Hello, and welcome to the bpost first quarter 2024 quarterly results. My name is Caroline, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for your lines will be on listen only mode. However, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now... Today, we have Chris Peeters, CEO, and Philippe Dartienne, CFO, as our presenter. I will now hand over to your host, Chris Peeters, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to present our first quarter results as CEO of bpostgroup. With me, I have Philippe Dartienne, our CFO, as well as Antoine Lebecq from Investor Relations. We posted the materials on our website this morning. We will walk you through the presentation and will then take your questions. As always, two questions each would ensure everyone gets a chance to be addressed in the upcoming hour. Philippe, let's get to the quarter results, and I will then take the floor for a status update on press distribution in Belgium, as this is one of our key priorities for the moment.
Thank you, Chris, and good morning to all of you. I'm on page three. Our underlying performance during the first quarter was impacted by challenging market conditions, particularly with ongoing pressure on our top line in North America and soft market backdrop in Belgium, in Europe. However, despite these challenges, we managed to navigate through them and deliver a resilient performance, thanks to notably our domestic and cross-border markets, and our continued focus on productivity in North America. You see that our group operating income for Q1 stood at EUR 993 million, and declined year-over-year by 5.3%, mainly due to ongoing pressure in North America.
While on the other end, our domestic revenue remained flat, despite lower mail revenue, including a EUR 5 million lower state compensation for the press concession and our fulfillment activities in Europe and our Asian cross-border sales continued to grow. On group adjusted EBIT, that stood at EUR 62.1 million, generating a margin of 6.2%, including a EUR 7.7 million M&A cost tied to the Staci acquisition. Before we delved into the financial performance of our business unit, you will note on slide 4, that while our adjusted EBIT decreased from EUR 78 million to EUR 62 million year-over-year, our adjusted net profit only slightly decreased from EUR 48 million to EUR 44 million.
This is primarily due to a nearly EUR 11 million increase in financial result, which besides FX impact, is mainly attributed to the absence of interest charge related to the variable U.S. dollar note that we repaid in December 2023, but also a rise in interest income from cash and cash equivalent investment in the quarter. Let's move now to the details of Belgium on page 5. At Belgium, we see that the revenue decreased by EUR 9 million to EUR 546 million. Domestic mail recorded an underlying mail volume decline of -6.7% for the quarter, against a -8.8% in Q1 2023.
This impacted negatively the revenue by EUR 21.4 million, yet was mitigated by positive price and mix impact of +12.2 million EUR, resulting in a negative 9 million lower domestic revenue year-over-year, of which 5 million coming from the reduced state compensation for the price concession. When it comes to parcels in Belgium, we recorded an increase of 5 million EUR in revenue, or +4.2%. Parcel volume increased by +2.9% year-over-year against a very high comps and a volume trend of +9% in the same quarter last year. Compared to our annual guidance of high single digit percentage volume growth, this lower volume trend in Q1 is mainly explained by a delay in anticipated additional volume from existing customers.
It should be also noted that this volume growth occur under unfavorable market conditions. In Belgium, inflation continues to increase month after month. Since October, when the lowest level of 0.35% was reached and rose at +2.2% in March this year, the highest level observed in the last eight months. In parallel, customer confidence deteriorated from 0 in December to -5 in February and March, result reaching its lowest level since August last year, as unemployment prospects soared and household savings intention continued to edge up. Price mix stood at +1.3% in Q1, mainly driven by parcel-... Proximity and convenience retail network revenue decreased by EUR 3 million, with lower banking revenue on one end, offsetting the indexation of the management contract.
Operationally, revenue from VAS value-added services increased, mainly driven by the fines solution and document management contract. However, this growth was more than offset by the repricing of the state services, which is now accounted within VAS, instead of other revenue in previous quarters. Let's move to the P&L of Belgium on page 6. Our intersegment and other revenue increased this year as they comprised, in 2023, a negative EUR 6.25 million impact for the repricing of the state service, as I explained before. We also see that on that line, the high-impact segment revenue from inbound cross-border volumes handled in our domestic market for E-Logistics Eurasia.
