Thank you. Thank you very much for being here today. This is a great opportunity to present to update you on CTT's transformation journey. And it has been a long way since we last met in a Capital Markets Day in June 2022. And now we want to update you on the journey we've done so far, and we want to present you the new way, the new path that we are going through. We will have a full morning. This will include an initial part of a presentation on strategy and e-commerce solutions by Mr. João Bento, our CEO. Then we will have a coffee break, and then we will have presentations on the mail services by our CCO, Mr. João Sousa, on the bank by the bank's CEO, Mr. Francisco Barreira, and on the financial ambition to 2028 by our CFO, Mr. Guy Pacheco.
And then we will have time for Q&A. I have to go through a slide, so just we understand we are all on the same page. Which is the disclaimer and forward-looking statements. I don't expect you to read, but you have it printed, so. If you do want to do so, please do. And I will pass on the floor to Mr. João Bento. João, please, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So you'll have to bear with me up to coffee break. As Nuno said, this is the outline for the morning. And we will start with this. Short view on the group vision and strategy. We are two days away from celebrating 505 years of age. We seem to be the oldest company in Portugal, so we carry a long history on our shoulders, and we've been acting with a, well, more recently stated purpose of delivering the future by connecting people and businesses in a sustainable way. We have indeed gone through a huge number of transformations, but in recent times one that we hope will lead us to become the Iberian leader on e-commerce logistics with the bank. And what we are here today for is basically to.
Look at the results regarding our commitments three years ago, and more important than that, to put strategic ideas and lines and commitments for the future, so starting with what we've done and what guided us in recent years, business by business, on e-commerce, sorry, on parcels, it was basically a scale-up of the business. We have achieved a, well, formidable position in Iberia. We have expanded our leadership in Portugal and acquired a significant presence in Spain, and we were indeed the fastest-growing player, not only in Iberia, but actually in Europe amongst the parcel delivery companies. In mail, well, the game was one of leveraging the, well, then new USO contract by using the levers we have now, finally, of price, but also quality and density while we protect the sustainability and profit of this business line.
On the bank, well, it was a play of, it was the bank breakthrough after break-even and speeding up growth. The bank has built an impressive base of more than 800 clients, doubled deposits since 2021. Increased significantly credit, and achieved a profit before taxes over EUR 25 million. So it was actually, well, the first significant life for the bank. Today we're going to see how it's going to speed up. We have also executed the first meaningful partnership in terms of capital in the bank with Generali, so it was a very important period for the bank. We have, meanwhile, of course, been very concentrated on efficiency on operations, and on cost control, to the point that we have been able to improve our EBIT margins from 7.1% to 7.8% in the period. And we did it all with.
I think I might call it a significant disciplined capital allocation. By paying meaningful dividends, having three buyback programs through which we have acquired roughly 12% of the company. It was also the period where, more recently, we have acquired Cacesa and announced and actually agreed the partnership with DHL. So it's been a very busy period, and we did it all while remaining true to some of our core pillars. One, obviously, being the environment. We drove decarbonization significantly. We have actually reduced carbon emissions per parcel almost 50% in this period, with major investments on electrification of the fleet, on solar production, and self-consumption, among many other initiatives. We did it with a people-first mindset to strong heritage of proximity. We have actually created employment. We have invested in social impact programs with.
Some meaning, up to the point that we have multiplied by more than 20 the number of volunteering hours of our people. Obviously, not only because we are listed, but because we attribute significant meaning to the way we govern ourselves with all the good governance rules that are required and supposed and expected by a listed company, and we have actually created a dedicated sustainability committee. We have created a new code of ethics and started practicing on that. Actually, we went even further than it is now required in terms of sustainability reporting. A very significant and impactful period, a journey of strong transformation, as Nuno said before, in the sense that we came to a set of businesses with significant growth. Indeed, we.
have growth in revenues of more than 8% per year and on EBIT of more than 5% per year, but with an impressive transformation in the sense that this in red is the contribution of the mail business, which remained more or less stable while we grew significantly but in terms of margin, this was almost a mail-only company, and now it's almost a no-mail company. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but just to illustrate how strong the transformation was. We believe that we have produced what is now an e-commerce logistics player and well, obviously, with the bank but we are now announcing a simpler, a new way of not only reporting, but indeed organizing ourselves in three business areas. The bank remains as it is, although it's going to grow much more. E-commerce solutions, and mail and services.
This is a simpler structure that we believe has been expected and required by the market, and also because we believe that we've been able to give a strategic sense to each of the three business areas. Of course, we have grown significantly in e-commerce solutions and in the bank. And for mail, it's a matter of ensuring profitability. And we have a significant number of initiatives of mail and services. Of which João Sousa will guide you along. That, in fact, promises that we're going to be able to create an Iberian market leader in each of these three different areas. And this is how our portfolio is organized. If we plot horizontally higher fit to our core business or lower fit, and if we plot vertically the growth nature of each business, this is not us. This is how our business lines are plotted. And this provides.
A reflection. A consideration about the nature of a business portfolio. With the bank, actually, our retail bank is much higher because it's a fast-growing one. The bank and payments and real estate are a bit further away from core. On the opposite extreme, we have last-mile logistics, customs clearance, not only core, but also fast-growing. And then, of course, mail and others that are somehow with a significant fit with what we do, but obviously mail with, well, no growth at all. And this is why we believe the portfolio is now very well balanced. We have obsessively pursued excellence and innovation throughout this period. And we did that by respecting not only our vision and mission, but also our values. And this has been thoroughly acknowledged by the market and by society in general, with prizes on from innovation to technology, capital markets, sustainability, you name it.
This is just a few examples of that kind of recognition. And we have developed scale in this obsessive idea of becoming the Iberian leader. And scale means, for example, that we are now with a D +1 offer in the whole of Iberia, with 77 operating centers across Iberia, of which 20 are automated. We are now able to process 150,000 parcels per hour. We have delivered last year almost 150 million parcels. Well, it's going to improve significantly this year. And in our peak day, we have delivered more than 1 million parcels. Well, as we speak today, we have probably in the streets in Iberia today around 700 parcels as we speak. And this scale is also present in our network. Not only the PUDO network that we call, we name now CTT Collectt, with more than 20,000 PUDOs, of which 1,100 are lockers.
This number is going to improve significantly, as we're going to see later. But also the, well, CTT retail network, where most of our B2C services around mail are developed. And we did this with the explosion of the usage of digital channels, with now 3.5 million active users. In full respect to the environment. And this is probably our flagship because we are achieving this year 50% of electrification in our own fleet, of course, with all our people engaged and reinforcing a consistently trusted brand with net promoter scores always consistently above 50. Well, a couple of words on main operating achievements or things that we have done. We became, of course, a meaningful actor in parcels in Spain. We have expanded revenues significantly in both countries. Also, market share, we will see these numbers in detail.
We have sustained a solid EBIT margin in Iberia, and we have delivered consistently a strong NPS, as you've seen. On mail, we stabilized revenues, in particular with the new price formula. Revenues are almost automatically balanced. We have accelerated our digital offer, like, for example, with this e-letter product. We have boosted. Multiplied by more than 3x our business solutions revenue, which is a main replacer of the losing mail revenues. And we have leveraged retail and financial services to generate incremental EBIT contributions to the group. The bank reached, as I said, a very impressive number of accounts. This is the fastest-growing history in Portuguese banking of building a customer base. Increased significantly profitability, achieved a return on tangible equity in line with what we had promised in the previous Capital Markets Day. And that's increased deposits and off-balance-sheet to a number higher than EUR 5 billion.
And with this, of course, by engaging our people, we have reviewed and invested significantly on progression and employer brand. We have also expanded significantly training. And we have been distinguished with top employer in the sector several times and also with well-being awards, which is probably a good sign. We have, meanwhile, been certified a family-friendly company as well. And on ESG, I've referred already to the results on the fleet. We have invested in social community impact programs, a significant amount of funds, and we set ESG-linked incentives to actually the whole of our leaders in the company. But, well, we did things. We achieved operational relevance, but we also, of course, had significant financial results. This is the evolution of revenues. Here, the trailing nine months, 12 months, we are now above the upper limit of our commitment back in 2022. And likewise, in EBIT, a significant improvement.
We are now, in the last 12 months, up to the third quarter on 105. Well, we've mentioned this in our recent results presentation. With a strong quarter that already started in a very strong October, it should be quite feasible to, well, achieve the guidance and meet all the targets that we have committed to back in 2022. And we have, of course, continuously remunerated our shareholders, not only with an increasing dividend, but also with a significant activity in these three buybacks that, as I said before, accounted for the acquisition of just over 12% of our own stock. We have delivered ambitious targets that have granted market recognition. And this is probably, well, the strongest way to somehow.
Evaluate what we did in the sense that we have multiplied by more than 3x the equity of this company in the period of this management, of this board, of this term, actually, which is obviously, well, a source of satisfaction, so this is what we did. Now, let's talk about the future because that's the main reason why we are here, so we are now building up to a market leader and I will guide you through measures that are associated with growth and measures that are associated with efficiency and therefore profitability. On e-commerce solutions, it continues to be a scale-up game. We are aiming at Iberian leadership in e-commerce logistics. We want to evolve our operating model, which is now almost fully integrated in Iberia.
I don't need to remember, sorry, to remind the audience that, well, we came to actually two different, almost independent companies that are now, well, very much integrated, so there is still a play of further integration, combining a vast first mile, sorry, last-mile offer with other positions in the value chain that is, in fact, the main factor that distinguishes CTT from our competitors, then on mail, stabilized mail, but nurture business solutions and strengthen retail, B2B and B2C as significant contributors for this new business area of mail and services that we see very positively, leveraging, of course, price, reducing costs and efficiencies, and basically to capitalize on the sales force and relations we have with, I'd say, virtually all the Portuguese companies, so more in Portugal, and, of course, of this unique retail network.
And finally, the bank, as you're going to see, is a play of speeding up where we are. With additional investment, but Francisco will guide us very thoroughly on that. To strengthen a distinctive business model of a no-frills retail bank, boosting the digital channel to become on par with the very significant retail network that the bank has, which is CTT's. And then. With using these main business enablers, technology and in-house engineering, this is we're going to have some emphasis because this is, again, unique. Some of you have visited some of the facilities yesterday, focusing on attracting and preserving talent and, of course, embedding sustainability in our decisions because we want to be here for the next 505 years. With a significant role. With a slight more detail, but yet at a general level, on e-commerce solutions, which is our main growth engine for the future.
So we aim at Iberian leadership. This is probably the fifth time I mention this. So this is probably a beacon of commitment, propelling our business model and amplifying our, well, the present e-commerce tailwinds. We want to broaden the presence in the value chain because this is actually unique. And this is one of the reasons why we've been growing faster than our competitors. But more than that, why we've been able to show EBIT margins like almost no one, capturing cross-border volumes, which is the portion of e-commerce that grows more, as you're going to see. And Cacesa is very important for that purpose. And not only in Iberia. And again, leveraging on the joint venture with DHL for Inter-Europe and, in fact, global clients, given their global presence and strong brand. Evolving our tech-intensive model, deepening specialization and productivity and quality.
And some of the things that also we are now able to do is, in a way, very much related with our somehow recent but strong technology internal capabilities and expanding on out-of-home delivery because this is not only a societal trend, but we see that also as a factor that will bring not only convenience to the customers of our customers, but also reducing last-mile costs and even reducing carbon emissions. I will go myself in deeper description of what we are doing along these lines. Moving to mail and services. So the keyword is stabilizing mail and unlocking value with mail and services, leveraging the current contract through the pricing updates, efficiency, and preparing for the upcoming negotiation. It is our strong.
believe, or I would say it is my personal absolute certainty that the existing funding model for the USO is no longer viable after 2028 because the volumes are coming so down that price would have to become, I would say, disproportionately high, and so there is a need, and we've been working on that steadily so that we find new ways of funding the universal service, so this is one of the things that aspect needs to be done and started to be done along the next strategic period, engaging customers with omnichannel experience, basically by improving our digital channels and intelligence, and we have now a full-fledged digital channel working with a significant number of customers, as I've mentioned, continuing to unlock value and engage with partners for business solutions and payments.
