Good evening, and welcome to Quadient's full year 2021 results presentation. I am Catherine Hubert-Dorel, Quadient's Head of Investor Relations. Today's presentation will be hosted by Geoffrey Godet, CEO; and Laurent du Passage, CFO.
The presentation will be divided in four parts. First, Geoffrey will give you the highlights of the year. Then Geoffrey and Laurent will detail the performance of each solution. Then Laurent will walk you through the financial performance. To finish off, Geoffrey will present the outlook for the year. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask question. You can submit your question through the web in writing or dial into the conference call for live questions. Thank you very much. With that, over to you, Geoffrey.
Thank you, Catherine. Good evening, good afternoon to everybody. Today, as we present our fiscal 2021 result, we can already see some of the benefit from the investment made in reshaping the company in the last three years. Quadient now enjoys two fast-growing solutions, leveraging a well-established mail business and fueled by powerful growth market drivers.
Our two new solutions operate in attractive, fast-growing markets, where they already enjoy leading position. As a matter of fact, our software business surpassed EUR 200 million in revenues for the first time in 2021, a remarkable size for a SaaS business. In addition, we're able to leverage the strengths from our mail solutions to deliver a strategy.
Our mail business is resilient and highly profitable, but more importantly, it is a fantastic way to grow our already well-recognized SaaS business, thanks to its large customer base and our MRS sales organization. Similarly, our parcel locker solution benefits from our customers' penetration as well as logistical and cost synergies with our mail business. In conclusion, three synergistic businesses delivering a unique and attractive business mix, as shown by the result of our fiscal year 2021.
Moving to slide six. Let me give you a quick snapshot of Quadient financial performance for 2021. We're obviously proud to report solid result, driven by revenue growth in all of the three solutions. At group level, organic revenue growth was 4.3%, and growth was supported by three main things. The first one, strong acquisition of new customers across our software solutions.
Second point is that we have a firm rebound in smart mailing equipment sales, and clearly outpacing competition. The third element is that we had a strong increase in our parcel locker install base, and we'll detail, obviously, the performance of each solution later in the presentation. Organic growth for our recurrent EBIT was 6%, a solid performance given the supply chain issues, notably experienced in the later part of the year as we know.
Profitability and cash generation remained solid, with a stable EBITDA margin close to 24% and a robust free cash flow generation at EUR 104 million this year again. A testimony of our clear focus on cost optimization as well. Leverage was also stable at 0.1x EBITDA.
Finally, and not the least, net attributable income for the group stands at EUR 88 million, which is almost a 120% year-on-year increase. Overall, a very solid performance despite a challenging macroeconomic environment and the COVID-19 evolution in 2021.
Moving to slide seven. Based on the solid result realized during the year, our strong confidence in our mid-term outlook and is in line with our capital allocation policy and shareholder return. We propose a EUR 0.55 dividend per share for the full year 2021, paid in cash and in one installment on August 8, and therefore increasing by 10% compared to last year. Moving to slide eight.
Before we turn to the review of our three solutions, I would like to share with you on the progress Quadient has made this year in its corporate social responsibility program. As you know, CSR is at the heart of Quadient's ambition, and our Back to Growth strategy is fully aligned with our CSR priorities.
You are now, I imagine, familiar with the five pillars of our program. As you know, people, ethics and compliance, environment, philanthropy, and our solutions. We have set very clear 2023 targets for each of those pillars, and we're making very good progress towards achieving our goals. The recent ratings received, I believe, are a testimony to the commitment we have taken towards our social responsibilities. I will highlight the most recent ones. The EcoVadis rating.
After three consecutive years at the gold status, Quadient has been awarded the platinum level in March 2022. I also want to emphasize the AA rating and score that we have obtained for MSCI in 2021. Finally, to be noted, our 67th position in the Global 100, which recognizes the most sustainable companies in the world among companies bigger than one billion in sales.
These ratings recognize the progress achieved by the Quadient teams' relentless effort in this domain, and it's the opportunity for me to thank all of them. Moving to slide nine. Let's now turn to the review of our three solutions, starting with our SaaS platform, ICA, or Intelligent Communication Automation business. Moving to slide 10. We are very proud of the progress made by our cloud-based software division.
In particular, thanks to intense cross-selling effort, the extension of our product offering, the recent acquisition of YayPay and Beanworks. Therefore, we have managed to establish ICA as a leading professional cloud player in the world, recognized by industry experts, but more importantly, by our customer satisfaction rate.
2021 has been a year of further strong customer acquisition with more than 800 net new customers after churn, and 2/3 of them came from our cross-selling initiatives. Once again, I believe this demonstrate the strength that our business model with the deployment of our cloud offering to our existing mailing customer base, enabling us to achieve a lower cost for customer acquisition compared to our peers. Our SaaS customer base is now just shy of 12,000 customers.
We expect this positive trend to continue in 2022 with the added benefit of the full deployment of Beanworks in Europe, in particular in the U.K. and France. The second important trend for our software division is the continuation, the continuous progress of our shift towards SaaS, as you know. 76% of our customers are now SaaS customers, and the share of subscription revenues as a percentage of the total sales now stands at 67% versus the 59% a year ago.
This shift away from license sales is key to our long-term sustainability of the business and a powerful source, sorry, of upselling and cross-selling opportunities. A simple fact, I think, that I'd like you to have in mind is our cloud platform usage in 2021 is up 25%.
I believe this demonstrate the obviously positive impact from this shift in business model. This also translate into a 20% increase in annual recurring revenues, ARR, which now represent EUR 147 million, versus just EUR 123 million a year ago, which shows that the growth of ARR has accelerated since last year. I will let Laurent give you more details about the financial performance of ICA. Laurent.