On the cost side, our adjusted OpEx, including D&A, only slightly increased by EUR 3.6 million or 0.7%, mainly driven by higher salary costs, as our cost per FTE increased by 2% year-over-year following the indexation mechanism you're familiar with. We only had one in since December. While on the other end, we maintained our FTE flat. Bottom line, our adjusted EBIT slightly decreased by EUR 4 million year-over-year, with domestic and inbound parcels mitigating the impact of lower press revenue and inflation on payroll cost. Moving on now to E-Logistics Eurasia on page 7. Revenue were up EUR 4 million, reflecting again a strong growth at cross-border Asia and at Radial and Active Ants. But let's have a look into more details since we have different trends in within the different activities. In e-commerce logistics, revenue increased by EUR 2.5 million.
So I was saying that the revenue increased by EUR 2.5 million with different trends in the different businesses. So let's start with Radial Europe and Active Ants, where we see an increase of +13% year-over-year, a growth which is fueled by onboarding new customers as part of our international expansion effort, as well as the upscaling activities targeting existing customers. At Dynam, despite higher volumes in the two-man delivery network, lower volume across all other business line, notably DynaFix and DynaSure, with less device to be repaired, led to a decrease in revenue. When it comes to cross-border, revenue increased by EUR 1.5 million or +2%.
As reported in the previous quarter, revenue growth mainly reflects on one end, the contribution of new customers and a continuous growth of existing customers with both resulting in some strong volume from China to Belgium, and on the other end, the impact of ongoing challenges we are observing in the U.K. market. Let's move to the P&L of Eurasia on-stage, on slide 8. While the total operating income increased by +2.1%, operating expense, including D&A, remained nearly stable, which is mainly explained by several elements: lower material costs, in line with lower volume at DynaLogic and lower SG&A, stable salary costs with inflationary pressures offset by lower FTEs, and on the other end, higher transportation costs in line with higher volume of activities at cross-border, especially for the volume destination Belgium.
From a profitability standpoint, notably thanks to Asian cross-border volume with destination Belgium, we've been able to reach the high end of our annual guidance with a margin level of 7.5%, which is consistent with the one we already observed in the last quarter of 2023. Moving on now to North America e-logistics business on page 9. In line with the previous quarters, our top line in North America continues to be impacted by economic softness, the market overcapacity, leading to high degree of competition and price pressure, as well as the insourcing of Amazon, which continue to impact the Landmark US business. I will come back on that one as well. The other operating income logistics decreased by 16% or EUR 55 million.
At constant exchange rates corresponds to a -15%, which is in line with the previous quarter, but in stark contrast with the first quarter of last year, during which the revenue was still, revenue decrease or revenue pressure was still limited to around 6% and only began to be felt. At Radial, top line decreased by 19% year-over-year, as the lower sales from existing customer and in-year revenue of new customer win, still very limited in the beginning of the year, cannot compensate the client churn that we have already announced last year. As discussed at our previous quarterly result, and to put our drop in U.S. dollar revenue in perspective, we continue to see volume pressure in the U.S. parcels market with, for instance, FedEx and UPS respectively referring to difficult demand environment and challenging macro environment during their recent quarterly result presentation.
At Landmark US, this is now the fifth quarter in a row that we record year-over-year lower revenue due to the Amazon insourcing that started end of December, the end of 2022. Despite general pressure in the market and excluding the revenue drop from Amazon, the other customers continue to grow. Moving to the P&L on slide 10. Alongside our total operating income, OpEx and D&A decreased by 14% at constant FX, as we managed to align our resources to lower demand and continue to focus on what we can internally control, i.e., productivity.
Variable OpEx evolved in line with revenue development, and we continue to benefit from strong variable labor management and other productivity gain at Radial, where the variable contribution margin, the so-called VCM, has increased by 3% compared to last year and stands at its highest ever level. This percentage increase of 3% translated into a $7 million additional contribution compared to last year. Despite the lower fixed cost coverage capacity resulting from ongoing top line pressure, our ability to align capacity and resources to demand and focus on productivity gains continue to play a key role in protecting our margin in these lasting, challenging market conditions. Moving to the corporate segment on page 11, external operating income decreased by EUR 1.5 million year-over-year from lower billing sales in line with our annual guidance.
The higher net OpEx, after invoicing of internal costs and depreciation amortization, increased by EUR 7.7 million, mainly resulting from some M&A costs resulting to the Staci acquisition, so the EUR 7.7 million is relating to Staci only. The payroll cost also slightly increased following the impact of one salary indexation. Note that after reporting in a reduction of overhead FTEs for 8 quarters in a row, our overhead this quarter remains stable. Let's move now to the cash flow on page 12. The main items to be flagged here are the following: Cash flow from operating activities before change in working capital stood at EUR 156 million, and slightly increased by EUR 6 million versus last year, with some favorable corporate tax settlement offsetting the lower EBITDA.