Although we are pretty dependent on payments in business solutions, it is mostly a play of our own expertise and companies, but also a play of partnership, which is very much present in what we like to do, and that's why we've been able to grow and keep growing fast and use the established retail network to grow services that need to be aligned with our footprint. So we don't want to have a bazaar of services. We want to keep a focused set of services. But for all of those services that require a physical presence, we are very well positioned like no one. And moving fast over the bank, maintaining growth in domestic mass market, of course, with the no-frills retail banking for this.
Three-year period, excelling in savings by fully capturing the synergies with the CTT network, leveraging, of course, the already very successful partnership with Generali, and hence the significant results on off-balance placements, fight for our fair share in terms of credit, both for consumer credit and mortgage, reinforcing leadership in auto loans. The bank is now top three in the market and offering an outstanding service and proximity, integrating in-person with digital channels and with a growing footprint, as I'm sure Francisco will detail, and I'll take some of your time for debating a bit on technology. First, with the mostly IT-related things, we are now unifying operations in Iberia, and this is very much a game of unifying IT systems, the standard operating procedures, but mostly IT. This is probably the most relevant IT project that we are undertaking as we speak.
So that we have a single Iberian ICT platform for parcels. Then regarding customers, to provide centralized tools so that all our customers relate with us through very clear and easy and useful channels, B2C SuperAPP for the general public, B2B portal for companies. And of course, in the case of the bank, because of regulatory concerns and business concerns, the bank has its own app. And on processes, of course, keeping advancing automation and autonomous solutions, I will also illustrate with some of the things that we are doing, boosting productivity. And here, I would refer to the Helena chatbot and process automation with and without AI. And there's plenty to show along these lines. And we have a very well-filled agenda on this front. On the more engineering side of technology, which is less known to the general public, but not less important for us.
We are also working significantly on first mile, further developing proprietary technology that we have. This is driving scale and efficiency. This is just an example. I'll go in more detail after that on optimizing sorters, some of them very old sorters that we are now revamping at a very low cost and significantly improving efficiency. Also on our own methodology for facilities layout, and on last mile I would refer probably, well, our FieldForce app that improved significantly our success in deliveries, and probably above all the journey that we have done from zero to full independence on lockers. We now produce our own lockers, and this provides for significant agility in, well, offering new services and offering convenience and bringing significant additional productivity to our offer. On people, well managed workforce with care, so care here is a well carefully chosen word.
Of course, developing talent and building a future-ready workforce. We need to bring people with us. Otherwise, we won't be able to keep the pace of transformation and growth. We are now engaging more than 1,000 people on leadership training. Also, shop clerks training. We have basically covered already 80% of our retail network and digital AI capabilities. We have already covered 900 people. So a significant effort in terms of training and empowering our own people. Proactively attracting and retaining top talent. We have more than doubled, for example, the number of candidates to our trainees program. This is a good sign. And of course, we need to refresh our own workforce, but it's also a good sign that we are now a more attractive company. We have all our operations people already with performance compensation, something that is simple and powerful.
But given the strong unionized nature of our workforce, this has been a great journey and merit progression applied for a quarter of our people. And we need to strengthen employee well-being by addressing pain points. And we are doing things that are very useful. For example, providing financial literacy support to our well, mostly low-skilled people, mortgage aid, of course, awarded by our bank and funded by CTT to our employees and also the bank employees, and improving the employee experience through the new My CTT portal. On sustainability, of course, we remain committed for purposes that are meaningful and that, in fact, will determine our ability to be here in the future. So I've referred already the decarbonization of the fleet. Now we are committing with a new target, which is to have 100% of our own fleet electrified by 2030.
We have just recently received approval by the Science-Based Target Initiative of our own reduction, short-term reduction targets. And we are also committing to incorporate 100% of recycled materials in our CEP products and 100% of green energy. Actually, we are already practicing 100% of green energy today. And by promoting participation and investment in social impact programs, we have this idea of using volunteering as the main source of exercising our own contributions to the community around us. And we are also committing with targets of 6,000 hours of employee volunteering by 2028. Sorry, 10% of our employees engaged in these kinds of practices. And also to support.
Vulnerable communities with some of the things that we do, like, for example, using adult time in the contact center to support, well, institutions or to offer mail services to institutions that need to deliver mail, that kind of stuff, which is done at a marginal cost, of course. So we have proven execution, and we believe that we are ready for the future. We have consistently delivered on our targets. And I apologize for insisting on this, but we felt some doubts when we came here three years ago to setting very daring targets. We have built strong foundations for the future, and we believe we are ready for future growth. And growth is, as Raul yesterday mentioned at dinner, one of our well, I would say probably our main attitudes. And with this, I will leave you with a short film, and we'll be back.
For the next session. Okay, so I hope you could rest a little bit of taking me. I will now guide you through what we are doing, what we have done, and what we are doing in a slight more detail on e-commerce solutions. Our recent journey has been very significant in terms of growth as well. We grew 24% year-on-year on revenues, 48% year-on-year on EBIT. This is why, in part, well, not only grew, but also improved significantly our EBIT margins. Basically, we came from a 5% when we were here three years ago to an 8% EBIT margin. If we would plot this is 2024, if we would plot Cacesa, and this is how it's going to be in the end of this year, this would be 9%.
9% is simply best in class, and there is only one peer, which is a particular one that only delivers out of home, that is able to show no one else similar to us is even closer to this. EBIT margin, so we are very happy with what we did, but this is just, as you see, the beginning of a new journey, and there are a number of factors I would highlight: growth and efficiency. And across the presentation, I will try to. Sorry, to enhance where we see contributions from growth and contributions for efficiency, and very often, they are both connected. One first reason that is associated with growth is that we grew significantly above the market for several reasons. Well, one, it's obviously that we were very small in Spain, and Spain is a very large market.
Let me remind you that Iberia is the fourth largest parcels market in Europe, equal to Italy, only behind France, Germany, and the U.K. But one of the reasons is that global marketplaces in this period grew significantly more than everyone else: 10% more than 10% compared to less than 5%. We're talking about, of course, large marketplaces, global marketplaces. And this is why by the end of last year in Iberia, this was somehow the split 1/3, 2/3 of the market. And because we are very exposed to these, that's one of the reasons why we grew so much. So one success factor is growth and the way we grew and how we grew. And this is why we came from a 23% parcel component of this type of clients to 2/3. This is something that we pursued actively because these are the growing.
Outperformers, and we are more exposed to them. And this is good for us. Then there is the issue of scale, because, of course, we needed to have solid foundations to be able to grow. I mean, there's no point in having customers if you are not able to deliver. Actually, with ever-increasing sophisticated customers, either we deliver correctly or they simply disappear. And this is our footprint in Iberia. Well, I'm a bit of a color-blind, but this seems to be green or maybe blue for operating centers without a sorter, red for operating centers with a sorter. And then all the pink points are points of presence for collection or delivery. So basically PUDOs. And with that kind of footprint but also with increasing profitability, as we've said, this is the same arrival point, but now with the trajectory.
And again, we have improved 3 percentage points with Cacesa. This will represent 4 percentage points in three years. Which explains why we have improved productivity, 18.6% in the period. We have reduced unit costs 8.4% in the period, and we have improved significantly our quality in general. Growth carries density, and this unlocks scale efficiency. So there is a virtual cycle here that I'd like to illustrate. If you look at the evolution in Portugal and in Spain in this period. On B2C market share, well, we have increased an already impressive market share in Portugal of 40%- 45%. And in Spain, we almost doubled our market share. Spain is obviously, well, the Spanish market is more than 10 x larger than the Portuguese one. On productivity, we moved from 5.68 sorters per inhabitant in dense areas to 6.37, and an even higher improvement.
In Spain in terms of productivity, and if you look at the cost ratio, that is the cost of delivering a parcel in a dense area versus the average. In Portugal, we have slightly improved, which is related with, well, the very high density that we already had, and in Spain, we have, again, a very significant improvement on this cost ratio, so this is one of the reasons why efficiency helps to deliver those numbers, and as I said, there is a virtuous cycle because scale drives density, obviously. Density drives competitiveness, and the more competitive we have, the more clients we have, so therefore, there is this virtuous cycle of scale, density, competitiveness. We have forged a distinctive value proposition to customers because we give them greater convenience given the, well.
Extreme evolution of points of presence, seven times more now than three years ago in terms of PUDOs. We have improved, as we've seen, quality of service together with a significant improvement in the Iberian market share, with density also, both in Portugal and Spain, measured in terms of number of deliveries per square kilometer, improving in both countries, and we are in Spain now. Only half the way where we were in Portugal, so huge room for improvement. And because we have a wider presence in the value chain, from customs clearance to storage, fulfillment, delivery, handling of returns, PUDOs, and you name it, and so here we have actually contributions from both growth and efficiency. So this is, again, a bit more detail and some repetition. How we came here. Now let's look at the important stuff, which is how do we scale to leadership in our markets?
Here, I will try to bring trends and then explain how we plan to react and take advantage of these trends. First three trends. One is that Iberian e-commerce is accelerating B2C, and this is good because e-commerce is moving up. B2C, as we're going to see, is moving up. The other one is that international marketplaces are gaining ground, as we've seen. These large marketplaces are growing faster than the general public and general competitors, and then out-of-home delivery is in itself also as a societal tendency going to improve, and we see that very consistently. Every time we open a locker or a PUDO, and with lockers, this is even more obvious, well, adoption never goes back, never goes back, so this is also a very important trend. Our value proposition is based on, again, growth and efficiency levers, so one is growing Iberian e-commerce logistics capacity.
So we need to bring up capacity so that we cope with demand, expanding our offer as well, because the more services we offer, the more we are able to capture clients, and then deepening our relations with tier one customers. I'm insisting on this because this is, in a way, the major or one of the major explanations for our success, and we foresee that's going to be like that for quite some time. Then leveraging on end-to-end coverage, increasing client loyalty, because the more services we provide, well, the better the clients feel with us. And to be honest, we have some clients in the room, the more difficult it is for them to leave. And we like that because we see clients as partners. And this is, of course, significantly improved with the incorporation of Cacesa.
Then there is the capturing of international flows, not only intra-European flows, but global flows, given, of course, the powerful brand that DHL brings to our universe. And finally, I've referred to this expanding and activating out-of-home network because this increases reach, increases convenience, and therefore customer adoption. So this is on growth, on efficiency. Well, in a nutshell, we are talking about network efficiency, cost discipline, Iberian consolidation, and capture of synergies, in particular with these two recent plays. There is further room for e-commerce growth, given the situation where we are. These numbers are improving, but we are still here. We see a number of countries, and we are plotting the percentage of e-commerce, sorry, the percentage of retail that is done through e-commerce. And this is the European Union average in 2024. Spain is slightly trailing the average. Portugal considerably trailing the average.
So there's still room for improvement, a bit and a lot, but the European average is increasing itself. So good news from this, and indeed tailwinds in the sense that more and more people will adopt retail e-commerce as their main retail habits or significant retail habits. And we have here modeled how in Portugal and in Spain this trend should evolve by comparing ourselves with somehow similar cultures. And again, we have good news in that sense. So people will buy more, and therefore there will be, I would say, a steady increase in terms of e-commerce adoption. Then B2C is expected to outgrow traditional B2B. And this is, again, good news. If you look at, in red, B2C in magenta, B2B, the evolution that we are foreseeing is very interesting.
Spain on the left, Spain has grown B2C at a higher pace than B2B, eight to six, but it's now doubling the growth pace for the future, for the recent future, and in Portugal, the numbers are even more impressive. Also because the situation is a bit different. B2B, actually, as we speak last year and today, it's still, sorry, last year was still slightly lower than B2B, and it's going to be like this this year, but it's going to evolve. From nine to four, we're going to have more than twice the growth of B2C. And because we are exposed mainly to B2C, this is, again, good news, so we are favored by this trend. Indeed, if we plot market segmentation horizontally and differentiation vertically, we are in a very sweet spot, and it's only that peer of us that delivers only out of home.
That is so well positioned to capture this trend of B2C growing more than B2B. So again, good news in this sense. Then there's another trend, which is cross-border flows. Cross-border flows are growing much more globally than domestic flows. And this is here we are representing the percentage of global cross-border flows in e-commerce. So 19%, a fifth of global cross-border, comes from Asia to Europe. Actually, a similar number from Asia to the U.S., at least pre-Mr. Trump's tariffs. It is almost irrelevant, the flows between America and Europe. And this is, again, very good news. Why? Because if you look at these tendencies, again, domestic flows that grew less than cross-border in the previous period, this is now more than doubling the difference between cross-border growth versus domestic growth. Here, we have the contribution of DHL that will allow us or help us to capture these.
