Hello, hello everyone, and a very good morning to all of you. On behalf of the bpostgroup Executive Committee, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to this Capital Markets Day. Welcome to those joining us here live in our headquarters in Brussels, as well as those joining us online. My name is Steve De Loor, I am Head of Communications for Belgium, and I will be your host this morning. Today is all about how bpostgroup is rethinking the possible and reshaping the future. What that means, you will discover later this morning. Let's first have a look at today's agenda. We will start with an overview of the bpostgroup strategy, and then we will zoom in on the different BUs within the group.
We will take a focus on the ESG policies and, of course, the financial outlook before wrapping it up with a closing Q&A. A lot of exciting topics on the agenda this morning. Fortunately, we have the seasoned and experienced professionals of the bpostgrou p leadership to take us through today's key messages. I would also like to present to you our community host, Antoine Lebecq. Antoine, welcome.
Hello, Steve. Good morning, everyone.
How are you doing?
I'm very fine, thank you.
Good.
I see some familiar faces, so welcome to all of you and thank you very much for joining us today.
I think we're all very excited to be here.
Yeah.
Can you introduce yourself and what is your role today?
Yeah, so I'm Antoine, in charge of Investor Relations, and today I will play the role of the so-called community manager. That means that I will relay your questions and also the questions of the online viewers. In practice, we encourage you to send your questions with the Slido add-on on the webcast page and send your questions. I will compile these questions and will come at the end of the presentation during the general Q&A session to answer this question with the panelists.
That's right.
I think that for the in-room questions, we also have some.
Yes, so after each presentation, we will take the time for one or two questions depending on how much time is left. Of course, at the end of this session, we will take all questions that we receive.
Good.
Okay.
I wish you a good day.
Thank you, and we'll see you later, Antoine. Now, there's one more person that I need to introduce. That is Rafike Yilmaz, Chief Communication and Brand Officer at bpostgroup. Rafike, welcome as well.
Thank you, Steve. Hello.
Hi. You will take the lead for the interviews today.
Yes, exactly. We have our CEOs today with us to explain the strategy for the coming years and how we basically reshape the future of this company.
Indeed. How will this practically work?
It will be a mix of interviews, but also CEOs pitching their strategy to us.
Okay, looking forward to that. I think it's about time that we get started. bpostgroup has gone through a lot of major changes recently, but let's first have a look at this video on what bpostgroup looks like in 2025.
bpostgroup , founded 200 years ago as Belgium's postal operator, has transformed into a global e-commerce and logistics provider. Headquartered in Brussels, it operates across four continents with a presence in over 15 countries. We cover the entire value chain of delivery services and e-commerce logistics, from order through fulfillment to delivery, all backed by multi-channel support. bpostgroup consists of 30 companies divided into three business lines. As the preferred last-mile parcel and mail network in Belgium, we are developing existing products and serving our customers while reviving the societal role of the mail carrier and transforming our post offices into multi-service centers. 3PL is a leading third-party logistics operator. Designing end-to-end solutions, we focus on high-value markets with complex logistic flows, ensuring seamless client experiences with faster, smarter, and more efficient deliveries.
Global Cross-b order, our third business line, serves all group entities through digital platforms and a network of partners. It provides best-in-class transport services focused on specific offerings and lanes that yield superior value. Creating solutions for diverse segments, we continually innovate for a seamless customer experience and integration for online retailers. We offer convenience and transparency while improving delivery speed and accuracy. The world continues to change, and we are changing too. Led by an experienced management team, bpostgroup is rethinking the possible and reshaping the future.
Reshaping the future is indeed what it is all about today. With that, please let me introduce to you the CEO of bpostgroup , Mr. Chris Peeters.
Welcome, Chris. Are you ready?
Of course.
Okay. Last year, we launched the new company strategy. We have announced a significant shift from postal to parcel. What do we exactly mean by this?
If you look at bpostgroup until, let's say, recently, it was really a postal company. It was organized around postal services. It had, over time, acquired a number of activities in the parcel business, but it had never integrated that. If you look at the acquisitions that we've done over time, you saw it already in the video. We've done Landmark acquisition in 2013. Important for us because that allows us to have both postal services across the border, but also parcel services across the border. We did the acquisition of Radial in the U.S., partly in Europe as well, in 2017. Very important activity in terms of parcel fulfillment for the B2C sector. Last year, we did the acquisition of Staci. Staci was the acquisition where we also entered into the B2B space, so fulfillment capabilities into the B2B.
That being said, the company so far was really structured around postal plus parcels, meaning that we were handing over to our postal carriers the parcel service and organized all the routes, all the way how we were organized around that. That is what this strategy is about. This strategy is really leaving that part. We basically embrace parcel as the core product that we are delivering going forward, meaning as well that we basically say we see, we look around in the world, and we see that actually the postal service is going down, continuing to go down. A successful company needs to have growth. Growth is in parcels. We fully embrace that and will organize ourselves to be successful in that space.
Okay, thank you. What exactly is different from the previous strategy?
Oh, there are many things that have changed, actually. The first and probably most important one, especially for investors, is that our focus will shift from volume to value. There is a lot behind that word, of course, but in the past, a lot in the different business that we had in Radial, in bpost in Belgium, was focused on having enough volume to keep enough activity, to keep our assets running, to keep our people busy. That was really the focus that we had. That means as well that we were actually present in quite commoditized services. We want to shift that to have much more value-added services, also have more diversified portfolios because the dependency that we have as a mid-sized company in the logistics sector from large accounts was too big. We want to diversify this towards, say, more mid-sized companies.
We also want to go into much more growth segments. So far, it was really focused in the parcel business on B2C business. That is something we will enlarge in higher growth areas. B2B is parcelizing as we speak. There is a lot of need in the B2B segment. We enter into that space much more than we did before. Also, what we see is in the consumer segment, the C2C segment is a highly growth segment today where you see that the reuse of things, secondhand markets are growing very fast today. Having services that are adequate to this sector is also something that we will enter into with this new strategy.
Okay, that's very clear. Value over volume, new products, new market segments. Most recently, we have been confronted with some strikes as well.
Yes, indeed. As you know, the social climate overall in Belgium is today what it is. There is quite some resistance against the government that has to cut in cost and is therefore looking for the ways how they get their budget under control. That has created some social errors. In that light, of course, bpost, as a former state-owned monopoly player, is also seen by the social partners often as a way to show to the government that things are not going well. The second thing, of course, when you announce a transformation, it creates a certain level of unrest. The combination of those two has led to a number of moments where we really had strikes. We have also in the quarterly results announced that this had a quite big impact on our activity recently. We have heavily invested, meanwhile, in that social dialogue.
Not yet to an end. Let's be also very, let's say, honest about that. We were evolving towards having a more intense dialogue, also explaining much more to our people why it's so important that we enter into new grow markets and that sticking to this postal market is actually not the way forward and also actually is a risk for the job security that they have. That in contrast, this strategy also will create much more job security than the one that we had before. We see that this dialogue really is going into the right direction now.
Okay, thank you. With this strategy, we want to change the course of this company. With this, we want to reshape its future by becoming a digital and regional expert in parcel-sized logistics. Can you explain to us how we will do this?
I mean, as you say it, it is very important that you see that a lot of the activity that we have become pure commercial activity. If you look in the structure that the company had before, it was postal services, which are still very regulated under the USO regulation business that we were working on, but it's a declining business. The second thing is we had quite some important government contracts, the press concession. These things we are actually fading out in the next coming months. We really will be focused on becoming a successful commercial company. Good news is that we already have initial signs that this is really working. We have a lot of client traction today, but it's quite important that we start to work on that.
That means as well, of course, that you put the needs of your client in the center of everything what you do, which is not typically what the monopolist does in the past. They basically offer a service and then you can choose if you want a service, yes or no, but they do not have to adjust themselves. We become much more commercial, helped, of course, by the fact that many of the entities that we have acquired over time were already very commercial. They were used to operate in this kind of market. Combining these forces together brings us into this new space and will help us to be delivering those parcel-sized services to clients and deliver them solutions in a way. Obviously, you mentioned the word digital.
Digital will be very important because combining those different capabilities, fulfillment to some extent, last-mile delivery, different types of delivery moments that we have, bbox, we will talk about that later. Those elements bringing it all together, digital will play an important role because in this world, of course, information is key to organize yourself in an efficient way. That means that we will have our assets sweat a lot more, but that's still at the client side. You have diversified services that are really focused on the typical client needs that you would have there.
Yes, thank you. You've also told me once that we need to install a change in culture.
Obviously, coming from an environment where you basically were market leader by definition as a monopolist, coming into the place where you have to prove every day that you are the market leader, that demands another level of flexibility. That demands the way how we think about delivery very differently. There were two things that were blocking us. On the one hand, this focus on postal service where we basically say, if you want to get organized around postal service, it's a day plus one organization that you have and you want to make it as efficient as possible with postmen running around in one cycle. Also, maybe sometimes in two cycles when they do newspapers as well. If you want to change that into a parcel that is oriented to the client, they might want it in the morning, at noon, at night.
You need to find different rounds, different ways of working, different sorting schemes that you need to have. All these changes need to be implemented that we adjust ourselves. Of course, the culture of that flexibility that you need, where you will see that our mailmen will have to operate sometimes in the evening, sometimes in the morning. This flexibility will be an important part of this transformation.
Okay. Chris, we have also launched 22 transformation threats. Seven of these we consider must wins. Can you explain them to us?
Yes. So 22 elements in the transformation program. You can read in the documentation that we have all the details on those. I think we want to highlight seven of them because with those seven, we will make the most important element of that transformation. If we go business by business, first of all, let's maybe start with the business that is typically least talked about, which is the cross-border business that we have. In cross-border business, we have a really strong capability, as you also saw on the video, in terms of having, on the one hand, transport excellence combined with custom capabilities that we have on those specific lanes. What we will do there is use that and leverage that capability to be successful in a changing market. That will mean that we will open new lanes.
We just opened a new lane to Spain, or also that we adjust ourselves to shifting lanes. If you look at an important lane for us, it was U.S.-Canada with a president that changes his mind three times a day in terms of tariffs. You see as well that those flows are changing. The emphasis on the China-Canada lane has increased and the U.S.-Canada lane itself has decreased. Adjusting ourselves to that new reality is something that we focus on. Do we have that agility in a changing market? If we then go to the 3PL business, 3PL business is really the growth engine of this company. In that 3PL business, if you look at the U.S., U.S. was vulnerable because of a number of large accounts that we had in the past. As you know, we did an impairment on that recently.
That was a company that was overvalued in our books because of the fact that those vulnerabilities were not taken into account. That is something that we have fully taken into account. Also, we have launched already a year ago a strategy of entering into the mid-market with a new product, a product that we will discuss later. Tom will talk about that Fast Track product that we have very successful already these days in the market. After a few months after launch, we see several clients already onboarded in this new product where we have actually multiple clients on the same side in a new technology stack, delivering services to them in a very efficient way.
That is what we focus on in the U.S., the turnaround of Radial, making that portfolio much more resilient to the future and also much more profitable, given the fact that we focus on a different type of client, mid-sized, more verticals. That is what's happening there. If you look at the European side of 3PL, the Staci acquisition is, of course, the centerpiece of what we do there. It helps us to enter into the B2B space. On top of that, we integrate the capabilities that we have from Active Ants and Radial Europe to ensure that we have a full portfolio to those clients and that we can actually do cross-selling. What you see is Staci coming in with non-merchant goods, POS capabilities, and we combine that with merchant goods that are sitting actually in Active Ants and Radial Europe.
That is leveraging to the full extent the capabilities that we have over there. Of course, everybody knows Belgium, and a lot of people sitting here in the room are from Belgium. If you look at the Benelux Last Mile business line, first of all, building that B2B capability, we'll talk about that when we talk about that business line. We're piloting in different verticals, new type of offering where we combine sometimes fulfillment with last mile capabilities, really adjusted to the client needs. We also are working on the renegotiation, of course, of the retail network that we have with the government. As you know, we have a contract that runs until 1st January 2027. We're in the middle of the renegotiation on how that retail network needs to evolve. I will talk about that when we talk about the business line.
Centerpiece here is the full redesign of the operational model. The way how we sort, the way how we transport, the way how we distribute will completely change. We will have a combination of different types of rounds. Today, we're very strong in the traditional milk round of the postman. We add to that bulk rounds for volumes in parcels. We will add to that time-based rounds. Really ensuring that we can deliver the client demands on that level. Finally, as well, we already have a very capillary network in Belgium with postal points, with our postal network, with a number of lockers. Now the launch of bbox at scale, where we're installing six to eight lockers every day, will ensure that we have full capillarity on this market.
Okay. You've also strengthened your management.
Yes, of course. If you want to succeed, you need to have a good team. We have reinforced the team with different capabilities that were critical for the success of this strategy. On the one hand, you heard the word digital. This company had many digital applications, but they were never integrated in a way that in a transversal way we can develop services. We have achieved digital officer that is responsible for that digital transformation to ensure that we can combine different capabilities and bring them in that way to our client. For the people in the street, this would mean, of course, that the app will give them much more flexibility in the delivery of their parcel. In a B2B space, many more things need to happen in terms of reporting, in terms of acceptance.
All these things will be integrated at the digital side. Second thing is B2B is a fairly new space for us. Focusing on mid-sized clients is fairly new to us as well. We have reinforced at the commercial side with Chief Commercial Officer at group level. Finally, in the U.S., we have onboarded recently, and he will present his strategy after me. The U.S CEO is driving now this new strategy towards growth of the company. In the middle of that transformation, Tom, you will see him soon.
Yes. Thank you for this introduction, Chris. I think we're at the end of this part. We will continue now with our CEOs, and we will see each other again with Benelux Last Mile part.
Thank you indeed, Chris. I think we can all agree that there's a lot of exciting things happening at bpostgroup , as you will discover even more later this morning. Now, I do remind you that if you have questions for Chris on this first part, we will take them at the end of the session. Please write them down or keep them in mind, and we will tack on them later on. It is now time to take a closer look at the strategy and the vision of the different business units. I propose we start with our BU 3PL Europe, comprising Staci, Active Ants, and Radial Europe. For that, we have the CEO, Thomas Mortier, with us. Thomas, please join us on the stage.
