Good evening and good afternoon to all of you, and thank you very much for joining this call to discuss Quadient sales performance in the third quarter and the first nine months of 2021. I'm Geoffrey Godet, CEO of Quadient. I am joined on this call by Laurent du Passage, our CFO. During this call, I will be referring to the slide presentation that can be downloaded from our investor relations website. It complements the press release that we have published today after close of trading. Starting with today's agenda on slide three, I will first provide you with an overview of Quadient's key sales and business achievement for the first nine months of 2021. As you will see, our nine-month revenue performance was strong with organic growth above 7%.
We have continued to successfully execute Quadient's Back to Growth strategy across all our core solutions and geographies during the period, thanks mainly to a few points. The first one is a continuous strong commercial momentum across all solutions with a large number of new customer wins in the first nine months of the year. The second point, an accelerated shift to subscription-based model across both software and parcel locker solutions. The third point is we have continued synergies between businesses in line with our strategy. Laurent will provide you with a more detailed review of our nine-month sales performance. Next, I will share with you our updated outlook for full year 2021. Finally, I will be happy to take your question with Laurent.
Moving to slide five, we are pleased with the strong sales performance we achieved in the first nine months, as I mentioned earlier, delivering organic revenue growth in excess of 7% year-over-year. As already mentioned, at the time of our H1 result announcement, part of this performance reflects a favorable comparison basis versus H1 last year, due, as you know, to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns. More importantly, this is also the result of all the strategic decision we implemented last year in the deepest moment of the health crisis by voluntarily maintaining our marketing and go-to-market capabilities, as well as our innovation efforts in order to fully benefit from the economic recovery. Naturally, I take this opportunity to thank all Quadient employees around the world for their resilience, hard work, and full commitment to supporting our customers.
Before presenting in more details Quadient's key business achievements, I just want to share with you some key numbers to assess the strengths of our performance so far. Starting with Intelligent Communication Automation, our software solution, in line with our strategy of building an even more recurring SaaS cloud business model, our subscription related revenue increased by more than 20%. Let me repeat, more than 20% growth. This growth was driven by SaaS and volume-based solutions for small, medium-sized, and large customers with an even higher growth rate across our recently acquired cloud-based financial automation solution. I'm referring to our accounts receivable and accounts payable acquisitions. Our software commercial momentum has also remained very strong.
With a gain of more than 2,000 net new customers in the first nine months of the year, and most of which, thanks to our cross-sell with our Mail Related sales channel. This net new customer gains has even accelerated in our third quarter over Q2 and even Q1 this year. Moving to parcel locker solution, we posted a strong nine-month performance with an organic growth of 22.5%.
This reflects a sustained increase in hardware sales that was mainly thanks to the completion of the Lowe's U.S. rollout in the first half of the year, and it also reflects the contribution from a subscription-related revenue, thanks to the expansion of our global network with more than 2,200 new installations in the first nine months of this year, and bringing our total install base over 15,500 parcel lockers for the first time. Lastly, regarding Mail-Related Solutions, we recorded a sustained growth in hardware sales of 17.6%, and mainly reflecting the strong recovery we experienced, in particular in North America, and a good traction with the new customer acquisition so far this year. We achieved a strong revenue performance overall for the first nine months of 2021.
Taking into account a much higher comparison basis for the third quarter, our Q3 performance was softer than in H1 and fully in line with our expectation. As you will see in the next slide, our commercial momentum was strong in the third quarter. Moving to slide six, our cloud-based software business continues to grow. I'm proud of our team and thankful to our growing base of customers and partners who trust us. In the third quarter only, we added over 800 net new customers to our Intelligent Communication Automation software business. This means that we acquired and signed an average of 13 new software contracts each business day in the third quarter alone. This acceleration in net new customers gain compared to Q1 and even Q2.
To be specific, out of these more than 800 net new software customers, we gain more than 180 of them new customers from the financial automation solution in the third quarter alone. This is also the result of the great traction that we experience with our accounts payable and accounts receivable solution as our customers naturally, increasingly look to automate their financial processes. The usage of our cloud-based solution increased in Q3 across the board. Communication volume with our recently announced Impress solution and the volume of our processed payments resulted in a combined growth of more than 26% in platform usage in the third quarter versus the second quarter of this year.
