Good morning. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Nexi first half 2026 financial results presentation. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on the telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Bernardo Mingrone, CEO of Nexi. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, welcome back to our first half results call. I'm here today with Piergiorgio and Stefania. We will take you through our documents, then at the end, we will open up the floor for Q&A as is usual. Let me start with a few introductory remarks with regards to the highlights of the first half. I would say that the first half has been very much consistent throughout the first quarter and the second quarter. As you can see, revenues grew 1% overall, similar to what it was in the first quarter, also for the second quarter. Importantly, our underlying growth is pretty steady at around 5%, as we have discussed at length also during the Capital Markets Day presentation back in March. Our EBITDA in the first half was broadly stable.
I'd like to highlight how excess cash generation was EUR 400 million, pretty similar to what it was in the first half last year. A figure or data which is comforting and puts us in a good position compared to our guidance for the whole year. The second thing I'd like to focus on is how we're shaping Nexi for our future profitable growth. In this, I just highlight how we continue to make progress on our roadmap to close the valuation gap, at least between how I and the management team perceive Nexi's underlying and true value to be and what it is perceived by investors. We spoke of this back in May with the first quarter results. Overall, our strategic initiatives are well on track.
We've spoken of in the past our efforts in the ISV space, so in the all-important convergence of software and payments, where our initiatives are proceeding as per plan in the geographies in which we operate. Today, we announce an organization simplification, which has been underway for the last couple of months, this will help us approach our journey going forward in the most efficient and effective way in the future. It also helps us with our continued and ongoing steadfast commitment to cost containment and discipline, Piergiorgio will speak about our cost performance in a few minutes. Overall, I'd also like to highlight how, with regards to creation of value for our shareholders, in the first half, we have successfully, as expected, obviously, paid out EUR 350 million of dividend back in May.
We have completed the acquisition of the Banca Popolare di Sondrio book in the beginning of the second quarter, we have paid down over EUR 1 billion of gross debt. I think this was part of an overall strategy that we also discussed back in May of the capital allocation, the most efficient use of the cash balance on our books. We started the year with just under EUR 2 billion of cash. This cash is being used, as I said, to pay down debt, we'll continue to pay down debt as it comes due, make dividend distributions, complete the M&A transactions that we had announced. As you will see, gross leverage, therefore, has come down, our net cash balance has come down as well.
We will continue to use that cash in the most efficient way, which right now is reimbursing maturities as they come due without accessing capital markets. Second thing I would like to speak about is something we'll definitely be hearing more of in the future, it is the digital euro program. As you know, Nexi's been a member of the Digital Euro Stakeholder Group since the start, since 2021. We've been part of the MAG, the Market Advisory Group. We have contributed to developing the rule book. We are on the Italian Payments Committee, in general, we are part of the overall ecosystem that is participating, led by the ECB, in defining the rules and implementation of the digital euro.
Back in 2022 and the beginning of 2023, we also developed the first digital euro prototype, we have been participating, as we've spoken of in the past, to the ECB's public tenders in a consortium led by G&D. We won the tender on the offline, we're now participating in remaining tenders and infrastructure part of the digital euro. We are keen to play an active role in the development of this critically important infrastructure. Finally, the ECB has recently announced that we were selected to participate in the pilot phase of the digital euro.
Something we're keen to leverage on in promoting a system-wide solution for other banks that would be able to benefit from the technology Nexi is developing in the digital euro, in order to socialize the cost of this opportunity and position us as an infrastructure provider for the digital euro to market participants, something we will be speaking more of going forward. That said, let me hand the floor over to Piergiorgio, who will take us through the details of the second quarter and the first half performance, then we'll come back to you, open the floor up for Q&A.
Thanks, Bernardo. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. For your interest in our company, Nexi. Let me start from where we left off a few months ago during our first quarter result call. The message we shared back then remains fully consistent with our Q2 results, confirms once again that we're a business built on resilient and diversified growth drivers, both from a geographic and operational viewpoint, supported by healthy underlying trends. We remain highly disciplined in managing costs and investments, we continue to deliver strong EBITDA and a robust excess cash generation. Overall, Q2 confirmed the resilience that we saw in Q1, with solid underlying growth and sound profitability, despite the expected impact of bank contract effects across both Merchant Solutions and Issuing Solutions, as well as some softness in consumer spending, particularly in Germany.