Hello, Thomas. Welcome.
Hello. How are you? Thank you.
As Chris called you the centerpiece, Mr. Centerpiece, he's called you.
Wow.
Within Staci, yes. Staci joined the group in August last year, and now you are a part of 3PL Business Unit. Can you please introduce yourself to our audience?
Yes. Good morning, everyone. I am Thomas Mortier. As you will hear with my accent, I'm French. I'm based in Paris. I am the CEO of Staci since 14 years, working in the company since 30 years now. I am currently the CEO of the 3PL Business Unit, including Radial, Active Ants, and Staci for the European part of the logistics of the bpostgroup .
Okay. Thank you, Thomas. Let's start with a short overview of the 3PL Europe operations, and I will give you the floor.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Perhaps a few words, a few figures to start about the 3PL Business Unit. We have a revenue of EUR 995 million in 2024, including EUR 770 million for Staci. We have 91 warehouses for around 1 million sq m, working in 10 countries: France, U.K., Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, U.S., and a small business in China started last year with Staci. Our offer to the market is a fulfillment solution. For our clients, we manage their goods. We store the goods, we pick and pack, and we distribute the goods in a last mile distribution. We always include the distribution part of the service. We work for two activities, B2B and B2C. B2C first is the specialization of Radial Europe and Active Ants with fully automated warehouses. We add to B2C, B2B business with Staci.
Staci is specialized in multi-channel distribution. I will come back on this one. Perhaps you know better Active Ants and Radial, which has been with the group for a longer time. I will zoom a bit on the Staci culture and know-how. We have an entrepreneur mindset culture, really flexible solution, sales-oriented, and we think global at local. This is our offer to our clients. A team with a long-term engagement, a low churn, and a lot of internal promotion. The MD for France joined us 20 years ago as a temp and became a site director, and then the MD for France. We have our own IT. It is called a WMS, a warehouse management system, has been internally developed, is owned by the company. We invest a lot in innovation since the beginning of the company.
We have web shops, 500 web shops, web agency integrated. We invest recently in drones for inventory for our clients, in AI solutions to control the pick and pack quality, API connection, and so on and so on. One asset of Staci is this capacity to work for multi-verticals. We are really sales-oriented, and we work for a lot of different verticals, like FMCG, fast-moving goods companies, industrial retailers, pharma, telecom, health and beauty, home equipment, fashion, toys, and baby goods, and so on. It is an unlimited kind of segment. We have 2,000 clients in Staci, more or less. Some of those, like 120 clients, we operate for them in more than two countries. We have 75 clients in more than three countries, 50 in more than five. It is increasing each year.
I mean, existing clients ask us for new geographies, and it is part of the growth of the company, of the organic growth of the company. The company has always been margin-oriented. We look for profitable growth. We do not look for high volumes with low margin. The strategy is really to go for profitable growth with long-term engagement with the client. We have clients with very long contracts. Perhaps a few words now on the market request, what the client asks us and what we answer to the client now at the 3PL business unit level. First, the client asks for outsourcing. It is a tendance. It stays a tendance, and we still have a lot of opportunities in outsourcing in sub-countries like the south of Europe. We offer to the client viable trust. Our warehouses are mutualized. I will come back on it.
Mutualized warehouses, we offer flexible and viable trust to the client. It's a business model. They like to outsource to us, and they pay what they use. Their invoice follows the flows and their volumes. We offer them a multi-channel logistics solution. This is the request of the client, serving with one stock, B2B, B2C, and marketplace like Amazon. They like the capacity to operate differently in terms of process of pick and pack to deliver any kind of final point of delivery. Historically, in Staci, it was shops, petroleum stations, and so on. We propose them multi-geography solution. Again, our offer is single ball at local. The request of the client is to have one contract, one KPI, one reporting, same invoice, one IT connection. This is our offer, and we operate locally for them.
Our global offer includes the last- mile delivery. We have 500 carriers connected with our TMS, Transport Management System, including for sure now the bpost capabilities, Benelux Last Mile, Landmark Global for cross-border. We offer a global offer to our clients. Last but not least, they ask also, our clients or the market is asking for automation and innovation. We have a lot of offers in mechanization with auto stores, again, drones, AI solutions, and so on. What is the strategy now? A few words about the strategy of this business unit, the 3PL business unit. We want to become a market leader. We are already a market leader with close to EUR 1 billion revenue, but we want to continue this growth, being a market leader in multi-channel offer solutions. The market is asking for this offer of multi-channel solutions.
The combination of strengths of Staci, Active Ants, and Radial is really a chance. I mean, those three companies have strengths. They have some weaknesses, but not so many. The strengths are strong. When we combine the strengths, we are quite unique in this 3PL market. The market is more specialized. You have some competitors which are more specialized in some kind of activities. We are able to cover all the requests from the market with mechanization, with our SIPs WMS. We have SIPs, warehouse management system in this 3PL entity. The strong know-how in organizing transportation. We have no trucks in the 3PL business unit. We outsource, fully outsource the transportation. We have a flex client onboarding. We are able to onboard a client in less than a week with just the setup of the IT. It's not the development.
The IT has been developed in those three entities just to be set up. In the three entities, we are able to onboard a client very quickly with low CapEx. This is also the business model. We leverage synergies with those three entities. We have a lot of synergies, as you can imagine. For that, we are ongoing to organize the business unit with a new organization chart by countries. By the past, previously, Active Ants and Radial was organized centrally. It was a centralized management structure across countries. Staci was organized by country, so a different organization. Now we are moving to this new organization by countries. We combine the new organization chart. Okay. I will continue. This gives us a lot of opportunities.
First, each country has its own CEO, COO, CCO, CFO, and sales team, HR team, finance team, project team, transport team. If I take the example of the U.K., in the U.K., we had previously one entity for Active Ants, one entity for Radial, and one entity for Staci. Now they are combined below one central overhead organization. We will have savings due to this new organization chart. We will have savings in overhead. We will be, and we are, more efficient in monitoring profitability because we are closest to the business and to the operations. We also answer better to the client requests. We are closest to the client, and we offer them so many requests in terms of mechanization, IT, and so on. We share the capabilities in the warehouses also, where we have space in one entity.
We can absolutely implement a client in an existing facility. This will increase the profitability in the near future. Also, in terms of procurement, strong synergies in procurement. We consolidate the spend in transportation for the three entities, the spend in packaging, energy, IT, temp labor, and so on. We have a better buying power in each country now to leverage also better cost. We push also the cross-selling. Cross-selling is a know-how in Staci that now we push in the 3PL business unit entity. This is quite simple. We are able to offer to the Active Ants client the Staci know-how and to the Active Ants know-how, the Staci know-how, and so on. We share those experiences. We are able to offer to the market the management of any kind of products.
POS, as Chris said, the marketing and POS non-core business product, which was a historical business of Staci, able to manage core product and spare parts. We have a subsidiary called Base Logistics, which is specialized in spare parts also. We are able to extend the segment. As I said just before, we are working for a lot of different segments. A recent example, we won four clients in the charging station booming market. We manage the charging stations, the spare parts, and so on for any kind of deliveries, B2B and B2C. The segments are a lot of opportunities, give us a lot of opportunities with mobile phones, companies, medical devices. We are also booming in medical devices. We start in June, we start six clients in this business unit, four in France and two in the U.S..
We offer this multi-country solution. It's an accelerator. I give you a quick example. With the combination of the three entities, we were able to start Staci in Poland in less than three months thanks to the Radial facilities in Poland. We implement the know-how of Staci, and we won three clients, including Bacardi, which is a historical client for Staci in three countries, now a client in Poland, and we have two others. Let's say a cover of Europe is really an asset for us, and we are close to start the business of Active Ants in France. We also share the best practice on the other way, meaning in Staci, to develop the e-commerce part of Staci. We leverage also the know-how of Staci to hunt new clients, to prospect.
It's a know-how in Staci, really, to go to the market, to hunt new clients, to catch market shares, to grow organically. It's a strong know-how that we have in all countries with a dedicated team for sales. You have the team for key account, but sales is a dedicated team with a central transverse organization, strong CRM and reporting. We do the same now for Active Ants and Radial, pushing the team to go to the market to catch the business. This is exactly what Chris said a few minutes ago about this way to go for commercial now. Okay, about financials, I will not give any details because Philippe will do in a few minutes. Perhaps as a summary or conclusion, we are in a growing market. We offer flex solutions. We have a long-term strategy and business plan. Thanks to a strong portfolio.
First, we have very nice clients, blue chip clients that we can replicate in other countries, and as I said, in other kinds of deliveries. We replicate the Staci success. So Staci success, cross-selling, fast duplication business model, sales-oriented, and expand in new verticals. Again, high margin business. We focus on high margin business instead of high volume. It is a different way to approach the market. We have these operational efficiencies, footprint, and overhead optimization. We will improve and optimize the footprint and optimize the overhead for sure. We have a lot of saving in that way. We leverage the strengths of the three entities also with this new organization chart, as I said a few minutes ago. Also a lot of cost synergies, particularly in transport, warehousing, and procurement. That is the plan for the near future. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Thomas. Within time. Thank you for that as well.
Logistics is a business. We ar e always in time.
Exactly. Very right. Which also leaves time for questions. We will take questions from the audience in this room right now for Thomas. Please wait for the microphone if you want to ask your question. Any questions for Thomas? Yes, please. One question here in the front.
Thomas, thank you for the presentation. Thomas, I heard you talking about a new organization structure country-wise, and then I heard you mentioning a lot of roles, CCO, CEO, whatever. It sounds like a lot more overhead, and you're claiming exactly the opposite. Can you explain that?
Yes, sure, sure. This organization chart was or is existing already in Staci, in all countries, except Poland that we were not, where Radial is.
We combine the three entities, and clearly we more or less maintain or combine with the Staci existing team. We will have savings in other overheads, globally. The saving, normally I shouldn't give figures, so I am prudent. I will just give one, but I think we are close to probably $1 million or $2 million of savings in overhead. Combining the entities, you don't need double team in all areas. It's really a strong opportunity.
Thank you. Other questions? Yes.
Thank you for the presentation. On your point on being able to share volumes between the warehouses, are there risks to the strategy? Would that mean that in the future you could maybe remove some of the fixed asset base if they're close together, if you're able to share volumes and increase utilization?
Yes, sure. Absolutely. Yes.
I can give you this example of Active Ants. We will implement Active Ants in Staci in France in an existing warehouse. The business model of Staci is mutualized warehouses. We have in our facilities between 10-60 clients. We never close a facility when if we lose a client, we replace the client by a new one. The sites have their own P&L, and they are independent, let's say independent. Each site has a site leader, has a local customer service team, ops team, and so on. We are absolutely able to integrate new clients, any kind of activities in an existing site. This is the way that we can leverage, increase the profitability of the site. What we do, it's a strong know-how also. We put in the site inverse seasonality client.
When the client has a peak period, like, I don't know, Heineken before summer, in this warehouse, after the peak period of Heineken, we have a client in the toys industry. We have the peak in toys, which is before Christmas. We always have full warehouses, really, to use the capabilities and increase the profitability. It is a know-how. It is a know-how that we replicate now in Active Ants and Radial, which have the same mutualized warehouses. The example of the U.K., but we can have the same example in Germany, for instance. We integrate now Staci's client in existing warehouses of Active Ants and Radial because the Staci sites sometimes are full. Instead of opening a new site, we take the benefit of the existing capacities of the sites of Active Ants and Radial.
In any case, the profitability of Active Ants and Radial will increase.
Okay. One last question. Yes, here in the front.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question, Thomas. I heard a lot about the geographical expansion as well. Active Ants opening in France, also new openings in Poland. I mean, this is clearly something very important for your customers having a good coverage. Can you elaborate a bit more on what the strategy here is or the pace of the strategy in terms of opening new centers? I see today you're mainly in France, Western Europe. There's still a lot of room in Eastern Europe as well. Is there something more specific that you can tell on the pace there? We haven't covered it yet, but there's a EUR 160 million-EUR 180 million CapEx budget for the bpostgroup .
Is it fair to assume that most of it will go towards the 3PL segment or business?
All right. It's a very good question. We have one hour. It's okay.
I'm afraid we don't have an hour.
Just in a few words, thank you for the question. Clearly, it depends on the level of maturity of the market. We are flexible and adapt our strategy of growth depending on the level of maturity of the market. When I say level of maturity, I take the example of, again, U.K., and I will go to the south of Europe, but just two minutes. In U.K., e-com is more mature than the rest of Europe. In England, the e-commerce is more mature.
We have the capacity to continue the growth with e-com, which is still growing in the U.K., but is a lot in advance compared to other countries in the south of Europe, for instance, Spain and Italy. We have in Spain and Italy a less mature market in terms of outsourcing. Recently, we won some big clients like Koch, Ferrero in Italy, and others, and [Heritage] in Spain due to this outsourcing decision. The market of outsourcing is still a huge opportunity in Spain and Italy. I trust that we open a warehouse when we have the business. It is that way, not the opposite way. We do not open a warehouse to get the business. It is a slightly different way to approach the growth.
I trust that in the near future, we will open more warehouses in the south of Europe, Italy, and Spain, which are huge opportunities. In Germany, where we are still small and the market is quite regional, we are regional. Thanks to the implementation of Staci, Radial, and Active Ants, we are regional. It gives us also a better cover of the German market. It is also a really interesting opportunity for us combining those three entities. There was a lack in Staci of know-how in e-commerce. Staci has a bit less than 30% of its activities in e-commerce. Due to now the combination of the three entities, it gives Staci a better visibility on e-commerce and a stronger offer to the market. I need more time.
I think there is more time either at the end of the session or during lunch, of course, if you want to go into this more closely.
With pleasure. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Thomas. We will see you again at the end for the final Q&A. Thank you. Okay. Now, time to dive deeper into the next business unit, which is 3PL North America. For that, we have the CEO of 3PL North America with us, Tom Schmitt, who flew in from the U.S. to be here with us today. Tom, thank you.