Thank you very much, Geoffrey, everyone. Now moving to slide 11 to give you some color. ICA now accounts for more than EUR 200 million of revenues in 2021. It has grown by 7.3% over the period. This growth was partially muted by the change of business model that Geoffrey again explained, which has strongly accelerated in H2.
If you look in Q4 notably, subscription accounts for 75% of license placements in large accounts, while it was just 25% a year ago, hence perpetual license declined by 40% in Q4, translating into a flat level revenue growth for Q4, as you can see on the bottom left chart. Overall, this change in business model penalizes our top line growth in the short term, notably for 2021 by about six points, but is securing our future growth.
ICA revenue mix hence continues to move more and more towards subscription-related revenue. 67% in 2021 versus 59% one year ago, with a year-on-year growth above 17%, including small and medium businesses above 20%, out of which accounts receivable and accounts payable are above 70%, while large accounts trend is above 10%.
Perpetual licenses, which only account now for 14% of revenue over the full year, while it was 20% a year ago, have declined mostly due to this shift in business model. Although one large deal, large enterprise deal was signed back in Q2. Regarding profitability now, ICA solution profit margin stands at a low point of 14.7% this year. It's down by 3.9 points compared to last year pro forma.
It's as expected, and it's notably due to the focused investment in cloud platform, dilutive impact of fast-growing YayPay and Beanworks, but also again, the change in business model, which we consider has an impact of four points over the solution profit margin evolution. Now back to Geoffrey for the next slide on Mail-Related Solutions.
Thank you, Laurent. Moving to slide 12. Turning to our mail-related business. Full year 2021 results were marked by an outstanding hardware performance. Most notably in North America and the gain of market share through new customer acquisitions. We estimate our outperformance versus the market at above three percentage points, which demonstrate that our focus on customer services and continuous investment in improving our smart equipment and software offerings are delivering positive results.
Let's take one example. Excuse me. We launched a new iX-9 series of mailing system in the U.S. These upgrades and continuous innovation are important as the deployment of a new range of mailing and document system drives both higher revenue from supplies and increased usage of our smart equipment.
The penetration of upgrades in the install base accelerated in 2021, and we now stand close to 12% of the share of the upgraded install base, which is more than doubling the level of 2020. 2021 was also a record year for high-end product deliveries and orders, notably for folder inserters that have now enjoyed growth for the last few years, demonstrating our product superiority in this segment alone. Laurent, can you give us more information?
Yes.
On the financials?
For sure. Now moving to slide 13. We have been growing our mail related solution this year by 1.8%, and it accounts for EUR 659 million of revenue this year. This growth was allowed by the strong rebound in hardware sales from H1, but even over H2 we see a very strong resilience of the overall business with only a 1.1% decline over Q4. As you can see again on the bottom left chart. This performance has been particularly fueled by North America.
We also noticed a strong resilience in subscription-related revenue, is the green part of the pie, coming from our install base, leasing and rental, thanks to good retention, as well as a recovery in consumption of supplies. From a profitability standpoint now, the solution profit margin stays very high on this business.
It's at 44.2%. It's down by one point against last year, and this is mostly related to the higher cost in freight and raw material price increase. Back to Geoffrey on the next slide for parcel lockers.
Of course. Laurent. Turning to slide 14. Speaking now to our parcel locker solution. This is the smallest of our three solutions in terms of revenue. That being said, our parcel locker business is highly promising. In just a few years, we have managed to establish Quadient as the number two player globally behind Amazon, while being the leader in specific geographies like Japan and the USA. Our revenue has grown from just around EUR 20 million in 2018 to more than EUR 80 million in 2020, and we now have an installed base globally close to 16,000 lockers worldwide. The expansion of our networks continued across all segments during last year.
Let's take a few examples. For carriers, we signed a number of deals in Europe and North America, such as Relais Colis and Pickup in France, opening penetration into new countries with Purolator later in Canada, and even more recently in the last quarter with DHL in Sweden, to just name a few. These deals are important as not only they show the strong competitive appeal of Quadient offer, but it's also opened the door for further opportunities in other geographies, and also demonstrate our offer is very strong globally and set us as a true global leader in parcel locker solution.
If we look at another segment in retail, we continue to roll out the existing contract, such as the larger Lowe's contract at the beginning of 2021 in the U.S. and in Canada, and we also won new ones with large retailers in France like Decathlon or Leroy Merlin. Lastly, we are pleased obviously with the developments of both the property management segment and the education and corporate segments, where new deals have been signed on both sides of the Atlantic now.
Importantly also, the increase in the number of installed parcel lockers goes together with the increase of lockers usage. The usage rates continue to increase at 61% this year versus 57% in 2020. A direct consequence of the expansion of e-commerce generating higher parcel volumes.
We have now more than 70 million packages, a 40% increase compared to last year that went through our lockers. The nature of the parcels expands as proven by the use of lockers to deliver our performance. As e-commerce continues to accelerate and consumption habits change, we are confident that this positive momentum will continue both in terms of usage and in terms of demand for new lockers. As mentioned before, our pipeline continues to get stronger and bodes very well for future growth. Laurent, can you tell us more about the financials of our parcel locker solutions?
Sure. Parcel locker solutions revenues accounts for EUR 83 million, with a limited growth of 2.6% this year, mainly due to the unfavorable comparison basis over H2, which was the last contract. While if you can remember, in H1, we had shown 40%+ growth. You will find that comparison basis on the bottom left chart with the phasing from Q1 to Q4 in comparison to last year.
You can see the tremendous volumes of Q3 last year, but also, notably, Q4, which stood at EUR 30 million standalone, or 88% growth, which results this year in a decline of 32% in Q4, as no equivalent large deals have been booked. The expansion of the installed base continues at a strong pace, reflected by the 19% growth in subscription-related revenue.