Flows from inter-Europe and actually global clients, not only to Iberia, but also from Iberia. And of course, we have a significant help from Cacesa because all these out-of-Europe flows need to be cleared. And being the market leader in Iberia, this is, of course, very good news for us. Then strong synergies across e-commerce verticals. And I'll show twice the representations of the value chain on e-commerce. Here, value chain on e-commerce, and here. Different segments in terms of flows. And where are we? CTT is already on fulfillment, last mile and returns in our markets and even out of our markets for some of our clients. Then with the acquisition of Cacesa, we improved something that we already have, which is progress in the value chain more towards warehousing and clearance.
And with the partnership with DHL, we are going to expand to inter-Europe and in fact, global clients and also in terms of the value chain to long hauls because the presence of DHL in that part of the spectrum. So we are not only occupying a higher portion of the value chain, we are also covering a higher portion of the flows, which is obviously, again, good news. Cacesa is strengthening our position in the cross-border part because, again, looking at, well, a different simple representation, starting from customs clearance to last mile, what typically happens is that customers do have an exit provider for clearing, then a logistics provider or several for the other parts. We can do that, and we are doing that with Cacesa in some places. So Cacesa is our clearing partner, and then we deliver or someone delivers for Cacesa.
But the good news is that we can do that in an integrated way. And this is indeed unique. And by the way, Cacesa is doing this portion. Although the integrated part is only in Iberia, this portion, well, in a very large part of Europe and already in Turkey with some sizable operation starting in India and in Morocco. So again, a good contribution for Cacesa for this particular trend of cross-border growing. This provides for higher customer engagement, as I mentioned. It provides for additional operation efficiency, especially even here, but especially when we do integrated. Imagine a sorting center when only a few tiny portions of the parcels are going to be cleared and all the others are immediately being sorted and sent away. So this is a huge improvement vis-à-vis two separate operations.
The great beneficiary is our client because we give them better service levels and of course, we share the operating efficiency. There is also a strategic sense on being in that part of the spectrum is that we anticipate market movements because anyone coming from out of Europe to Europe, the first thing it needs to find is a clearing partner. So we are in a privileged viewpoint to see who's coming and which new opportunities we do have. Also, because Cacesa is clearing parcels in all these geographies, and we also see that this provides an opportunity for us to probably go to some of those geographies and do the rest and occupy the rest of the value chain. A word on the DHL partnership. This is an extraction of DHL e-commerce, sorry, capital markets today, just to say that their e-commerce division.
Which is our partner in Iberia is aiming at growing above the market, so we are partnering with a partner that is in itself also ambitious, and of course we take advantage of the global presence in terms of leveraging inbound and outbound flows, the brand recognition. We hope to access global clients that will now be able to be convinced by the strength of the brand, and this issue of specialization, because just to remind the audience, in Portugal we are acquiring DHL e-commerce, so we will deliver B2C and B2B actually through this new arm of us, but in Iberia we're going to deliver B2C, they being a minority partner, and they will deliver B2B as being a minority partner, and this specialization is also very promising.
Moving to another trend, which is the fact that, well, I mentioned earlier, tier one players are the most relevant, and global marketplaces are gaining ground vis-à-vis the rest of the market. Just an illustration, back in 2019, this was the split between tier one players, Chinese marketplaces, and other players, and the evolution, of course, is that these two portions of the spectrum are becoming ever more relevant, and the fact that we are exposed to them is also very important. In fact, 91% of the market is going to be here in 2028, in a very few number of clients, very sophisticated clients that we like a lot, but it's very important to be with them, approaching ideas for each segment, so for global marketplaces, we want to consolidate our presence, efficiency, and quality, quality being of utmost importance for these partners.
We have tracked a fully controlled operation model. The idea of consolidating Portugal and Spain for this purpose is very important. Extended value chain presence also for those, of course, that do require other services within the value chain, out-of-home delivery and returns, which is part of our offer, and all of them require this. For Iberian champions, the DHL will enable a one-stop shop for B2B and B2C, which we didn't have, frankly, now. We had it in Portugal. We have it now for the whole of Iberia. It will add scale and competitiveness, and it will actually allow us to, again, leverage our presence in a very large out-of-home network that I will detail later. Make it simple is the idea for SMEs using alternative channels, mostly digital channels, prepaid solutions. This was a very, very impactful measure in Portugal.
To promote point-to-point shipping, which is also interesting given the out-of-home network. It will also probably improve our presence in C2C, which is not very relevant today. And finally, to attract volume. Blend the best-in-class B2C operation with DHL commercial reach for global clients and leverage on a single offer, as I've mentioned before. So value chain presence, full-fledged offer, out-of-home network, and digital channel. This is basically what we need to do to keep growing for each of the various segments. Zoom in on out-of-home delivery. It's obvious that if we plot closeness or the inverse of distance to customer satisfaction, well, the closer PUDO is, the more the client is, the more satisfaction it raises. And if we look at what is the evolution of density against.
Preferences, we see that we are in a reasonably sweet spot, both in Portugal and in Spain, but we need to invest along this line. This is, of course, the other only out-of-home only peer. And this is what we plan to do, to invest more, to somehow follow the evolution of this trend. And also because we know that we will in a way influence this trend. The more lockers and PUDOs we have, the more this preference will develop. And we've seen this in Portugal very, very well. So that's why we are so committed to this target that you're going to see later, but you already know, of 10,000 lockers in Iberia. So this is good for merchants, it's good for municipalities, it's good for couriers, it's good for consumers. Well, with the few green stamps because it's in general also good for the environment.
So this is, yes, a way to go. This strategy, in our case, is a combination of lockers and PUDOs, as you know. Lockers being mostly in public places that deliver a 24/7 presence, and this is very, very important. PUDOs more on CTT places and local stores. Again, of course, with an attended operation, it's not available 24/7, and the advantages are well known. I don't need to take you here. Just a few names of the 10 highest users of our networks today. We also want to increase leadership in this area, and so finally, the target here, we see the total number of PUDOs in Iberia evolving from 38,000 to 53,000. In Portugal, 21%, 79%. Spain growing more than Portugal, also because Portugal is already pretty filled with our own presence, and this is where we hope to be.
We did deliver 3% last year. We want to be in 2028 between 10% and 15% and then move to 15%-20% following and also helping the market adoption to evolve. This is by expanding our present 20,000 points of presence to almost 30,000 in 2028. Given the locker expansion, obviously being the more relevant component. You'll see that when you look at capital expenditure, and we will also address that. So a very important point here, this drives, for obvious reasons, significant operating efficiencies. To deliver with a 100% network is 40% as a cost, which is 40% the cost of well non-PUDO network. So this is also a very significant source of improvement. So cost efficiency planning and volume peak management, because at very, very core peak.
The usage of a locker or a PUDO network sometimes helps to exhaust parcels, if that is allowed by the customer, and quality of services. With this tiny presence that we have, we know that we have, with the number of PUDOs that we have today, we saved in 2024 sufficient funds to a full year of Lisbon to Madrid line hauls. So just to give you an, and this is a very small presence that we have in Iberia. So this is a very strong source of further efficiency. A focus roadmap on operations, so network capacity, efficiency, integration, and synergies. Just to mention that we need to keep expanding our network, increasing and consolidating our Iberian approach, and finally to capture the synergies. This is basically what we need to do on the network expansion side. A deeper.
Word on what we are doing on in-house innovation on engineering. We have this sort of hybrid solution whereby we install, modify, upgrade our sorters with our own technology. This drove and it will keep driving 48% cost reduction and the 65% first mile process productivity. The fact that we control our own sorters and the software that manages our sorters is ours gives us a huge hedge on managing productivity of sorting and first mile. Then upgrading sorters, 42% FT reduction, 48% of parcels handling, tray vision. We have improved the efficiency of main sorter around Lisbon in Marl by 10% just out of vision technology that makes inspection of the trays and manages the fact that the sorter could be dirty or occupied. So 10% increase on a large sorter is a huge investment just by a tiny contribution in terms of vision.
Then we have developed a proprietary digital waiting system because the market offers were too expensive and not strictly usable for us. We have developed also technologies on containerization, moving to last mile routes, dispersal points. So this is technology that is basically related with organization of the way we deliver. the FieldForce app that has improved 3 percentage points on effectiveness of delivery, pit stop technology that is also proprietary, and of course, the highest impact. We came from zero to full flexibility in lockers in these four years. We control electronics, software, metal parts. We have a virtual factory that fabricates them. We have lockers for all purposes, and we are increasing significantly self-service in our retail store also through that. On internal technology, more on the digital side, I would refer to the Helena chatbot. It was, in fact, the first chatbot to be publicly made available.
Publicly in Portugal. This deflects today 35% of our contact center inquiries, so a significant improvement in efficiency, increased by 40 points NPS. And then by incorporating augmenting AI, we are also driving additional economy by deflecting contacts that otherwise need to be handled by, well, real people. On the FieldForce app that I've mentioned, a single Iberian platform, and as a whole, the first pilot of a new system for the whole area of Iberia is already working as we speak so far with the normal difficulties and successes of a very complex project that is going on. And finally, on omnichannel, we want. I'm sorry. We want all our journeys, be it by companies or by retail customers, to be full omnichannel. They can start digitally, and then physically. They can start physically and then digitally. They can start on a self-service and.
End on close on a balcony. So everything should be, this is the aim, and this is why we need, of course, to excel on IT technology and also the corresponding hardware. Then investing to build the foundations for scale. There is this issue that the markets will keep growing. We will deliver a bit more than 150,000, sorry, million parcels this year, but by 2028, this number will increase to, we hope, more than 200,000. So, of course, building capacity. This requires not only funds and the ability to deliver. It requires also probably new concepts for network evolution. This is Iberia. Madrid is the very center, not only politically, but in all senses in Spain. It's also the very center of Iberia. Most of our cross-border flows arrive through Madrid, and so we have now.
Three very large hubs in Madrid that will most likely, well, evolve to a mega hub in Madrid, with Barcelona, Porto, and Lisbon also being very strong complementary hubs. So we need to invest in the design of the network and significant investments here, and this is why Guy will also refer to this with more detail. This is why we are keeping roughly the recurring CapEx stable at 2% of revenues, but for a short period, we're going to have a hike for both the investment in the locker network and the master hubs to allow for capacity. This will nevertheless not exceed the roughly 4% of revenues. So a robust twinning model, a clear path to attack the next cycle. We have a strategic positioning on the fastest growing portion of the market, which is e-commerce and B2C, and the key players of this market.
That's because we have positioned ourselves to be there. We have the most compelling offer along the e-commerce value chain, enhanced by the DHL joint venture and acquisition of Cacesa. We have a specialized operating model backed by technology, autonomy, and higher and higher technology intensity in our operations and integration. We have differentiation, scale, and efficiency as the main levers to consolidate our best-in-class margins. That's why we believe we deserve to aim to be the Iberian leader in e-commerce. This is where we are today with our partner. This is where we hope to be in three to five years. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you very much. As we are CTT and we like to deliver on time, we are on time. So, as such, we have time for a full coffee break. The coffee break will be towards my left, towards your right.
I'll look forward to seeing you here at 11:40 A.M. Sorry, at 10:40 A.M. Thank you very much. [Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
Good morning, everyone. My name is João Sousa. I'm the Chief Commercial Officer of CTT, and I'm going to present to you today the strategy for mail and services for the next three years until 2028. As you know, the decline in mail volumes is a structural global reality. But at CTT, we are actively transforming this challenge into a source of efficiency, innovation, and long-term sustainability. Why? Because the trend is that mail volumes continue to fall globally, a structural trend driven by digitalization and a new way how people, companies, and institutions communicate. And this is a permanent shift, reshaping how people are communicating. But at CTT, we are not waiting for a change. We are leading it. So we don't see this as a problem.
Our focus is clear: inefficiency and growth. Inefficiency, we, and I'm going to speak a little bit about this during my session, we are modernizing our operations and improving our workforce efficiency. We are advancing digitalization omnichannel experience and also working on everything, like João Bento already said, involving the USO terms. Most important, we are using mail as a platform for growth, like we already have done for the bank. We already have done this for express and parcels because we have this relationship with all these customers, B2B and B2C. So in that way, we see mail as an opportunity for growth in B2B, growing in share of wallet and market share inside of B2B customers, and in B2C, selling financial services for these customers. Inside of this new area, like João Bento says, we have three strong business lines: mail, our.