Hello, Tom.
Good to be here.
You're quite a rookie in the group. How are you?
I'm excited and pumped up to be here.
You're not really a rookie, are you?
It's three months not even into my position with bpostgroup and Radial.
I guess technically I am a rookie. Now, while I've been here for three months, I've been three decades in the industry of transportation, logistics, supply chain, perhaps relevantly leading DB Schenker contract logistics globally, which has a huge e-commerce fulfillment part, and in the U.S., FedEx supply chain, similar space as Radial. Three months in the group, very pumped up about that, and three decades in the industry.
Thank you. Exactly. You've started a few months ago, but you haven't wasted any time. I know you're very eager to talk about the Radial North American strategy. I'll leave you to it.
Thank you. Thanks, Rakife. It is a new dawn for Radial North America. The company actually has gone through some struggles over the last few years. I'm going to talk about that. It's a new dawn.
We're going to go back to a journey of profitable growth, value over volume. Before we go into the how-to and the three-year destination 2027, let me just take you back a little bit. The company had several origins. The most relevant one was in 1995. A young tech entrepreneur called Michael Rubin knocked at the door of world-leading consumer brands in North America and said, "Hey, I can build you a web store." Most companies, probably in 1995, said, "Okay. And what exactly is that?" Your customers can click on demanding that web store, and our skirt or our perfume shows up at your customer's home. I will do the warehousing, the transportation, facilitate the payment, and you have an additional business stream. That's what happened 30 years ago. Thirty years later, we still do that.
We still fulfill those customers' demands and deliver goods to their customers' homes for some of the world-leading consumer brands, mostly in apparel and health and beauty. We do this today in North America with 21 locations, 1.3 million sq m, 14 million sq ft. At peak, we actually have 10,000 teammates delivering those goods on time, as Thomas said, and with super high accuracy levels to our customers' homes. Now, as I said before, the last few years have not been without struggles. Into the COVID years, 2020, 2021, we invested heavily into new leases, new facilities, and also into new automation inside these facilities, bigger footprint, and that was great for perhaps a very short amount of time. In the following years, 2022, 2023, 2024, some of that consumer bubble during COVID waned. Some of our customers had business decline challenges themselves.
Also, some of our customers decided to insource and called warehousing their core competency. Altogether, that meant at the low point, just a few months ago, we were actually sitting at capacity utilization in the low 60% range, almost 40% of our capacity empty. The standard in the industry is somewhere between 85%-90% fill rate. We are going to get there over the next couple of years. We are going to go from today's 66%. We edged our way up a little bit to 88% next couple of years. The struggle has been real. Now, the one thing that is very, very important, even during those challenging years, 2022, 2023, 2024, we maintained profitability. How did we do that? Rigorous cost management. In 2024, 2025 alone, we actually had a cost reduction initiative that yielded $116 million on an annualized basis. It is a new dawn, though.
We are going back to profitable growth with value over volume. How are we doing that? Two prongs. The first one is getting the maximum performance out of our existing customer base. This is where the margin focus comes in. The second is stretching beyond the current core in meaningful ways, allowing us to tap into more customers and more industries for value creation and value capture. Let's double-click on each one of those two prongs. Let's talk about maximizing the performance of our current core business. There are three dimensions that are the most relevant. The first one has to do, you heard this earlier from Chris, customer centricity. We are absolutely relentless about focus on our customer, on our customer scorecards. When we measure success, we do it in the eyes of our customer scorecards, not ours.
Over the last two and a half months, as I said, I've been three months here, a little bit less than that. I've talked to 25 of our top customers. We are getting close to them. I do believe we are in a position where churn is going to be more at a normalized level going forward, and we're going to get out of the surprise business of being surprised about customers leaving us because we're not being close enough to them. That's no longer the case. That's changed. Account management for us means managing the account in the scorecard eyes of our customers. That's what we're going to be doing. We're going to stay very close to them. When I leave from here, I'm going to see the decision makers that are based in Europe for two of our largest customers that decide actually on our American business.
If and when a customer is not happy with us, and by the way, our current accuracy rates are 99.8%, and our current on-time performance is 98.5%. When we fall short, I tell these customers to their faces, the expectation I have is only one. When we do not meet your expectations that instance, you pick up the phone and you call me. We have runway to get us back together on track. Customer centricity is first and foremost. Secondly, I talked about real estate utilization being at the low point in the low 60%s, today 66%. What we are doing going forward is rigorous management of our space. Three things. One is if a lease expires and the building is half empty, let us relocate the existing business, let that lease expire, and go to facilities close by. Secondly, let us do something smart.
When we have a big anchor customer, not the only customer, but an anchor customer in the building, that customer contract and the contract of that lease facility's timing needs to be co-timed, i.e., we can't have a lease for a building for 10 years and a customer contract for three. Obviously, we also are subleasing. We just sublease our building in Romeoville when we have to. The most important, and frankly, the most exciting part is selling new business into those facilities. We're going to talk about selling new business here in a moment. The third piece, in addition to customer centricity, real estate focus, the third piece of maximizing the performance of the current core is around technology. Technology consolidation of legacy technology. As an example, we have 13 warehouse management systems. There's no really good reason to have 13.
We're going to go down to a couple, two. We also have data centers, and we're going to go to the cloud. That's consolidating the legacy technology. In addition to that, we're also upgrading and refreshing the technology overall to make us more flexible. That's going to be the core of the second piece, which is stretching our existing customer base into more and more spaces. Let me get to that. We're going to maximize the performance of what we have today, and we're stretching into different spaces. Today in North America, the so-called TAM, Total Addressable Market, is about $4 billion for us in the apparel, fashion, and in the health and beauty space. Through the stretches we are making right now, we're going to stretch that TAM of $4 billion - $46 billion. Last time I checked, that's 11.5 times X.
Rounded up in good finance matter, that's a 12X. It's going to be in much different spaces. Three parts of that stretch. The first one is we are going to go into different industries. A near stretch there is going into sporting equipment, going into cookware, household goods. A little bit of a further stretch is going into automotive spare parts. Works very well for Turbine in Europe. Also going into industrial goods. We just recently signed a company in the solar panel distribution space. Those stretches into different industries, into different verticals is the first dimension. The next dimension is we are going into different channels. We are and have been heavily a B2C space. Now we're going more into B2B also. We also are selling through marketplaces. Different platforms, different channels in addition to the traditional business-to-consumer space where Michael Rubin started in 1995.
The third dimension of the stretch beyond different industries and different platforms and channels is that it's going into a different size customer. We talked about that earlier as well, going more into the SMB space, small or medium-sized businesses. The companies that we attracted three decades ago were mostly large enterprise accounts. We're going to still delight those customers in those large enterprise accounts, maintaining, maximizing the core. We're going to small and medium-sized businesses. All three of those stretches together, further amplified by continued e-commerce growth, is getting us from about $4 billion in total addressable market to $46 billion. Much larger fish to pond to fish in, giving us the opportunity to get more value creation, value capture, because we can be more selective who we go after. This is stretching the core now.
This sounds great, and when you fish in a much larger pond, how do you go about doing that? It's one thing to say we're going to fish in a larger pond, but how are you going to be successful? We came up with a new operating model. We call it Fast Track. I sometimes call it Radial-m ade-e asy. From a menu approach, whether it's the web store, the warehousing, the transportation facilitation, the payment, the fraud protection behind the payment, the returns where necessary. When you buy shoes, there's quite a few returns. Every single one of those pieces, we have modules, a menu.
It's almost like when, I'm not sure how many McDonald's fans there are here, but you go to a McDonald's and you can pick all sorts of main courses and desserts and salads, but it's this one, that one, and that one, any subset of those, or any combination thereof, but that's it. Fast Track is that way, plug and play. You can have any subset of our capabilities in a certain standardized way. No one-offs. One-offs are not replicable. One-offs are hard to upgrade and refresh. Standardized is very easy to upgrade and refresh. New menus, standardized, plug and play, simple commercial process. The one and only aspiration that we had when we built Fast Track, and I'm so super grateful for my predecessors and the whole team that's still there, because I walked into this and Fast Track was almost ready to go.
The only aspiration that we had, every single thing we offer, there has to be the opportunity to go from contract to going live within one week. Let me say that again. Going from contract to go live within one week. That is quite a lofty aspiration. We got quite a good reaction when we launched Fast Track officially on March 22nd this year in Las Vegas. We are talking literally two and a half months ago. We are active. We are up and running with five customers. I think this would be a great time to check out, open the doors, and look at the implementation of one of those five. That is all.
Today was absolutely D-Day, total countdown day. We all felt that at 5:30 this morning. I think everybody came a little more caffeinated than normal. Some people brought some donuts.
It's so exciting to see it all come together. Considering that none of this was here a month ago, super happy.
All right, good morning, everybody. Big day. We officially start shipping orders today. Ready for our stretches? All right, everybody down.
Excitement is in the air today at Radial in Brownsburg, Indiana. After weeks of tireless effort, everything is finally set for the highly anticipated launch of White Fox.
The first truck arrived on April 22nd. Over the next three or four days, it kind of filled the dock completely. I feel very proud of what we've been able to accomplish in 22 days. And that's 22 days of contract signed to outbound go live.
The partnership with the popular Australian fashion brand was finalized only a month ago. Today, the first shipments are already heading out. And that's all thanks to Fast Track.
White Fox wanted to be launched in the U.S. pre-peak of this year in August of 2025. With the tariff uncertainty, they said, "Can you launch us by the end of April?" They pulled their launch up four months, and we said that we could absolutely support it.
We've shipped out already 1,300 units. We've inbound more than 300,000 units. That is a tremendous accomplishment in a very short window.
Radial is already using robots to support order picking at sites across the U.S. This summer, they're arriving in Brownsburg.
We're integrating Fast Track to the robotics that are here at Indianapolis. We're going from 3 million- 5 million orders over the course of the next two years. Having those robotics in place will certainly allow us to do that at speed with efficiency.
A delegation from White Fox traveled all the way from Australia to Brownsburg for this important moment. How do they look back on today?
I feel like we're leaving tomorrow, going back to Sydney, and we don't really have any worries or stresses that anything will go wrong. It's been super smooth, a great transition, and yeah, we're very comfortable.
E-commerce logistics is not going away. We lost our swagger for a handful of years, and I feel like we have gotten that back. Fast Track is helping, you know, with that.
This is the path for us. Everybody is fully, you know, embracing this. They're fully excited about this, and this is the way that Radial will continue to grow.
Cool.
If you look at this video, first of all, before some of you who are in the math business are telling me, I said within one week, and you heard here 22 days. Yes, we were waiting for the customer's inventory for about two weeks. We were ready. It is a high-quality problem when we wait for our customer, not the other way around. The second thing is this is a great example. This is an Australian brand. Something like Fast Track, when there is still a small emerging modern company in the U.S., is ideal to get a foothold in North America. It is not the only one that is making its way from outside the U.S. inside the U.S., using the Fast Track methodology to get from small to large fairly quickly. I just meant to say this is cool.
You could sense the excitement in the voices of our own teammates. It's really difference-making when you listen to a customer. Did you see these guys' eyes and hear that guy's voice? I mean, that's the excitement level that we're looking for. That's the customer centricity we want to live every single day. This is not the only example. In the first two months, we got five Fast Track customers to go live. We have the next eight slotted for the next eight weeks. When you step a little bit further back, our pipeline is about 16% bigger at the same quality level than it was a few months ago. Also, when you look at where we are fishing here, a year ago, of our entire pipeline, eight percent of the opportunities were outside the health and beauty and the apparel fashion space.
Today, if you take a snapshot, 41% of our opportunities are beyond the apparel and health and beauty space. There's nothing wrong about apparel and health and beauty. That's our core customer base. We love them. We're going to maximize the performance together with them. It is very right to also fish in other high-value creation, value opportunity areas that goes back to the value over volume principle. Now it is 41% non-healthcare, beauty, and apparel versus eight percent a year ago. All up in the first five months this year, we achieved our internal target, the plan, more than 53% of our plan in Fast Track in the first five months. Again, for those of you who are math inclined, that gives us a pretty good chance to make or beat the plan for the year.
Again, we just want to make sure we get this done the right way. Adding this all up and looking ahead by three years to 2027, let's take a quick look where this takes us. We are saying on the revenue side, between 2024 and 2027, we're going to be flat to slightly declining. That doesn't sound like profitable growth, but remember, in 2025, we're still churning through the consequences of the larger companies that, because of our heaviness of making it hard to do business with them, left us over the last 12 months. The most recent ones just the last couple of months. We have some churn that we have to work through in 2025 before we make it back up towards profitable growth, which leads to a combined 2024 - 2027 flat look, flat to slightly declining.
More interestingly, again, we're going for value, not for empty calories. When you look at the margin side, we are a 2.7% EBIT business in 2024. Again, we are working through a 2025 that's challenging, still positive, but challenging, making our way back up, fishing in that larger pond to profitability levels on the EBIT side in the mid-single digits, four to six percent by 2027. Stepping back overall, as I said, I'm a three-month rookie here at bpostgroup and Radial North America. I'm absolutely pumped up about the momentum that my teammates have been creating. There's momentum that's building, and I'm absolutely certain we're far from being done. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Tom. It does sound very cool indeed. Now, for time's sake, we only have one question at this time. Who would like to ask a question right here, the gentleman in the front?
Yes, thanks. It's Frank Classen of Degroof Petercam. I've got a question on, let's say, your margin target, almost doubling by 2027 while your revenues are flat at best. That sounds pretty ambitious indeed. What are the main building blocks? Is it indeed the utilization rate which goes up, or are the new customers more profitable? What are the, yeah, the building blocks here?
Yeah, it's a combination of those things. If you go back to the margin, the value part of the value over volume piece is really noticeable in the current base business of those three dimensions that I mentioned, customer centricity, and secondly, real estate management, and third, technology consolidation and refresh. The latter two are directly margin driving.