Starting with the top line, year-to-date revenues are slightly above EUR 1.7 billion, up 1% versus 2025, broadly in line both with our expectations and what we saw in Q1, consistent with the back-end loaded growth profile we outlined at our recent Capital Markets Day, with no major deviation to highlight. Year-to-date, EBITDA at EUR 870 million is in line with last year and with our guidance. Q2 EBITDA at EUR 473 million was slightly below 2025, reflecting the expected normalization of OpEx phasing that I anticipated and we discussed back in May. I would, therefore, strongly encourage you all not to look at this quarter in isolation. I will come back to operating expenses later, but let me say that we're very pleased with the first half OpEx growth, slightly below 2%, while keep on investing to support the top-line initiatives discussed during the CMD.
Year-to-date, EBITDA margin at 50.1% was just below 2025, which closed at 50.6%, supported by disciplined execution and the cost control initiatives we put in place over the past few months. In Merchant Solutions, the Q2 revenues were broadly stable year-on-year. This brought year-to-date performance to -0.8%, improving from -1.4% at the end of Q1. We are beginning to see the gradual recovery we discussed, with further acceleration expected in Q3 and Q4 as our strategic growth drivers gain traction and the impact of bank contracts effect reduces. To this point, I'd like to underline the positive contribution of direct channels, where we keep on investing as outlined again during the CMD and ISVs, whose impact to our sales is slightly better than our original assumptions. Looking at the underlying performance, revenues increased by around 3% year-on-year.
On volumes, the value of managed transactions continued to expand, supported by processing activities and the ramp-up of the Bancomat processing hub consolidation in Italy. These remain an important development as it further strengthened our positioning as an infrastructure provider within the payment ecosystem. At the same time, the macro-environment softened versus Q1 in one of our markets. In Germany, consumer spending weakened during the quarter, putting some pressure on volume growth, even as new customers acquisition continued to run ahead of last year. So far, the overall impact has remained contained. Let me now move to Issuing Solutions. IS delivered another robust quarter, with revenues up 1.5% in Q2 and approximately 3% in the first half of the year, despite the impact of the bank-related contracts.
The results were supported by solid core business trends, with the value of managed transaction remaining very robust and growing by 7% in the first half. Looking at the main drivers, the momentum was supported by the ongoing ramp-up of the Nexi Bancomat processing hub in Italy and the completion of the onboarding of a large customer in DACH, together with sustained expansion international schemes. This was further complemented by the positive contribution of our business levers, including international debit in Italy and increasing penetration of value-added services across our current portfolio. As we highlighted in May, the first quarter results also benefited in part from favorable timing of certain projects and initiatives, which mainly explain the different growth rate between Q1 and Q2. Going forward, we expect the non-bank-related headwinds to become a bit more pronounced in the second half of the year.
As a result, we anticipate full-year growth for Issuing Solutions to be in the low single-digit range, fully consistent with the framework we have previously shared with the market. Moving on, DBS delivered strong results, with the revenues up 6% in Q2 and 4.5% in the first half. This was supported by solid volume trends across the SIPA clearing, open banking, network services, and pagoPA, together with the contribution of new projects and business initiatives. We also benefited from favorable timing of certain activities, including bank M&A related work, while seeing additional contribution from initiatives such as Verification of Payee, XPay, and the digital euro offline project Bernardo just talked about. As we have consistently highlighted, DBS is structurely more expose to project base revenues than our other businesses. Part of the first half progression reflects positive project phasing.
While the underlying business trajectory remains very sound, we continue to expect full year growth to be in the low single digits. Moving on to the next slide. Our geographic diversification remains one of Nexi's key strengths, helping us to deliver resilient and predictable growth despite localized headwinds in specific markets. Starting with Italy, revenue grew 0.4% year-on-year in the first half, improving from a decline of 0.4% at the end of Q1. Let me remind you that Italy is the region most affected by the bank-related contract effect. In the Nordics, revenues declined by 1.7% or EUR 5 million in H1, mainly reflecting the mitigation of a large issuing client at the end of 2025, as we have discussed many times in the past. Excluding this effect, the underlying trend remains solid, supported by sustained momentum in e-commerce, value-added services, and national scheme.
