Good day, and welcome to CTT H1 2023 Results Call. My name is Priscilla, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero, and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Mr. João Bento, the CEO, Mr. Guy Pacheco, the CFO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you.
Thank you, Priscilla. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our, our H1 webcast, where we are talking about the great quarter with all business areas performing very well. And I would emphasize the performance of Express & Parcels that through a robust growth in volumes, revenues and profitability, somehow rendered the right results, given the capacity investments that we have. This is indeed for Express & Parcels a record-setting quarter. If you follow me on the left-hand side of slide 4, we start exactly with parcels on Iberia, strong volume rebound across our EMP platform, driving revenues and profitable growth in Portugal and Spain.
In Portugal, we have seen a sustained acceleration of volumes and revenues and margin, and in Spain, it was mostly a very strong growth, both in large and small clients that, that provided this very interesting result and outlook. As for Mail, we are now grabbing the benefits of, of the new price mechanism, given that price increases compensated volume declines. Nevertheless, we remain focused on profitability and on cost cutting to deliver EBIT growth, and, and that's why with the, the flattish revenues performance, we had a, a significant improvement on EBIT.
As for the public debt, we are now back to what we are considering a normal or normalized demand of public debt, following the changes in the economic conditions of the main product, the Savings Certificates. We remain focused on transforming the retail network towards services, namely with this new acceleration on insurance distribution, where we are already observing the first very relevant results. As for the bank, volumes, growth and higher rates, both seem contributing to improved profitability, and the bank remains focused on strengthening client relations against the backdrop of low-cost banking clients growth in the quarter.
With all this, we've seen revenues growing 12.7% year-on-year, reflecting the already mentioned growth in all segments, with EMP itself accelerating some 25% in the quarter year on, year-on-year. With that, we have produced a EUR 22.7 million recurring EBIT, or roughly 90% growth. Finally, we are also showing a strong operating cash flow generation, EUR 55.6 million in the H1 , almost tripling the results from last year. Free cash flow went up to EUR 48 million, or 12.5 times growth year-on-year. This is also the quarter where we paid our dividend of around EUR 18 million or EUR 1.75 per share.
Consolidated net cash position of EUR 7.6 million, a significant improvement again. With the bank equity accounted, our net debt stood at now EUR 174.6 million or down almost EUR 18 million versus the numbers of year end 2022. With that, we have moving to slide 5, the details of the revenue and margins that that somehow reflect the comments I've already produced, obvious growth on all on all on all business areas. I would invite you to move to slide 6, where we describe our main features of EMP in Portugal.
We have indeed registered the fifth consecutive quarter of sustained acceleration in volumes and in revenues, benefiting from operational leverage, and we have also seen very interesting results on margin. Indeed, this growth of revenues is based on growth in all types of clients, and therefore, we are showing this chart on the bottom left-hand side, with a diversified client base, which implies resilience in this type of growth, in the sense that, well, we cope with different dynamics in different parts of the economy that, that produce or induce less mind deliveries. Revenues have grown significantly in Portugal, double digits....
Growth in revenues is a combination of not only growth in volumes, but also an improvement in margin, given better pricing. This is also a period where we have somehow absorbed all the, all the, the main impacts of cost inflation that we've seen in recent times. Moving to the right-hand side, this generated an increased operational efficiency and leverage that allows for a 34 growth in EBITDA and a 70% growth on EBIT. Producing again a double-digit EBIT margin, which which we render very, very relevant. Moving to slide number 7. We see as a situation in Spain with record volumes driving increased profitability due to a much higher operating leverage, benefiting from prior investments.
As we've seen and, and we've referred many times in the past, we, we have built the capacity, we, we have the quality in Spain, and with volumes growing to numbers that we were aiming at and working towards this achievement, we are now seeing the results. Indeed, we have a 44 growth in the quarter, and in fact, it has been accelerating through the quarter. Again, this is a result of growth not only in large clients, but also in small clients. You can observe on the, on the bottom left side, we've seen in the quarter a 59% growth on, on smaller clients. Indeed, moving to the, to the, to the middle, charts, we see that the top 5 clients have, in fact, reduced their contribution to growth.