Every time we get from a little bit further from 66%- 88%, again, subleasing, selling into that space, making, in some cases, sure if their lease expires, we can actually get rid of that building. That helps with margins tremendously. The 88% versus 66% is a ton of a difference. The last piece, the technology, this consolidation, the amount of FTEs, resources, energy, time that you spend maintaining and upgrading 13 WMSs, warehouse management systems, is much different, i.e., higher than doing the same for two WMSs. Those two help tremendously. Customer centricity, by the way, also has a financial consequence that's positive. If we get the churn back down to normalized levels where we're absolutely manically focused on delighting our customers and churn becomes an exception, not something that pops up all the time, that obviously also helps us.
The most profitable customers are the ones that stay with you because moving customers out and in is expensive.
Okay.
Thank you, Tom, for this short answer. We'll see you again at the end for the final Q&A. Thank you. Now, we've been to Europe. We've been to North America. I think now it's time to come a bit closer to the historic home soil of the bpostgrou p with Benelux Last Mile business unit. And for that, I would like to re-invite Chris Peeters to the stage, as he is also the CEO of this business unit. Chris and Rafike, close yours.
Hello again, Chris.
Hello again.
Yes. Now we're going to zoom in on the strategy for Benelux Last Mile. Can we start by explaining us what we do today?
Well, today, I think many people see bpost as mainly that part.
It is well known by many people. It is a last-mile service that has its origins in 200 years of mail business. bpost originally was founded around the same moment that Belgium was founded. It was in that time the one that was for the full geography covering any mail product that was there. That includes commercial mail, that includes registered mail, that includes the... In that time, of course, there were payment services linked to that. You could have the post check. You could have all these kinds of activities around a traditional postal operator. If you look actually at the performance of bpost in this space, bpost is actually great in this space. Yeah, many people forget sometimes about that. We were many times badly in the news.
Actually, if you look in terms of performance that we have in terms of quality, in terms of delivery that we have compared to other postal operators, we were compared to every, I think every month with 265 other ones. We're always top 15 in postal services. If you look in the parcel service that we have integrated, meanwhile, we're also NPS score-wise the best in the country today. We actually have a very, very strong business. Unfortunately, it's not only about a strong business with very, very good mailmen and mailwomen that we have today, but also, of course, a business which is very much challenged because the traditional postal business is already for since many years in a decline of eight to 10% a year.
Let's continue with that because bpost Belgium is obviously well known in the country, but as you say, we are facing some challenges.
Yes. First of all, the core product that we had so far, the mail product, is declining at eight to 10% a year. Let's be very clear, for maybe some in the past, we were not very clear about that. For today, for bpost, it's very clear this product will come to an end at some day. We don't know yet the date. Denmark will stop as of 1st of January, the first country in Europe that will stop with a user mail product going forward. We're not naive. This will happen to everybody at some point of time, depending on digitalization. Very simple, because for quite a substantial amount of the volume of the mail product, the digital product is just better.
Yeah, if you look at invoicing, why would you like to have a paper invoice with all the complexity to integrate that in a digital flow afterwards? It is a product that is basically not a product anymore of the modern times. We should recognize that and not try to survive in this kind of mode and stimulate a product which actually is less performant than other products. We take into account that reality mail products will be out. That being said, not all mail products are out. Some of those mail products will evolve to track and trace products like parcels. You have high-value mail products. Registered mail is a high-value mail product. Many people think it will be digitalized. I can tell you most of the senders like the product. They like to officialize the fact that you have to state something to somebody.
You haven't paid your invoices. I like to make that official. I want to make sure that in court, I can prove that I made that official to you. That is a high-value product that will continue to exist in its paper form. Invitations for many kinds of forms. People like to have official invitations. Not only your grandmother likes to have the card of your wedding, but also other people like to have this official invitation. Commercial mail. Many of the retailers still see that the effect of the paper product is much stronger than what they can do on digital platforms. On those products, we will continue to invest to innovate these products and to make them more modern products.
To give you an example, in registered mail, we will make the product a hybrid product that ensures as well that you can have a signal the day before that you will get it, and you can reroute it in the way you want it. Do I want to have it tomorrow? Do I want it the day after tomorrow? Do I know the sender and therefore the mailman can drop it in my box while I'm not at home? I can give a proxy to somebody else. I can ask to do it in a bbox. I have those flexibilities so that it becomes a modern product and so that people say, actually, it's not a pleasant product, registered mail. We all know that, but still it becomes a convenient product to deliver.
That is what we will do for those high-end products that we see in mail going forward because they are challenged on that side, but we're not naive. The rest of those products will phase out. Next to that, bpost, of course, was as well very much dependent on government agreements. We had the press concession, which was phased out at the end of the last government. This is something that we will, to the extent that we see it happening now today, bring to our affiliate where we are still in that business, but it will be out of the core region of bpost so that bpost has the freedom to fully transform into this parcel logistic player. Of course, we had other agreements with the government. We think that those need to be clarified into normal margin products.
We do not want to depend on any government contracts going forward, and we want to become a pure commercial operator over there.
Okay, that is clear. What do these changes mean for the Belgian busin ess unit exactly?
They mean a lot. They mean actually that we have to completely revisit the way how we are organized. Today, if you look at the way how we are organized, it is a very impressive activity that is actually really focused on sourcing at night and distributing during the early moments of the day. That is basically what the activity is about, both in press products as in traditional mail products combined with the parcel business that we are in. We want to make sure that our assets sweat more. We want to make sure that we also deliver services towards our clients.
That means that we will have multiple sorting cycles over the day, depending on the client needs that we have, and so that we make our assets in that perspective sweat more. The second thing is we will also have multiple types of rounds. We're testing them as we speak. We have bulk rounds today. We will ensure that those bulk rounds, time-based rounds over the day, during the night, actually can deliver the kind of service that is linked to the client so that we also allow ourselves with those capabilities to enter into new spaces like the B2B space, like the C2C space, two spaces where we're not that present today because the current model actually is not competitive in those markets. B2B side because we don't deliver the right level of quality, meaning time, time windows in which we have to deliver.
C2C space because actually we have an overdelivery in terms of quality. We deliver an overnight product for something where the question is not overnight, and you could actually use a cheaper sorting capacity during the day if you organize differently around that product.
I hear you say we evolve our operational organization. We have prepared a video, so I suggest we have a look at that, and then we can come back to our conversation.
Benelux Last Mile, one of bpostgroup' s three business lines, began as Belgium's mail delivery service. Times change, so do we. Take, for example, post and press distribution. Press distribution has changed, and that creates new opportunities. To better meet the changing needs of customers and to optimize our resources, we are developing more flexible workflows.
These include the scheduling of letter and parcel sorting, their transport throughout our network of more than 200 distribution offices and mail centers, and the timing and number of delivery rounds. This way, all types of delivery can take place in the morning, afternoon, or evening. For instance, a technician needs materials for that day's job. They can be delivered to a locker before 7:00 A.M. We will enable clothing retailers to restock their shelves before opening each day. Moreover, this flexibility will allow us to offer higher-priced services for priority deliveries and lower prices for less urgent needs, such as a second-hand clothing shop that wants to pay less for three-day delivery. With this flexibility, we can divide deliveries into sorting waves, better fitting our capacity, and improving service for all our customers. At bpostgroup , we rethink the possible and reshape the future.
This means flexibility in organization and adaptability to new products.
Yes. On top of that, of course, you need digitalization because you have to make sure that you can match those pieces. We will introduce a product capability model where we basically make those waves something that you can combine in a specific client product. It means that if you would say the example of C2C, you can actually say, "I want to have a day sorting," which is the one where we have most capacity today. That will be lower cost combined with a certain transport combined with a certain distribution level. That distribution level, in the case of the C2C product, will be limited in that case from bbox- to- bbox to keep it as cheap as possible so that you only use bulk rounds and not the door-to-door rounds, which are more expensive.
You go to the technicians' ones. There you say, "Actually, it's a last-minute product. Somebody, some technician needs to have additional material. Otherwise, he cannot do his job." Somewhere during the end of his job in the afternoon, he does an order in the system that we deliver, in the network that we deliver. We do the fulfillment. We inject that into our network, and it gets delivered into those specific bboxes before they arrive at seven in the morning , which is, of course, a product which is of higher value, of more, and where we can also charge, of course, a different price as well because it saves a lot of friction cost for the user of that product. We see that we have a lot of interest in those products today because a lot of those people say technicians, as you know, they are in demand.
There is a lack of technicians today. If they have to do themselves those logistical jobs, going to the warehouse, looking for pieces, et cetera, it is a huge friction cost in that industry. We actually reorganize those sectors in a way that they become more efficient, that they can use their time much more efficiently. A lot of the clients today tell me, "Actually, you are creating for me the opportunity with the same amount of people to hire my top-line growth because actually I am bound by the bottleneck of the number of technicians that are actually doing the job." The more they are spending in a van, it is not a cost discussion. It is a revenue discussion for me because the more they can spend on the real work, the better it is for me.
If I can have an efficient, reliable service doing that for me, I'm really a fan of this. That's what we see today in the pilots as well. They were fairly successful in that space.
It's also clear that the bbox is an important cornerstone of your strategy. Let's have a quick look at our video.
As Belgium's national postal service, our story is closely connected to the history of the country as a whole. We've always been close to Belgian citizens, constantly delivering groundbreaking new ways to fit in with their busy lives. For example, we installed the country's first bboxes in 2011. Tomorrow, our bboxes will become even more important in the way we serve customers. bboxes are set to play a significant part for bpost as we install them across the country in bigger numbers and sometimes bigger sizes.
Take this new bbox here in Leuven, with 184 lockers in a variety of sizes. bboxes offer all kinds of advantages. They are not only secure, they also offer easy 24/7 accessibility at any network location. They provide the option not only to receive parcels, but to send mail too, registered letters, for example. In other words, bboxes will help us to respond better to our changing customers' needs and habits. As several thousands continue to appear in our country, they will offer more opportunities to make it easier to buy and sell on second-hand marketplaces or facilitate sending parcels among businesses, allowing us to handle greater volumes while getting even closer to the customer. In fact, fast-tracking our bboxes forms an essential part of our strategic vision, daring to think, thinking again, and constantly delivering innovative new services.
Do you want to elaborate, Chris?
Yes.
Maybe first of all, this is something that we add to our last-mile strategy. It was there, but we expanded massively over the next coming years. Let's be very clear. The door delivery with the, let's say, very popular mailman that we have today will stay, will continue to be there because we do not say that there is a whole market move from the one to the other. We just say the market has become much more diversified. In the past, people were only new to the system of having home delivery, and they found ways out of that. The social structure was different. That was an environment where this was something which was acceptable. Now you see that you have more diversified family settings, single, single, single-parent families.
You have people that have busy lives, and they don't necessarily are at home or don't want to be disturbed, even when they are at home, at the moment of this delivery. bbox can allow to have a broader service with the client in control of what they want. That is what makes bpost at the customer, the B2C segment, very specific because we see other players doing one of the two models. Actually, we give the possibility to the customer to decide at the moment of time where they actually want to receive their parcel or where they want to send their parcel from in this full Kepler network from door delivery, bboxes, postal points, and postal offices. That is a combination that we deliver. Now, why is bbox so important and why are we putting so much emphasis on our growth plant?
Philippe as well explained that part of the CapEx is not only going to the 3PL, but it's also going to these bboxes that we're installing. We're installing, as we speak, six to eight of those bboxes every day, 100 doors. Six to eight hundred additional doors are installed every day in Belgium because what we see is, on the one hand, especially in the environment of urban areas, young urban public is really interested to use it. We see that the moment we install them, within a few months, they are in full capacity use, and people ask us to install even more because it's something where it's really addressing a need in the B2C space.
On top of that, in the B2B space, it is really something that reduces a friction cost that you have in a professional environment because the delivery does not need to be momentaneous with the receiving, which in many instances, if you look at building construction sites, if you look at technicians, which is actually a high-fixed cost where you need to do these things. Of course, our digital tools also ensure that the delivery note, the acceptance note, all these things are organized thanks to the fact that people use their identification when they open the door. The whole administration flow as well is optimized through those bboxes, which increases then, of course, the facility to our clients. That is why we really believe this is important.
Today, we are aiming to be by the end of year with 2,500 of those bboxes, and we continue to grow over the next coming years towards 4,500 of those bboxes. Obviously, if we see if the market space would be bigger for that, we continue to grow afterwards as well.
Thank you, Chris. This brings us seamlessly to one of our seven must-wins: building a B2B service in the Belgian business unit. Can you explain a little bit more on that, please?
If we look today at many of our clients, we were in the typical business where we basically said, "This is the offering that you have. You can deliver a parcel typically at a postal office, or we can collect it at your place, and we deliver it on the next day. That's the product. You like it or you don't like it.
This is what it is. We fully changed that approach into a B2B approach where we basically look at the logistical problem of the client and then try to see how parcels can be a solution into that. What we have seen here around technicians is a typical example of that. Today, actually, you replace a service that actually is not even accounted for in the logistical market because it is a technician that actually is sitting himself in a van, and you reduce that time and you re-engineer actually the supply chain over there. The same we see for a number of retailers. Many retailers that have to fight against fast fashion are distributing their stock among their brick-and-mortar stores.
You enter into a store, and then you basically, when you buy something, it could be that the size or the color or whatever is not in the same store, and you would like to have it. Currently, for them, that is a big reason of client loss. If I look at my personal situation, not me, my wife, she would walk out and say, "I think about it," which means the sale is not going to happen. If you actually could deliver a service where you say, "Tomorrow it is at a place that you like," a lot of those sales can happen.
That is what also those retailers recognize in the pilots that we do today, that they see that they have a much higher sales volume while they actually can reduce their working capital because they have less stock needed, also less stock to be sold in the sales spirit. You actually deliver a service which adds much more value than the pure logistical value or the cost of moving a box from A - B. You actually re-engineer the whole supply chain for them in a way that is much more productive.
With this, let's zoom in on our recent collaboration with Colruyt.
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That's not all. Thanks to a collaboration with SLS, one of our entities, goods can now be delivered overnight directly into the technician's van. That way, they can start their day with exactly the right materials.
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This approach is proving to be a success.
bpostgroup and Colruyt are already exploring new ways to expand their collaboration even further.