Historical mail operation, and complementing by these agencies that allow us to look for this business area like a business for growth: financial services and retail and business solutions. Beginning on mail, our focus here is maintaining the service relevant while improving the unit costs and the unit economics. How are we going to do this? Volumes are declining by over 40% across the world the last decade. Portugal mirrors this trend, and why? Because digitalization is in process. It's our main competitor for mail, shifting the consumer behavior and also rising costs of physical mail. And this is going to happen in the coming years, so we know what's going to happen. So that's why it's so important to offset this decline of mail with efficiency and business agencies, and how are we going to do this?
So, as you know, we have this current price mechanism that allows us to mitigate the impact of the decline of volumes in mail. But nevertheless, we need to continue to work on operational efficiency. Because if you see, this is the reduction of the regulated mail, so an unavoidable trend. But we have these current prices that allow us to mitigate the decline of volumes. So around 60% of the mail volumes are using this price formula that allows us that the decline in revenues is less than the declines of mail. But keeping tight cost control is crucial to maintain this area sustainable at the same time that we are going to focus on growth, like I'm going to talk to you about after, and how are we doing this? Leading.
So the focus here, we're very happy at CTT that we are leading the way we would look for efficiency in mail. Leading distribution innovation. If you see here. Since 2019, we are evolving the distribution model that allows us to decrease the number of routes. We're beginning with all of. Crazy names or good names that our operations invented with our marketing team. And now we have this new model that is unique, and all the other operators are trying to understand how we are doing this, that we call fast and slow distribution model. And what is this fast and slow distribution model? In fact, it's a dual-speed network that consists of two networks: one D+1 for p riority products, mail or express and parcels, and a slow network for D+3 for not priority products. Okay?
And this allows us to distribute the number of routes, number of kilometers, and also don't need so many people to distribute. We have also, like João Bento talked about, used technology to improve our performance. And Raul talked about that last night in the dinner. We are becoming more than a mail company or an express and parcels company, also a technology company. And we are using that technology to be more efficient in our operations. I bring here just three examples just for you to understand. This is what we call track fluorescent orange barcodes , but at the end of the day, you can use some samples of what the mailmen are doing in this app. And that way, I can control efficiency and quality of our operations. We have these postman cards.
With this capacity increase through an ergonomic design card that I would just like to highlight, this is done with recycled materials and looking at producing in Portugal with one third of the cost of the typical normal suppliers. So very happy to have done this in Portugal and at the same time bring more efficiency to our operations. And we have this postman digital brain. At the end of the day, what it is, we are incorporating into a digital system the knowledge of the postal network. So typical, the knowledge of the routes was in the postman. And we are bringing this to an app. And with all of this information, we are decentralized and can be planning much better the way we deliver mail. We are also going to have this retirement and natural exits that allow us to do a workforce resizing, avoiding forced exits.
So this is at the same way we are decreasing the number of routes, we are optimizing operations, we are bringing efficiency, we don't need so many people. And to have this retirement and natural exits allows us to have fewer people without forcing exits. We look for this natural attrition, a decrease of 8%-12% by 2030, so this is also important. Of course, always coordinating this with the demand we have with mail and the capacity we needed, and also promoting initiatives that facilitate integrated and mobility people inside of the company. But at the end, we still need to work on and be improving all this efficiency, like I told you here before. Working on new operation models, like we see. We already are trying always, and always challenging us how we can do better, how we can be more efficient.
Looking at the way we can do with the less people with operational or forced efficiency via natural churn, retirement, transferring people inside of the company, and of course, looking for our corporate functions we have inside of CTT, trying to understand how we can resize this capacity and this corporate function. This is about mail. Now. Also very important, and João Bento already spoke about this, we have a strict USO that has not been reduced in sync with the sharp decline in volumes. What do I mean? We still have most of the European operators still operate with five to six delivery days per week, despite the volumes dropping, and this means that these standards are outdated and financially unsustainable for mail operators, but as you can see, some countries already are taking measures to help the mail operators to maintain these public services.
That's why it's so important, and it is paramount to involve the new USO contract in three key dimensions. Of course, maintain the scope of quality and SLAs, but simplify products. Align with how important mail is for the community. The financial model, this self-funded model, is no more sustainable for the future. So we need to work and try to understand how we can fund these public services for the future. And also the geographical coverage. As you can see from the presentation of João Bento, and I'm going to show you also, with self-service solutions, we can have this geographical coverage and don't have a route or a person to deliver mail or package inside of the house. So this is about mail. This is how we're going to work on efficiency and bring efficiency for this business.
I would like also to highlight this is a decline, but we know what to do with this decline, but we are using the platform of mail to grow this brings because CTT is a loved brand in Portugal. We have a very good relationship with B2B and B2C customers, and this is what we are doing right now. Business Solutions is now a structural growth driver. It accounts for around 50% of the mail and service revenues and growing more than 90% per year, so it's already established. Okay? And we want to capitalize this market share we have with B2B customers to introduce more business solutions and grow market share inside of these customers, and how are we going to do this, following these key trends. First, balancing this digital payments growth, so payments are bringing more digital.
But at the same time, we still understand that we have some segments that want physical payments. So we have the best solutions. We already have digital payments. At the same time, we still have this huge network that allows us to have physical payments like nobody inside of Portugal. This is one of the trends we are seeing for B2B. The second one is cost control and reduction. Most of the corporate leaders around the world are trying to understand how to avoid costs, how to cut costs with innovation, digitalization, or service outsourcing. And we have these solutions for the customers, and I'm going to show you. And the last one, how to use technology to escalate efficiency inside of the company, mainly with AI. This is the three key trends we see for the next three years for B2B and the concerns of the companies. And this.
is the way we are positioning to deepen customer relationships. We already have this commercial and service digital platform already inside of our portfolio that enables us to help the SMEs to go digital. We have this digital wallet inside of this. Just for you to understand, 52% of the Portuguese students right now are using a digital wallet of CTT. This is sometimes when you look for CTT and you look for mail and you look for e-commerce, we don't understand this small service that we are implementing and growing inside of CTT. We have this solution of payments. Just for you to understand, on a normal daily basis, we have more than 100,000 daily users that are using our physical network to pay invoices, to pay taxes, and so on. We have this mail and document management.
This is a solution, maybe the oldest solution we have in business solution, but still very important because if you go for municipalities and big companies, they still have a problem with documents, how to digitalize, how to archive this. And we have this solution for the companies. And at the end, we have these business process services that allow us, CTT, to deliver an end-to-end BPO solutions and contact centers to our customers or prospects. And why do we believe that we can have success? Because on B2B, what is very important is the relationship and the contact you have with the customer.
And just for you to understand, today, CTT has a share or has a contact or has a relationship with more than 90% of utilities in Portugal, more than 80% of the municipalities, more than 60% of bank and insurance, and more than 45% of the public services and institutions, so the path is over there. We have the solutions. And after this presentation comes the tough job, which is selling more and growth. That's why we are aiming for a double-digit growth on this area, but not with the same importance of investments. On payments, we're going to have an investment level of growth with the strategic rationality that payments are very complementary with the express and parcel business, so we're going to invest in a way that we see growth in this area.
On business process services, the idea is here to invest in a double-down investment and leverage the business opportunities that we already have with the relationship with the customers that I talked about before. On customer service and digital platforms, it's double-down. Reinforcing the digital service role is very important. Portugal still has a way for the companies to go digital, and CTT can be the right partner to do this job. And mail and document management, the investment level is maintained as it is, but pursuing the digitalization opportunities. And in that way, we see a growth per year at 7%-10% until 2018. On this business area of growth. Now I speak about B2B and growth. Let's go for financial services and retail. They are the area that we want to maximize the assets we have inside of CTT. What is the asset we have on CTT?
15 million walk-ins per year in our retail network. This is something unique. Who is managing on a daily basis retail understands the importance of having 15 million persons enter in a store or a third-party store in a week per year. We have what we call the biggest retail network, and we want to have also the best retail network. More than 500 CTT stores, more than 1,800 postos, that is Pontos CTT, that is third parties for logistics, and more than 4,700 Payshop agents. Payshop is our brand for payments. At the same time, we already have this digital network with self-service, with PUDOs and lockers like João was mentioning, and also our digital app. And I'm going to bring you the numbers of also digital, just for you to understand. We are so ambitious that we call internally this app as SuperAPP. So.
We think with this physical and digital network, and using each channel to offer service that best suits the type of customer and the segment, that we are able to grow on this B2B. Because right now, we are on CTT and Pontos CTT selling postal and parcel services, and also third parties like for Banco CTT, for IGCP, and Generali, and we can go for an omnichannel experience, growth in this area of postal and parcel service for SMEs, but at the same time, growing these current partnerships we have with the bank, with the Generali and IGCP, and also start new partnerships because most of the utilities in Portugal, when they look for this huge retail network, understand that they can partner with us and use this retail to work with us, but this means that we're going to serve and sell everything inside our stores?
No. We have done a huge segmentation. So we have. On the logistics part, we're going to sell focus on our CTT stores for SMEs. And for B2C insurance and public debt. We're going to sell mail and express and parcels on CTT postos also, but more simplified offer, more simple, not so complex like we have in our CTT stores. And these Payshop agents don't sell logistics. And the additional offering, we're going to sell financial services on stores. We're going to do work for Banco CTT and payments, but no more confusion. Don't going to have either retail services, other services that we're going to do with third parties. So in that way, the B2C customer or the SME understands when you want.
Solutions for so and SMEs in logistics or financial services that need time or payments that need time, consulting sales, going to a CTT store, simple offer. Logistics, or additional offering going to our third parties that we have. And for that. We need to do something, doing two or three different things. A new shop concept that allows us to have more consulting sales that people have time to sit in the CTT stores so that our salesmen can have time to sell our services, using our lockers to complement stores with added self-service capabilities. So no-brainer solutions, the customer can go for self-service, don't need to go for a store, and also use our digital channels for omnichannel experience. And now I'm going to show what we are doing in this new concept store.
So in this new concept store, we are enhancing the client's autonomy and self-service when they don't need any consulting. We have these self-services working 24/7, this preparation desk, or this quick service counter that can do all the services that they don't need to be in a queue and waiting for a long time. We're going to have spaces for consulting sales for SMEs and so or individuals that take more time, like we have for Banco CTT, and we are doing this with the bank, waiting areas, consulting service, so selling financial services or insurance needs this, and of course, with technology, one more time enables for a new customer journey, and the numbers we have and the outlook is very positive for the new stores, and in that way, that's why we're going for the top 10-15 high-potential stores will be annually remodeled.
So you're going to see this in our CTT stores. In the country. At the same time that we already have these in our app, in our site, we still maintain our investment in digital to bring this omnichannel experience to our customers. We have something that is very powerful for us. João Bento already talked about it. That's why we can have these self-services and self-areas. This is CTT-owned technology. Some of you already saw this yesterday. So this enables us to be very flexible and design the solutions the way we want for our customers, for our stores, and for our partners. That's why we have these lockers. That we're receiving and sending, and very important for returns. It's very important in the e-commerce. And right now, 70% of the high-potential CTT stores already have at least one locker.
We have these vending machines that allow customers to purchase prepaid envelopes and boxes and so on. Just for you to understand the success of this, around 29% of these sales on these vending machines is doing after closing hours, so this brings more convenience to our customer, more flexibility at the same time that we take people from the stores that want just simple products and allows our salesperson to spend more time with the customer. We have this P.O. digital box, so the typical. The oldest thing that we have in our stores with also the technology of the locker. We have the stamp machine also, one more time. The customer, if he wants just one stamp or more than one, they can do this with self-services, and we're going to have label printers also to do this in the self-services.
And I would like to highlight this very beautiful outdoor version we have. We changed what we call [Foreign language] caixas do correio in Portugal for this one. So you see this in Portugal, in Lisbon and Porto. A self-service machine around the city. At the same time, even these ones include two LED panels that allow us to communicate to the customers with CTT advertising. And this capacity, it's very important to bring this new concept to our stores. At the same time, we are investing three years in this, what we call SuperAPP, that brings convenience to our customers and seamless digital access to consumers. So they can be beginning doing things in the app and finishing in the store or beginning in the store and finishing in the app, or can do all the purchases, all the services inside of the app.