Also in this case, Q2 improved compared with the start of the year, and we expect further progression in H2. Moving to DACH, the region delivered strong growth overall with revenue increasing by more than 7% in the first six months. Austria and Switzerland remain very strong, also in Q2, continuing to benefit from healthy commercial momentum and disciplined execution. In Germany, however, we experienced a second soft quarter, reflecting a challenging consumer environment, particularly in hospitality, where our exposure is relatively higher. As evidence of this challenging scenario, Germany recorded one of the highest levels of corporate insolvencies in the last two decades. Despite these market conditions, commercial momentum remains encouraging, with new customers acquisitions increasing at a faster rate over last year.
Finally, Nexi continued to grow, even though at a softer pace in Q2, mainly because of some phasing in non-volume-driven revenues and ongoing mix and pricing pressure in our Polish e-commerce franchise. Let me now turn to cost performance. As I highlighted in our first quarter call, looking at the single quarter in isolation does not provide a meaningful view of the underlying cost trajectory of our business, because timing and phasing effects can influence quarterly performance. For this reason, I believe the first half as a whole provides the most relevant perspective. In the first six months of the year, total cost increased by slightly less than 2%, moving from EUR 850 million to EUR 866 million, despite ongoing inflationary pressure on labor and other operating expenses, as well as higher volumes.
This result was achieved while investing in the strategic priorities outlined during the CMD, which will support Nexi future development. Personnel cost increased broadly in line with our expectations at about 4%, the same pace we saw in Q1, reflecting salary adjustment and investments made during 2025, plus what we did in the beginning of 2026, specifically to support our strategic growth drivers. At the same time, operating expenses remained essentially flat year-on-year. This reflects a combination of continued operating leverage, disciplined expense management, and the first benefit from several cost control measures launched over the past few months. These initiatives span both technology and non-technology spending and are increasingly supported by AI-enabled productivity improvements across the organization.
Overall, I am very encouraged by the progress we are seeing so far, and the first half results reinforce my confidence that we will continue to manage our expense base with discipline throughout the remainder of the year, and to deliver our full-year profitability and excess cash objectives. Moving on to CapEx. As we indicated at the beginning of the year, we continue to invest in key pillars of our strategy, growth platform modernization and consolidation and product quality, innovation, and security. In the first half, CapEx amounted to approximately EUR 168 million. This was broadly in line with last year and slightly better in terms of both absolute CapEx and CapEx intensity, while we continue, as said, to invest in strategic growth drivers. These reflect, once more, disciplined execution, clear prioritization, and our continued focus on cash cost control and efficiency. Let's now move on to cash generation.
Our cash conversion profile remained a key strength in the first half. We generated EUR 400 million of excess cash during the period, once again demonstrating the strong cash conversion characteristics of our business model. This result was achieved while continuing to invest in the business and funding the strategic initiatives we have discussed many times. Overall, H1 results confirm the resilience of Nexi cash generation model and give us full confidence in our ability to deliver around EUR 750 million of excess cash for 2026, consistent with our guidance that we reaffirm today. The strength of our cash generation has also enabled us to continue executing our capital allocation priorities.
As Bernardo just said, during the first half, we repaid approximately EUR 1 billion of debt maturities, paid around EUR 350 million of dividends to our shareholders, and completed the BPS deal, leveraging our strong liquidity position while maintaining a solid financial position and preserving our investment grade credit profile, which was reaffirmed very recently by both Fitch and Standard & Poor's just in July. Let me conclude with our outlook for the full year. As you can see on the slide, we are confirming all elements of our 2026 guidance. On our revenues, the underlying business drivers remain intact, and Merchant Solutions is progressively re-accelerating as expected. At the same time, we continue to see a somewhat softer consumer environment, particularly in Germany, as I said, and the second half includes important seasonal periods such as the summer and year-end, which naturally carry a higher degree of variability.