Thanks to the synergies in our product portfolio and our sales organization, I want to remind you that 60% of those net new software customers are coming from the cross-selling of our MRS channel. Most of these customers are existing mailing customers which opted to use our software technology to address their digital needs with Quadient. I think this is just a further evidence of the value that our software portfolio brings to our mailing customers on the one hand, but it also demonstrate the strong capability of our mail-related solution sales professionals that are able to cross-sell software and hardware into their existing customer base. Additionally, I wanted to point out that we recently hosted our flagship customer event called Inspire Days, and we had a record level of attendance this year with over 2,200 participation and registration.
We had presentation from analysts, customers, partners, and obviously, Quadient experts on the value of optimizing customer communications and experiences. Our effort to help companies digitize their processes and their communication have been further recognized on the market as Quadient has recently ranked as one of the largest French software companies by consultancy firm EY and the Professional Software Industry Association, Numeum. The last point I want to make on this slide is that I have already flagged the more than 20% growth we recorded in our subscription-related revenue in the first nine months of the year. Another way I think to look at it is to see the accelerated growth we experience in our annual recurring revenue or ARR.
Our ARR grew from EUR 123 million at the end of the last year to EUR 141 million at the end of the third quarter. This is a strong achievement, I think, which also reflect an ARR growth acceleration in the third quarter alone. Moving to slide seven, as we move to our mail-related solution. In addition to several countries, we recently expanded our iX and cloud-based, what we call smart solution in Canada. This solution revolutionize mail center by combining basically leading-edge technology to improve the customer interaction and their business processes. Those innovative products are allowing us to have many success across our regions and also recently in government, in healthcare, and in insurance verticals. We are able to do so by combining our innovative hardware solution and our ICA software offerings.
As you could see on the chart, the share of this new generation smart device grew from 4.9% of the installed base at the end of last year to 11.3% at the end of the third quarter. Another example of the synergies is our recently acquired 10 new high-volume mail services providers as new customers in the third quarter, and most of them are also leveraging our ICA software solutions with Inspire or Impress. This is another differentiating synergy in our go-to-market to combine again our hardware and software offering. These new contracts are across all major regions, including France, Belgium, United Kingdom, and the United States.
As we focus also on customer satisfaction and our relationship with our customers, we're very happy to announce that Quadient's growth in MRS sales significantly outpace the key market players for the first 9 months of 2021. This is a great achievement by the teams. Moving to slide 8. We're also proud to announce today for the first time that Quadient has exceeded over 15,100 parcel locker installations thanks to more than 600 new units being deployed in the third quarter alone. We are seeing great activity across our 4 verticals and new geographies. We're also benefiting from the adoption of our innovation, like our open network and our Parcel Pending Lite solution.
Take an example in Japan. We continue to make progress with more than 6,200 units installed so far, and over 200 new installs of Parcel Pending Lite deployed just in Q3 again. As we move into the retail vertical, if we take the example of Japan, we have exciting project related to people now being able to pick up prescription medicine in our parcel locker solutions. We are also pleased to announce that we recently won a very key competitive tender with Decathlon in France. Lastly, the Lowe's project, also a retail distribution organization expansion, has now also been completed in Canada for an additional 179 stores. If we now go to the property management industry, we now have over 5,600 units installed in the United States alone.
What's more impressive, I think, is that we see obviously a continuous growth in the usage of the U.S. network with more than 10 million parcels that went through our network in the third quarter of 2021 alone. Why is this important? This represents an 18% growth over Q3 last year, which was already a peak in utilization related to the usage of e-commerce during COVID-19. We also are seeing good momentum in U.K. and France in this new segment. If we take another segment, the universities and corporate segment now, we obviously have synergies with our MRS customer base and sales channels, and we continue to benefit from a strong traction in the U.S. with more than 330 units installed and new deals signed in France and the U.K. again.
Last but not least, we continue to see a very strong pipeline of large tenders and such across all regions, which I believe bodes pretty well for the future, not mentioning all the large contracts we have already secured and that have not been fully deployed. This concludes my review of Quadient's key business highlights that I wanted to share with you. I am now handing over to Laurent to discuss our 2021 nine-month sales performance.
Thank you, Geoffrey. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. I am Laurent du Passage. I am Quadient's Chief Financial Officer, and I will walk you through our 2021 9 months revenue figures. Starting with slide 10, Quadient Q3 2021 revenue is almost stable compared to Q3 2020. When looking at the organic growth at the center of the graphic, hence when you remove on the left side of the chart, the gray bar, a negative scope effect for EUR 12 million, which is mostly relative to the portfolio reshaping we've been going through with the impact of the divestment of Australia and also automated packing system business at the end of H1.