We rendered this as an interesting feature of dynamics of the demand in Spain. We have, we have produced a 36.6% growth in revenues, 75% growth in EBITDA, and, well, impossible to, to qualify growth on EBIT with a significant growth and EUR 1.2 million, which is a number we've never achieved before. We have a very promising, we have a very promising Q2 on E&P, both in Portugal and Spain, as I said, but also, we, we also have good prospects for the year. I'd like to invite now my colleague, João Sousa, to comment on, on the, on the Express and Parcels outlook and, and following for, for Mail and Financial Services as well. João, up to you.
Thank you, João. Like João Bento was saying, in Portugal, we have managed to have a diversified customer base in business sector and also in the dimension of the company. That guarantees a, a better way to managing the uncertainty of the market. In Spain, the increase of the age of the SMEs and, and, and consequent reduction of the dependence of the largest customers also gives the security to manage in a better way the numbers in Spain. In both countries, we see a very positive commercial pipeline that gives, give us a very positive outlook for the, for the future and for the rest, for the rest of the year. Coming for the Mail business on slide 8.
Despite the effort of, of managing the drop Mail traffic, gaining market share in share of quality in customers and managing churn with business solutions, that is growing year-on-year. The addressed mail volumes decreased -7.3% against the same period of last year, but the average revenue per item increased 7.1%. This comes from the new price calculation formula. Could also give us a clear view for the future and help us to control the decrease of mail volumes in the future from the price formula. The increase in average price per item allow us to reach EUR 90.8 million of revenues in this quarter.
This is a very slight decrease, compared with previous year of minus 0.8%. Also in this business area, we continue to control the costs, to help, the to managing the drop mail in this, in this, in this business area. Coming for slide 9, Financial Services. After a strong growth in the recent quarters, the public network placements have already, we already have seen in the last weeks of June, a daily placement equivalent to the historical values. We come from the, the same values that we have seen before this growth in the, in the last quarters. We are doing several initiatives, mainly in customer experience, to help to maintain these volumes, and managing the churn of these volumes.
Nowadays, a customer can schedule the visit to a store in our website and upload all the documents. This help us to reach the younger segment and also to managing a better way this placement. As you can see in the market, this is very important. This is very important. Saying this, the placement of the the placement of the 2Q in 2023 grows compared with the same period in the previous year, more than 287%. In Financial Services, where are the public debt placements, we reach a revenue of EUR 17.6 million, so +42.9%, and an EBIT of EUR 9.9 million, an increase of 65.8% against last year.
What, what I want to highlight here is we continue to position the CTT retail network in a platform to sell savings, insurance, and credit services to the Portuguese citizens. We have a powerful brand. We have a very important talking in our stores that allow us to bring more services to our stores. It's still early days, but we, we beginning selling this insurance in April of this year, and we are already very happy with the performance. Nowadays, we have more than 85% of our stores already selling insurance. We, as you can see in the numbers, in June, we already reached more than 60,000 customers doing simulations and presenting our, our, our offer.
This is very important also for to managing the future. We, and we see this like an avenue of growth, because as you know, insurance services is a monthly guaranteed revenue and allow us also to protect our future. Coming for the results of the bank, I go to ask you.
Thank you, João. In page 10, we have some of the bank's key figures. The bank continues its accelerated growth path with acceleration in the results of customers. Accounts grew 7.7% since June last year. Also in resources, we see acceleration versus the Q1 this year. Volumes also keep growing, especially in auto loans, where we are growing 16.4%, and mortgages also accelerating 7.6% of growth. Nevertheless, originations are growing even higher. We are witnessing a lot of prepayments in the market right now. Yields also improving, especially on mortgage, of course, on the back of the improving interest rates. We are also repricing and doing a repricing effort on auto loans, where we already see improvements in yield.