We have DynaLogic, and we have chosen to do a test trial on doing installation of scanners within the stores. We are in discussion with the marketing department to see how can Staci use its POS and marketing expertise for Colruyt.
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They seem happy.
It is very exciting. As you can see, on the one hand, you recognize the strength of bpost, its capability to be very, very close to the market with the extreme distribution capacity, sorting capacity, collect capacity that we have. On the other side, you see that we're really adjusting ourselves to the client.
That is what excites me as much as Tom was excited about his example. What you see here is a client that starts to see the potential. Actually, each time when we talk with them, they see more opportunities to do work in this way. That is what we say. We will actually reinvent and reshape supply chains with this. A lot of the capability that we have seen in Staci really specialized in certain verticals, like in Telecom, where you have Digiboxes that need to be replaced. If we combine them with the capabilities that we have in our last-mile distribution, we even get a kind of unique offering nobody else can offer, where you have a high capillarity, very convenient product for end consumers or for B2B clients in a way that nobody can do.
Meanwhile, we make our assets sweat, which is, of course, the strategy that makes the profitability higher than it is today.
Okay. We have also announced the development of a C2C offering with even a pack and label-free solution. Why is this so interesting?
I can tell you one thing. When we launched it, many of our competitors were on the phone and were asking, "How are you doing that? How is that actually on earth possible that you have something without a package, without a label to be sent between two customers?" They were very interested in the way how we did it. Interestingly, this is really some of the innovation that we brought. This is the first in the world that we do, but it's attractive because on the one hand, it combines convenience to the C2C client.
Somebody selling some clothing and says, like, I don't have a box at home. How do I get it done? They just can go on the app. They select the bbox where they want to send it. They put the package of clothes in the bbox at that moment of time. They give the sender address, bbox at the sender side. The sender can just choose the bbox where it needs to be delivered, or the receiver can choose where it needs to be delivered. What we do actually is we have a reusable package that is labeled, and so we package it at the moment that we take it out of the bbox and then get through the normal process and get it out of that reusable package.
That, of course, is in terms of ESG as well, a big step ahead because the reusable package, one of the challenges everybody knows is how do you manage the flow of the reusable packaging itself? We have created a full internal flow of reusable packaging, allowing us to have the reuse really happening and not having tons of reusable packaging somewhere in the corner of a warehouse standing and waiting there for something. We really have this internalized in a way. We create a very convenient, no-nonsense product for the client, combined with a very, let's say, low footprint in terms of packaging and a low footprint in terms of CO2.
Okay, thank you. This shift from postal to parcel, you've explained that. You've also explained that the postal products will not disappear, just adapt, modernize, serve the clients in a better way.
Yes.
Let me give you a couple of examples over there. We launched recently the obituaries track and trace product. One of the problems that we had on that product was that it's a, let's say, a high-quality product that needs to be delivered in a very short period of time. The ceremony between the moment that people print the things they want to send around is very short, and they want to be sure that it is arriving at every place. In the past, bpost had many times, we even had some of the journalists here in the room, had a job in putting us in the press and explaining that the carts arrived after the ceremony, and people were sitting there and didn't see how good the ceremony was.
Now we have developed, thanks to digitalization, a track and trace product that allows that we know for sure, day plus one, everything has been delivered, and if not, what the reason was. Sometimes wrong address, some uncle that changed the address or something. We can really precisely help the client with that product. That is what we do with all those high-value products and high-sensitive products to ensure that we upgrade the quality in a way that the customer really feels that this product is taken care of. I really can trust bpost that they do it in the right way.
We are running short in time, but can you just quickly—yes, exactly. Can you just quickly touch upon the topic of retail office network?
Yes.
Because they are evolving towards a multi-service center type of service offering.
Y es.
The retail offices is about the only retainer that we have where we need an agreement with the government. It has to do with proximity, the level of service that the government wants to give to citizens for certain base banking services, base postal services, and some other services. This government has announced that they want to renegotiate the next contract towards a contract with a lower cost ticket than the one that we have here. We have to adjust ourselves to that new reality. What we do for that is that we fully rethink the model that we have.
On the one hand, we will make it a model where you have a combination of self-service integration with the app, integration with our call center, making sure that we have actually maximum service to the need of the client, combined with a service level that we have with multiple flows coming to the office for the human service that we have over there. We look at mutualities, we look at municipalities themselves for the issuing of passports, identity cards, and other documents. All these things we will combine to maximize the flows over there. Of course, obviously, the discussion will happen with the government in the way that we manage that within the normal profitability margin that we have. It is a European-approved budget that we will have.
We have today 656 offices and depending, of course, on the combination that we have of new flows together with the budget that the government will foresee, we will then see where we will end up in terms of those things. Importantly, they will be the center point of proximity in all the communities where they will be present.
Okay, thank you, Chris. To wrap it up, can you briefly walk us through the financial outlook for Benelux Last Mile?
Yes, maybe a bit similar to what Tom has said, with that difference, of course, that we have still a line that is continuous in decline.
The mail line continues to be at a decline of eight to 10% each year, combined with the fact, of course, that you see the effects between 2024 and 2027 of the exit of a number of government contracts, the press concession, the 679 account that BNP Paribas has won as last one. Those ones are going away in the short term. What you see is that we will reconnect to growth over time, and the compensation that we will see coming in from the B2B, from the C2C space going forward, will compensate for the loss that we see on the mail business in the horizon of 2029.
Thank you.
Philippe will give you more detail.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Now, as Rafike talked way too much, we're running a little bit out of time here, but we do have time for one short question and an even shorter answer, Chris. Yes, here we go in the front.
I'll keep it short, but Chris, you already mentioned on the outlook that it includes the loss of the press concession evidently and the 679 accounts. There are, of course, some other things set up for negotiations as well, including the traffic fines and licensing plates. Is that included in the outlook?
Yes. What we have included now is, as you know, we are in the middle of or at the start of a new tender around, for instance, the license plates. License plate scope tender already was reduced compared to the former. There are less services asked by the government to the winner of the tender.
That is one thing that we take into account. The second thing that we take into account, of course, is you know that in these files, we did the internal audits and we had some excessive charging. The excessive charging has been taken out as well for the future offering that we do. You have a combination of a smaller scope of this, of these contracts combined with a, let's say, normalized margin that are actually in the plans as you see them and as Philippe will present them to you.
Thank you. Thank you for the short answer indeed, Chris. Now, there is one business unit we have not discussed yet, which is the Global Cross-border Business Unit. For that, we have the CEO, James Edge, with us today. Actually, James is joining us live from across the globe.
It's called Global Cross-border for a reason, obviously. James, where are you? Where are you now?
Hey, hi Steve. I am in La Mirada, one of the flagship facilities of Landmark Global. And yeah, our spiritual home or the place where we were founded in 2004.
Okay.
So yeah, that's where I am today.
Nice. And what time is it over there? Probably somewhere in the middle of the night, I suppose.
I think if I stare off into the distance there, it tells me it's 2:45 in the morning. But to borrow a phrase from our Radial teammate, the team here and I are well caffeinated, so we're ready to go.
Excellent. Okay, excellent. Can you introduce us to the cross-border business, please?
Yeah, with pleasure.
You know, from those early beginnings in Southern California in 2004 and including the acquisition by bpost in 2013, which Chris already mentioned, we're now a EUR 600 million business. We've got 25 locations across four continents. Again, relating to where that revenue sits, it's now 80% in the commercial stream and 20% related to postal. We'll come back on those two elements later on in the presentation. In cross-border, we're clearly in a fast-growing market. There's opportunity there, as our listeners will be well aware, as cross-border and global e-commerce grows. We're particularly strong in certain lanes, which I will address in more detail as we go on. Yeah, U.S. to Canada is where the business began.
We've got a very strong market from China, some of the large Chinese platforms, as well as some of the mid-market players into Belgium and increasingly into other parts of Europe. We've got a strong regional presence in Northwest Europe, particularly France, Netherlands, and the U.K.. We're an asset-light business. We're focused on transportation. You've listened to my colleagues in 3PL talk about more of the fulfillment business, which we will touch on. We're asset-light. We're focused on transport. 1,500 FTEs spread across those locations goes up a little bit during a peak and low CapEx. When my colleagues in the room are fighting for Philippe's CapEx budget, then usually I keep my voice a bit lower.
I'll take a step back and try and describe in a little bit more detail the problem that Landmark Global was solving, the opportunity they were addressing all the way back to 2004, because it's just as relevant today, whether the customer is ordering from Canada, as was the case for Landmark in 2004, or whether it's a Belgian consumer ordering from China or from somewhere else in the world today. Customers shop cross-border for two primary reasons. One is they're looking for a product or a brand that they can't access in the home market. The second one is they're looking for value. They could save some money, perhaps, from shopping in the U.S. or shopping in China. The problem in 2004, well, problems are not problems. You could get an item tomorrow with FedEx, fantastic service, track door to door in an express business model.
The problem was it would cost you a lot. That value would diminish, and it turned a lot of people away in the checkout. The other route at the time was postal. Absolutely nothing wrong with postal, but it tends to be a slower experience. Many of you in the room might have had the kind of surprising and unpleasant part at the end where you get a little piece of paper through the door asking you to pay your duties and taxes and a service fee on top. At Landmark Global, we set out to solve those problems. That is the essence of our cross-border business. Back in the day, it became a five- to seven-day service from U.S. to Canada, not overnight and not, say, 10 to 14 days like postal.
The key piece was that we incorporated technology and tracking events. The visibility of that parcel was clear from the start of the journey to the very end, just as you would expect in a domestic e-commerce experience. The final bit that was solved basically was the customs and duty piece. There were no surprises at the end of that journey. In a nutshell, that's what cross-border is. If I go to today, I kind of think about it as six key USPs for us. One is that we are close to our customer base. Whether that be close to our U.S. customers or close to our Chinese customers, we have sales teams located in our key markets. Really delivered recently, we had a trip out to China.
We sat down with one of our largest clients, with our Belgian team and our international team. We basically developed a new product that clearly solves customer need and creates more volume, of course, for us. Just a great example of what happens when you have local teams really tied in with the customers that they're serving. Linking it all together has always been strong technology. We have an in-house platform called Mercury, which we often talk about, probably mention it once or twice in this presentation. That's the platform that ensures this end-to-end tracking and the full visibility wherever you are in the world ordering and receiving. The third piece and the fourth piece surround transport. Final mile is key in the cross-border experience. Clearly we have that in abundance in Belgium.
We also have a final mile service in Canada that is in-house, Apple Express, an acquisition we made a few years ago and developed into a B2C powerhouse in Canada. In other markets, we use partners. We offer the same visibility, the same experience. I would say it is those strong last mile positions that make Belgium and Canada our two strongest markets. With the combined, I guess, power, the combined scale of the group, we are offering increasingly more competitive and flexible transportation solutions. Before you get to final mile, the trucks, the planes that are delivering the goods around Europe and North America and other places in the world, and we will come on to that a little bit more later. Then that in-house customs expertise. A lot of people claim to have it. For us, it is very much in-house.
We own our customs brokerage that serves Canada. We own our customs brokerage that serves Belgium. We have a network of partners that service the other places in the world where we're strong. The final piece, and I never wish to confuse anyone between what cross-border does and what 3PL does, but this is the link. The link is fulfillment. Once we have a client who's been successful delivering single parcels by the thousands to a market, whether that be Canada, whether it be Europe, or whether Australia or wherever, they will come to us. They'll come to Landmark, they'll come to the group, and they'll ask for an in-country fulfillment solution. We have that. We obviously have that through our brands, Radial and the other 3PL brands. We can serve those customers in different ways.
If they want to stay on our Mercury system, if they want to remain a, call it a Landmark Global client, that's possible. We also have situations where those clients become local clients of, say, Radial Europe. Fulfillment is a key piece, and it's obviously a key group capability. We've got an interesting market environment, right? Chris already alluded to the tariffs at the beginning. What I will say about them is the uncertainty is the kind of killer or the slowdown for global trade. We could go through on what happened last week or how perhaps Canada retaliated or where we are in the court system. It's that uncertainty that makes life difficult. It's where, in relation to our competitors, again, I'm very happy that we have our in-house customs brokerage. We're able to provide advisory services to our clients.
There's many looking at sourcing goods, let's say, from Southeast Asia instead of from China. We're able to help them with that. Of course, being able to offer that in-country fulfillment in Canada or anywhere else in the world is a huge part of how you answer the tariff question. The second one is the rise of platforms, particularly the Chinese platforms. We had many years' experience in North America with platform businesses. The fast growth of those Chinese platforms is really transforming the market. Related to the tariffs, and again, Chris, you mentioned this, but it's providing us business opportunity. If because of tariffs, Canadians are less likely to order from the U.S., you can be sure they're more likely to order from China.
It is that diversity of offering that we have and our kind of embeddedness with those platforms that is a key kind of power of the growth that we have now and we are expecting in the future. Anyone following the U.K. market, I know many in the room will be seeing the market consolidation in our space. That can provide scale and opportunity. When we are looking for final mile solutions in the U.K., what has been happening with DHL, with Dell, with the others, with the consolidation happening there can be an opportunity. For us, when I talk about the French market, we made an acquisition within cross-border a few years ago of IMX that really strengthened our solution out of France and our solution in Northwest Europe. Market consolidation offers a number of interesting opportunities, let's say.
Just as we talked about generally with bpost and with post offices everywhere, we do have a profitable mail business in cross-border. That business is in decline, right? Letters are going down. Again, that's why we're focusing on the fast-growing commercial side of the business, which is already 80% of the revenue within cross-border. To answer that kind of market environment, we've got four main prongs to our strategy. I'm going to cover two of them here, including the must-win that is trade lanes and key lanes. The group-wide initiative that we're leading from cross-border is the group-wide transport experts, which is the Transport Centre of Excellence. Excuse me. First, the lane management and the key priorities there. It goes without saying that we need to defend what we have.