Excluding on the right-hand side of the chart, the gray bar, favorable currency effect for the first time of the year due to the dollar increase against euro, which amounts to EUR two million. This organic stability is all the more remarkable as we had a strong comparison basis in Q3 last year, particularly for parcel lockers. While in ICA this year, we have further accelerated our transition to SaaS. This has been allowed by a particularly resilient Mail-Related Solutions evolution this quarter. When moving to next slide 11, we can see the same revenue bridge for the cumulative nine months period where organic growth stays very strong for the group at +7.2% year to date. Each one of our three solutions and additional operations contributing by 12 to 13 billion of incremental organic revenue to date.
Total reported revenue stands at EUR 752 million for the nine months. It's up EUR 9 million versus last year reported revenue as our more than EUR 50 million of organic revenue growth is offset by EUR 25 million of scope and EUR 18 million of currency impact. I will now walk you through each of the segments in the next slides. Moving to slide 12, ICA, our software division, accounts for EUR 147 million revenue over the nine months, and it has grown by 9.8% over the period. The demand for cloud-based solution is high, and it's reflected by the 30% SaaS growth in small and medium businesses, which includes the 69% growth in financial automation solutions, accounts receivable and account payable. For large accounts, subscription-related revenue grew as well by 13% year-on-year.
These trends result in ICA revenue mix continuing to move more and more towards a subscription-related revenue from 60% back in 2020 to 67% just in the nine months of 2021, and even 69% if you look at just Q3. It has a continued year-on-year growth of 20% when you look at this absolute value of subscription-related revenue. To the opposite, we are showing a lower perpetual license revenue that now only accounts for 14% of our software revenue over the nine months. Although one large deal was booked in Q2, as we mentioned during our H1 result. This mainly explains the dynamic by quarter at the bottom left, where you see Q3 revenue evolution in line with Q1 level in terms of growth, plus 6%.
While it was particularly dynamic in terms of bookings of subscription, and it's not yet directly reflected in the top line, but when you look at the annual recurring revenue, it has significantly increased in three months, as shown earlier by Geoffrey. Moving to slide 13, with EUR 481 million of revenue in nine months, Mail Related Solutions is showing a 2.8% growth over the period. That's thanks to the strong recovery, 17.6% to date, in hardware sales against last year. When you look at the quarterly evolution at the bottom left, the stability of revenue level for this activity is particularly remarkable. In Q3 2021, we compare ourselves to less favorable base. You remember last year, Q3 included the catch-up effect versus the H1 of last year.
However, MRS still has shown this year a resilient -1.8% evolution in Q3, thanks to strong traction in NORAM, which was the case already in H1, but also this time in many European countries. The sustained growth in hardware sales to date is favored by a low comparison base over H1 last year, but the result as well of a strong recovery with new customer acquisition. This trend was pursued in Q3. At the same time, our backlog is very strong and at the highest level of the year at the end of October 2021, mostly resulting from some delays in the supply chain. Overall, we see a strong resilience in subscription-related revenue coming from our installed base, in spite of lower usage, mostly supplies. Now moving to slide 14.
Over nine months, the last major solution, parcel locker solution accounts for EUR 62 million revenue and still records the highest growth to date of our solutions with a +22.5% year-over-year. When looking at the revenue phasing since beginning of the year, Q1 was fueled by the end of Lofts contract delivery, notably. Q2 was not impacted by large projects. Q3, despite the revenue growing by 8% compared to Q2 this year, compares itself with a very high Q3 2020, characterized by the start of the same Lofts delivery, and hence shows a decline of 4%.
The strong double-digit growth of 20% year-on-year of subscription-related revenue is fueled by the steady and intense expansion of the installed base, more than 15,000 lockers, as mentioned by Geoffrey, notably in North America in 2020, but also by the increase of usage rate, which continued to increase post-2020 and post-COVID, I would say, intense period. Hardware sales was very dynamic in H1, continues to show a strong performance in Q3 despite comparison base. Like for MRS, Quadient finishes with high backlog in parcel locker end of Q3. Again, Quadient has now more than 15,000 lockers installed worldwide at the end of October 2021.
When summing all major solution, the three major solution we've just seen, we see that major operations accounts for EUR 689 million of revenue to date, and it's up by 5.8% year-on-year. When you look by geography on the pie chart at the bottom, North America accounts for 55% of major operation and has been growing by more than 7% year-on-year over nine months, particularly fueled by H1 performance. Many European countries with 40% of the revenue have shown a good momentum during Q3 and are growing now by 3.8% year to date. Last, international level is delivering a solid performance of +5.9%, and it's notably thanks to the expansion of the Japanese locker base.