Also to, to respond to, to the current market environment, we start paying, or increasing our cost of deposits that now reach 0.28%. On the next slide, we can see numbers of revenues and profitability. Revenues of the bank grew 19.7%, namely driven by net interest income that with higher volume, but also with expansion on net interest margin that now stands at 0.9%, driving all of that growth.
Also coupled with a, with a, a good cost performance, our cost income decreased in the period, and our cost of risk is pretty much contained, and drove EBIT to EUR 5.4 million in the quarter, which itself drove our RoTE that is now at 8.3% in an annualized basis, and pretty much aligned with our midterm targets. On slide 13, we can see our financial review with our main financial KPIs, where we have a very strong set of financials, with strong growth in revenues, 12.7%. Our EBIT also growing eighteen nine point two percent. Specific items of EUR 8.4 million in the quarter, this is mainly two events.
First, we resume our optimization of our structure in Mail Boxes division, where we continue to see opportunities to optimize our structure. We booked a EUR 3 million one-off related with the suspension of labor agreements of 62 people, with a payback below 2 years. We continue to see opportunities to further increase these optimizations that will then flow through our PNL in the next quarters. We also have a EUR 5 million book due to the exit of our previous headquarters. Following a slowdown in the office rental markets, we are taking longer than we expected to sublease the headquarters.
We still have 2.5 years of contract, and we provision 1 year of rents to encompass the time that will take to sublet the remaining of the building. Net profit also with good progress, net EUR 9.9 million in the quarter, free cash flow of EUR 8.3 million, we continue to have an healthy generation in operational cash flow. On the next slide, we see our revenue evolution, so a strong growth which would like highlight with a very strong and positive contribution from all business units. Express & Parcels, of course, being the most significant progress with 25% growth. We also with a positive contribution from the Portuguese operations, that grew 13.6%.
Spain, with a very high growth of 36.6% with the onboarding of large accounts, and growth on all of the segment as João already mentioned. mentioned. We also see a very good progress on the diversification of customers, that remains our main focus on this area. Mail & Other growing EUR 0.4 million with a positive contribution of business solutions. Mail, pretty much sustained, that is our main focus here in this area with a 0.8% decline. Financial services and retail still benefiting from an exceptionally high demand in April and May. As commented, since the 5th of June, we saw placements resume the previous trends. The trends that we witnessed before the H2 of 2022.
H1 of 2022 and the, and the end of the year of 2021 is the, the kind of placements that we are seeing. Nevertheless, the placements reached EUR 3.8 billion in the quarter. That drove the, the revenues growth of 42.9%. Banco CTT growing EUR 5.9 million on the back of net interest, net interest income, both a factor of higher volumes and expansion of, of the margin that, that now reached 2.9%. In page 15, we see our OpEx also increasing 8.1% in the quarter, mainly driven by, by Express and Parcels and, and financial services. Express and Parcels, we saw an increase of 22.5%.
Nevertheless, we, we see a unit cost reduction in Iberia, despite this inflationary context. That is basically the impact, the effect of Spain being more and more closer to, to reaching critical mass, and we continue to see the fruits of the focus on investment in efficiency throughout the two geographies where we see benefits of that starting to flow through the P&L. Mail & Other declining EUR 0.2 million, but I would like to highlight that we have to cope with wage inflation of EUR 2.6 million on the quarter. That is the fact following the agreement with union, the wage agreement with the union. Financial services growing EUR 1.4 million, that is basically linked to the increased activity in our stores.
Banco also growing EUR 2.6 million, also increase in activity-related costs. Our cost of risk pretty much contained and stable, 1.3%, so that's 1.3 on this quarter. The next page, page 16, we can see our EBIT that is growing EUR 10.7 million in the quarter, with also a positive contribution from all business units. Express & Parcels increasing EUR 2.8 million, with margin reaching 11.8% in Portugal and 2.8% in Spain. With a sustained in Spain, with a sustained improvement throughout the quarter and with very positive outlook. Mail & Other also improving EUR 0.66 million due to stable revenues and good cost control.