We need to increase our digital capability, for example, in our U.S. to Canada business, so we can better interact with our clients through the platforms that they're using. In China to Belgium, we've got over 50% market share. We face increasing competition. The development of those new products and new solutions is key, as well as finding clients in the kind of mid-market space, a little bit like what Tom was talking about earlier. There are plenty of mid-market clients that we're approaching and that we're having success with in the Chinese market. Again, defending what we've recently been growing from China into Canada, it's been a big boost to our Canadian business in light of everything that's been happening. It's important that we continue to develop that cross-border piece. The other two key defend markets are France and the U.K..
France is growing in a very healthy way. The U.K. is not growing as much. It's a highly competitive market, but it's a really important market for us. It's an inbound, it's an outbound, it's a cross-dock, as well as being an origin of new business. Alongside those lanes that we've had for a long time, we're also looking to boost lanes that are kind of that haven't perhaps been priorities or we haven't managed in the most effective way in the past. A good example is the Netherlands. We've managed it very effectively as bpostg roup, selling into Belgium. There is a ton of other opportunity, as you well know, out of the Netherlands with the e-commerce companies. Being able to offer our whole suite of cross-border products is a massive opportunity.
We have really focused on that in the last six months to a year. We are beginning to see the dividends now. Other key lanes that we could boost, we are super strong U.S. to Canada. We could be stronger from U.S. to the rest of Europe. We have the pieces in place. That is more of a sales effort and sales focus in that direction. If I skip from defending and boosting to new lanes, you already heard mentioned earlier from Chris that we have found new business out of Spain, which is kind of a cool story. We combine the clients we have in different origins, in this example, China, with the capability that we have been able to piggyback on with thanks to Thomas and his team of Staci in Spain.
We now have a cross-dock, we have a home for our salespeople, and we now have an opportunity to launch a Spanish lane, which obviously is the trucks coming up through Europe, going through France and into Belgium and really boosting our presence in Southern Europe, feeding into Northern Europe. Canada is a funny one to see perhaps as a new lane. All of our Canada focus really, since I've been around for more than a decade, has been inbound into Canada. There are opportunities out of Canada as well. There are opportunities for us as a domestic provider in Canada. We have Apple Express, which is our final mile company and capability. There is more focus we can put on domestic, particularly in light of what is going on in the tariffs. In a quick tour, that is our lane management strategy and priorities.
I'll close on strategy-wise with the Transport Centre of Excellence. As a group, we spend almost a billion on third-party transport solutions on vendors. We've always managed it in silos. It links back to what Chris said at the beginning. We've operated very successfully in those silos, but we've never looked at the whole piece. In the last six months to a year, we've started doing that. We've already identified what you could call a low-hanging fruit, EUR 15 million of annualized savings, just by doing simple things, going to the market as Staci plus Radial plus Landmark in North America, for example, looking at the U.K. and saying, "Hey, Active Ants, Radial, Landmark, Staci, you all have accounts with the same final mile vendors. Let's approach them as one." As we go forward, we need to turn the low-hanging fruit into a kind of industrialized solution.
Over the next six to 12 months, we'll be looking at our operating model, and we'll be looking at the data that we have, and we'll be working at how we can increase that savings, but more important, increase the efficiency and just operate better as a transportation group, if you will. Yeah, like everyone else, I'll touch on the financial outlook, but leave the key numbers to Philippe. We're going to continue being a growth engine of bpostg roup. North America will be steady. We'll get through the challenges we're facing at the moment with headwinds and tariffs, and we'll see a return to growth. We've got fantastic growth coming out of Asia and into Europe. We're very excited about the new lanes that we're developing regionally, both in Northwest Europe, which we've talked about, and also in North America.
Now, all of that, all of that's a great revenue story. EBIT-wise, it's a very good story too. The postal decline does take that EBIT margin down, but the transport savings, the organic growth, more than make up for it, make up for it. We will continue to see EBIT margins between 10%-12% in the years ahead. With that, Steve and the room, I'll pause and take any questions.
Thank you. Thank you, James. Indeed, we have time for one or two questions from our audience here in Brussels who would like to ask James a question. No specific questions for James at this point. Yes, one question here in the front.
Yeah, thank you for taking my question. Maybe on cross-border China into Belgium.
I can imagine that with potential abolishment of the de minimis ruling in Europe until 2028 or earlier, there might be maybe less volume, maybe more tariff customs clearance that you can do. Can you maybe walk me through how you see potential threats from less de minimis in the future?
Yeah, certainly. We could be talking about Europe or other places in the world, so it's a great question. We've already seen that into Europe in years past as the de minimis has changed and as the data requirements have changed. What realistically happens is volume does dip as everybody readjusts. We're confident that we'll manage that, and we'll work with our clients anywhere in the world to manage those movements in de minimis. Yeah, like I said, the history shows a little dip, and then back it comes as everyone adjusts to the new rules.
What does not generally change is consumer behavior. In the end, as we and our clients make de minimis changes more understandable, clients will go back to buying, and we will see those volumes go up. That is what I expect to happen again.
Thank you. Thank you, James. I know it is late, but please do not go to bed just yet because we will need you for the general Q&A at the end of the session. That ends the deep dives of the different business units. There is something that connects them all. That is our ambition to be a reference in social and, sorry, environmental sustainability in the markets we operate in. To elaborate a bit more on our ESG strategy, I would like to welcome our bpostg roup CFO, Philippe Dartienne.
Thank you very much, Steve. Good morning, everyone.
Very happy to be here with my colleague to share with you our strategy. When it comes to TSG, I want to remind and reiterate the fact that we are committed and engaged in sustainable matters and projects. We have conducted, like many companies, the double maturity assessment. From that, seven ESG priorities came out. The big ones being CO2. Since we have a large fleet of vans and trucks, their emissions have a direct impact on the Scope 3 of our customers. I will come back on that one. Waste and packaging, Thomas alluded to it in the triple activities generate packaging during the activities. Also people, one of our core assets. We want to attract and retain the right talent in a group where they feel respected.
As in the case for many operators in the sector, reducing CO2 emissions is a major objective for us. We have a clear roadmap to reach net zero emissions, notably by investing in fleet electrification, renewable energy, and circular business model. By doing so, we aim at reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 55% at the horizon of 2030, in line with SBTi's target, and to reduce Scope 3 emissions by 14% over the same period, leading us to net zero by 2050. You will find in the deck some concrete action and targets about what I've spoken about. Before diving into the finance part, and you could open your excel spreadsheet where I could provide you with a lot of data, let's see a short video that illustrates from FDF Port when it comes to ESG.
Integral to our strategic vision, sustainability is at the core of our market operations and differentiation. At bpostg roup, our environmental policy is underpinned by three principles. To ensure a healthy, inclusive, and respectful work environment for our 36,000 employees, we focus on three areas. We make sure that every employee and business partner understands their role in upholding our values. Here are a few ways we are putting these policies into action. At Staci, our B2B logistics acquisition, all waste cardboard is sorted. The clean cardboard is transformed into cushioning material. This has reduced cardboard waste by over 11%, and CO2 emissions produced by transporting cardboard waste have also decreased. Another advantage is the lower cost for cushioning material.
bpostg roup is making urban deliveries greener in Belgium with eco zones, areas with a dense network of pickup points and parcel lockers where all pickups and deliveries are made using electric vehicles. In 2024, we welcomed 24 new double-deck trailers, allowing us to transport more parcels with fewer trips. Close to 600 e-bike trailers are reducing road congestion, freeing parking spaces, and cutting carbon emissions. By 2029, with 4,500 bbox lockers across Belgium, over 90% of the population will be less than seven minutes from a locker. Sustainability is not just a goal for bpostg roup. It is about rethinking the possible and reshaping the future.
As we move forward in the day, and my colleagues have shared and explained to you their respective strategy and then transformed journey that will bring us to 2029, I would like to present to you the financial trajectory as a three-year milestone. I will be covering the period 2024-2027. bpostg roup top-line growth is now mostly driven by the logistics and the cross-border expansion, as you have understood it, I hope, with a consolidated top line, which is expected to grow above and beyond EUR 5 billion, supporting a progressive EBIT recovery with a momentum expected to build from 2026 onwards and leading to an EBIT of EUR 275 million in 2027. I will come back to it by BU view, but the consolidated trajectory will not be linear since in the early years, we are still facing challenges, and the result of the new development cannot immediately offset.
EBIT contribution profile is shifting from the legacy business to logistics, with 3PL emerging as the main growth driver post-transformation, global cross-border remaining solid, as James showed you, and Belgium last mile being progressively repositioned. In terms of CapEx, we expect to invest between EUR 160 million-EUR 180 million per annum, of which 50% will be allocated to growth, supporting the long-term profitability, customer experience, and sustainable value creation. Our progressive and sustained dividend policy is aimed for distributing between 30%-50% of IFRS net result, with a clear focus on long-term value creation. We commit to maintain our investment-grade credit rating with a clear deleveraging path after the Staci acquisition, targeting a reduction of the leverage ratio to below 2.5 times by 2027. Let's move now to the BU view, starting with 3PL Europe.
In 3PL Europe, the top line is expected to grow at a high single-digit pace, driven by the proven Staci growth model replicated across 3PL Europe, as Thomas explained you, with the combined country approach enabling a fast rollout, cross-selling, and geographical expansion. Also, a robust customer pipeline with scalable solutions across markets and multiple diversified client bases across different industries. When it comes to profitability that we measure at EBIT, it's forecasted to grow from 5.1%, knowing that the 5.1%, which is starting in 2024, is the impact of the acquisition of Staci in the middle of the year, and will gradually grow to the high single-digit number. The integration of Staci with the best-in-class margin profile in the logistics industry above 12% will help us further improve the profitability, including when it comes to Radial and Active Ants, thanks to operational efficiencies and synergies across 3PL Europe network.
Speaking of synergies, despite the fact that the synergies were not the main driver for the Staci acquisition, they nevertheless are gradually building up to reach EUR 30 million in 2027, of which 80% are cost-driven. Let's now cross the ocean and have a look at Radial North America. We expect a flat to low single top line growth resulting from a strong contraction as a result of the announced client churn in 2024 and 2025, a stabilization from 2026 with return to growth in 2027, supported by the new Radial Fast Track offering that Tom has presented to you and we have seen in the video, and also market expansion into new verticals with a value-over-volume approach. Same-store sales is also expected to grow at a low single-digit rate across a healthier, more diversified client base, providing increased resilience to market shifts.
To put things into perspective, expected growth in annual contribution value, the ACV, in the early years is north of EUR 120 million, making it the first engine of growth for Radial North America. EBIT margin will gradually improve through 2027, following a low point in 2025. Margin recovery is driven by three elements, and Tom already partially covered those ones with the question: a more active real estate portfolio management resulting in improved occupancy rate after a low level in 2025, a technology transformation with a simplification of the technology stack, cloud migration with real-time data, and also a selective profitable top-line expansion geared towards mid-size customers and standardized service offering, I refer to the McDonald's menu as you refer to it. Let's see what it means now when we are combining these two regions. In fact, this is the going forward.
I want to emphasize on the fact that despite the fact that we are explaining you in a lot of detail the two segments, which is Europe and U.S., in the future, we will be guiding on the entire 3PL segment. When we are combining these two, these two regions, U.S., North America, 3PL should expand its top line by low to mid-single digit, and the EBIT margin should range between eight and 10%. Let's move to global cross-border. The global cross-border segment is expected to deliver a mid-single digit top line growth that will be fueled by strong growth in cross-border Europe and Asia, driven by solid commercial expansion, offsetting structural volume decline in postal. Modest growth in North America near term reflecting the overcapacity and increased competition while tariff uncertainty is delaying business decision and commercial cycles.
Mid-term, the EBIT should remain between the 10% and the 12% supported with a stable EBIT. The stable EBIT will be delivered by top-line growth, offsetting slight margin dilution from the mix effect from postal product to commercial product and growing transportation savings, starting with a EUR 15 million saving in 2025, as James just explained you. Let's move now to our last business unit, Benelux Last Mile. When it comes to Benelux Last Mile, we see top line reconverging to the 2024 level by 2027, so not before, with a low point in 2026, which is explained by factors acting in opposite direction. We'll first see a revenue drop in 2026 with the end of state service, like the management of the 679 contracts, the re-tendering of the European license plate contract on a smaller scope.
We will also see continuing a structural decline in mail, while the evolution of the volume, which is in negative territory in the range of high single-digit percentage, will be partially compensated by a positive price mix effect on a low to single-digit percentage. These elements take into account, which is also part of the question, the end of the press concession that happened in 2024. Growth from the X2C parcels, where volume is expected to grow positive territory, mid-single-digit percentage, price mix effect also positive in the range of the low to single-digit percentage, gradually supported, as Chris elaborated on, and we saw some examples on the video, by new B2B revenues. Also growth in personnel, logistics, and domestic cross-border volume, mostly originating from Asia.
On profitability, we are targeting a landing between 2.5%-3.5% EBIT range, which could be explained by margin pressure in 2026, reflecting the top line decline of state service contracts, underlying shift in product mix with the decrease of mail and press product. Nothing new for you, but it will continue again, as Chris explained it. This will be partially offset by significant operational efficiencies, including review of flows, distribution round, asset utilization, sweating the assets, which is very core to Chris and to our art, and workforce organization in all parts of the business. As you understood from Chris, the transformation journey of Belgium is profound. We'll require multiple years for turnaround, starting with a low point ever in 2026, as we are still facing challenges that cannot be fully compensated by new business and additional efficiencies.
With this, we end our detailed view of the different business units. Let's move to the bpostg roup consolidated view. Reshape 2029 sets bpost on a path back to EBIT growth, driven by a successful execution of the seven must-win battles we have seen at the beginning of this presentation, of which the value-over-volume strategy is an important one, together with a more resilient customer portfolio. We see top line evolving at a recurrent low single-digit percentage growth, expected to deliver above EUR 5 million of top line in 2027, supporting a progressive EBIT recovery from momentum expected to build from 2026 onwards and leading to an EBIT of EUR 275 million in 2027. Our capital allocation is anchored in long-term value creation through the transformation. We intend to invest between EUR 160 million-EUR 180 million per annum to maintain our set, but also fuel our organic growth.