Just for you to understand, right now, we have more than 3 million registered consumers in the app, a powerful number for Portugal. Growing year-on-year, a daily basis, users, 20%. And why we call it this SuperAPP? Because inside of this app, you can have logistics services, parcel tracking, online parcel senders via CTT, that solution we have for SMEs and companies in Portugal, and also understand where is the locker and all the. Relationship with the locker. We have payments inside of this app. So they can do payment tools. And consulting. And we are developing this digitalization of the Payshop journey also inside of the app. Just for you to understand, more than 50% right now of the payments of digital tools. Of the tools, sorry, is doing by digital.
We have this success of financial services that is selling the public debt on the side of the CTT. Right now, everybody can do a subscription inside of CTT, and we are already developing and just waiting to put this in the market, the capacity to also opening already an account for digital. Just for you to understand, September was a record. So every month, we see more people using the app, and with this, we bring new subscribers, a new type of subscribers for Certificados de aforro. So in a nutshell, with this digital expansion, new services to grow in this area in a top of a stable context of public debt that we see flat, but growing 3x the new financial service, insurance, health plans, third parties, and most of these have an importance for us because it's recurring revenues.
That's something that you typically don't have in this kind of business. We see for the coming three years a growth of 7%-10% on this business area. In resume, we believe that in mail and services, we have a clear plan for the next cycle. In mail, stabilize mail profitability through price mechanism and operational efficiency, like I spoke before, and using mail to grow in our B2B customers, grow share of wallet. Maximize and monetize the relationship we have with these B2B customers. And grow also in financial services through new offers and mix evolution with the channel. That's it. Thank you very much.
Hello, and good morning to you all. It's really an honor for me to be here for the first time presenting to you Banco CTT.
And it's also an excitement for me to be here presenting you the new growth cycle that we see ahead of us. But before talking about the future and our growth ambition, as I was mentioning to you, I think it's really important for, first of all, to understand what we are as a bank and why can we look to the future with this new ambition, as I mentioned to you, so we started the bank in 2016. We are almost celebrating our 10th anniversary next March, and we started developing a very innovative retail banking approach, and I will underline the three basic pillars of this innovative approach, as I mentioned to you. The first of all is, of course, the brand. Who can start a business with such a strong brand as CTT? We had that opportunity.
So when we launched the bank 10 years ago, we already had a very strong and successful brand with us. Banco CTT is, as you all know, one of the best recognized brands in Portugal, and every individual and family associates the brand also with some core important values for a bank. The brand is associated with trust, proximity, also very associated, as João showed us, because of the relations with the public debt with Tesouro, so with savings. And so this was really a privilege to start a bank with such a strong brand and such strong values. And even if you remember, we started in a very post-crisis context where the incumbent banks were facing a very negative perception for the customers. And we started in that moment in time with a very strong brand.
The second pillar that I would like to mention to you is, of course, the branch network. Again, here, we had the privilege to start not only with a digital solution like the neobanks, but also with a nationwide presence with a very low CapEx. And we have this privilege because we started in CTT premises. We started in premises which are located in very prime high-traffic locations, in places where everyone knows where CTT are. So the general public, the families, and individuals, again, know exactly where CTT is located in their city. And this was very important for us and for our growth, as I will show to you. And we do this with a very low CapEx. We estimate with less than 5x less CapEx vis-à-vis the incumbents to start.
A new branch for serving customers, and also with a solution with very low and flexible OpEx. Because if you look to the incumbent banks, you can see that probably they will have around six, seven, eight employees in their branches on average. And probably if they don't have the capacity to have four employees there because the business is not there, they will probably have to close. But in Banco CTT, we have today branches with five, four, three, two, one employees. And we can adjust our capacity to the moment where we are, not only to the market that we are serving, but also to our growth cycle. So this was really a very important thing for us, and it's still a very important asset that we have.
So we can serve the customers in a phygital way of serving, in an omnichannel way of serving, with a very interesting and a very nationwide presence in branches with proximity and with a very low cost to serve when compared to everyone else. The second thing that I would like to underline. It's our value proposition. So we started the bank with this idea of a simple value proposition. We are very focused. We are only serving individuals and families. And we have a simple value proposition with reduced adoption barriers so that everyone can open an account with Banco CTT and with a very strong value for money. And also with an attacker mentality so that we can grow fast, as I will show you. We'll be able to do in the past 10 years.
And so this was, as I was mentioning to you, a very innovative retail banking model. And let's see what happens in these last 10 years. So today, we can probably say that the market has confirmed this new innovative approach model. We have more than 800,000 customers that believe in us and that trust us every day to help them satisfy their financial needs. And this is a huge asset after 10 years. It's a big customer base, as I mentioned before. We have more than 700,000 customers with a banking account. And also in 2019, we acquired 321 Crédito , which is a top three brand in auto loans in Portugal. And we have more than 100,000 customers with auto credit with us. And this is not only a very important.
Customer base in terms of size, 800,000 customers, but it's also a very important customer base in terms of quality. We are looking to essentially. Customers that live in Lisbon and Porto, more than 65% of them, with an average age around 48, very aligned with the average age of the Portuguese population, with strong digital adoption. We have a good Net Promoter Score. So the customers love the service that they are receiving from Banco CTT. And we have already a noteworthy engagement level. We estimate that around 50% of our customers are using the bank as their primary bank. And this is a very interesting number for a bank with only 10 years. I can tell you that, of course, if you look to the incumbents, you will see a higher engagement rate. The incumbents are probably around.
70% engagement rate. And what this tells us is that we still have a lot to go in terms of engagement of our customers, which, of course, represents a growth opportunity. But I can also tell you that this number is way higher than any neobank can achieve, even after 10 years. So I think that this both represents a validation of the market for our approach, our phygital approach, and also represents a good opportunity for growth. I can also tell you that we are the fastest-growing bank in Portugal. If we see the last three years, we can see that we are growing 12 x above the market in terms of business volumes, on balance business volumes. And this is huge. And this represents, again, an opportunity. We are in a momentum. We continue to be the fastest-growing at the end of 10 years.
This is easy to be in the first one or two years. But after almost 10 years, we are still the fastest-growing bank in Portugal. And this is very important for us and for projecting our future. And we also fully deliver our previous Capital Markets Day aspiration, which is also, of course, essential and really very important. So in terms of business volumes, we are above guidance in all of the objectives that we presented to you in the last Capital Markets Day. And also in results, we have profit before taxes expected to stay within the range despite the lower interest rate scenario that we all know that we lived in. So, we have a very interesting story. The market had validated our model. We are growing fast. We have delivered what we promised you that we would deliver. And so I think that we can, in short.
Conclude that we are living a great momentum so the innovative business model is leveraging the distinctive assets that are not available to neobanks, so we are in a very nice place. The outstanding market acceptance shows us that we are in the right path, and we still are looking to positive macroeconomic context for the next years, and so this is the time, of course, for us to double down on our growth ambition, supported, of course, with investments in some key enablers to support not only this new growth ambition cycle that we are going to be in the next three years, but also to support future growth cycles with a very scalable way of doing things, so this is really important for us. These next three years will be very important.
What is this new business cycle and how can we represent it in a very simple way? So we will be looking for three growth themes and for two business enablers. And I will be talking to you about all of these. Five areas of interest. The three growth themes are, of course, grow customer base, grow even more than we have grown in the growth in the last two or three years, and, of course, work in that engagement level that I've already mentioned to you. We will also want to excel in savings. We started with savings, again, capitalizing the brand awareness of CTT in savings. But we want to go faster on that and capitalize on savings and on investments. And I will tell you how. And we want to fight for our fair share in credit. We are not so good yet in credit.
And, of course, if you want to be the primary bank of your customers, you need to have the entire offer, and you need to be very good, not only in terms of offer, but also in terms of commercial attitude in all the aspects of the offer that an individual or a family needs to fulfill their financial needs, and we will, of course, invest in our hybrid distribution model, we are going to increase the investments in our hybrid distribution model and in our digital transformation, and I will address each one of these five items for you, so in terms of growth themes, we want to keep growing in terms of number of customers. This is very important. We have already shown to you that we can do this, 800,000 customers in less than 10 years. It's really impressive, and we want to go faster, even faster.
And to do that, we will improve our current account portfolio. We will underline our freemium approach to the marketing, reducing the barriers for new customers. We will be launching tailor-made offers for specific segments. For instance, in the beginning of next year, we will be launching a specific offer for self-employed customers. And we will keep simplifying the commissions so that we have a clear message to the market that if you want to work with us, you will not pay commissions with your current account portfolio. And so we will, of course, have a positive discrimination for those customers who want to work with the bank as their primary bank. And we'll also improve our service and capillarity. I will talk a little bit about that later. But we will improve our service standards with a more omnichannel approach than we have today.
We will increase our capillarity with presence in underserved regions, again, with our low CapEx, low OpEx model that I mentioned to you. With that, we aim to have more than 1 million customers at the end of 2028. In the deposits and savings, we will complete our off-balance offer. We are very good and very strong in on-balance offer. We have to complete our off-balance offer. We will strengthen our partnership with Generali, which is going amazing. These first months of work, we are way above our own objectives in selling off-balance products with Generali. We will launch new products during next year to complete the off-balance offer. We will also launch during the first semester of next year our investment funds platform for our platform for investment funds and selected capital market products.
And this will complete the offer so that we can be as good as investments as we are already in savings. We also want to boost our cross-selling with CTT, as João was mentioning. And we will leverage the CTT ecosystem, again, very aligned with what João Sousa mentioned before. And we'll maintain an attacker attitude on term deposits, mainly. Looking for new money and being much more aggressive for acquiring new money. So we'll maintain our attacker attitude in term deposits. So we need to complete the offer and excel in savings and investments. If we look to the credit, and I already mentioned to you that we need to have very good opportunities in credit. In mortgage, we have the product. We have the product. We have a very good product. But we need to improve our time to decision and our time to cash.
This is really essential to increment our market share in mortgage, and we will also reinforce the relationships with intermediaries, going even deeper at the point of interconnecting banking systems with the CRM systems of the main mortgage intermediaries. We will also invest in consumer finance. We will revamp our actual personal loans partnership with a much more commercial attitude towards the consumer finance product, and we will launch our own branded credit card. The offer that we have right now is with partnership, and we don't think that's the offer that we need to have, so we will launch our own on-brand credit card, and we'll have it, hopefully, at the end of next year. This is very important for us to go deeper in the credit. For auto loans, as you know, we are already number three, but we want more.
Right now, we have this very important market share, but we are very focused on the small and medium car dealers, car vendors, and we want to also be very good in the large intermediaries. This, of course, needs a different approach, a different approach on pricing, a different approach on offer, a different approach on process, and that's what we are going to invest in the next month so that we can go deeper and increase our share in auto loans and our ambition in auto loans. We will also develop new strategies, new commercial strategies, not only with the more than 100,000 customers that we have right now, and we want to work better that relationship that we have, mainly if we think about revolving at the end of the contracts.
But also, we need to work better the cross-selling between 321 Crédito and between Banco CTT. We want that the customers of Banco CTT have easy access to the offers of 321 Crédito. And we want that the customers of 321 Crédito open their banking account in Banco CTT. So we will go deeper on this cross-selling agenda. And with this, we expect to have annual growth above 15%. The same, I didn't mention it. I hope that you have seen that in the previous slide, the same in the previous slide. So we hope to have annual growth above 15%. For the enablers. So we will be investing in our hybrid distribution model. I've already told you that. So we will need to revamp digital channels. We have good digital channels, but they are mainly focused on service. And we need to focus those digital.
Channels also in sales. Not only sales in a self-service way so that the customer can fully buy the products and have a customer journey to fully buy the product in digital channel, but also in this omnichannel approach, like João Bento was mentioning. The customer needs to have the ability to start their customer journey in the branch and in the app. The employees in the branch need to have the opportunity to call the customer, sell a product, and the customer doesn't need to come to the store to sign the contract. They will sign and finish the sales or the buying process in the app. So we need to invest a lot in the digital channel so that it will be much more focused in sales and much more focused in marketing with marketing automation campaigns and marketing automation capabilities.