Financial services, still growing on the back of the, of the exceptionally high demand, mainly saw, in April and May. Banco CTT growing EUR 3.3 million, a very strong quarter, with, with positive trends, be it on revenues, be it on, on, on a good and risk, good cost control and also risk performance. Page 17, our, our, our cash flow, in the H1 , operating cash flow stood in EUR 65.6 million, which is strong operational performance.
Our working capital suffered on, on the Q2 from mainly all that growth in parcels, that, that brought more efforts in terms of working capital, but also a negative evolution in our DPO, but something that will be recovering throughout the year. A free cash flow of 5 to EUR 47.9 million, and our we, we, in terms of, of net debt, that is actually a net cash position, including the lease liabilities of EUR 7.6 million in the H1 . With that, I'll hand you over back to João Bento for his final remarks.
Thank you, Guy. Summarizing, we had an excellent quarter with our Iberian Express & Parcels operation growing, expanding its margin, and offering a solid outlook for the forthcoming months of this year. In Mail, we see the price increase protecting us from decline in inflation, but we remain very, very focused on cost and efficiency to compensate for volume decline and improving margins. We have also seen an intense commercial activity that is allowing us to grow significantly our insurance distribution now on the backdrop of the agreement with Generali, while savings are normalizing the previous levels of placement.
Banco CTT continuing to deliver growth on number of clients, on volume, and on revenue, thus enhancing its profitability and in route for the levels of profitability that have been announced in the capital markets today. All in all, we had a very strong quarter with consolidated revenue and recurring EBIT growing across all business areas. It was also a quarter for strong cash flow generation, and we see our financial flexibility improving. We have launched during this quarter our new EUR 20 million share buyback, which complements the annual dividend, but that, by the way, were also paid in this quarter in May.
With, with all this, we believe that it enables CTT to reaffirm and the management to reaffirm our recurring EBIT guidance of at least EUR 80 million in 2023, thus rendering it opening on the right-hand side to be, probably better than this. With that, I thank you for your attention, and we remain available for, for Q&A.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll now take our first question from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got actually 2 questions. One is on parcels in Spain. Clearly, volume growth of 44% is, is kind of a very big number, especially if we consider the Q1 , where volumes, if I'm not wrong, were actually down year-on-year. Just wondering what happened there. Have you onboarded some very large new customer? Yeah, just if you could give a bit more color on the different drivers of the growth. Still, still on on Spanish parcel volumes. Revenues are up year-on-year, but, you know, a bit below volume growth, so unit price is going down. Therefore, yeah, if you could explain again, the, what's the mix in that volume growth, also referring to the, the price mix.
The second question is about the financial services. We've seen in June, as you, as you show in your slides, a normalization in public debt placement. If you can give a bit more color on what are your expectations, should we expect the June run rate as, as the new run rate for the H2 of the year? June, maybe it was lower than what you think is the run rate for the H2 of the year, because I don't know, very hot weather and people not going out much. Not sure. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mark, Marco. Coming to your first question, we have in fact onboarded a large client that was already a client of ours, but not only one large client. We have, in fact, a couple of new large clients, and we have grown substantially on SMEs. Even for those large clients that we are acquiring and that are increasing their volumes, it's also a result of interesting commercial activity and new dynamics in the market that we are observing. Some of the Chinese sellers are now trying to reduce the number of agents in between their launch of products and last mile distribution. We are now operating directly with some large clients that we were distributing through other partners.
The main, the main note I'd like to make is that it's been a contribution of several clients, two of them large clients. We see this, this tendency to probably to improve in, for the future. The revenue is higher, but below volume growth. That's exactly because we have, in fact, smaller packets, so a higher contribution of Chinese, Chinese e-commerce flowing through Spain and therefore, smaller price per packet. There could, there could be no other ways to produce that, but in any case, to have that result. In any case, we see, we see very interesting margins associated with this growth. Finally, on the question on financial services.