This accounts now for EUR 48 million, you can see on the right-hand side. Note that the worldwide install base, as mentioned by Geoffrey, was extended by 2,800 additional new units over the full year, as we saw in the previous slide. We've seen a good start in the U.K. market this year. If we now discuss the solution profit, it's standing at -4.5%. It's 10 points less than last year.
It suffered from freight cost increase, which has impacted the solution profit margin by at least five points out of those 10. We did not benefit from the contribution of a large deal, compared to last year. While we've continued to focus investment towards R&D and go-to-market, and this has intensified. Our growing install base continues to be highly profitable at 27%.
Now that we have reviewed our solutions performance of 2021, let me walk you through the financial performance of 2021. Moving now to slide 17. Overall, with 4.3% organic growth in top line this year and slightly more than 6% organic growth in current EBIT. After some uncertainty we faced last year, and notably regarding supply chain, which resulted in a guidance more frequently updated than in previous years, we finally managed to exceed initial guidance and be in line with all others summarized in this slide throughout 2021.
Moving now to the next slide on the revenue bridge, slide 18. This 4.3% organic revenue growth is the growth between the EUR 1,029 million we reported last year and the EUR 1,024 million we report this year, excluding both scope effect for about EUR 40 million, that's the gray bar, and currency impact for EUR 8 million over this year. Scope effect is mostly tied to the sale of graphics activity back in January 2021, but also includes the sale of ProShip, automated packaging system, and the acquisition of YayPay and Beanworks.
Currency effect over the full year is still adverse despite the increase of the dollar against euro over H2. As you can see, each major solution and additional operations contribute to this organic growth. Parcel locker having a smaller contribution this year, limited to EUR 2 million. Moving now to the next slide on the same bridge for EBIT.
If we analyze the evolution of EBIT against last year, we start from the EUR 152 million we reported. We exclude the earnout reversal as well as scope effect, which makes the EUR 140 million starting point for 2020. Our increase in year-on-year activity level, strong corporate profitability of installed base, and simplification allowed us to bring EUR 34 million of incremental margin, which was partially offset by the EUR 15 million additional plan spending.
It's mostly sales in ICA and PLS, but also R&D. The ten million of supply chain impact, which result in a net increase of current EBIT of EUR 8.5 million, which is slightly more than the 6% organic growth. If we add all three major solutions we've been going through with Geoffrey, this brings us the major operation scope.
It's EUR 942 million of revenue, and it's growing by 3% year-on-year. We need to move to next slide 20. Thank you. This revenue is very recurring at 70%, driven by subscription model across all solutions, which helps us having very good predictability of revenue and margin. North America revenue growth is very solid. It's 4.7% year-on-year. It's 55% of our revenue on major operation. It's been driven by an impressive MRS performance and double-digit organic growth in ICA, offsetting the one-off high comparison basis of the parcel locker loss contract.
The level of activity in Europe is relatively flat. It has suffered from a lower MRS rebound, but also a strong growth in SaaS solution, while international, on its side, continues to grow, being driven by Japanese locker base increase.
The current EBIT for major operations stands at EUR 147 million. It's improved by 5.1% compared to last year organically. That's the result of the combination of acceleration of activities, leaner organization that has been partially offset by increased investment that was planned, change in revenue mix that was planned, but also higher supply chain costs.
If we summarize now on slide 21, at group level, major operation, which we just discussed, accounts for 92% of group sales over the full year. Additional operations today stands at EUR 82 million with no EBITDA contribution. Moving forward, post-divestment of Drachten and APS business, we expect run rate of revenue of additional operations to stand around EUR 60 million-EUR 65 million. Now moving to slide 22.
We are very pleased to share that Quadient net attributable income is up by circa 120% year-on-year. That's a result from a range of below EBIT items improvement. First, we had lower acquisition-related expenses due to lower M&A activity. Fewer restructuring costs in the optimization expenses line, despite the net impact of Drachten divestment.
The cost of debt has totally decreased, thanks to the decline of the average gross debt carried over the year. We reimbursed last portion of 2.5% bond in March 2021, and also we've declined the average interest of our debt. We continued in H2 to have gain on the valuation of XAnge and Partech participations, bringing a total of EUR 20 million this year, among which EUR 5 million in H2. We have a lower income tax compared to last year.
It's notably due to some one-off booking to cover tax risk last year in 2020. The result is a net attributable income of EUR 88 million compared to EUR 40 million last year and EUR 14 million two years ago. The EPS stands at 2.32 euros and 2.17 fully diluted. Moving now on slide 23. EBITDA stays strong and stable. As you can see on the first line, it's at 23.9%, where it was 24.7% before COVID. Change in working capital was kept limited, as we were able to partially offset the impact of increased stock of EUR 13 million , and that's thanks to the additional receivable collection.
Change in lease receivable was not as strong as last year, which is a very good sign from a business standpoint, as it means the leasing portfolio has shrunk at a lower pace. Income tax paid has normalized compared to 2020, where we benefited from COVID-19 measures.
Last but not least, CapEx stands in line with last year, as we will see in the next slide, where we go on the details of the CapEx, which all results in a very robust cash flow after CapEx of EUR 104 million. It's down compared to last year, which was exceptionally high due to the business circumstances, but it's up against 2019. In acquisition net of divestment, you see the balance of Beanworks cash acquisition less the Drachten divestment. In slide 24, now I will do a focus on CapEx.
It's in line with last year. However, development CapEx, so the purple, the dark blue/purple, part, is higher due to the acceleration of development in software R&D notably. It's been offset by the decline in IFRS 16 CapEx, thanks to our limited renewal of real estate contracts. It's in line with our work from anywhere contract, program.