Taking this factor into account, our current view remains that revenues are on track to be in line with our guidance, with the final landing point depending on the normal evolution of consumer spending and seasonal dynamics over the coming months. Importantly, we also have a high degree of confidence in our ability to deliver our EBITDA guidance, and our excess cash target of around EUR 750 million. Once again, this confidence is supported by the flexibility we retain on our cost base and by the strict cash control we demonstrated in the first six months of the year. With that, we can start the Q&A session. Thank you.
Excuse me, 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 the 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 Sébastien Sztabowicz from Kepler Cheuvreux . Please go ahead, sir.
Hi, everyone, thanks for taking my question. First of all, on short term, how do you see volumes trending since the start of the quarter? Have you seen a specific change versus what you have seen in the second quarter? I know you mentioned some softness in Germany, but also in Italy. Could you please elaborate a little bit what is happening in those countries? Second question is on the rundown of some specific project, including Banco BPM in Italy and Nordea Issuing. Where are we standing right now in terms of progress? Are you in line with the plan? Are you doing it better or worse than you had expected? Thank you.
Morning, Sébastien. Thanks for your questions. With regards to volume evolution throughout the first half, I would say there's not been anything material to call out in terms of fluctuations as we always point out, it's very hard to glean any information from one week to the next. I would say that overall, the six months were pretty much aligned with our expectations in terms of development. This is throughout the group then, Piergiorgio called out, I think, Germany rather than Italy and Germany. In Germany, indeed, we all read the press and we've all read about very substantial redundancies being called out in the auto sector, with hundreds of thousands of people being laid off. In general, the macro environment in Germany has been worse than our own macro expectations, which we had put underlying the plan.
This is obviously contributing to a slower than expected performance in Germany, but I wouldn't make anything more than that out of it, because as you know, as we've discussed in the past, most of our growth comes from increased levels of penetration. In Germany in particular, our real bet is not so much on macro performance, but on increased penetration levels. Germany is one of the countries with the lowest levels of penetration of digital payments, and increasing market share because we are a smaller player in Germany than some of our competitors. That said, Germany is suffering from the macro, but hopefully things will improve over time, and that will also help us. In general, the environment in terms of also the holiday season and tourism, et cetera, doesn't highlight anything we should be concerned about.
With regards to the migrations, I would say, on the customer that you mentioned in Italy, I think what you see in our first half numbers largely reflect our expectations with regards to the migration away from Nexi of those banks that churned back in 2023 and 2024 that we spoke so much of during our Capital Markets Day. The churn was both an issue in acquiring with regards to Banco that you mentioned earlier. It started with acquiring, and now moving into second half of the year, we are going to kind of benefit from the fact that that is over, compared to last year, where it was in full swing in the first half of this year when it was being completed.
What we had guided you to was that we would have a gradual improvement over 2026 between first half and second half on the Merchant Solutions revenue front. You can see that the negative growth in Merchant Solutions in the second quarter is improving compared to the first quarter because of this effect. The year-on-year lapping of the exit of Banco is coming to an end, and in the second half, we expect an acceleration in Merchant Solutions simply from the comp effect. That's happening.
We also said that the migration away from us would switch from Merchant Solutions or from acquiring to issuing, and that is starting, and Banco has started. As you can see, issuing has slowed down in the second quarter compared to the first quarter, and this will continue in the second half of the year. I would say this is mostly as planned. On the issuing front, we also have the Nordic customer that you mentioned, whose impact also started during the first part of the year, well, actually started many years ago, and will be exhausted by the end of this year.
Just on Germany, what was the trend exactly in terms of revenue in Q2 and in Q1, just to understand a bit the deterioration that you mentioned?
I think the second quarter. I'll hand the floor to Piergiorgio, who can give you more details, but obviously second quarter is slightly worse than the first one.
Yeah. Sébastien. Hi, thanks for the question. If you look at our slide where we present the revenue by geography and you do reverse engineering compared to what we presented in Q1, you would see that Q2 overall, I mean, DACH as a region, is growing more or less by 2%, give or take. As I said in my written remarks, DACH is the sum of Germany and Austria, with Germany being the biggest player by far. This + 2% is a little bit better than what Germany did per se, since, as I said, Austria and Switzerland doing fine. Ballpark number, call it between 1% and 2% in Germany. The other two smaller geographies that growing need a little bit more than a mid-single digit, mid to high single digit.