We will also target ad-hoc bolt-on acquisition for further scale and strengthen our core in a selective and disciplined approach, both on the strategic and financial aspects. For the avoidance of doubt, current focus is on deleveraging after the Staci acquisition, prior to engaging in large M&A, while maintaining an investment-grade debt profile, while providing short-term returns to our shareholders. At the time of the Staci acquisition, so back in August 2024, we commit to maintain a prudent capital structure with the explicit objective of preserving the standalone investment-grade rating. Today, we confirm we have a clear delivery past post-Staci acquisition, supported by underlying cash flow and robust operational performance. Current credit rating with S&P confirmed on May the 7th as A- with a three-notch uplift as a government-related entity, meaning that we are on a standalone basis, BBB-.
We commit to a financial discipline, enabling the company to withstand cyclical pressures, fund strategic priorities, and remain agile in a fast-evolving market environment. We also want to continue building a future-ready company while ensuring capital strength through a commitment to returning to a target leverage ratio below 2.5 times by 2027. At bpost, we have a well-balanced debt maturity profile, avoiding refinancing cliffs. The debt is centralized at HQ. It amounts to EUR 1,650 million, which is composed of three Euro bonds, bonds in euro, with no restrictive covenant. Ample liquidity resources, including a EUR 500 million commercial paper program and a EUR 475 million in unwritten RCFs. All outstanding debts are at fixed rate with a current weighted average cost of debt of 2.6% and a maturity of five years. The refinancing of the EUR 650 million bond nearing maturity is currently under review.
Let's have a look now on how we are investing when we intend to invest our money. In terms of growth, we are focused on an organic growth strategy, with gross investment accounting for roughly 50% of the CapEx, while ensuring the right level of maintenance of our asset. We also aim at reducing our capital intensity and maximizing their utilization. I will not say again, sweat the asset. Investments are anchored in e-logistic expansion, mostly in Europe, as Thomas explained it to us, bbox in Belgium, as Chris mentioned it, finding the right balance for the right place and optimal size. We will also continue to invest in our network optimization and the technology stack. Investments are made to deliver tangible results, enhancing customer experience, driving service efficiency, focusing on quality, and expanding our value proposition.
We reinvest in the area that differentiates us competitively and generates long-term returns. Choices are made based on rigorous financial and strategic criteria, including post-investment reviews and defined payback periods. Let's finish this section with our dividend policy. Our dividend policy is guided by discipline and long-term sustainability, striking the right balance between rewarding the shareholders on the short term and maintaining financial flexibility to fund the company's transformation and expansion. Temporary dividend pauses in recent years reflect a clear capital allocation hierarchy. We reinstate our dividend policy of distributing between 30% and 50% of IFRS net profit when conditions allow. Beyond dividends, shareholders are created through discipline, reinvestment, and capital efficiency. That's what I wanted to share with you this morning.
Thank you. Thank you, Philippe. Now, Philippe will take questions after the closing words during the final Q&A.
I would like to, before we start answering those questions, invite Chris Peeters to join Philippe for the closing words. Philippe may come to my left and we shift. Yes, we shift. Yes, for the camera. So people at home can see us very well. Your final words, Chris, on this day.
I think that you all can see that we are in the middle of reshaping this company, and it was also very much needed. This company was under a lot of pressure. We had the declining mail business in which we were. We had the government contracts under pressure. We had a press concession that was ending. There were many things, and we had the client loss that we had in the U.S. There were many things where the company was under pressure.
Meanwhile, what you can see is that the transformation is in full motion as we speak. You see today already, as Tom said rightfully, you see already the lights in the eyes of our clients today. We see in the pilots that we did today that the transformation that we have engaged in is really starting to deliver results. Of course, as Philippe has said, what we see is 2025, 2026 are transition years in that transformation before we see that the new strategy will deliver sufficient growth to compensate for the drop that we will see from the things that I just mentioned. What you really clearly see today is that the pilots that we have are successful. They have the potential to be expanded and to be scaled. That is what we will focus on in the coming weeks.
We have the right team in place. You have seen that we have reinforced the team with really strong profiles to deliver on that growth. We are ready to execute this plan. I hope that we could convince you today that bpost will be reshaped, will be a very different company in the years to come. A lot you will recognize. It will be based on the capabilities that we have. It will be based on the assets that we have. The way how we position ourselves in the market will be completely changing in the next coming few months.
Thank you very much, Chris, for those closing words. Now, I think it is time for the Q&A. Get your questions ready. We are just going to put some high chairs on the stage.
In the meantime, I would like to invite our community host, Antoine, to join us on the stage as well, as well as the CEOs of the different business units. I think James is still with us. James, you're still awake, I hope?
Yep.
Perfect.
I'm still there.
Okay. Thank you. We've had a number of questions from our online audience, and I propose that this time we start with them. Antoine, the questions from our audience, first one.
Yep. Just to mention that you can continue sending your questions during this Q&A session.
Of course. Yes.
Of course. I think that Thomas and Philippe as well, the first question comes to the synergies at 3PL.
You both mentioned this during your presentation, but perhaps to reclarify again, high level, what are the key highlights that you want us to keep in mind when it comes to synergies from a business perspective and then financially?
From a business perspective, it's mainly cross-selling. The synergies that we have is cross-selling. We have a few examples that we cannot name the client, but we have a few examples of clients that went from B2B to B2C. You know, additionally to the B2B, we now deliver the B2C, went from a country to another country, another one. Perhaps Air Liquide, now we started in France, then they asked us to go to operate in Italy and in the U.K., and we just won Germany. You know, it's an example, but we have a lot of those cross-selling effects, sorry, between entities.
Also adding on the top, the capacity to manage any kind of product. For a lot of clients, we manage the POS historically, and then we go to core product or on the opposite way from core product to POS. The cross-selling is really a huge opportunity for us as we deliver quality also. We are recognized for the quality of our service, a flexible model with, you know, again, the pay-as-you-use model compared to the logistic market, which mainly wants to invoice to the client fixed cost, which was also a model, or is a model for a lot of our competitors. We propose for them a variable cost. It is quite unique in the market. It is a know-how.
A lot of competitors try to copy us in this business model, but if you do not have the know-how of mutualization with a strong IT, you cannot do it just, you know, in one day. It is really a know-how that now we share also with Radial U.S.. I trust, you know, it is also in Radial U.S., a real know-how that they have in a different kind of market. That is the leverage for the cross-selling and synergies that we have, yes, in trust for trust.
I would say on top of that, cherry on the cake, which is already very good on the top line, but we also have savings from a cost standpoint. As I said, I mentioned a number of EUR 30 million in 2027 that will be gradually built up, of which 80% is on cost only.
The major contribution to cost savings are transportation savings. It has been mentioned by Thomas, it has been mentioned by James, that by combining this purchasing power, we could get better rates. Of course, some of them we need to return back to the customers to keep a competitive pricing, but we still owe the vast majority of it. So we have also a cost component to it. Another one is in the example of the combination of the countries where 3PL operates, there could be some SG&E savings. There are also the fact that they could leverage on some central function, the level of bpostg roup. It's another source of cost savings and more generally procurement savings for all types of stuff. You also mentioned Thomas, packaging, energy, and so on and so forth, and the usual suspects when it comes to procurement and putting things together.
Perhaps I forget also the synergies with the other bpost entities. Staci was not so strong in cross-border. We did not have by the past a strong offer in cross-border. Now we work a lot with James and his team, you know, with Landmark for it. And we offer to the Staci clients and at events and Radial Europe this opportunity also to manage their goods over borders, which is a real interesting offer, including for U.S., Canada, and so on where we are. James said a word about Spain. You know, we started some countries recently after less than a few months. Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe another online question first?
Questions are still coming in, so I'll let you ask in the audience.
Okay, all right, perfect. Audience here live in Brussels, questions?
Yes, maybe start here in the corner and then to the left of us.
Yeah, it's Marc Zwartsenburg, ING. Question for you, Philippe. Did you consider also taking out a dividend for a while? Because I'm here you mentioned it keeps us disciplined. It gives you a bit of a reward on the short term for investors, but on the other end, with a leverage ratio of around three, there's enough discipline on the balance sheet already. Did you consider why don't you cut it off completely for the coming two years?
Thank you for your question. If you allow me to slightly adjust it, the fact that when we did the acquisition of Staci, we knew what kind of leverage we would be entering in. So we knew it from the beginning. So it's high.
We knew it, but we have a very clear deleveraging path, as I hope you have understood it, with a different initiative on the top line growth and margin evolution. I think there is a path to deleveraging, and it's a prime target. When it comes to the dividend policy, I repeat what we have said. We want to reinstate that dividend policy by distributing between 30% and 50% on IFRS net result when conditions allow. When I say that, it's referring to what happened in 2024. Never know what can happen. We have nothing in the forecast, but just want to be very cautious and transparent in terms of expectation. Yes, we think it's also to restate the credibility of the market vis-à-vis bpost. It's important to show that we try to strike the right balance between the long term and the short term.
Hence why we have reinstated our dividend policy distribution.
That's clear. Can you maybe remind us on the bond that's due in 2026, what the current rate is and what, based on your credit rating, will be a new rate?
The bonds we are referring to are the EUR 650 million bonds that were raised back then at the time of the acquisition of Radial in the U.S.. It's maturing next year. It's currently yielding a 1.25% interest rate, fixed rate, and it will be replaced at a higher rate since the rates have evolved compared to the situation back then. Nevertheless, we will still be enjoying a very satisfactory, strong credit rating as A- that would allow us to have an attractive all-in pricing for that bond.
Do you have any indication of a range of what we should be thinking about?
Is it four to five percent in the replacement, the current market, or can you not comment on that?
When we will comment, we will come back to you when we will market the transaction and you will see the result. I say we are working on it. We will not wait to the last day to issue the new bond, but it is a project ongoing for the moment.
Can I ask another question?
Maybe we will come back to you later. Can we just maybe hand it over to the gentleman on the left?
Why do you not use the free cash flow to repay a part of the bond issue?
The strategy of bpost is to continue the growth, to continue the growth and to fuel that growth and that transformation because both go together. We need also some money that will yield higher returns, not short term, but midterm.
That's the reason why we want to continue investing in the transformation of the company, maintain our assets, fuel the growth, while at the same time, partially also rewarding the investors with the dividend policy.
Next question. Yes, the gentleman in the back.
It's obviously great to see the early success of your SME strategy and with Fast Track. The conventional wisdom with SME is that it's usually a higher margin customer base because it's, you know, it's faster to break even, faster onboarding, as you pointed out. It's, you know, obviously stickier customer base. There's more cross-selling. Can you talk a little bit about the relative margin profile, maybe not precise numbers, but just on a relative sense, you know, the SME versus the enterprise customers and how's that speak into your forecast?
Yeah.
Just to take you back to, Chris, what you started focusing on, which is a theme running across all of our entities, which is this value over volume. When you double-clicked inside Radial North America, you saw on the margin piece of it, the focus on making the current core business kind of into world-class game shape. That is where the real estate, the customer centricity, and the tech consolidation come in. The second piece was, this was stretching beyond the core, where we really focus on opening up so much more. SMB is a big deal. Additional industries is a big deal too. If you move automotive spare parts compared to commodity apparel, the chances of value creation and value capture are just higher. It is not only the fact that it is small, medium-sized businesses, where yes, we do have a bit more of leverage.
We can also bring more to the table. Philippe, you talked about, and James, you also did about the power of transportation that we collectively, we spend a billion of it. We help each other out. Staci U.S. and Radial North America is working together there. We are clearly fishing in industrial goods ponds and automotive spare parts ponds where both the size of the company, `but also the industry that they're in create more value capture. To put it into a headline, that low single-digit EBIT margin that you see in today's reality in North America and that mid-single-digit reality, that aspiration that we show for 2027, that's a commitment that we have. You should see the SMB north of that single mid-digit, and you see the legacy core south of that mid-single digit.
Thank you.
Maybe to comment on the last- mile. If you look at the large B2C accounts, that is really a very competitive market. That is extremely low margin that you see over there. That was more in the light of volume versus value strategy that you see that they are there. We keep them because, of course, they make our assets sweat, but it is not that you make a high margin on those sides. If you then move into the B2B space or into the SME space of the B2C space, you see that you move up to the lower single-digit kind of level of margin that you can make over there. If we shift the weight of the portfolio further towards those ones, you see what you see happening already.
There is a margin uplift compared to where we are today, where the current margin is still supported by the mail business, but of course, that one you see each year declining. We have to ramp up into the SME, B2C, and into the B2B business to make sure that we get back to attraction of value-creating business going forward.
Thank you. Next question. Yes, here in the front.
Thanks for the idea. James, I appreciate you're still awake, so I would like to ask you a question. James, you said something about adding new lanes, and you mentioned Spain directly. In France, you have IMX, which helps you. Increasingly, we're also seeing your competitors talking about entering the cross-border arena. InPost is doing it. PostNL announced it a couple of months ago. What gives you the advantage?
Is it a link with the fulfillment side of the business?
Fulfillment is definitely part of it. I think what gives us the advantage is that it's that combination of origin and destination. It is where we can be most competitive, let's say in final mile, then we can bundle it with transport. Back to the Spain example that you referenced, if we can bundle with what Staci is doing there and what Staci is doing in France, that gives us a huge competitive advantage. The customs brokerage piece in other markets, right? It's not necessarily relevant intra-Europe, but it's a big deal from U.S. to Canada. I would say those are the key pieces. Maybe the final bit is also to know perhaps where we're not ready to play, right?
There's regions of the world where our competitors are present and we're not present. You know, right now that makes sense to us. It makes sense to focus in the regions where we're strongest.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Next question, right here in the front.
Yes, hi, Pieter Declercq , ABC Securities. I had another question for Tom, a bit of a follow-up on the SME customers at Radial U.S. I'm just trying to understand, of course, it's Fast Track, it's new, but what about the stickiness of the SMEs? Like previously, you had some longer-term contracts and you mentioned that you plan to, you know, that the leases of the warehouses correspond to the term of the contract. I would assume that for SMEs, that's maybe a bit more difficult. They're quicker to onboard, but maybe there's also a bit more flexibility for them to leave.
I'm just trying to figure out how this would work. Now I think it's a bit more easy because you have some overcapacity, but going forward, how are you looking at this?