CapEx for rent, which are detailed at the bottom, they are stable year-on-year. It's up for parcel lockers, it's down for MRS. At circa EUR 30 million per year, it's below our EUR 40+ million yearly expectation shown last year at the Capital Markets Day. However, we still expect over the plan that this development to be valid, which means significant deployment are expected in parcel lockers over 2022 and 2023. Now moving to slide 25.
The net financial debt is down by EUR 8 million at EUR 504 million against 2020, and this despite the acquisition of Beanworks. It's down even by EUR 164 million compared to 2019. The leverage ratio is stable against 2020. Leverage excluding leasing sits at 0.4x, and leverage excluding leasing and excluding IFRS 16, which is the ratio in which our covenants are based, ends at 1.9x including the [Audianan]. Leasing receivable portfolio and rental future cash flows shown on the right-hand side are higher than our net debt position. Interestingly also, thanks to ForEx, the leasing receivable reported numbers are stable versus last year.
Now to get some details on the maturity of debt, we move to slide 26. You can see that we expect [Audianan] to be repaid this year for EUR 265 million as planned in June, and it has already been addressed by a new Schuldschein net debt back in November 2021. I remind you that the OCEANE is accounted for as equity, so mechanically the leverage ratio will increase when reimbursed to reflect the change in financial instrument.
In February 2022, post-closing, we already reimbursed EUR 83 million of Schuldschein maturities of 2022 and 2023, which are the ones flagged in gray in the bar chart with the different maturities. Liquidity position is very high, at EUR 887 million, of which EUR 487 million of cash, which will normalize after repayment of [Audianan] and of course, the repayment we've already done of Schuldschein.
Leasing portfolio receivables and rental future cash flows are very well spread and nicely balanced with our future debt maturities. That's what you can see on the bottom right of this slide. That being said, now let me hand back to Geoffrey for the 2022 outlook.
Thank you, Laurent. Let's move to slide 28. Let me take the opportunity to give a few words of introduction. A year ago, we presented our Capital Markets Day to open the second phase of our Back to Growth strategy. Following the reorganization of the group, this second phase really aims at driving and delivering sustainable value and search for all stakeholders. We have chosen four main objectives. The first one is related to acceleration of digitization. We live in a world increasingly connected, as you know, and the ability to monetize these virtual exchanges is both increasingly important and extremely attractive.
At Quadient, all three solutions leverage this digitalization trend, and we focus innovation to further improve, obviously, and to develop our connected platforms, whether cloud-based for our software solutions, connected for parcel lockers, or through our smart SaaS platform, even for a mail solution. We are extremely well-positioned in this very attractive and fast-growing market today.
The second point is our unique integrated business model, which provide us a wide range of synergies to extract both in terms of revenue and costs. Our mail solution gives a significant competitive advantage in terms of customer acquisition costs, market penetration, customer-based access, operational and logistical scale for both our growth engines. The third objective, as attractive as our chosen markets are, growth cannot come at any cost, and we remain committed to a comprehensive approach to capital allocation.
Our cash flow generation is solid, and we're careful to balance our growth CapEx, as Laurent mentioned, the strength of our balance sheet, as well as a dynamic approach to shareholders' return, as detailed before. We have been disciplined, and we will continue to remain disciplined in our investment criteria.
Our fourth and last objective, as discussed at the beginning of the presentation, our growth ambition cannot be separated from our CSR ambitions. Our Back to Growth strategy is built with sustainability embedded in its targets, and we're proud of the progress already made toward these goals. Moving to slide 29. We are making solid progress in our execution, as you can see. When we set our strategy a few years ago, the two new businesses only accounted for 15% of the total group sales. We almost doubled that in just three years.
Let me repeat, we just doubled that in three years. We made the right targeted acquisition, and in turn, it has contributed already to accelerate the trend. The fact that the market we have chosen benefit from solid fundamentals. We have also delivered strong organic growth as well. Looking ahead, we are naturally confident today that growth can only accelerate.
Cross-selling our SaaS platform within our mail business is an underappreciated asset and opportunity, both from a growth and a cost-saving standpoint. We are converting customers to our cloud-based platform offer and thus increasing, accelerating the increase in annual recurring revenue at a lower cost of a customer acquisition. We expect now our SaaS solution to deliver more than EUR 250 million of ARR by the end of 2023.
For parcel lockers, we have truly exciting pipeline of projects ahead of us, as we mentioned. The deployment of large open parcel lockers network in our key countries is one of the many projects we're currently working on. We also continue to focus developing our retail offers with promising projects ahead as well.
In fact, all the segments are presenting exciting opportunities, and we are therefore very confident in our 2023 targets to have more than 25,000 lockers installed by the end of 2023. The decision made to invest in our three solutions at the beginning of our journey are paying off. Moving to slide 30. Current EBIT is obviously already past the inflection point, as you can see on this chart.
When I took over as Quadient CEO in 2018, we embarked into a new journey to restructure and reposition the group. We set up our Back to Growth strategy, which consisted in two phases. First phase was to transform in the first two years, in 2021 to 2023, to drive sustainable value. To do so, we divested assets for around EUR 110 million, EUR 150 million today, simplifying the group and making it more agile. We also invested a bit less than EUR 200 million in targeted acquisitions in both software, SaaS, and parcel lockers to strengthen and develop our market positioning.
You can see these investments we decided to make to enable our transformation. As we evolve our business mix, EBIT has decreased, reflecting both the investment we made in R&D, in innovation, in the go-to-market, scaling our lockers business, but also the voluntary shift in business model from licensed sales to our SaaS model for software businesses.
We have also worked hard to successfully maintain, during that time, the profitability of our mail business and such, despite the COVID-19 impact. As we close to 2021, we are confident that the bulk of this transformation is now behind us, and we have set the company on solid path to grow its current EBIT as well.