Perfect. Thank you.
The next question is from Justin Forsythe from UBS. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Good morning, Bernardo and Piergiorgio. Thank you very much. First question from me, just wanted to ask around excess cash and the moving pieces. I think we were expecting a little bit more of a 2H weighting despite the tax impacts as you flagged and consistently hit in 2H. Maybe you could just walk us through if there's anything you're expecting that maybe you weren't expecting initially to hit excess cash negatively in 2H and walk us through the moving pieces there. I wanted to ask a follow-up on Germany. I just was wondering if you could. You talked a little bit, Bernardo, about the layoffs in the automobile sector. Piergiorgio, you flagged specifically hospitality. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the specific challenges there. Like is that, say, people flying to Germany from places in the Middle East?
Is it more due to economic hardship across the region? Is that more in food and beverage? Just trying to get a feel for the dynamics there. What does this imply for the rest of the year? I guess you feel very comfortable reiterating the guidance. You, again, still expect that acceleration in merchant services through the rest of the year? I guess one other follow-up on Germany, you spoke a little bit about software-led or ISV distribution in Germany. I remember that business actually being a lot of direct distribution. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about where you're having success with the ISV business. Is that more orderbird? Is that partners that you're bringing up through the pipe, et cetera? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Justin. Let me try and answer all three of your questions, or all four, but I'll place the fourth one with the second on Germany, and then Piergiorgio obviously can help me where I get stuck. With regards to excess cash, there is some seasonality with it. Especially on things outside of the P&L, if you think of CapEx and the phasing of CapEx, that obviously helps or contributes to cash generation. The timing of that is less predictable. It's less of a flow. It's more lumpy and got to do with projects. That said, indeed, given our guidance of EUR 750 for the year, the fact that the second half is generally 52%, 53%, I would say, weighted compared to the first half of the year in terms of EBITDA generation, hence also cash generation notwithstanding taxes being in the second half.
All that said, a bit better than we expected. That is also to do with one of the points I made earlier. One of the things we're working on is obviously to try and perform as well as we can on costs, and in general, on cash generation. I think we're being successful on that front. I believe that the cash generation in the first half is a good indicator of our performance for the year, and the fact that we are very confident that they will meet our guidance at this stage of the year. There's nothing lumpy, one-off that you should normalize for. It's just in general something that we're working on and we're doing well on.
On Germany, I go back to my remarks about how Germany is, for us, a market in which we win or lose more based on our ability to develop our distribution channel successfully and our ability to win market share from competitors given where we start from, and on the fact that the German market, the kind of rising tide of payments that lifts all players in that space. That's much more important than the macro. That said, when you're talking about 1 percentage point to 2 or 3 percentage points of growth, which is one or EUR 2 million or EUR 3 million in a year, obviously also macro impacts. I think everything we mentioned and you reiterated contributes to that negative effect. The fact that unemployment is going up in Germany or people are being laid off, obviously that leads to consumption being under pressure.
In general, the HoReCa space is not growing as much as it used to. It's actually hitting a rough patch and I'm not able to answer the question as to whether this is Middle East tourism that is coming down. In general, what we see is restaurants and hotels being less productive than the past for us in terms of volumes. What I'm focused on is how Strategy to win market shares performing. On that front, given that you asked the questions about the channels, I think we're doing pretty well, if not very well on the ISV channel and the partner channel. That includes the ISV channel, obviously includes orderbird. In general, on the ISV channel and the partners are doing very well. Where we need to think long and hard about our strategy is the direct channel where we're struggling a little more.
Again, this is growing pains, I would say, in a market which represents for us a great opportunity given its size and given the level of under-penetration. With Thomas, who came on board last year, about one year ago, actually, we're seeing if there's anything we need to change in terms of the direct distribution effort to make it as productive as we can. With regards to the rest of the year, the forecast for the rest of the year, in general, we always caution not to read too much into short-term performance because there are quarterly swings tied to project work timing of certain issues, et cetera. I think the first half this year has been very steady, very predictable, and I would just stick to what I said earlier.