Subscription-related revenue accounts for about 70% of this revenue, and all categories of revenues have grown year-on-year to date with a significant recovery in license and hardware as well as professional services, and finally, a 3.2% growth on subscription-related revenue. Now, if you look at the subscription-related revenue at major operation level at the bottom left chart, the combined growth engine subscription-related revenue growth more than offsets the decline in the recurring base of MRS that you can see in green. Moving to slide 16. As a summary of the group now, you see major operation that accounts for 92% of total revenue and keeps growing in terms of ratio, notably due to the continued additional operation portfolio reshaping, including the recent divestment of the automated packing systems activity end of July.
Additional operations accounts for EUR 62 million revenue to date, but only EUR 16 million for Q3 and represent only 6.5% in Q3 of group revenue within this quarter. Overall dynamic at group level remains very well oriented with a 7.2% growth over nine months as already mentioned. On Monday, 22nd of November, we announced the successful issuance of an equivalent of EUR 270 million of new Schuldschein private placement under very favorable conditions. This new issuance objective was to anticipate the OCEANE repayment planned in June 2022, as well as the 2022 Schuldschein maturity, which you can see on the right-hand chart, top right-hand chart.
With a deal volume that was up from EUR 100 million to EUR 270 million, we took the opportunity to immediately repay part of 2022 and 2023, three Schuldschein maturities, EUR 130 million to be precise. The margin that we have for this new Schuldschein is lower by 25-35 basis points compared to historic cash flow issuance for a given maturity, which obviously will result in a reduction of the group's average cost of debt. The new maturities range from 5-7 years, extending the average maturity of our debt profile. As a reminder, as of July 31, 2021, we had EUR 322 million of cash and EUR 400 million of undrawn credit facility. After this operation, we have a positive net cash impact of EUR 140 million post-transaction.
As a reminder, we have also strong future cash flows amounting to EUR 575 million of a well spread leasing portfolio and EUR 183 million of rental future cash flows. This concludes my section, and now handing over to Geoffrey for 2021 outlook.
Thank you, Laurent, for this review. Let's move to slide 19 so that we could go over Quadient's outlook for the full year 2021. As you can see, we have updated several times our guidance during the year. In a year of recovery, where we're still facing increasing uncertainty, our goal has been all along to provide you with the most accurate vision we had and to share this with you in the most transparent way, as we always do. In 2021, we did well so far to benefit not only from this much improved macro environment, but also from positive dynamics in terms of increasing parcel volumes and last mile delivery needs, as well as from an increasing need for companies to further digitalize their business communication flows and processes.
However, if the economy has strongly improved, this rebound also comes with its challenges. The key one for us is the stress that it has created on the supply chain. It has a direct impact in limiting our ability to deliver timely our hardware equipment to our customers, not mentioning some pressure from the cost increase and availability of components, as well as you know, the increase in shipping costs. Now, thankfully, our business model is both highly recurring and increasingly exposed to software business. For part of it, we still rely on hardware placement to renew and/or increase our install base of mail equipment and parcel lockers.
As a matter of fact, we ended the third quarter with a particularly high strong backlog, meaning that the supply chain issues have already started to weigh on our performance because some of the backlog has not been able to be recognized in Q3. Today, we expect this could continue, sorry, over Q4. Consequently, to reflect this uncertainty and out of caution, we have chosen to slightly adjust our guidance for the full year. At the top line level, we now see organic growth at around 4% versus the above 4% previously stated. We see no impact, obviously, regarding our software business. We continue to expect a continued strong momentum in subscription-related revenue, driven even by a further acceleration of the successful shift of our model, as Laurent mentioned, from license to SaaS.
In our mail-related business, we continue to expect a low single-digit organic sales decline in Q4 with a strong backlog at the end of Q3 and with some uncertainty regarding the level of reduction of our backlog in the first quarter. In parcel lockers, even with a good booking level anticipated and a stronger backlog at the end of Q3, our expectations are now a bit lower than they were at the end of H1 due to these supply chain constraints. Moving to the current EBIT organic growth, we're logically updating our guidance to around 5%-6% organic growth as opposed to above 6%. I take this opportunity, obviously, to remind you that restated from the various scope effects, the pro forma base in 2020 amounts to EUR 140 million.