In fact, as Guy already mentioned, June was influenced by a strong, let's say, movement that we had from before. In the last days of June, we have seen demand coming, falling to the numbers that we used to have before. Our guidance would be more on the EUR 1 billion-EUR 1.1 billion as our average placement, which is what we are observing in the final days of June. Sorry, this is per quarter, of course. The roughly a little bit more than EUR 500,000 we have in June is still higher than the normalized number.
something that we have, that in which we have, I would say, a strong confidence is that the limitation that this new series for EUR 50,000 per account will be removed, when the year starts. One of the reasons why government has, has done this was that the, the percentage of public debt that was placed in retail was, was too high in their view, and they wanted to limit that, but also, remain, leave, leave an option for retail to save throughout this, throughout this, this type of product.
We believe that next year we have a new budget, and we will have, well, it's, it's, I would say, more than sure that we're going to have a new higher limits, which probably could bring the normal placement to a slightly higher number than it will be for the rest of this year. Thank you.
Thank you. I-if I can just have a quick follow-up question. Just want to confirm what you have said on your expectations for parcel volume growth in Spain. Can you confirm, you said that you think that, you know, the trajectory will remain similar to Q2 , if not further accelerating into the H2 of the year? Did I get that right? Thank you.
Thank you, Marco. We, we need to take into account season, seasonality. We are now starting summer, and so normally, summer would, would, would observe, especially in Spain, even more than in Portugal, lower economic activity and also from the consumer side. In any case, we see, we see a strong demand, and volumes remaining high. Of course, one needs to take into account that there is some seasonality, so probably, slightly lower demand throughout the summer and then build up for the peak season.
In any case, we are now acting at levels of last year's peak season, which is somehow I wouldn't say unexpected, because we believe it's a consequence of our commercial activity, but it's in these very high, very, very high numbers.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marco. We'll move on to our next participant, Filipe Leite from CaixaBank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I have three questions, if I may. First one on, on Express and Parcels, because I'm still trying to understand the evolution of margins in Portugal, because the improvement was significant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that it was one of the best margins ever in, in this unit. Was this related only with higher volumes, or there was any significant cost cutting, cost structure? Are you using more your own distribution network to justify this, this margin in, in, in, in Portugal? For the future also, if you see the more than 11% EBIT margin of this quarter as, as recurrent and normal going forward, or should we, should we expect some stabilization more close to the historical levels of high single digits?
Second question in terms of guidance for full year, because in H1 , you already did 60% of the EUR 80 million recurrent EBIT target for full year, and you're still missing the seasonal strong quarter of the year, which is typically the last quarter. Do you see your guidance as too conservative, because you are keeping it as you mentioned? Last question regarding real estate, if you can provide us an update on the deal.
Thank you, Filipe, for your questions. I'll take the first one and the last one, and I'll leave guidance to João Bento. E-express and parcels in Portugal, a good performance. What we are seeing, as João already mentioned in Spain, we are seeing this market trend of having smaller and smaller size of objects. That enable us to increase the synergies between our networks in Portugal, where we, with this new kind of profile of volumes, we can leverage more on the Mail network, also lower volumes on the Mail side, enable us to increase that, those synergies.
We are also have been very much focusing on the, on the, on the improvement of margins in both countries, especially on this inflationary context, we see all the, all those measures bringing or delivering results. We see margins, I wouldn't say above the, the, the current margins, but pretty much stable around these levels in Portugal. Spain is still room to improve because I, I, I should highlight that the growth was a sustained growth throughout the quarter, from the levels that we saw in the Q3 where margins were still negative in Spain.
I, I think the average is, is, is negatively affected, but we, but we remain for Spain confident with, well, with our midterm guidance, that is high single-digit numbers of margin in Spain as well. In terms of real estate, we, we, we affirm our, our, our belief that we'll do the closing in the Q4 . We are now with this legal and administrative process of detaching the assets, and sorting out all, all the legal requirements and, and permits that are needed, and all the tax issues around, around the portfolio. I, I should say that we are up to date on, on, on the timetable, so nothing, nothing to highlight.