Moving to slide 31. 2022 is bringing challenges that we're taking very seriously. Geopolitical unrest with the war in Ukraine, high inflation, continuation of the supply chain tension, and not mentioning even COVID. Let me address some of these concerns now, as I'm sure you will have some questions.
First on Ukraine. The war in Ukraine is obviously a tragedy from many perspectives. Quadient has mobilized itself to offer the help we can to all our Ukrainian teams and their families. Quadient has no direct employees in this country, but we do work with a small group of software developers as contractors, and who support and develop our accounts receivable automation solution, YayPay. We have taken measures very, very early on to support and protect these team members, as well as their families in a variety of ways, and we obviously remain in close contact with them today.
Our accounts receivable automation software solution is cloud-based. It's hosted in Europe and North America. With the business continuity measures in place and already executed, we do not anticipate any disruption to the use and to the support of our software. From a business standpoint, Quadient conducts no meaningful business in Russia today. We have, in 2021, less than 0.1% of the group sales that came from within the country of Russia.
It is worth also, I think, noting that we have no supply chain exposure within the region. In light, I think, of both business and ethical implication of this war in Ukraine, and after review, we have decided that we will no longer pursue business within the country of Russia. If we talk a little bit about inflation and supply chain.
Inflation and supply chain disruption are a concern obviously, as higher costs could continue to put pressure on margin in the future. We have been actively looking, obviously, to align our production to our markets, and we obviously continue to review our supply chain organization, trying to anticipate disruptions as much as we can.
One thing that I wanna bring to your attention is our decision last summer to dispose of our own production sites is helping, as it gives us more flexibility in the choice of our suppliers today. All in all, we are careful when looking at future margin, but we're also optimistic as the profitability of the mail business is restored and such post-COVID.
We should start benefiting from the improving profitability of our install base, both for parcel lockers and cloud-based software as they continue to grow in 2022 and 2023. We expect a strong organic growth in revenue for both our software and our parcel locker division. Both solutions are expected to grow double-digit, and as such driven by both customer acquisition and increase in platform usage for our software and the deployment of existing contract, and also the materialization of part of the pipeline that we have mentioned on the locker business.
We anticipate a resilient revenue for our mail activity with a limited organic decline, and more likely better than the market trend. When we take this potential challenge into account and the level of uncertainties, we expect for 2022 above 2% for organic sales growth and a low- to mid-single-digit organic current EBIT growth.
Moving to slide 32. For the full year 2022 guidance, and taking that into account, we also reiterate our three-year guidance over 2021 to 2023, which anticipates an average organic revenue growth of at least 3% over the period, and a minimum mid-single-digit average organic growth in current EBIT. We also maintain, naturally, our commitments by solution as detailed on the next slide 33. As we close 2021, we are on track to deliver our three-year ambition by solutions.
We are confident that we can continue to deliver strong growth from our cloud-based platform, our parcel locker solution, and while at the same time benefiting from the high profitability of our resilient mail business. By doing so, we'll be in a good position to further accelerate the fundamental penetration of the group into these new attractive markets that I have described today. Thank you for your attention. Laurent, Catherine, and I are obviously now ready to take your questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypads. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally as you will be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you would like to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Mourad Lahmidi from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yes. Bonjour. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the guidance for 2022, the above 2% organic growth. What would be the shape of the current year? Should we expect some softness in the first half due to the high comparison basis and the rebound in the second half? I have another question on MRS. The future cash flow from rental are declining sharply in 2021. Is it because you are seeing more attrition in the countries that are based on rental? I have a third question on the parcel locker business. Could you give us the share of the installed base that is rented versus sold among the 15,800?
Also maybe you could elaborate on the business model that you and DHL and Relais Colis have chosen. Basically is it rental or sale model? Sorry, I have two other ones and then I'll wrap up. On ICA, the profit margin contribution is expected at 30% in 2023, so almost doubling, yeah, from 2021. Should we already see that trajectory in 2022 or is it more back-end loaded? Finally, what's your level of commitment in the private equity funds that you mentioned during the presentation? Thank you.
Thank you for all those questions. I hope we're gonna all capture them. We can take them in the order that you have mentioned. I could maybe give a quick word before Laurent organize himself with some of the other question as well. On the guidance for next year, obviously, we need to take into account many things that can happen from one quarter to another. I mentioned to you, as you know, the last time in Q3, the supply chain. It will remain a dynamic year. That being said, generally speaking, we have some seasonality in the group. Our Q2 and Q4 is always bigger quarters within each of the semester.
Q1 and Q3 are a little bit smaller and a little bit stronger activity in Q2 and Q4. Aside of that, H1 is always, usually speaking, a little bit smaller than H2 as a result. If I step back, as you know, we're moving more and more to subscriptions. Definitely that has a compounding effect obviously on the pace and the return as we embark subscription revenue in the first part of the year versus the second one. I believe that the year reasonably speaking, if all things are equal compared to the year, we should have the same seasonality. We're looking at the same seasonality that we may have had in 2021. Laurent, anything you wanna add on this topic?
No, no. I think it's a fair assessment on the seasonality.
Do you wanna talk maybe of the impact of the future.
Yes.
Cash flows on the rental?
Yes. I trust your point, Mourad, is on the future rental cash flow that you have on slide 25, and that we showed move from 205 to 288. You are correct. There is a decline, and that you could see also in the CapEx in MRS. Basically in MRS, we are rolling out less CapEx than we used to, notably in France, where we have the bulk of the, I would say, a good chunk of the MRS franking machine rental revenue. That's part of the explanation. There is a second part is more the phasing of the rollout of the Japanese locker install base. As you know, we started this slow rollout in 2016.