Change in working cap and provision remained roughly stable at EUR 116 million compared to last year. This mainly reflects, on one end, last year's deferral into Q1 2023 of the last quarter 2022 payment of withholding tax on payroll, which was, I already mentioned it, a measure that the Belgian government offered to a corporation to cope with the high inflation. So this resulted in a favorably, in favorability of EUR 31 million this year. But this has been compensated by the lower state compensation for the press that amounts to -EUR 35 million. Cash outflow from investing activities amounted to EUR 14 million, with EUR 43 million lower CapEx, reflecting the purchase of two logistics site in the U.S. last year.
This item constitutes the main valuation on our free cash flow, and the cash flow from financing activities amounted to EUR 34 million, in line with last year. I now hand over for Chris, for handover on the press.
Thank you, Philippe. During the presentation of our annual results in early February, we had shared with you our ambition to finalize negotiation with press editors by the end of March. This would have provided us with clarity to our employees and the required visibility on the financial impacts, allowing us to introduce the group EBIT guidance for 2024. Due to factors external to bpost, the timeline deviated slightly. Let me provide you with an update on the press developments of the past two months. First, regarding the financial support from the government to the publishers, as announced at the end of 2023, the annual envelope of EUR 50 million until the end of 2026 was confirmed in the form of a tax credit in favor of the editors... and the terms and conditions, including eligibility criteria, were confirmed by the government on March twentieth.
This was crucial financial information for publishers to progress in their commercial negotiations. Second, regarding commercial negotiations, progress varies between the northern and southern part of the country, and also varies by product. For the negotiations with the Dutch-speaking newspaper publishers in the north of the country, which in terms of volume, represent around 80% of the total newspapers currently distributed by bpost in Belgium, the commercial negotiations have concluded, and we announced last Friday the agreement we reached with publishers. As a result, we will gradually transfer volumes from bpost SA to our subsidiary, AMP, by 2026. AMP is a subsidiary wholly owned by bpostgroup and works with subcontractors employing their own workers.
As a reminder, AMP has been active since 1885 in the press distribution, and is the leading press distributor in Belgium, leveraging its four distribution centers across the country to serve over 4,500 retail outlets in Belgium, such as press shops or gas stations. This commercial agreement allows bpostgroup to secure approximately 75% of the volumes we currently handle in Flanders, and avoid a social plan for that part of the country. For the negotiation with the French-speaking newspaper publishers in the southern part of the country, which, in terms of volume, represents approximately 20% of our newspapers, we have the proposal to gradually transfer the A to AMP, but did not receive the support from our French-speaking unions, and we were unable to submit a similar offer then to the French-speaking editors.
We are currently in discussion with the publishers based on a different operational setup for the press distribution in Wallonia. Here, too, the objective is to secure most of the current volumes, but all options are still possible, including discontinuing distribution via bpost if our offer is not accepted by the publishers. We hope to obtain a decision by the end of May. Finally, regarding negotiations with Belgian periodical publishers, we have made good progress and have presented our new commercial offer to the regulator on April 15. We immediately started presenting this offer to our customers and received some positive feedback so far. Again, our goal is to find a good balance to, on the one hand, offering distribution services of high quality at financial conditions that are acceptable, of course, for bpost, but also for the publishers, despite a substantial decrease in government support to the press sector.
We're talking here about EUR 110 million between 2023 and 2025 of decrease, and of course, to avoid a social plan at bpost. We have achieved this already for the newspapers in Flanders, which is a great relief. The commercial offer for periodicals is being presented to our customers, and we are making every effort to reach a viable agreement for the distribution of newspapers in Wallonia, even though it is still at risk. At this stage, as some of the negotiations are still ongoing, we are not able yet to provide comprehensive details on the overall financial impact or to introduce an EBIT guidance for the group in 2024. We will do so as soon as possible, but as you understand, the timeline is not entirely within our control. There may be some comment on the strike.
In the context of the negotiation for the newspapers in Wallonia, bpost experienced a 4-day strike from April twenty-second to April twenty-fifth. This strike affected our sorting and distribution operations for press, mail, and parcels, particularly in Brussels and Wallonia. Apart from the impact this will have on service quality and the additional cost associated with clearing the backlog of unprocessed volume during this period, we had to engage with our customers so they could make arrangements to mitigate operational disruptions. Consequently, some volumes were temporarily transferred to the competitors. As we only began the April closing process yesterday, we are currently not able to quantify these impacts. We will provide further information on this matter when we return to you with the outcome of the ongoing press negotiation. We're now ready to take your questions.