I think we, and Piergiorgio reiterated, I think we feel very comfortable in terms of our overall performance for 2026, given our guidance, that the further down you travel in the P&L, the more control we have. We feel most comfortable, obviously, on the cash generation where we have the most levers to act on. The way we close the first half is a good place to be.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
The next question is from Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. Please go ahead, sir. The next question is from Nooshin Nejati from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Two on my side, too. Maybe follow up on Justin's questions, actually. I appreciate you mentioned seasonality and that there was no one-off to account for. What are the main reasons not to think this continues in H2, the excess cash, and you would basically end up above your guide? I guess I'm asking if guidance is now conservative or there are specific elements to consider for H2. Maybe if you can please help us bridge FY margin outlook. How should we think about cost growth in H2 relative to Q2 and maybe the difference between the quarters?
I think you're trying to force us into revising our guidance anyway, which we're not going to do. The guidance is what it is, and we're planning to do at least EUR 750 million of excess cash. We're at EUR 400 million. There is no unusual seasonality that I expect in the second half of the year compared to prior years. We pay taxes in the second half of the year, so you have that. The second half of the year is also heavier in terms of cash contribution coming from the business because of the summer months and December, and that is true every year. I think in general what we're doing, I go back to my opening remarks. Piergiorgio and I and the rest of the team is very supportive of this.
We're working to make sure that we can fund the investments we're making in our growth strategy, which we spoke of at length during our Capital Markets Day, through greater efficiencies. Of course, the world is evolving very quickly, and AI and other instruments that are available to us today are helping this efficiency gain that helps fund these investments, that helps our performance. Again, we give guidance on a yearly basis, and we will report on a quarterly basis how we're doing, and that's the EUR 400 million compared to the EUR 750 minimum level for 2026. On the cost growth. We closed the quarter or the first half at just under 2%, 1.9% cost growth.
We are shouldering the cost or the investments we are making in ISV and the direct sales force primarily, I would say in the ISV channel and the direct sales force, not only obviously as we deploy AI more pervasively throughout the company, we have increasing costs related to that. It's an investment well placed in my mind. Notwithstanding this, we are able to contain our costs through continued efficiencies. I think a number of times we've spoken of how Nexi has come together as three companies back in 2021, and these three companies brought with them a number of platforms and complexity, which we are working on to minimize and reduce. The cost out coming from the reduction of this complexity helps mitigate the upward pressure on costs. This has always been true.
I think we've always been consistent in terms of being able to manage our cost growth in a way that it is lower than what you'd normally get inertially from just volume growth, inflation, wage drift, and the likes. Also, thanks to the fact that we started with a pretty articulate and complicated IT landscape that we're working to simplify. This will continue in the second half. We do our best and we work to try and do as well as we can and to beat the guidance that we'd given you, but that remains the guidance.
Thank you. Very helpful.
The next question is from Alexandre Faure from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning. Thank you very much for letting me on, Naeem. About three questions, I am afraid. First one is going back on cost growth that you just talked about. Now you talked about this simplifying the organization and so on. Should we expect any cash outflows relating to those efforts coming through in the second half, maybe, or in 2027? Second point, sorry to get back to that, on the guidance question. I heard what you say on sort of EBITDA and free cash flow guide. I was more curious on your net revenue guide. Does this hold at current macro, or you'd need a macro to go back to what it was in January and February in the second half to sort of get to that net revenue mark?
Finally, I was surprised to see that Merchant Solutions installed base revenues seem to be coming down quite a bit again in Q2. If you could remind us of what's in there and what's been causing the decline for a couple of quarters in a row now. Thank you.
Sorry, Alex, I couldn't find the button. You shouldn't apologize for your questions. We're here to answer them, I am happy to take them. Cost growth and simplification, as I said, we are in the process of reorganizing ourselves so that we can be as lean as possible in terms of all our decision-making processes, in terms of our go-to market. This reorganization will generate efficiencies, which were probably not baked into the numbers back in March, because simply they were born out of a change which occurred after the Capital Markets Day. This is obviously going to help us, I would say, more so next year than this year, given where we stand in the year and when these things are actually happening. Obviously there is some benefit in 2026 as well.