And we need also to strengthen our branch network, keeping this low and variable cost base that I already mentioned to you. And that is an asset that we have and nobody else has. And we have to capitalize on that. We will reinforce in-store specialized stuff. We will double the number of employees that are fully, totally dedicated to the Banco CTT service. And we will expand the branch capillarity for underserved regions, but still with a very high significant market value. And we'll do that again because we can, because we have this opportunity for being in CTT Group. We will also invest in digital transformation. It's really important. It will be very important for the next year. We are right now changing our core system. We will have this change take place during next year.
This is a really very important moment, not only because of technical issues. Of course, we are migrating it to cloud and so on. So this is also important in terms of technology issues and to be very able in terms of technology. But this is also very important for scalability so that this new core system can support the bank's ambition for growth and also for flexibility. We need to have flexibility and time to market to launch all of these new products and all of these new customer journeys in a time-to-market manner. So we will also be investing a lot in AI and process automation. We will transform the bank during these next three years into a data-driven company, clearly AI-first bank. So this is our ambition.
And, of course, we have lots of things to do, as you can imagine, to put in place the systems to support the new products, the new digital channels, the new customer journeys that I've mentioned to you so that we can have a complete, simple offer, but complete, so that we can engage the customers more and more and increase that 50% that I mentioned to you before. So in a nutshell, we have a strong ambition with growth focus for the following years. And these are the key numbers that I can present to you. So in 2018, we expect to be way above 1 million customers with the bank. The business volumes we will. In 2024, as you know, we are looking to EUR 7 billion. Business volume. And we want to be in the EUR 12 billion-EUR 14 billion. In 2028.
We will be between EUR 12 billion and EUR 40 billion in business volumes in 2028. We will be delivering profit before taxes around EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million. Of course, because of the investment that we will need to do in these next months, we'll be stable until 2026. So we'll see the increase in profit before taxes in 2027 and 2028. And we will be delivering a return on tangible equity, a normalized return on tangible equity around the numbers that we are delivering today, so 12%-13%. Of course, with a different structure in our capital base, we will evolve from a 21% core equity tier one capital base to a core equity tier one base above 70%. And this is important to address that this is a self-funded plan with 100% of the earnings reinvested in the bank.
And this is, of course, also very important to mention and for the group. And with this, we will materialize our core vision. We have just recently entered the group of the mid-sized banks in Portugal, of the five mid-sized banks in Portugal. We have recently entered this group, and we want to go higher in this group. We want to be the first in this group. So during the next three years, we'll be a fastest-growing franchise on track to become a significant mid-sized player. And this is our ambition. And we will capture every day a bigger market share for realizing this for fulfilling this upgraded core vision. So just to synthesize what we can expect for the next three years with all these ambitions and projects as I mentioned to you. So we'll be much more relevant in the market.
We will have more than one million customers, and we will increase that level of engagement that I mentioned to you. We'll be growing in a strong way during the next three years. We'll be reaching EUR 12 billion-EUR 14 billion in business volumes with an annual growth above 15%, and we will keep our returns with a benchmark of a return on tangible equity around 12%-13%, delivering higher bottom line results by 2028, so this is the ambition for the next three years. As I mentioned to you before, we are very excited to showing to you this ambition. Me and the executive team that are all here with me are very committed to it to deliver this vision, and we are also available for any questions that you have at the end of this session, so thank you very much.
Good morning to you all.
I will guide you through the financial ambition and I will start with our journey. Our journey over the last strategic cycle has been remarkable as we transform CTT from a postal and Portuguese operator into an Iberian integrated logistics player, and we did that while we grew our business significantly. We grew 10% per year over the last strategic cycle, making parcels our biggest business unit that when we combine with the bank, the other growing area that we have, it almost accounts for 60% of our revenue, so diversifying away from the legacy business. And that is even more meaningful when we discuss EBIT that also grew 15% in the period and reached more than 17% of parcels and bank combined as the growing areas of the overall profitability, and we did that combining fast growth with best-in-class margins. And that allowed us to.
Grow our EBIT faster than our peers and outperforming most of them. And during the period from 2022 to 2024. While we did that, we also increased our recurring dividend. We complemented that policy with three share buybacks programs that allowed us to buy more than 12% of our share capital. And we kept investing in our business. We stepped up investment in our business, and we managed our balance sheet in a very balanced way. That enabled us to keep leverage even further down the increase of growth with the acquisition of Cacesa that we recently made. And we did that with a very disciplined capital allocation strategy. We were being able to redeploy capital in a creative manner. As an example, we had inflows like the real estate that we did in.
An EBIT multiple above 14x that we deployed, be it in Cacesa or New Spring, for much lower than our trading multiple and with an accretive play. And most important, we delivered our targets. We delivered all the financial targets that we promised to you three years ago. We delivered revenues. We are well in line to be on the top end of the guidance range. We were the fastest growing Iberian player in the market. We met our recurring EBIT guidance. We are also meeting all the targets on the bank, namely the return on tangible equity. And we think we optimally combine shareholder remuneration with the investment in our capacity. And what about the next cycle that we are starting today? We will seek to continue to allocate capital in a strategic fashion. And that means that we'll continue to invest in our scale.
Investing in growing capacity and broadening our suite of services. That means that we'll densify PUDOs, as João takes you through, we'll scale fulfillment, and we'll continue to differentiate in last mile, and that will be always driven by quality. We aim to be best-in-class quality as we think it's paramount for our customers and for our growth, and that, combined with verticalization and scale, will continue to lead to industry-leading margins that ultimately support our cash flow that we see robust coming in the next years. That will also support our remuneration policy, and what about targets? When we start with 2024, with this new structure of reporting, we include the Cacesa in order to make it comparable in terms of growth, and we aim to grow high single digit in the next three years.
On the back of above market growth, both in parcels and in the bank, we'll be acquiring share in both of our growing businesses. And we'll enter the interval of EUR 1.6 billion-EUR 1.7 billion in 2028. In terms of EBIT. Also the same base, starting in 2024, we aim to be mid-teens, so growing between 13% and 17%. Also on the back of parcels and bank, we aim to achieve leadership in Iberian market in the next three to five years. And also the bank aims to be a significant mid-sized bank in the Portuguese market. Our targets assume stable macroeconomic context. We see in all the official forecasts. We see GDP stabilizing around 2% in Iberia, the same for inflation rate, and interest rates will stabilize just above 2%.
And we are also assuming the conclusion of the DHL JV that we now foresee for the beginning of the next year. To support this growth, we'll step up our investment. We'll be increasing our investment to EUR 50 million-EUR 55 million in the next cycle, keeping it within the same CapEx intensity range. And we want to replicate the kind of returns that we had on the past cycle in growth CapEx. We'll be investing in increasing our capacity, as João showed. We want to further increase Iberian integration. There are opportunities to rip out synergies for having a more integrated network. And that will be done especially through Madrid. And that, coupled with the technology, will further increase our ability to reduce costs and scale. And we'll continue to expand the locker network, especially in Spain. We have a very dense network in Portugal, but still a lot of.
Ground to cover in Spain, and we want to capture that opportunity because it's a new trend that will be fast coming to the Iberian market, and we want to take advantage of that. We see paybacks between two and three years, so a fairly interesting investment, and we also will continue to invest in our digital platforms, be it on parcels, be it on the mail, be it on the bank. We need to continue to digitize and have smoother and seamless customer journeys in order to continue to provide good quality standards. The bank, as Francisco showed, will reignite its growth, and that will entail also a CapEx envelope that we estimate between EUR 15 million and EUR 18 million. That will be all self-funded by the bank.
And more important, we see this also a step up of CapEx on the next three years when we phase out of these big investments on the hub and on the local network will slightly come down to a CapEx intensity below 3%. The bank will still invest to reaccelerate its growth. We see a big opportunity to grab market share, market share in the credit, market share of customers, and that will enable the bank to become a leading mid-size bank. And that will also drive value as we see strong correlation between price-to-book valuation and business volumes. And because the opportunity is there, we want to take benefit of that. That ultimately will generate value for our shareholders. When we look to our portfolio, we'll be keen to invest in our core as we continue to be vigilant for opportunities to.
Simplify our portfolio in the less core areas. And looking down to the logistic value chain. We want to reinforce our positioning in the e-commerce value chain. We are highly present in last mile returns and after Cacesa acquisition, also in customs. We are looking to reinforce our positioning and fulfillment. We believe fulfillment continues to drive market share in e-commerce. And also, it's a key element to have for cross-border e-commerce as we see changes in the way the volumes will arrive to Iberia. And also in reverse logistics because it's highly synergetic, high margin, incremental margin that we want to also bet. And we'll keep prioritizing key verticals as we did in pharma. There are other key verticals developing in e-commerce that we want to remain vigilant on the traditional core.
It's an area that we are keen, but we don't see that much opportunity in Iberia and the other areas. Either we are already highly present or it's not our focus. We have a strong balance sheet that we want to manage to keep our optionality. We are setting up a leverage ceiling that is 2.5x net debt to EBITDA that excludes the bank. We are now standing at 2.4 x EBITDA in the nine months. This is something that we see rapidly deleveraging under the current perimeter and even faster if we conclude the JV with DHL. We aim to operate within these new levels, and we use the optionality or the leverage capacity for any relevant inorganic opportunity that may arise. So, a disciplined capital allocation. First, we'll invest in the growth of our organic business, EUR 150 million-EUR 165 million of CapEx. We aim to have.
An interesting and growing shareholder remuneration policy. We are setting up a dividend policy with a payout between 35%-50%, the same that we had in the last period. That we also want to complement with opportunistic share buybacks if leverage and the market conditions allow us to and keep the optionality of our strong balance sheet for any opportunity of an M&A. So, to conclude, we are certainly ready for higher returns. We are setting up ambitious targets throughout all business units. We are investing to reinforce our core in all the markets we operate in. And we aim to continue to have a very disciplined capital allocation.
So on the back of a strong execution track record over the last cycle, we are ready to grow, to deliver value to our shareholders, and to continue to seize new opportunities for value creation that may arise on the next cycle. Thank you.
Here I am again for a few minutes to conclude and then remain available for Q&A. So we come a long way, a very long way indeed. And we believe that. We've announced a new journey starting now. We will intensify our Iberian integration as the cornerstone for value creation. We will build on unique partnerships for growth opportunities, and we have demonstrated how significant this can be in this recent strategic cycle. We will deepen tech intensity, fostering innovation and efficiency. And again. We believe that there is a huge role for technology to improve our efficiency ratios and quality ones.
We will nurture closeness to our customers as a very important factor for success. Since we have segmented our preferences and we know which markets will grow, we need to feed those relations because these relations have a partnership nature. They live on trust. We need to develop talent backed by a culture of merit and well-being because nothing can be done without engaged people and workforce. We want to take responsibility in making a positive impact to our communities, the environment, people, locations, communities in general. And of course, we need to do that and want to do that in a balanced investment between growth and robust shareholder remuneration, as Guy very rightly illustrated. So we remain more than ever committed to deliver, which is our motto. With a target of EUR 1.6 billion-EUR 1.7 billion of revenues or a growth between 7%-9% annually.
We are also committing to a growth of between 13% and 17% annually on recurring EBIT, and well, to sum it up, we believe that we will either be there or deliver significant steps to become the Iberian leader in e-commerce logistics. Thank you. We remain now available for partnership.
Thank you very much. We will now have a Q&A session. And we have investors and analysts that are in virtual mode from elsewhere in Europe and all over the world. And we have investors and analysts here. We will take questions first from the room, and then we will see whether we will have enrollment for questions from outside of the room. João and Guy. So who would like to enroll for questions? We have a first question from João Safara. João, please state your company affiliation, even though we all know it.
Is it working? Yes. Good.
So it's João Safara from Banco Santander. Is there a question restriction? Two? Three? Let's do three. Let's do three then.
Try as much as you can.
No, I'll restrict it to three. My first question on the basically on the CapEx plan, which I understand is a little bit more intensive in this period than probably I was expecting. And also a big part of it is also being driven by the bank. So I noticed that there has been, let's say, doubling down your bet on Banco CTT. And so, as far as I understood, the bank will self-finance this investment, which will probably mean that during this period, 2026 to 2028, we shouldn't expect any dividends coming out of the bank. So that would be my first question. How do you think is your dividend flow from bank to CTT? Then on market share.
So you have the ambition to be the number one in Iberia. Just if you could give us some figures there because we usually talk about your market share and you've presented your market share in Spain and in Portugal. I guess the overall market share today should be close to, I don't know, 15%-17%. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, and I would like you to address that. And thinking where you want to be in 2028, sorry, which would mean having a higher market share than Seur, what that would mean. So this will basically just going back to the slide you showed on the peers and the market share. What should we expect for Iberia in terms of market share for you to be the leader? And then the third question on what you mentioned on the universal service obligation, what has to change for the.