That has been intensively rolled out in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Then we have been slightly rolling out less in 2021, but we have continued to collect the cash flow that is committed by our customer on this installed base. Hence you have a decrease there, which is more, I would say, associated to the phasing. We collected the cash, and we have not renewed yet those lockers. Obviously, at the end of the contract, you will have likely a renewal of these lockers. Again, we have very limited decommissioning of lockers. I mean, on our 15,000 installed base is barely a couple of units that we decommission every year.
Laurent, do you wanna take the second question?
Yes.
About the share of the install base that is in the subscription or rental mode of the parcel locker solution? I believe there was a subsequent interest into whether the Relais Colis and the Yamato large contract we signed-
Yes.
Were hardware sales or subscription.
Mourad, it's very easy. It's 50-50, and it continues to be 50-50. I would say it highly depends on the verticals, but basically on the carrier side, as Geoffrey mentioned, we are mostly on the rental mode. Yes, the commitment of Yamato in our JV, but also the one of Relais Colis are in a rental mode.
I can take the ICA product. The ICA product solution, our SaaS software solution I believe that Mourad is referring to, is at roughly 15%. In 2021, we have committed to bring the profitability of the SaaS business to 30% by the end of 2023. In 2021, Laurent just mentioned that we have roughly a four or five-point impact from the shift of business model, meaning that the drop in license being replaced with subscription-related customers. Now, those subscription customers, right? They have an impact in a given year, but we have the subsequent benefit in the next year.
We do expect naturally, as we have less and less impact by this change of shift in model, to have a natural step up in 2022 and in 2023. Additionally, for us to be able to achieve our SaaS solution profitability improvement, we also count on an increase in the size of our customer base. Because those customers, that base of customers for our SaaS solutions are really highly profitable today. Obviously, when you add one more customer, it is with a high contribution to the rest of the base. We have added, as an example, 2,800 customers net new in 2021, and we do plan in 2022 and 2023.
At the end of the day, you will see naturally an improvement on the profitability in 2022 and 2023, so it will not be just in 2023. But probably with a little bit more improvement in 2022 and the rest of it, the bigger part in 2023.
I would take maybe the last one, Geoffrey.
Yes.
On the PE fund and, more specifically,
XAnge and Partech, you raised the point, and it's a very, I would say, right question to ask because we made a significant profit about EUR 20 million this year on just XAnge and Partech. You were asking, I think the question more was the level of commitment we still had. We have today, and that's gonna be disclosed as it's usually in the appendix of our accounts. We have a commitment of EUR 3.7 million left overall.
Just as a reminder, this year, in 2021, we had an increase of EUR 20 million on this, I would say, those stakes. We cashed in just for the year 2021, EUR 10 million. The commitment remaining is pretty low. It's EUR 3.7 million, and it's mostly XAnge.
Thank you very much. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Mourad.
There are currently no questions in the queue. As one last reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a question. The next question comes from the line of Patrick Jousseaume from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening. Can you hear me?
Yes, very well.
Perfect. Thank you. Regarding your revenue in PLS, what is the part which is in the Japanese JV, please? Second, could you elaborate a bit on the pipeline for PLS, current pipeline? At group level, my understanding when you adjusted the guidance when you published Q3 results or Q3 sales, was that you have missed some revenue during Q3? Were you able to because of the supply chain issues, were you able to get this revenue in Q4, or is there still some catch up to expect in beginning of the current fiscal year, please?
Do you wanna talk about the share?
Yes.
The PLS.
I will take the first part.
Japan?
Yes. What you're asking is the share of the Japanese locker business. It's about 1/4 of our total parcel locker business. 1/4, about 25%, of our total revenue is coming from the international segment.
A few words on the pipeline. We obviously had seen coming out of the COVID the validation that people were obviously during COVID doing more online and buying through e-commerce what they used to be able to go into a store traditionally to procure for themselves. That has created, I believe, a change in the realization for some of the bigger players, the carriers, in particular.
Also, in terms of the big brand distribution brands, that they had to address a different way to handle the way their customers their click and collect, and the way they would potentially be able to support the delivery of those packages that has been increasing and creating, obviously, a lot of different tension.
That pipeline of bigger deals and strategic deal that I've mentioned have grown during the year in both segments, I would say worldwide today. If we look at the year, you know, Q1, Q2, Q3, we had more and more opportunities coming our way.
With the opportunities that have started maturing, obviously, so we're talking about big deals which is why the sales cycle is probably between nine months to potentially even more than a year, which is completely normal for such big deals. The good news for us is that we see that we have not lost any, obviously. We have actually won already some initial phases of proof of concept or phase one in some of those deals.
We're in a likely the best position to be able to execute the rest of those deals. Obviously looking in 2022 at a pipeline at the beginning of the year that is way more mature, way more advanced, and for which we're obviously counting in 2022 to be able to secure some of those deals. If we are having the luxury to have several of them at the same time, we'll be even happier. We are counting now to be able to execute on some of them in the coming months. Laurent, do you wanna take the last question?
Can you remind me of the-
Q3 guidance, the mix of a new opportunity, whether there will be a catch-up.
Yes. I was assuming you would take this one, Geoffrey, so you can take it.
I can take it. It's been too long. I'm happy to do it with you.
No, it's a very good question. You're right, we made an adjustment. When we announced the Q3 result over the full year, we had significant tension in supply chain. I think we managed very nicely, notably in January, the delivery of the orders we had to process. We still are at a higher level of backlog at the end of the year than what we used to be at end of quarters.
To answer your question, yes, some of the revenue has come in Q4, but we still have an excess of backlog that will generate in the future, and the key question is when, basically, and when are we expecting to see normalization of the supply chain. It's not the case today. We still have tension. We're still working on it. I think we've demonstrated our ability to manage it wisely at a decent level.