What I'd like to point out is the way we have approached this as a team is that we need to fund all investments, including in our efficiency from the business. The guidance we give you includes anything we're spending in order to become more efficient. There's not going to be a surprise between now and year-end saying there's a big restructuring charge or something like that associated with this. Our guidance is including everything, which doesn't mean there's no cost associated with it's funded by other savings, other initiatives, let's say also phasing effects or things we might decide not to do, period. You're not going to get the restructuring charge like we had in 2024 or something like that.
That said, going forward in the next few years, every, I think, six or seven years, we have the opportunity in Italy in particular to have early retirement windows open, et cetera. This is not something we're considering today. Doesn't mean that in the future at some point we might not do so again. As I said, nothing is planned, nothing was in the plan numbers, and nothing will be happening for sure between now and year-end on that front. On the revenues front, I'd say go back to the comment on Germany. It actually holds true for the rest of the group. Obviously, better macro helps, especially when revenues are growing 1%, every little bit helps to improve that revenue growth, and macro does as well.
I stand by our numbers support, our forecast for the year supports the fact that we believe that revenues will grow in 2026 similar to how they grew in 2025. Obviously we hope that macro helps us achieve this and we do better, but right now that's where we are. So we'll stand by that. Finally, on MS, let me on installed base revenues in MS and the quarterly evolution, I'll hand the floor back to Piergiorgio who's closer to detail there.
Yeah, thanks. Just an additional comment, if I may, on the cost guide. I believe even though it was not part of our official guidance, going back to the Capital Markets Day, we showed a slide saying that we would have expected our cost base, our OpEx to increase at 2026 over 2025 by 5%-6%. If you do the reverse engineering of where we ended up in Q1, you would end up with a growth, OpEx growth rate implied in H2 of around, let me say, 5%-ish to 6% kind of. We are, I would say, aiming to be on the lower side of that range, the 5%-6% we talked about, and that is going to give us all the flexibility we need in case of further deterioration of macro conditions or variability to deliver what we committed to deliver.
That really makes us comfortable there. When it comes down to installed base revenues vis-à-vis non-installed base revenues for MS, as you might remember, give or take 25%-28% of our revenues in MS are driven by installed base. It just takes a couple of millions more quarter- to- quarter to change those percentages. I wouldn't read too much into that number. If I look at the volume and I compare Q1 2025 with Q1 2026, once again, if you go back and look at the numbers, you would see that the volume of revenues is increasing nicely.
I would say it's around 1.5%. Installed base revenues quarter- on- quarter are going down. If you look in Acquiring, it's the same story. They're going down by 8%. There, once again, you have some phasing of projects, plus some pressure on terminals, price pressure on terminals. Again, most of it I would say is phasing of non-volume events.
Okay. I think in general, it's fair to say that there is margin pressure, I would say, or more pressure on the terminal pricing than there is in acquiring, which we're compensating with Acquiring. That's throughout the market. Some players are offering terminals for free, maybe ahead of IPOs or things like that.
Got it. Thanks very much for the candid answers.
The next question is from Antonio Gianfrancesco of Intermonte. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just one from my side on digital euro. I was wondering if you can help us to understand what kind of investment, let's say, in terms of CapEx, are required in next 12 months, one, two years, whether they are already included in your current CapEx plan, and when we could start seeing an impact in terms, let's say, of incremental revenues. Thank you.
Thanks for the question, Antonio. Our guidance includes everything we're doing, so it includes also the work we're doing on digital euro. Right now in the startup phase, in this pilot phase that we're working on, the investments are, if we're talking about the work we're doing with the ECB and helping the ECB develop the framework, obviously they're compensated by revenues associated with them. We're not talking about huge amounts of revenues. We're single digit kind of million EUR for the time being, and similar amounts of investments associated with them.
With regards to the development of the pilots, the capabilities to participate in the pilot phase, again, given where we are in the year, smallish investments required, but I think significant potential going forward because the whole let's say my ambition would be that Nexi can serve its partner banks, not only in Italy but across Europe, in helping them socialize the costs of being able to adopt the digital euro by having us invest once and them using us as a common infrastructure for them to be sure on the acceptance rails, but potentially also on the wallet side of things going forward.