New universal service obligation? Or no universal service obligation? Just what has to change in terms of the funding model for it to become viable while starting in 2028?
Now, how does this work? One by one?
Let's answer one analyst by one analyst.
Thank you, João. I'll start with the last one. So the implied consequence of my comments are associated with the fact that mail is declining and we have a funding mechanism which is solely associated with users. I'd like to use a short joke of a colleague of mine, which is the CEO of An Post, the Irish postal company that says, well, my operating costs on mail are roughly EUR 400 million. With your mechanism, the day I will have a single letter to deliver, the stamp will cost EUR 400 million. And so that joke illustrates where we are aiming. We cannot keep increasing.
The mail price at close to 10% per year. And so we think it's time for this public service to have a similar contribution to, well, it would be symbolically similar because all the public service in Portugal, be it health, safety, security, pensions, education, all are fully funded by the state budget and by the taxpayer. There's no single cent from the taxpayer today allocated to the public service. And this is almost unique in Europe. And so what explicitly we've been arguing and defending, even publicly and in public events such as this one, is that in the next cycle, we will require, I mean, the universal service to be awarded in similar service levels, which, as João Sousa mentioned, will themselves have also to be relaxed for your visits, like everyone else is relaxing. But even so, it will require contributions from the state budget. On.
The CapEx, your assumption or your interpretation of what we said, and I believe Francisco was explicit on that sense, is that our cash contribution as a shareholder, and we are aligned with Generali in that sense, is that we don't require dividends to be paid in the sense that we are very confident of the growth journey that has been redesigned for this cycle. And therefore, we believe that the best way to allocate the ability that the bank has to generate cash is to reinvest on its growth agenda. So yes, we won't require dividends in this cycle.
On the market share question, we right now on Iberia have around 12% consolidated. We are forecasting to be number one jointly with DHL in three to five years. And the idea I can share also that Seur or DPD is around 18% right now.
We are committing to be number one. We are not committing with a specific market share. The numbers are this: 12%, our current position, 18%, and DPD. We commit to be number one.
Next question, please. Yes, yes, please, Ildar.
Sorry, I had other questions, but I just wanted to follow up, and this is Ildar Davletshin. From the Wealth Management. You just said that 18% is your current market share in Iberia, or? Sorry, could you repeat? Because
No, 12% is our current market share.
But is it with DHL or without?
Right now, we have 12%, and we want to be leaders jointly with DHL. Today the biggest player in the market has 18%.
Your market leadership would be including the DHL business. And what is the share of DHL now?
It's around 3%-4%.
All right, thank you.
And if I may, then the main question on the targets for EBIT that you provided. So just to clarify what you said about USO and your plan to maybe request some state funding during the next three years, do your targets assume any government support or not? And if possible, could you break down maybe the margins or the EBIT within the segments of the E&P and mail in the next three years, or at least how the trajectory we can see the bank is growing, I guess, 15%. But how do other segments do you think could grow relative to the consolidated number you've provided? Thank you.
Well, I can start by saying that we don't disclose, we never did, and we won't be disclosing targets for each segment. If I understood your question correctly, and as for the market share, I believe the question was already answered.
Yeah, but nevertheless, I think it results from the presentation. I think the bank is very clear on its own targets. We are committing with strong growth in parcels and some margin incrementality. And we also detail a number of targets, be it for business solutions and financial services. And we also provide the guidance for mail. So there is a lot of numbers to reason around how the breakdown will be in 2028.
Joaquín, next question, please.
Yes. Hello, thank you. Another question. I'm Joaquín from JB Capital. Just two quick questions. One, if I'm correct, the financial service should be a revision next year. Have you started the conversations with the government, and how are they going? Do you feel any threat of competition here? And then on Banco CTT, is the divestment still on the table in the next coming years, or is this now.
More for the future? Thank you.
Thank you, Joaquín. I will start, and I will ask Guy to then complement. So. The contract for the distribution is, in fact, a combination of two contracts as we stand. One for services that we provide, opening an account, deploying cash. KYC services. And then there is the, so this is a pure service contract, and there is the placement contract. We are now in a very advanced stage of negotiating the new contract, and in fact, it has been negotiated. And in terms that we believe are very interesting. And also compatible with the higher degree of servicing that this activity today requires. And we have tested that recently because of regulatory concerns. And so just to say that there will be a significant increment on the services part.
And on the placements, we are also, although we are slightly changing the structure, we have also, well, we struck a deal that is very much in line with our expectation. So very good news on that sense. These contracts then need to be approved by the Court of Accounts, and we are in that process. So, I mean, the main message to the market is that things have been more than starting contacts with government. Everything happens actually with the public debt agency. And the negotiation phase is already ended, and we are closing contracts. We have also interesting news in the state budget proposal because the targets that have been announced are very much in line with recent placements. As João Sousa mentioned, we are now in a much better position because we referred also to competition.
Regarding our digital channel, because we are increasing the percentage of placements. And this is, we believe, with a new class of investors, typically younger and more digital. So we're talking about more frequent and smaller placements. And we don't see any impact whatsoever of the competition. There's only one bank that applied for a license, and they are just placing marginal portions. Given the bank, so I believe that we have demonstrated quite a few ideas. One is that we feel comfortable with the bank in our portfolio, but of course it is, well, in this plot that both myself and Guy brought to your attention, is further away from our core. But it is also very obvious, it was, in my view, in João's presentation and Francisco's presentation, that.
The leverage that the bank makes and the value it brings to our retail platform, which is, and we like to make it even more a platform for deploying services that require a physical presence, is interesting. We are very comfortable with this idea of well, building market leaders, to quote one of our board members. The bank wishes to be a market leader in its own natural environment, but it is far away from the core. And of course, we will be very attentive to challenges or opportunities that will emerge, but if I may be a bit more direct, we won't seek actively to sell it. We are, at this stage, very much focused to develop it, to make it grow faster. And of course, we will take seriously any ideas that come, well, to do any portfolio movement. I don't know if you want to comment.
Next question comes from Filipe. Filipe Leite, please, go ahead.
Guy was about to compliment my answer.
Sorry.
No, it was just. Underlining the slides I show, but in the end, we think by taking this opportunity of growing the bank, we'll be ultimately increasing the value of the bank that opens up all the other opportunities that João mentioned.
Filipe Leite from CaixaBank BPI. On my side, I have two. First one is on your strategy on express and parcels, and if it is possible to see you in the future expanding your activity, namely the last mile activity to other countries outside Iberia. Probably in countries where Cacesa is already operating. And second one is on CapEx, and if you can give us some details or breakdown of what will be deployed in each of the key areas.
So what will be deployed in lockers, sorting capacity, digitalization, and so on.
Thank you, Filipe. I will take the first one, and Guy certainly better than me the second one. So you came to an argument that I use myself. Cacesa is now in a number of, or it has been, and is actually expanding its presence in a number of geographies. Geographies where global marketplaces are getting more and more relevant, as we see in Iberia, for example. And therefore, that provides us for places and geographies where we'll feel more comfortable because somehow we are in those markets and we have access to market intelligence and we feel more comfortable, we are in a better condition to assess risks and opportunities. And so the fact that we incorporate Cacesa in our portfolio places us in a better position.
The main idea we need to be clear about is that within the present strategic framework and numbers, we are not foreseeing opening any geography. Having said so, we are responsible actors in this market. We have global clients that are clients of Cacesa in some of these geographies, global clients that are our clients and partners in Iberia, and we are challenged and we look at the opportunities. So, well, one day, the good news is that, as I believe I mentioned, Spain and Iberia is large enough for us to grow significantly and to commit to the numbers that we have committed with. But, I mean, if good opportunities arise, we will consider them. And we have been actively looking at opportunities because sometimes they just, well, show up.
On CapEx, so we'll be deploying 5,000 lockers, most of them in Spain.
We aim to be close to 7,000 lockers in 2028, 2,000 lockers in Portugal, 5,000 lockers in Spain, and so that is one of the key areas of investment. The other is the network. I think it's important to clarify that right now we have two parcel networks that cooperate, you can say that they mainly cooperate between each other. And we need to recenter them as an integrated network starting from Madrid because it's what makes sense in terms of logistics. It's steps that we've been doing or during the last few years, but it's time to recenter it in Madrid. And that entails probably a big investment in a big hub in Madrid. That is the rest of the pickup of the investment, okay? We'll be discussing around north of EUR 20 million on.
That area over the three years. We have shared yearly numbers and that's what is sliced in that three years. So it's the growth or the step-up of the CapEx is basically lockers and the recentering of the center of the Iberian network in Madrid. But that will, in the future, unlock a number of synergies, be it on Cacesa, okay? Because it opens up the opportunity to co-locate Cacesa in our own facilities. That is something that is not today and opens up the opportunities to save in space, linehaul, and increase quality overall Iberian market, be it Spain and Portugal.
Next question comes from Sophia. Sophia, just before you ask your question, I would remind the virtual attendees that if you want to enroll, please raise your hand in the Zoom conference call.
Sophia, please go ahead.
Thank you. So going back a little bit on the universal service, I would like to, since you are increasing your footprint in lockers and proximity, I was wondering if the new shape of funding could actually increase the quality service that you provide, given that you are investing in proximity via lockers. Does it mean that the model could actually incorporate a different kind of service-level coverage using this proximity and self-service that you are investing in? And the other one is a little bit related with the fact that you're actually investing a lot in technology that assumes increased self-service. And you have a natural attrition in personnel. That means that probably walk-ins or personnel will be reduced. My question is, is there any plan for reducing physical presence because the intensity of service of walk-ins will be reduced?
If you can elaborate a little bit on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Sophia. So, conceptually, the fact that we have been building and we have already, and we'll certainly increase our self-service ability or ability to provide self-services. Conceptually, I was about to say, well, allows us to figure out new ways of presence. One that, well, it was vaguely illustrated, and a good portion of our top stores, we have destroyed the windows and embedded, well, kind of lockers that didn't exist in the market that work well there, so that this store, well, became available 24/7, and there's no reason for us not to use that cheap alternative to a store to, well, intensify our presence if it makes sense.
Because you have associated your question with USO, I need to be careful because what is natural in the next cycle for the USO is that service levels should be reduced. I'll give you a very, I would say, strong example, which is next-day delivery. Next-day delivery for a letter is not present in the universal service of most European countries. It has never been present in Spain. Let me remind the audience that public service exists to comply with the market failure. I mean, there's no market failure in having a letter anywhere in Portugal next day at a decent price. So that is an example whereby service levels in the next cycle should probably decrease. On the other hand, it's also cheaper and easier to have basic services. Then João Sousa illustrated some of the machines that we already have and have been deployed.
So in a way, it will be a matter of, for the USO alone, of what the policymaker wants for the public service. We are ready and we believe we have the responsibility to influence that particular public policy, given our experience and exposure and the ability to benchmark, but it's in fact a decision for the policymakers. I don't think that regardless of the color of government in those days there won't be, I would say, some reduction or easing of service levels. On the technology investment, self-service, and the plan for reducing physical presence. Again, I mean, we are very happy and it's in fact one of the trademarks of this management to stop a significant reputation erosion that resulted from the fact we were closing stores. We have now a balanced concession contract that is compatible with the level of density that we have.
Again, if the policymaker wants to intervene on that, there will be. Well, the right moment to do that will be in the next concession contract. Well, my view is that, as I said many times before, and that debate has not been reopened, we will not be the public service provider if the conditions are not economically viable. Fortunately, today, we have a new postal law. The postal law calls for the need of aiming and protecting the sustainability of the service itself and therefore of the provider. So I believe that it's a matter of negotiation, but I believe there is strong political content in what needs to be done to a public service that is changing because, well, life and society have changed. So we don't plan to reduce our physical presence unless that is the choice.
This doesn't mean that we don't optimize as we always do. We've recently replaced two stores in the center of Lisbon by a much better store, and waiting times were reduced, quality and NPS were improved. Of course, we will always be aiming to improve our service levels and quality.
Next question from Antonio Suarez.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions and thank you for the presentation. I have three in terms of specific items. Provide some color for the next few years.
Antonio. Put it closer to the mouth.