Again, two questions each, please, so that everyone gets the chance to be addressed during the session. Operator, please open the lines.
Sure. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line. Frank Claassen from Degroof Petercam. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Frank Claassen, Degroof Petercam. Two questions indeed. First of all, on the guidance, I understand that you cannot give the guidance pending the negotiations, but with the full year numbers, you gave some building blocks for the different divisions, excluding the press distribution impact. Can you... Let's say, are these building blocks still valid? That's my first question. And then secondly, it related to that, the CapEx. You indicated EUR 180 million at the start of the year, but the first quarter was only EUR 14 million. Is that pure timing, or do you think that, yeah, the EUR 180 million may be a bit at the high end? Thank you.
... Okay, so let me start, and feel free to jump in. So, indeed, when we presented the guidance, in fact, we presented the building blocks for the different subsets. And then let me briefly walk through, and of course, as you rightly mention it, this did not include any impact of the price of the price concession. So, let me come back on what we shared with you back then. So when it comes to Belgium e-logistics or Asia, again, excluding the impact of the price, we are more or less in line with what we were expecting, so, again, excluding that one.
Nevertheless, there is an additional element compared to the time or the assumption that were made back then at the time when we shared with you the guidance or the building blocks for the guidance, which is, as Chris mentioned it two minutes ago, which is the impact of the strike. Impact of the strike has direct and indirect impact, in the sense that, of course, we have not been able to deliver some products, some services to the customers, but also it might have an impact also on customers in the future.
When it comes to e-logistics North America, indeed, we see a decrease of the top line in a context, again, which is extremely demanding, and it's not only us seeing it, our competitors as well are seeing it. So there, I would say, in fact, that if we would have to guide right now, we would rather guide to the lower end of the range that we had announced earlier, if the pressure persists. Also, keep in mind that when it comes to the top-line development in the U.S., this is a business which is highly dependent of the year-end peak, and no one could anticipate right now what's gonna be this year-end peak.
I mean, we have no reason to be more or less optimistic or negative compared to a similar situation when we announce the first quarter results of any given year. When it comes to corporate, then we have to revise it downwards, which is mostly to the M&A cost relating to the Staci acquisition. You understand that at the time we were presenting you the guidance, the building blocks of the guidance, for confidentiality reasons, we could not state any amount relating to that activity. So, long story short, we have not dropped our initial guidance.
We always put it in a way which is by building blocks, with some exceptions, some unknown, mostly relating to the price, and I would add the impact, the unquantified impact, the unquantified yet impact of the strike we had, we experienced some days ago. Second point of the question, which is on the CapEx, indeed we guided on EUR 180 million. Typically, the first quarter is very low. Last year it was a bit higher because we had the acquisition of 32 warehouses in the US, but if you go back in history, you will see that the first quarter is typically low. One thing is for sure, is that in that CapEx, there are two types of CapEx. There are some maintenance CapEx that we continue to invest in.
We need to keep our delivering our engine being able to deliver the parcels, the mail. We continue that one. But there is also a component which is linked to growth, since when we are onboarding new customers, we have to invest in IT or sometimes physical equipment. And so in some parts of the world, the acquisition rhythm of some customers is slowing down; de facto, there will be less CapEx spent on the development part.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Marco Limite from Barclays. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got two. So the first one is, can you just remind us, how it's split between, newspaper and periodicals work? So in the past, you used to receive, you know, under EUR 60 million plus, for, for the, you know, the, the, the press concession, basically. Now, you're saying that for the periodicals, you have presented a new offer to the regulator. So just wondering if you remind us, you know, how the periodical works, if you are getting some sort of compensation from the state for, for that business specifically? And the second question is: Can we take the run rate on financial expenses that, you have reported, in Q1 as a run rate for the full year? Thank you very much.
Let me start with the financial expenses, which is a very technical one and very easy to take risk. So basically, the two elements that we are seeing that explain an evolution in the financial expense result being lower or more favorable than in the past. First, there is a reimbursement that happened in December 2023 of the U.S. dollar tranche. That one is repaid, so we could expect these savings to continue over the entire year. On the other end, we continue actively managing the cash and cash equivalents surplus that has generated a significant income in the first quarter. Of course, we will continue to manage this one, but it's dependent on the interest rate. It, it's one element.