Yeah, a couple of points. I mean, one is right now we've got the lower quality opportunity to sell into empty space. We will be getting in some markets into the higher quality problem that we need a second facility, possibly in Canada, where we have one in Eastern Canada, Mississauga. We have one in Western Canada, Pitt Meadows outside Vancouver. We will at some point in specific markets get into a higher quality problem of selling into new space.
To your point about stickiness specifically, to be very blunt about it, if a customer, whether it is a large enterprise account or whether it is a small, medium-sized business, if they are dissatisfied with the service excellence or lack thereof that we deliver to them, they will find a way to walk. In some cases, they might even say to your face, like that piece of paper, that contract is not even worth the paper it is written on. What we have to do is whether you compare us to traditional 3PLs, which we were one of those in terms of nimbleness and agility and speed, or also customer intimacy, or you compare us to like tech-driven 3PLs where we need to be just operationally better, we will win or lose not by the strength of the contract.
We will win or lose, and we will get customers to stay with us because of the excellence of service and the value that we deliver to them. You're absolutely correct. Technically, some of those contracts for Fast Track are more flexible and on paper, gives them the opportunity to walk and run faster. We have seen as a company, when we fall short of the excellence that we strive towards, and right now we are at a very, very good game that we're playing and we're striving to get better, that's what's going to make the difference. Our retention is going to be based on the excellence of the service that we deliver, not on the contracts that we get to write with smaller or larger companies.
If you allow me to build on that one, Tom, of course what you say is I totally share it, but I just want to add another color. Also, as a key driver for having the EBIT margin going up, there is also the profile of the mid-size customers. You can define mid-size in the U.S. and in Europe, it's not the same, but okay, mid-size anyway. The short-term real estate strategy when it comes to long-term customers is also, and since Chris and I are in the office, we have not signed one single contract for customers who would be occupying one full warehouse where we do not have a back-to-back of those.
We are not saying we're going to leave these customers as long as they stay with us, they are welcome, and as long as we could build on qualitative services and yielding good results, they are very welcome with us. Why? Gradually, and because you also pointed right that we are in overcapacity, and it will take time to reduce that gap of overcapacity, but at the end of the journey, we'll be more towards the model of what Tom described when he said that he had between 6-12-60 customers in a warehouse, where in fact, when one is leaving, not a big deal. We are not there yet, but the model is gradually shifting when it comes to this kind of SME type of customers.
Also in terms of the churn, Tom, the churn that you are experiencing in your customer is extremely small. Extremely low.
Sorry. It is down one percent.
Okay, makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe your colleague next to you.
Yes. Thank you. Frank C lassen of Degroof Petercam. A question on the leases versus fully owned warehouses. If I am not mistaken, Staci's model is primarily based on leasing the warehouses, while you and the other subsidiaries also have fully owned warehouses. What is your view on going forward and is maybe sale or lease back also on your agenda?
First, to be 100% correct, your statement is 95% correct. We own two warehouses in the U.S. that we acquired two years ago, while
One in the U.K..
As well. You are absolutely right, Tom.
One in the U.K., because we considered that we had such a portfolio of customers at a place that was so well located, and we were there since many years that we said at one point in time in a part of the portfolio, it might be useful also to have that one, because it's, of course, yielding on the long-term better result. It is not that we want to shift from one to another one. We do not exclude that sometime, somewhere, under certain circumstances, we might go for owning part of the real estate. It is not a shift in the real estate strategy. The model of Staci is asset light, not only for warehouses, but for CapEx as well. Same goes for Radial in the U.S., but we do not exclude sometime when it makes sense.
Okay, thank you.
Lady next to you, yes.
Hi, I'm Emilie Fung from Barclays. What have been the main learnings from Staci, which is helping improve the profitability in your other two businesses? As a company, how do you think you're better set up to harvest synergies versus back when you acquired Radial?
I think the business model is quite different, and what you see happening now is that what we do in Radial is, to some extent, expanding ourselves in a model that is more reflecting the philosophy that you see within Staci, while maintaining the profitability that we have on the large enterprise clients. That is what we do there, where you really see, and some of the questions here were as well, it's also linked into the real estate strategy that we have.
We will go to multi-client sites to ensure that we can serve multiple more clients on the same site. As a consequence of that, by definition, of course, those clients are also lower CapEx, because the CapEx that we've seen in the past in Radial was many times very dedicated CapEx focused on a very specific problem of a very specific client that had the size to justify this kind of thing. Therefore, you saw as well longer-term contracts over there. Unfortunately, in the ID, when our predecessors closed those contracts, it was that they would roll over those contracts in a succession of that contract, and we see that that is actually not happening. You do a CapEx investment, and at the end of your first contract term, they basically say, we insource it or we put it again into competition.
As a consequence, you're sitting actually on a lease with inside a CapEx investment that even would cost you to remove. That makes it very complex to make that transition happen. The Staci model is much more asset light and is with multiple clients, so it creates a much more resilient portfolio. Of course, the difference that you see today between Staci and Radial is that Staci is still in the middle of that model, meaning they actually can say to a client, no, thank you very much, at this margin, we're not interested today. While, of course, the challenge that Tom has is we're sitting at 66% you have today of occupancy is still too low to say no to clients, even if that is not yet fully fitting into what we're trying to do.
That is a little bit what we have to manage as we speak today. Another thing that we see is the diversity of verticals that you see happening. Actually, the way how Staci looks at the market is to say, we look at a certain vertical, we really try to understand what the client problem is, and then actually we try to sell to every single client in that vertical the same service. That is what they try to do. They are not necessarily then in the same warehouse, but we know how to serve them. We know what the specificity is. If you look at the examples they have in Telecom BOAT for the maintenance workers or for the DigiBox treatment that they do, this integration that they do with the client, with the admin process that they have, that is a fully developed solution.
It is much more than just the warehousing and some putting in boxes. There is a whole system behind it, the eCat system that we have, where you have this internal eShop that you generate for clients for their internal flows of goods. Those are really the competencies that they bring to play. That really makes the difference if you do that. That is what we are integrating into the way how Radial is developing going forward. Obviously, while maintaining the business in which they have been good for time, and we have many happy clients also in the enterprise size clients, Tom has now visited most of them by now. Basically, what you see happening there is that they want to continue to serve as the ones that were willing to churn have churned.
The other ones we basically see as a long-term partner, and we built a more resilient business, Staci-like next to that, which allows us to be at a higher margin point, but also at a higher resilience point in terms of portfolio.
Okay, thank you. Next question. Marc.
Thank you. Yeah, in the outlook for 2027, the EUR 275 million EBIT, it includes a smaller scope and slightly lower margin for the state services. But there is retendering in the end. You do not know what the outcome will be. What is the risk there that you might not get the contract or that the state decides differently, like with the newspaper contract? What is the risk there?
I think it is a tender, and a tender has always the risk that you do not win it.
I think that if you look at the specificity that you have in the license plate tender, that is the one that is now out, it's a real logistical service. Yeah, in the end, it's a real logistical service. It's linked to some admin flows, but it's very similar to what we've always done. Very different to 679. 679 is a historical relic that we have. The postal services as a state-owned monopoly was doing that for the state and is now actually competing with people that are in the full banking space, have developed IT, have the facilities to do that. We actually had to continue to maintain IT dedicated to that solution, which makes it, of course, something where we are much less competitive in that space.
If you look at the license plate, it is, if you are from Belgium, you'll know in the past it was a DIV queue that you could make with the typical state service level of quality that you would have if the queue was not even finished by the end of the day. They saw that it was five o'clock or four o'clock , they closed the guichet, and you could come back the next day, which is replaced by an overnight delivery of license plates, which is very much appreciated by leasing companies, by car sellers, dealerships, etc.
That is a service where you see there is a real value in that physical delivery of that product there and where we really have developed the capability, which is combined, by the way, with one of our daughter companies, PEOS, which has this capability of doing as well the documentation behind that. The printing of the documents behind that, combined with the license plate combination, the secure setup that you have, which is in a vault that it's all needing to happen because of the risk that you will have, of course, that people cheat with those documents. That kind of setting that we have there is very specifically and is very much into the logistical space. We feel strong that we can win such a tender.
We also are, of course, clear that this will be at a normal commercial margin of the logistical sector, which was not what we had in the former contract, of course, where it was a contract in which we had a margin which was far beyond the one that you see in the logistical market. That is the way how we have included it. Will we win this tender? Not sure. Will we fight for it? Yes. For sure, yes, we will fight to win this tender, as we do today with the pilots with other clients. We think we have a capability that really distincts us from their ones.
By the way, in this license plate environment, very interestingly, Staci coming into the play, they do add-on services to certain leasing companies where they say you need to have a safety kit, you need to have a triangle in the car, you need to have a number of additional elements that the leasing company wants to provide in the car, and they basically integrate a service in the way how we operate with certain leasing companies. That actually is enhancing further the service and making that service a very specific service.
Okay, thank you.
The license business is quite safe, but the 679 seems more competitive.
It's done. It's not in the books anymore. It's not in the books.
Okay, okay.
Next question to your neighbor.
Martin Maguire , two questions around your capital expenditure. Firstly, you invest in your digital assets.
Could you more or less share how much you invest in that area? You have discussed a number of new propositions. Maybe you can also share with what you expect or which area we have to look for your new products and services in that space. Another angle, Philippe, you mentioned about payback periods. Could you share what kind of hurdle you use to grant investments?
I'll start. You continue, Chris. I just remind that out of the CapEx that we want to invest, 50% is still to maintain the asset. Even if we want to go to a less capital-intensive way of doing business, we still need to maintain our asset because they have value, definitely. 50% is dedicated to growth. A big chunk of it is dedicating to growing the infrastructure in the 3PL.
A big part as well is also dedicated to the bbox, so the lockers, automatic parcel machines, where we tend to go. We are roughly at the end by then 2025 will be 2,500, going up to 4,500 market dependent. There will be a bit more, a bit less. That is a big chunk of it. The rest is where you find the digital. The digital, you do not do digital for digital. You combine stuff together. I mean, just like WMS or TMS of James, it is also assets. Sometime it is less capital intensive, but in terms of value return on investment, it is absolutely huge. Size does not always matter when it comes to this kind of stuff. We do not have a budget for digital. Our Chief Digital Officer does not have a budget to spend. No, it has to come in a product capability model.
We develop solutions, and in these solutions, there is a physical aspect to it, and there is also a digital aspect to it. We do not look at it separately. The question to your question on paybacks and other rates, I'm sorry, I'm going to answer you. It depends. The type of asset, the type of market, if it's a synergetic investment, of course, we will expect to have a payback, which is very short. If we're investing in new solutions, of course, we will allow us a bit more time to have a payback.
Thank you, Philippe. We also have a question from one of our online attendees.
I think that, Philippe, this question first goes to you. It's about the financial policy and the share buyback program that we did not present. Can you elaborate on that?
I think that was also one of the questions indirectly in the audience. We are in a transformation journey to create long-term value and to grow the company. To grow that company and to fund that transformation, we need CapEx. We believe that they will be generating high returns in the mid to long term. Since we have good, viable, realistic returns expected, we do not see why we would enter into a share buyback program.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you.
It is almost one o'clock, which means that it is almost time for lunch. It means we have time for one question and a short answer, please.
Let's see. Looking at the margin of Benelux Last Mile. Sorry. You have growth and very nice margin, 3PL, cross-border, growth stories.
If you then look at the 2.5%-3.5%, which includes the parcel business, which should make mid to high single digit EBIT margins, it obviously comes back to the mail business again. It's there, but maybe one for Chris. How is that conversation?
You have a short answer, though.
Not point to me.
Sorry. No, that's why I said, let's see. How is that conversation going with the government? Because they're 51% shareholders still of bpost. While we have this business, which is basically not reaching rookie levels. How would you look at that? Can we think of a solution that we put it aside, carve it out, give it to the state, give them 100% shareholding, and they reduce the stake in bpost, have a growth story with high margins? Is that something you discuss?
I mean, possible. Yeah, of course. Obviously, a company like this one that is mentioned in the government agreement should have talks with the government, not only for the retail officers, but also as a shareholder. These discussions are happening. What we see today is that that discussion is fairly early phase. What you see is that they have made on the public-owned companies a statement that they want to revisit their position on each of them. Out of the first discussions comes that, and you've seen it in the press as well, we're not highest on the list in terms of priorities. They first want to get a feel as well to what extent do we get no reaction to the transformation program that we have. They have quite some, let's say, trust in the way how we approach now the transformation.
That is where they basically say, let's now take the steps. Maybe it's not the best moment for us to make any decision outside of the plan that you have presented to us, which they support. That is what I think will happen: they will spend their time in the early days now in, first of all, as you know, there is a telecom operator that needs also to have some attention from their side. They have some people reinforcements that need to happen over there and a position taking as well that they need to do in the long run.
They have next to that, of course, a number of much more financially juicy topics that they have, which is the banks in which they participate in the way if they want to have a support to the public finance that are the first ones to look at at the current stock price. I do not think we would be a large contributor into that extent. I think what we will expect is that the discussion will come up likely in the course of next year.
This year, I do not expect a lot of conversation with the government on that side, given the priorities that they have, and that we then will have a discussion about, like for the other companies, what is the right state involvement, at what level it is part of the business, how will that go further, and how do we make sure that we balance rightfully the shareholdership with, of course, the shareholder value creation that is, of course, the intention of the new strategy.
Okay, thank you, Chris. It was indeed short enough as an answer. We have come to the end of this Capital Markets Day. I think a lot of people are getting really hungry by now. I think it is clear at bpost, we are rethinking the possible and we are reshaping the future. A special thanks to our leadership team, Thomas, Tom, Chris, Philippe, and of course, James.
Also, I would like to thank Antoine and Rafike for hosting us today. For those that are staying for lunch, of course, first of all, I would like to thank you people in as well here in the headquarters in Brussels, as well as those that joined us online. For those that are staying here for lunch, lunch is served. Of course, you will have the opportunity during lunch to continue your interactions and maybe ask questions in a less formal manner with our leadership team. With this, I wish you all a very pleasant day, and I hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.