Okay. In terms of specific items, if you can provide some color for the next three years, namely on mail, you mentioned about workforce reduction, so I think that you should have some idea about the figures. Second question is on parcels. On the presentation, you mentioned about my understanding.
I understood that volume should continue to grow at 15% or higher, nevertheless over the last two quarters. It was not easy to reach the 15% growth, so. It's not a too ambitious target. I know that you are going to merge. We are going to create a joint venture with DHL, so it could help. Nevertheless, it seems too ambitious. If you can clarify the question about market shares, current market shares. DHL, CTT, and your main competitors. And last on bank. I understood that. Loans and risk-weighted assets are going to grow about 15% or higher. Probably NI I around 15%, fees around 15%, so you can provide some color on costs and cost of credit risk. If it is going to increase or it stays where it is, about 70 basis points. Thank you very much.
[Foreign language] Specific items. Let's see. On restructuring.
What we tried to depict is twofold. So first, we need to continue to improve our distribution models in order to be reducing routes. Reducing routes will enable reducing people. And we have some tailwinds because the natural attrition of the people and the tenure of our distribution people will help on that effort. We showed a number of 12% reduction of people within that period. Okay? That will, in a way, soften the dimension of the effort that we need to make in order to restructure, okay? Nevertheless, we continue to see some opportunities to, or the need to continue to complement that with restructuring. We are forecasting 100 people- 150 people paid exits in the next three years. That is around EUR 70,000 per person. Sorry. In terms of market share, so we are discussing Iberian numbers once again, so it's not neither Portugal nor Spain.
We currently have 12% market share. DHL has between 3% and 4%. And our main competitor has 18%. We are aiming to be the largest one in between three and five years. Without committing with a firm number for that leadership. In terms of the bank, maybe Pedro, it's cost of risk. Help me, António. Cost of risk, right?
Can we have a microphone?
There, over there. Over there, the same gentleman.
Basically, for the bank. I understood that risk-weighted assets and asset loans are going to grow about 15% or even higher. So costs are going to involve costs, operational costs, and cost of risk, of course.
So correct, António? So we have a 15% + growth on the credit, so RWAs. We do expect revenues to grow, most likely not at 15%. We're in attacking mode, so margins will be slightly lower. On the cost of risk.
There's a guidance there. We are growing credit without enhancing our overall risk appetite. So our cost of risk guidance remains the same between 70 bps and 90 bps . And on the cost side, we will have a take-up of costs, especially in 2026, and slightly roll over to 2027. So we'll be, especially in 2028. Cost growth will be slightly lower, or we expect to be lower than the revenue growth.
On the issue of excessive ambition or too ambitious, I believe was your framing, António. So just a reminder, we've been growing more than the market, actually more than anyone else. We have these trends that are all of them very positive. So overexposure to B2C, which will grow more than B2B. Overexposure or higher exposure to large global players, which will grow more than everyone else. And the fact that we have.
A stronger presence in the value chain. So that's why we feel confident that. And because there is also a prediction that the market will grow at around 8%. So it should be. We see it quite feasible to achieve the ambition that has been translated to our own numbers. So in a nutshell, we feel confident with our assumptions and forecast.
Our next question will come from Henk Slotboom, who is attending virtually. If the technical team can put him on speaker. Henk, please go ahead. State your name and your affiliation, please.
Yeah. Good morning. Henk Slotboom, The IDEA!. I've got two questions, basically. Well, first of all, thank you for the presentation. Impressive presentation. I've seen a lot of presentations from your peers, but this is definitely one of the ones I'd like most. Enough compliments. So critical question as well.
First of all, with regard to slide, I believe it was slide 43. That you signaled that the tier one clients and the Chinese marketplaces are growing to around 90% of the market by 2028. Now, there's a big discussion going on at a new level about all the cheap imports of Chinese articles, unsafe, too cheap, unfair competition, and that sort of thing. There are proposals to basically introduce a levy of EUR 2 per parcel. But there are also countries that say we should tackle this by means of using the digital Directive of the EU, basically punishing Chinese sellers for selling unsafe products because that would basically allow you to charge, to put a fine on them, of an X% of their sales. How are you looking at it? Is that a potential challenge for your growth model going forward?
And the second thing, and that's closely related to it. When you talk about a focus on large clients or large clients taking a bigger share of the market, then mostly that is bad news for margins. How are you dealing with that? Thank you.
Thank you, Henk. Two very good questions. All questions are very good. So coming to the challenge. First of all, I believe the sentence that has been poorly expressed is global marketplaces. Not all of them are Chinese. We have some of them very global and present in this very room. And so that exposure is to global marketplaces. Coming to the Chinese marketplaces. Well, of course, we are taking it very seriously. But there are basically, to simplify and make it possibly a short answer to a complex issue, there are two possible consequences.
One is elasticity because if there is a EUR 2 or whatever will be the final amount imposed on every parcel, there will be an impact on price and therefore some price elasticity, and the other one would be additional complexity, like the one that we are now seeing for parcels entering the U.S. Coming to the first one, we think that there is sufficient efficiency in these marketplaces for elasticity, in our view, not to be significant, and of course, we see also other global marketplaces sourcing a lot in China, and therefore there will be a more level playing field and eventually less pressure from peers for actions on that, but the answer is we don't think that that kind of price increase because of the impact of an additional tax is meaningful, so we are not very concerned with that.
On the other hand, if there is additional complexity, that is in a way very good news for Cacesa because the more complex it is, the more services it will be required. We also have probably different impacts because there will be more bulk clearance and more sourcing from Europe, and then it becomes, well, a neutral issue. As for the competition with large clients, yeah, you have a point, of course. Large clients have a higher negotiated power. That's why we like to nurture our relation with them. And I've mentioned more than once in my presentation that we believe that our relation is a long-term relation, a partnership relation. Our large clients do have as much operating information of our own performance as we do. So they can assess what we do, how we do, our service levels, our quality. And so we need basically to keep.
Satisfying them in delivering quality at a level that is very rare, often unique in Iberia, both in Portugal and in Spain. So it's a, well, it's part of the game. Higher relation implies higher responsibility, but we take that very, I would say, in a relaxed way. We take that very seriously, but also very naturally, so to say.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's clear.
Thank you, Henk. Any more questions from the room? António and João have a follow-up question. Perhaps João first. And then Henrik as well. So let's. Henrik, please go ahead.
Yes. I have a question on the lockers versus PUDO. If you can speak a little bit about the unit economics and also the NPS. My thesis is that the NPS and the unit economics are much better for the lockers at scale.
So if that's the case, I'm wondering how you sort of think about it on a higher level. It's also largely a cultural thing, the preferred methods of delivery in different markets, so how do you think about rolling out lockers more aggressively and accepting a lower utilization rate to increase adoption? And on the customer side, does it also make sense to maybe lower prices to incentivize customers to use the locker network? Or it could also be other forms of incentives, such as gamifications, or you get points to buy something and so on. Just your high-level thinking about the lockers increasing.
Thank you, Henrik. So there is, of course, a different level of satisfaction, but it depends very much on the end customer. I always like to cite a study of an international logistics player that ran a market survey in the U.K. some two years ago.
Among the youngsters, the preferred way of delivery was in a locker, 85%, I believe. The main reason was, a bit sadly, absence of social contact. So it depends a lot because some people would prefer to go to a locker. Some would prefer to go to a place and have someone to interact with. But the main difference is, in fact, availability during the day because lockers are supposed to be, of course, not all of them. Some of them are in shopping centers and in supermarkets that also close at night. But most of them should be available 24/7. And I believe that is the main reason for higher satisfaction. Our main concern is to deliver. I was looking for our locker man. I can't find him. Oh, he's there. Francisco. So it's to provide a customer experience that is seamless, regardless of.
Being an attended or unattended presence. We also believe that the increase in locker adoption will also increase, as I believe I've mentioned in my presentation, C2C journeys and returns. So it's not a matter of unit costs. It's more a matter of, well, delivering what people like. But in any case, it would be impossible for us to have today, as we do, more than 20,000 pick-up and drop-off points if solely relying on lockers. So, well, at infinite time, there will be possibly a matter of lockers only. Meanwhile, PUDOs will play, in my view, a significant role on incentivizing through price. It's a bit the other way around because most of our customers in the locker, except for the C2C, are not, I mean, it's not the people that use the locker. Are the sellers that deliver things to them.
And we need to provide lockers so that our clients will enhance the customer experience. And of course, for us, and everyone knows that, and I've just referred the kind of open relation we have with large clients, they know and they understand that. Our operating cost is lower in a locker. And they also try to propagate that to their final clients. And you have today many marketplaces or e-commerce online shops where if the final client chooses to have delivery in the locker, they pay slightly less than if it is to be delivered at home or any other physical place. So it's more a matter, it's more a tool for our clients to use than for ourselves to use.
Our next question comes from António and then João.
Okay. Just on the DHL partnership. I understood that it should start now.
From what you mentioned, so it should start in 2026. I don't know if you can provide some more color or if the information that you released some quarters ago is okay, is enough. Just taking into consideration market shares that you mentioned, is it fair to assume that both operations, so DHL+ CTT parcels, will increase by 25%-30%, taking into consideration the market shares that you mentioned, or it's not right? Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, António. So slightly more, a touch of color on where we are. As you know, we are now running a competition process. And given the size of the operation and the size of DHL, it runs in Brussels with DG COMP, the competition authority. We've been interacting very actively throughout time. We had summer in between.
And we are, I mean, we are reasonably happy with the process, a bit slower than we have predicted. And that's why. Guy has mentioned that we are now aiming at the beginning of next year rather than this last quarter. That was our initial intention. There is nothing particularly relevant that we would want to stress. Well, we possibly wouldn't let you know. In any case, there's nothing special. It's just a normal interaction, which is a bit slow and complex, as it always happens. Regarding the market share, I don't know if Guy wants to complement what has already been said.
Let's see, António. We already shared a number of data points. I think now it's for you to come up with your views. There are ample numbers within the presentation. I think it's easy to extrapolate what you are trying to achieve.
João, please go ahead.
Yes.
So two more questions. The first, going back to the DHL JV. And also trying to link with what you mentioned in terms of Cacesa being a potential vehicle for new inorganic opportunities. Does the agreement with DHL forbid you from entering specific markets? Or it's completely out of scope? So if you wanted to go to do last mile in Belgium, you could do it. So that would be the question. And then the other one, just on the leverage. So you have the 2.5 x net debt to EBITDA target. My first question is, if this EBITDA, so I suppose this EBITDA is before LISA, so you would have to take out the LISA as a better proxy to cash flow.
It's on the net debt. It's not on the EBITDA, but the two numbers are consistent.
Okay. And so when we think about that then.
What would be, let's say, the range in terms of leverage that would probably trigger you to do further buybacks? Do you think about that? Is there any kind of range that you say, I mean, below, say above two, we won't do buybacks, or below one, we'll do a lot of buybacks?
Thank you, João. So there is no restriction whatsoever. The DHL joint venture agreement is an agreement for Iberia. But then there is good sense, and I believe you see yourselves as sensible people, reasonable people. So we don't plan to go and try last mile in Germany, for example. But of course, we know where DHL e-commerce is present because DHL e-commerce has at least three types of presences: direct operation, fully through a partner, on a commercial agreement, and sometimes a hybrid presence because they have, for example, a minority stake. And so.
In the exercises that we often do for Horizon 3 opportunities, we take that into account because we want to develop and further develop. Well, a friendly and fruitful relation with DHL. But there is no restriction whatsoever.
On buybacks, so we mentioned that we have that target area of operation, okay? And then we state two conditions to appear a buyback. One, it's leveraged to be below that level. And there are market conditions. It depends on the valuation of your share. It's not only leverage that drives that.
Okay. Thank you very much for your questions. João and Guy, thank you very much. We will now go to lunch. Lunch will be upstairs. In order for you to go to lunch, you will have to go through the place where you entered, and you have to go through the museum.
Take the opportunity to go through the history of Portugal as well. You will be given tickets so you can go through the museum all the way up to lunch. João and Guy, if you want to do any final remarks.
No, just a final thank you for coming and today for your questions and interest. We remain, of course, as always, available through our Investor Relations team and in particular through Nuno. So thank you again. And I probably am allowed to thank CTT's team that prepared this yesterday's and today's event at a very high level. So thank you for that as well. And we hope you have a nice lunch and enjoy the visit to the museum. Thank you very much.