As expected, we will continue to benefit from well-identified operating efficiencies in terms of real estate savings, simplification of our organizations, and further integration and synergies between our solutions. In conclusion, we're still shooting for a strong performance in 2021, including organic sales growth guidance that is still much higher than the initially expected when at the beginning of the year, and a marginally better EBIT growth compared to our initial guidance given at the beginning of the year. Moving to slide 20. Let me now briefly discuss about Quadient's mid-term ambition by solution.
As a reminder, we shared during our last Capital Markets Day specific targets by solution for the 2021-2023 period. Starting with Intelligent Communication Automation, subscription-related revenue increased by 20.1% on an organic basis in the first nine months of 2021, which is fully in line with the 20%-25% subscription revenue CAGR target over the three-year plan. Regarding Mail-Related Solutions, organic revenue growth stood at +2.8%. It's a positive growth of 2.8% in the first nine months of 2021, which favorably obviously compares to the targeted -5% organic decline CAGR that we target over the three-year plan.
Lastly, for parcel locker solutions, we target an install base of more than 25,000 lockers by the end of the three-year plan, which represent an increase over 12,000 units compared to the 13,000 lockers we had at the end of 2020. In the first nine months of 2021, we achieved more than 2,200 of those new installations, bringing our install base now to over 15,100 units, as Laurent and I mentioned earlier. It's obviously a great achievement also in line with our ambition to scale fast our open network of parcel lockers. These installations do not include the strong backlog remaining on existing key contracts and the orders we obviously have received at the end of Q3. Moving to slide 21.
With regard to Quadient's 2021-2023 three-year plan, we naturally confirm our midterm targets. At a minimum, 3% organic sales CAGR over the period, 2021, 2023, and also obviously at a minimum mid-single digit organic current EBIT CAGR over 2021, 2023, for the period. This will conclude today's presentation, and Laurent and I are now happy to take your questions. Before we do so, I just want to remind you that you can submit your questions orally, directly through the conference call or in writing in English via the webcast interface.
All right. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question via telephone, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and you'll be advised when to ask your question. Again, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. All right, we've got some questions submitted in the queue. All right, our first question comes from the line of Mourad Lahmidi from Exane BNP Paribas . Mourad, go ahead with your question.
Yes, thank you and good evening, gentlemen. I had actually two questions about your guidance. At the top line level, maybe I missed that, but you said that MRS was going to decline low single digits in Q4. That means that the rest of the business is sharply down. I'm thinking about parcel lockers. I know that the comparison basis is high, but can you just give us some granularity in terms of the trends that you see in Q4 for ICA, MRS and PLS. Also, I know that you give a guidance in terms of EBIT like-for-like growth.
Just to understand much better the guidance, does it mean that in absolute term you are expecting an EBIT of between EUR 147 million and EUR 148 million, with a base at EUR 140 million, basically to expect the pro forma sale of additional operations? Is that the way to understand that guidance?
Cesar, I'm gonna try to take the first part of the question on the top line, and maybe, Laurent, you feel free to complement and take the second one on- Sure. On the EBIT. Yes. So yes, you're right, we expect a low single-digit decline for MRS, which obviously, is a very good news, because it's a very low level of decline and probably in the same line of Q3 with the potential uncertainty relating the backlog reduction. If you compare that low level of decline with even a pre-COVID situation, it shows the strong momentum that we currently have across MRS region. The booking has been pretty strong obviously in Q3. Actually the performance could have been slightly better if we could have delivered more of those products.
We end up in Q3 with even a higher backlog. We do anticipate that some of those tensions for MRS on the supply chain could continue as well in Q4, so we're not sure yet how much of the backlog we will be able to reduce. We obviously count so far with the continuation of the strong booking momentum that we see so far, even at the beginning of November, I mean, for November, for the beginning of December. On PLS, you're right. We did anticipate that at the beginning of 2021 in our earlier guidance. We have shared all along that we had a strong comparison basis related to the rollout of the new project lows last year.
In 2022, we started to roll out the Lowe's project in Q3. In Q4, which was probably one of the highest phase of the implementation, and it continued this year in Q1 in particular. Just as a reminder, last year in Q4 for parcel locker, if I remember right, Laurent, the organic growth rate of parcel locker was 88%. That's why when we refer to a pretty strong comparison basis, the 88% is the comparison basis I'm referring to. Obviously we anticipated that in Q4 PLS would be negative naturally, even though in Q4, like in Q3, we will continue to install a pretty good level of new lockers like we did in Q3, continuing in Q4 with the same uncertainty that I have shared on the reduction of the backlog for NIS.