If I could, add, Laurent, we did deliver everything that we actually wanted to deliver in Q4. What happened is that the bookings, the placement of orders actually was stronger in Q4 than what we anticipated, and we have not been able to go above and beyond what we also wanted to be able to deliver in Q4.
It's kind of a good news because we have obviously a good business underlying trend of good placement across the region, and that also in particular in the U.S., so the normal business dynamics getting into Q1. We're gonna be super careful at the end of every quarter to make sure that the supply chain tensions that we've seen last year, which continues today, we can manage them carefully at the end of every year quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
There are no further questions on the phone lines, so I will hand the call back to your host.
So we go-
Catherine, did you have other questions?
We do have other questions. We're going to start with questions on the solutions, and then we'll move to the group and the strategy. Starting with the lockers division, can you give us some color about the utilization rate by country of your current installed base of lockers? That's question number one. Still on lockers, a question on the confidence we have on our target for 2023. Can the latest contract you sign at the end of 2021 accelerate installation rate in 2022? Do you maintain your 2023 target of 25,000 lockers?
All right. It's a good question. The short answer is yes, we do expect an acceleration in 2022, and yes, we do expect to be able to exceed the 25,000 lockers mark for 2023. We can with confidence say that because we have already existing contract with committed volume on large contract that span over the next two years.
We have a good element on those contracts, in particular the one that Laurent was mentioning with Yamato and with Relais Colis, with a few others. We also see an ongoing development of the more traditional short-term backlog and placement of orders, in particular on the property management segment, the corporate segment, the education segment, in particular universities.
We are obviously also encouraged by the fact that we now are able to do the same thing that we've been doing in the U.S. for those segments in the U.K. and starting a little bit in France as well. Finally, we obviously are making good progress in the retail segment in France, in U.K., in many other countries actually, in the U.S., with both strategic initiative, but also smaller initiatives. That's really the sum of both what has been committed and signed in 2021, even though we didn't see the full acceleration in terms of numbers of lockers, but that's why we do expect that acceleration in 2022 and 2023.
Obviously, some of the big deals that we have mentioned in the pipeline with Patrick Jousseaume earlier, whether we sign them all or we sign some of them, will help us potentially overachieve those targets, when that happens. We'll be happy to share those numbers once we can get those deals signed.
Maybe a word on the utilization rate.
Yes. Utilization rate is we don't communicate it specifically by country or by segment. I think it's really dependent on how the carriers, the brand decide to obviously establish their policies or the customer relationship that they wanna have. It's really related to the fact you look at a particular package into a parcel locker, and how much time do you give that customer to pick it up? Based on the time that you set, if it's one day, for example, you're gonna look at all the open boxes and place the package into the locker and obviously into that box and consider it as utilized out of the rest. Those utilization is pretty high in the retail segment.
We are looking at utilization rate that we believe is probably the max that you can really get, around 75%-80%. We see that not only in France, but we also see that in the U.S. We feel it's more or less consistent. We see the property management going through peak during the year because obviously each one of us, as we go buy online, we make more purchase at certain time during the year or holiday period of time, end of the year. We see the utilization peak above, which is always an issue, is that those maximum rate at the end of the year for the property management segment.
The carrier obviously, i t's a pretty steady flow of volume that the carriers can deliver. Utilization is usually pretty high in a given location, and we have the capacity to adjust the size of a given location based on utilization. If we see, for example, in Japan, that a location is not fully utilized, we can remove columns or boxes, and we move them to another location so that we always get a pretty decent utilization.
We've seen the usage increasing both in the U.S. or I think I should say generally speaking, beyond what we've seen before based on the C2C cases and new use cases. We were very, you know, strongly focused on somebody orders something online, and we just distribute it. Now we're looking at return management, C2C as a services. In Japan, we started to deliver drugs for pharmacies. Obviously, each of those use cases come and augment the utilization of our lockers and therefore the value that people can extract out of them.
Still on lockers, do you need to expand specific renewal CapEx at the end of the contract period for your lockers? What is the average life for the lockers, and what is the current amortization length of the lockers? I'm looking at Laurent.
Mm-hmm.
More financial questions.
Yes. Very financial questions. At the end of the locker lifetime, yes, there will be another CapEx to replace the existing locker. The key question is when. Today, we have, I would say, a relatively conservative approach, which we need to have. We need to have a prudent approach to basically ask the question, which is, does the locker has a value at the end of the contract?
If we have a contract which is shorter than the lifetime of the locker, could we reuse it in another location with certainty? That being said, depending on the location, the timing of the contract, we would amortize the locker according to the standard contracts we have.
If you take the example of Japan, for example, where we have a good chunk of our rental parcel lockers, we have contracts over seven years, so we amortize our lockers over seven years. The first lockers we placed were in 2016. Now it's a reasonable question to ask if by 2023, those first locker will still be ready to use. We believe that there could be an upside here, which would mean keeping the same material and continuing or renewing the same existing contract for one to three years eventually.
The last question so far on lockers. Is Amazon a direct competitor for you, or do you work only in their closed ecosystem?
It's actually a very good question, because we generally see Amazon obviously into the parcel lockers. It's true that they sometimes, or in the U.S., I should say, some countries use the lockers exclusively for their own product. If that's the case, it's not fully a competitor because they have an integrated approach. Their customers order online and deliver in their own lockers. Actually, Amazon is also leveraging some of our own parcel lockers, like in Japan, where even though they have a network, it's a small network, and some of the package is being delivered through different carriers that are using our own network.
There it's more that they are like any other brand online, and they need to find the most relevant, cost-effective way to be able to deliver the package. If that's the case, they're not a competitor. They could actually be a customer or partner.
Moving on to ICA now. After the full SaaS transition of ICA, how much on-license mix do you envision to keep as a run rate compared to the 20% revenue mix of 2021?