The second element, we have excess cash, right now, on the balance sheet. Of course, we will use part of this excess cash to finance the acquisition of Staci at the time of the closing, which is, I remind everyone, that it's targeted to happen at the end of the third quarter. So, yes and no. So we'll continue for the first two quarters for sure. Third and fourth quarter, the lower level of cash and cash equivalent will definitely have an impact on the financial income. When it come to press concession, or press in general, I would say, let me remind you that, in fact, in the past, when we are...
The top line relating to press is composed of different elements. First, there is the concession, for which we are receiving, or we were receiving in the past, some money for directly from the state and also from the editors, and it was not a balanced amount. It was mostly geared towards the state compensation. Second building block, which is all the revenue that are generated by AMP, it's a company that Chris referred to earlier in his speech, and to a lesser extent, the company, Aldipress. So when it comes to top line relating to price, there are different elements, and over time, these elements will vary.
Because you know that in the new press agreement, let me put it that way, don't call it concession, because there is no more concession. But even for the first for 2024 and going forward, the balance between the state compensation and the editors' compensation totally changed. Globally, the state compensation goes south, decreased drastically, but at the same time, editors' compensation go up.
I would say there is no major impact on INP and Aldipress, besides the anticipated one, as Chris mentioned, where some volume that were historically invoiced through bpost SA, so the legal entity, will be, when it will be transferred to INP, will be invoiced by INP, but it's only gradual, and it only kicks in in 2026.
Yeah. And then maybe to add on that, to your question on how does it work at the newspaper side versus periodical side? As I explained very briefly, but maybe to give some more clarity on that, newspaper rounds are still today, well, for the contract that we concluded in the north, based on dedicated routes. There are pure newspapers route that are happening in the early morning hours with specific quality demands from the editors, because, of course, they want to have it in time with their readers in the mailbox. While if you look at the periodicals, it goes through a regulatory process of tariffication, because there it is part of the normal mail route.
Those periodicals are integrated in normal mail route, and of course, there, you have an overview coming from the regulator that their structure is in line and is coherent. That is something that we had to submit. And then, of course, for the ones that use large volumes, there are specific discounts for the volumes, but more importantly, as well, they might have specific treatment qualities in the way how they deliver it to our sorting centers, the way how we want to distribute it.
Some of them will sort before, some of them will not sort before, and that will have an impact on the way how the tariff structure is defined for them, and that is something that is happening as we speak, after that we have made the submission of the new tariff structure, also with a slightly change in the way how we define those products. And so that are we discussing, and there, we see quite positive reaction in the market today of the biggest editors of periodicals as we speak.
Thanks.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Amy Lee from UBS. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thank you for taking my question. Can I ask on the Belgium domestic parcel volume growth, you attributed the 2.9% growth this quarter to slight delays in anticipated additional volumes. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you've seen so far in the first month of Q2 in terms of parcel volume development? And against, if we're still aligned to the guidance of high single-digit growth for the full year, how should we think about the volume development cadence for the rest of the year? Thank you.
Again, I start, and will you continue? So indeed, two point nine is rather at the low end, but also, we need to... So as a result for the quarter, we have, we have observed, in fact, in the first two months, in January and February, we were higher than that one. The month of March was disappointing, I would say, compared to the first one. And in April, it's difficult to say because as you heard, we had that strike impact. What I can tell you is, prior to the strike, we're more in line with the January to February level than the March one. So let's see what, what's gonna, what- what's gonna, where the market bring us in the coming months.
But also, keeping in mind the impact of the strike, it's more difficult to be more precise as we speak.
Maybe to add to that, the delay that Philippe mentioned in his part of the speech is due to a number of large contracts-
Mm.
that we could conclude, end of last year, beginning of this year, with a couple of big e-retailers, and those volumes will grow. They have an agreement for, let's say, an overall, let's say, bandwidth of volume they will do over the year. And so, or let's say, initial thought was that would kick in earlier, but still, that is something that we expect that will evolve later over the year. Of course, taking that into account, not yet the impact of the strike. Is that an answer to your question?
I guess she's muted.
Okay. Always interesting when you have a silence on the line.
Yes. Yeah. Indeed.
Okay. Operator, do we still have somebody on the line? Plan B. So we can switch to Plan B.
Yeah.
Operator?
Maybe to ask her to see the plan.