We, we reaffirm our, our objectives is of, of, of closing in, in the Q4 .
Okay. Thank you, Filipe. Given the guidance, well, we have, we have provided from the beginning of this year, a guidance open in the right-hand side. That was justified by the fact that we had the, an, an obvious uncertainty regarding the behavior of the public debt placement that was extraordinary, and in a way was not dependent ex- solely on ECB behavior. Of course, we had to prepare the network and the network to be able to answer to the high demand, which we did, but we never knew how long it would, it would take. A- as we all know, that, that extraordinary effect ended in the beginning of June.
We have part of the, that, extra, contribution, throughout the first months of this quarter, but it's not going to be here anymore. What I would like to-- when we aim that or we, we, we, we, we, according to our expectations, this should produce a EUR 8 million-EUR 10 million decline on that extraordinary contribution.
So the fact that we reaffirmed the guidance to be at least EUR 80 million and, and and leave it again, open on the right-hand side, we believe it's not conservative, as you said, and provides, and provides, and, and is associated with the, with the, with, well, confidence that we have, that it provided all the businesses continue to, deliver as we expect it could be, it could be even better. So in a way, you can read this at least EUR 80 million as having upside risk, despite the, the, the, the, the end of the extraordinary contribution of public debt. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll move on to António Seladas from AS Independent Research. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions, and thank you for the, the presentation. I have two. First one is related with the bank and the non-performing exposure that keeps increasing. One of the reasons from, if I understood well, is related with the credit card loans. I don't know if you can update us on the, on your partnership with Universo, and what should we expect over the H2 related with the credit card loans? Because I thought that they should start to come down, but at the time, I'm just seeing NPEs increasing, and as I mentioned, partially explained by credit card loans that are increasing, that are increasing. The second question is related to financial services.
On, on average, in the past, you usually place more or less 80% of the total, certificates, placed, of the total certificates. I noticed that over the Q2 , the, the, the average figure was just 70%, 75%. Apparently, the online application from, from, from the government or from the, the, the authorities are increasing the market share. Could you elaborate on this and, or explain, or say something about this, this, about, about this trend? Thank you very much.
Thank you, António. I'll be taking the first one. Yes, the NPE's evolution is pretty much driven by our credit card partnership with Banco Universo. That, as you mentioned, should start to come down. Because of the dynamics of the portfolio, we should expect the NPEs exposure to continue to increase until the end of the partnership because of the mechanics behind those kind of dynamics on the portfolio. In the rest of the portfolio, we don't see any big increase on risk, pretty much the opposite. We see stabilizing trends on the risk profile of the bank. Thank you for your question.
About the second question, the number, the market share we see right now is the same that we had before of this huge growth. As you know, to open an account, we, the, the Portuguese citizen needs to come to the CTT stores, and after this growth, we see the same market share. Now the growth of the last weeks of June, it was, or sorry, the, the market share was as to the people that still already have the, the accounts and, and, and, and, and just putting more money. Saying this, we are developing, like I told before, we are developing also a better customer experience in digital. A customer right now can schedule a visit to our stores and upload already the documents to, so to create this, a better experience.
In the future, we're going also to have more developments that allow us to compete with this, if I, if I can say this, with, with, with all the digital platforms from, from IGCP. What we see with these first weeks of this new solution customer experience is more young people, putting their savings in the, in, in, in public placements. Also, I think we are reaching even another segment to, to, to this offer.
Thank you very much. Just regarding the NPEs and the partnership with Universo, when do you think that partnership will will end, effectively will end, through the year or just in the in the next year?
No, it will be before year-end. Just on the year-end, it will be in December.
So if when you finish NPEs, should come down?
Yes.