Ultimately, I would say, our goal is to have zero. The question is the pace at which we move from the 14% we reported this year to the zero. One of the item that remains in these licenses is the existing accounts, notably the large accounts, that have earlier purchased perpetual licenses and to which we are upselling some modules. Of course, we are not closing the door of the ability to upsell and make further business with them. Between last year, at 20% of total revenue, to 14%, we've declined by seven points. We expect that this trend will continue. In the midterm, short to midterm, mid-single digit probably is the plan target.
In the longer run, obviously, we expect that this turns to a very limited and minimal ratio of the total revenue of ICA.
Still on ICA, can you give us some color on Beanworks and YayPay figures following the integration?
We don't disclose as such Beanworks-YayPay financials. We mentioned that on accounts payables and accounts receivable, we made more than 70% growth compared to last year. It's a tremendous growth, and I think we are very happy to see that the curve is materializing and that those two business are becoming significant. As far as I can remember, we gave some color on the size of Beanworks' expected activity for this year. In the press release just following the acquisition, we are mentioning about EUR 7 million of revenue. Considering that YayPay is smaller than Beanworks, it gives you a good idea of the size of both companies together.
Last question on ICA, what is the part of the proprietary solution in the software portfolio?
Today, our four main platform, Impress, Inspire, YayPay, Beanworks are owned 100% by us. It was the full purpose of developing ICA is to be in full control of our IP stack. That being said, we do resell and we have partnership to resell some third-party technology today. The main one being the one we have with the JV with Esker, which is today mostly being resold in the French market still today. I would say probably above 85% of the total sales represent our own IP, which is gonna continue to increase naturally in the coming years.
Mail, to finish off with our solution, how do you feel about the Q4 figures for Mail? Are you satisfied of your performance considering the shortage and freight headwinds?
It's a good question, and I think Laurent already touched on that, so I'll go quick. We had a very good performance in Q4 for the Mail because we did deliver at least what we wanted to deliver. Actually at 1% decline in the first quarter after pretty strong year last year without the rebound of H1. It was a more normalized H2.
We are obviously very happy. Happy because we have made, I think, clearly outpaced the competition. Even happier to your specific question because the bookings were even stronger, and therefore, there are bookings that we even had in Q4 that we have not been able to deliver because of the supply chain tension. It's a positive and negative.
We're obviously happy because the performance could have been even better if we had delivered those machines. At the same time, which shows that we're still gonna have some lingering issues on supply chain moving into Q1 and Q2 and Q3, and we're gonna have to be extremely also careful the same way we've been in H2 last year in ensuring timely deliveries in Q1 and Q2.
Moving on to the strategy. Have you completed your M&A cycle? If you envision a new deal, what would be the segment, ICA or PLS?
Good question. We have been, I think, very clear on that, so I'll be a little bit quick. We've made the necessary investment in acquisition, very targeted, very specific to build up the offer that we felt we didn't have or the capability to build ourselves for the software with the acquisition of YayPay, now Beanworks. For parcel locker, smartly, I think, identifying the leader in the U.S. market, which we felt was the biggest market in terms of opportunities for us, and we did that early on in 2019. We moved into a phase today where we wanna reap the benefit of those acquisitions, do the integration like we've done this year, and set the company on a steady course organically.
We're not gonna say we're never gonna do acquisition again, but our focus clearly is on an organic focus and benefiting from the integration of those companies.
In divestment, regarding additional operation, should we expect new divestments?
We are focused clearly on repositioning the group fully on our core and main solution, as you know. In Additional Operations, we have mostly today actually some activities of our mail-related business for some export countries. We have some parcel locker activity that we actually like, the deal with DHL in Sweden, that is not accounted in our PLS number at major operations level. There is the remaining few, not necessarily core activities. We'll continue to make sure that Additional Operations is contributing to the strategic goals of the company.
We have two more questions, maybe one for Laurent. Can you give us a guidance on 2022, 2024? I think it means 2023 on the G&A expenses between the profit margin of the solutions and the current EBIT.
We don't guide specifically, I think, on those metrics. That being said, you've seen that we've made strong efforts, and also we committed to continue leveraging the synergies of our support function to support our solutions. Of course, this includes finance, but not only. It also includes the real estate portion, on which you saw the CapEx that we have limited the renewal of the real estate contracts we had. We have also closed a range of offices in the U.S. last year, and we continued this year. We will continue to make as much effort as we can to deliver the full group commitment on the EBIT trajectory. That includes obviously considering the reduction of costs and the continued reduction of costs in the G&A side.
Last but not least, you stated that you could do some buybacks if you had opportunity during your plan. Considering the present low valuation and cash generation, have you considered any buyback instead of the increase in the dividend? Is the buyback approach still valid or will dividend payment should prevail?
That's a very good question actually. We have clearly stated in our capital allocation policy that Laurent presented at the Capital Markets Day that we would look every year at excess cash, if we have any. If we have excess cash, how to best leverage this cash, whether we had opportunities organically to invest into the company, whether there could be some strategic or acquisition or targeted acquisition opportunities, or whether obviously we could return it to the shareholders.
If we could return it to the shareholders, in which way would be the best way through dividend, obviously share buybacks. That's naturally a question that the board reviews on a regular basis. We have not made a decision on the share buyback at this stage.
We're just at the first year of the three YP, the Capital Markets Day phase that we have described from 2021 to 2023. It's probably a little early. That being said, maybe mid plan or even 2022, that's definitely something that we will continue to look at it on an ongoing dynamic way, recognizing that, you know, having a low share price is obviously a great opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
To potentially return to increase the return to our shareholder if we can leverage the extra cash.
Thank you, Geoffrey. There's no further questions.
Great. Thank you, Laurent. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you.
I think this.
You may now disconnect your line