Obviously, digital euro is only expected to come into being in 2029, so potential revenues will become realizable from our positioning in the market as this kind of an infrastructure provider probably in 2028. I would not expect it to be sooner. Right now, we're trying to position ourselves for the pilot banks, and we'll see how that works, and that might bring some benefit sooner, but not materially in the short term.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Hannes Leitner of Jefferies. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes. This time not muted. The first question is, you talked quite a lot about macro weakness, softness, and that the guidance depends on consumer spending. Feels a little bit like a cautious stance. Where do we are in those trends lines? That's the first question, really getting a little bit more granularity. Where do you see actually you have more outperformed your plan to get to the headroom? Because clearly macro looks worse today than couple of months back. The second question is, again, on Merchant Services, and maybe their international schemes have been slowing. Is that partially related with the contract runoffs or have you done the migration mostly in Italy and now you have a much bigger share in international schemes?
Just the last one is, if you look at underlying growth, for the group, you talked about 4% Merchant Solutions, just 3%. That would imply underlying growth in Issuing Solutions around 5%, or reverse EUR 10 million headwind from the bank contract runoff. Is that the quarterly cadence we should expect now for, let's say, for the next nine months or 10 months? Thank you.
Thanks, Hannes. Let me try and answer these, and then obviously Piergiorgio can help me with the greater granularity you're looking for. In general, overall, the macro weakness is ultimately our revenues are growing 1%, right? I mean, they're not growing 5%, which is the underlying. Part of that, we're not outperforming our own guidance also because of macro. I think it's pretty homogeneous throughout Europe. We pulled out Germany because it's definitely suffering a bit more than other regions. In the past, we'd discussed Finland and Sweden. They're smaller than Germany, so lower contribution. I would say that no one is doing particularly well. In Nordic country, Denmark and Norway, nominal growth is actually quite healthy there with a bit of inflation economies. That's close to 5% if you want. That helps. I'd say they're probably doing better than elsewhere.
Italy is not doing that badly also for us in terms of our revenues. It's not like there's one country that's firing on all cylinders and outperforming and dragging everything else up. I think in general, the climate is subdued, hopefully, things will improve as time goes by, and this will also help us close that gap between where we're growing at today and historically where we've been growing at. That comes to the last point you were making, the 5%. Yes, it's actually 5% on average for the group. Of course, if you look at the second quarter, it's 4%, but I always go back to what we caution, which is, quarterly performance you need to then normalize for weekends, for holidays, for the weather, all these kind of things.
Overall, I think we are pretty stable around that 5% mark historically and for the first half of the year. As you were noting that we have a very diversified group, which makes it difficult for us, given the diversification of businesses, of regions in which we're in, so our levels of penetrations of the countries in which we operate in, and therefore the structural capability of the group. It has both the cons of being diversified. It's unlikely that as a group, we can grow our top line mid-teens in terms of growth, even though within the group, we do have businesses that grow in double-digit space, like e-commerce, like historically, for instance, some areas like Poland or whatever.
As a group, the diversification is such that on average, we'll grow less, we've highlighted how we believe that structurally, we're capable of growing in line with our historic underlying growth. That said, also on the diversification helps us when Merchant Solutions is growing less than expected. You have Issuing, which is very predictable and is growing 5% and pulls the average up. It also has to do with the phasing of the exit of the bank contracts that you were speaking of, or I was speaking of earlier. So far, we've suffered on Merchant Solutions most from the migration away from us because it's easier to migrate away a merchant from your acquirer. You give them a new terminal, and they start accepting on that, and it's easier.
Migrating a card portfolio is much more complicated and much more time-consuming, frankly speaking, also from an operating standpoint, risky. That's taking longer, and it will evolve over the next probably 12 to 24 months. We fight tooth and nail to try and make it as slow and painful as possible to migrate away from us. On the other hand, they're trying to do it as quickly as possible, and we'll see who is most effective. That's how it will evolve. For sure it will hit us. It started to hit us in 2026, the Issuing side, and will continue throughout next year. I don't know Piergiorgio if you want to answer anything on this.
No, I have nothing to add. You covered it very well.
The national schemes.
Sorry? Okay. I think we have no more questions, so hand it back to the operator.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.