Okay. Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll move on to Artur Amaro from CaixaBank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. I think this question was already mentioned by Filipe Leite, but just to understand, what are the main reasons behind the difference of the profitability between Express and Parcels in Spain and in Portugal? Because EBITDA margins in Portugal, at least from what I've seen in the presentation, they're close to the double of EBITDA margins in Spain. If you can give us a little explanation on what's the difference between the substantial difference. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. It's, it's basically the factor of two things. First, because Spain, although with a very strong growth, is still, is, is still reaching critical mass. We, throughout the quarter, we saw an improving, a sustained improvement in margin. That doesn't translate on the average over the quarter. Nevertheless, that, that underlying trend is there, and, and we should expect on average, the, the margin of Spain to, to increase closer to Portuguese. Never forget that in Portugal, we have this, I should say, we, we have this, this good synergy between networks and, or advantages. Yes, it was, thank you, it was, a word I was looking for.
We have the advantage of the mail network, where we, we can, lower unit costs, to, to deliver a, a parcel, through that installed capacity. That with the current mix of, of volumes that, that are, smaller, profile in, in terms of volume, that, that we had, in the past, increase the efficiency of that distribution. We also invest in technology in order to decide, within each object, which network delivers it according to the profile of the object, and that is improving very, very helpful on maximizing the parcels in, in the network, that in, in the base network, that in, during the Q2 , increased 18%, versus, the, the Q2 last year.
In Spain, we, we see this, this improvement profile, although we will always be in a way, at discount the margin versus Portugal because of, of the advantages of, of the network.
Very, very clear. Just a little follow-up, if I may. This would you say that this that the current EBITDA margins in Portugal are sustainable? By saying this, can we assume that this kind of margin is going forward? There is no one-off event here, increasing, artificially increasing the, the margin, we can assume this kind of margin is going forward.
Yes, around, around this number, 1 couple percentage point below or, or above, it's.
Plus
sustainable margin. No, no big one-off to, to, to our life. It's actually the, there's improvement on the efficiency we, in which we use, each network that we have available in Portugal.
Okay, thank you very much, Guy.
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, Marco?
Hi there. Sorry, I was on mute. Yeah, thanks for taking my follow-up question. During the presentation, if I'm not wrong, I think you mentioned a EUR 6 in one-off in staff costs. Can you confirm I got that right, and can you clarify if that was in the Q2 or was across a number of quarters? If that, that EUR 6 million, we should expect that EUR 6 million to drop off of the cost base, and what, what are the cost benefits coming from, actually related to, to the one-off cost? Thank you.
Thank you, Marco. I, I think you are referring to the specific items.
Yes.
On the specific items, we booked a EUR 3 million provision for, to account for the suspension of labor agreements of employees on the Mail & Other business units. This is a one-off that we'll book every time we do one of these movements. We have a payback below two years on this kind of initiatives. We should see the benefits of that movement throughout the next quarters, and we see further improvements to, or further opportunities to do more of these actions in the near future.
Just to highlight that this movement was also made on the end of the quarter, so still, still to flow the benefits through the P&L, but already booking the, the, the one-off.
Shall we expect the benefit roughly equal to the one-off? Now it's a EUR 6 million one-off, and then we should expect EUR 6 million less cost in the future or something like that?
It's a 2-year, it's a 2-year payback on a EUR 3 million one-off, so it should be EUR 1.5 million-EUR 1.6 million benefits throughout 1 year. Forever, yeah.
Okay, clear. Thanks.
Thank you. Dear speakers, it appears there is no further question at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back to Mr. João Bento to be, for any additional closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you, Priscilla. Well, thank you all for, for attending and for your very interesting questions. We remain available to interact throughout our IR team, as always. I also would like to announce that we are, we are now aiming at having a, a, a reverse roadshow event about the bank, about the strategy update for the bank by the end of September, and you should receive a save, a save the date notice at any time now. With this, I, I, I thank you once more for you to, to be here with us enjoying the, the results of a great quarter. Good morning.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day, everyone.
Thank you, Priscilla. Have a nice day. Thank you.
Thank you.