We have a little bit of similar situation in parcel locker, mostly related to the U.S. base, where the backlog has significantly increased in Q3. We're gonna have probably some room in Q4 of what can be delivered in addition obviously to the new bookings. Then finally, on the software side, we had a pretty strong year all along in terms of new acquisition of new customers that I was referring in particular for the third quarter. This has been actually accelerating and increasing in Q3 even compared to Q2. We see no reason why it shouldn't change in Q4. We see strong momentum getting into Q4 of new customers.
Where we see a big difference for the software solution is obviously same thing, the ratio of license versus new booking in terms of subscription. Q4 being traditionally the highest quarter historically in terms of license, we see the shift on the bookings continue to progress the way we want it potentially even a little bit higher, which is a good thing in terms of subscription versus license. That being said, we see the same level of momentum getting into our software business for Q4. I hope I covered the main point. Laurent, I'll let you complement and get to the second part of the question.
I think the top line is very clear, Geoffrey. From an EBIT standpoint, Mourad, yes, I can confirm that the comparison, the starting point is EUR 140 million as we mentioned at the end of H1, which is a pro forma of last year, basically excluding anything we divested and including what we eventually acquired since then. When we guide again around 5%-6%, it's not between 5%-6%, just to be clear. Yes, 5% would lead to 147, and six percent would lead to 148.4 at last year rate. When we say around, it doesn't mean that it's only between, it could be slightly higher, slightly lower as well, considering the uncertainty that Geoffrey just mentioned.
Okay. Thank you very much. That's very clear. Thank you.
You're very welcome.
All right. We have another question in the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Nicolas Tabor from Jefferies. Nicolas, go ahead with your question.
Good morning, gentlemen. Can you hear me well?
Very well. Good morning. Good afternoon, Nicolas.
Great. Thank you. Just maybe coming back on the PLS momentum. I mean, you said you won the tender with the Decathlon, Lowe's, you completed a new extension. So I was just trying to understand what is yet to be delivered within those large orders that you flagged and which of these, including Yamato, for instance, in Japan, and which of these are hardware sales and which are just rental models that we can have an idea of how the top line will develop for PLS in the next year. And then the other question would be on the if we take a two-year stack organic growth view. I mean, it's not that easy to reconcile of course with the change in scope.
I felt that in Q3 basically the two-year stack view was quite stable with H1, which so continuous momentum as you were saying, is it the right way to look at it or is it tweaked by the change in scope? In Q4 if I look at your guidance for top line, is it right to assume that that means that the two-year stack is slightly deteriorating in Q4 due to those external factors such as supply chain disruption and so on? Thank you very much.
Okay. I take some of it, Laurent. I start on the contract maybe, and then we can see how we take the next.
Yes.
Part of the question. Thank you, Nicolas, for this question. It's good that we have the opportunity to clarify. On the large contract, obviously, we're not gonna give the specific numbers for confidential reason, so I'm gonna group them. If I remember well, we had some contract obviously in France with some carriers, two main carriers in France. We also have obviously some contract in Japan. We said that roughly we were looking at 5,000 installation, knowing that the number of installation could vary based on the configuration, but that's the basis in term of comparison that we shared with you. That was obviously from the end of last year, I mean, this year.
That's for the Parcel Pending Lite. To be clear, all of these are on the subscription model, so they are not on a hardware model contrary to Lowe's, so full subscription. We have started to implement them both in France and in Japan. In Japan, I think I was mentioning for Q3 there was 200 equivalent of them just in Q3 alone. I don't have top of mind the exact number of what is left of those 5,000 equivalent, but we're probably less than halfway. There's probably more than half, probably a little bit around 3,000. Laurent, is that right? Probably a good ballpark, I think, on that, which is obviously part of the increase in the backlog.
When we talk about the backlog, there's the backlog on those large contracts, but there's also the backlog of the other customers orders that we receive, and that's the one in the U.S. because in the U.S., obviously, it's not accounted for in those large contracts. In the U.S., we also have the backlog that has increased from the other segments, in particular on the residential segment, where we've seen some of the time to be able to implement, obviously, a little bit longer, but also the result of a stronger booking activity. This is why as we get into Q4, as we get into the beginning of next year, we obviously have significant amount of work on the backlog, on the contract, and we obviously look at the opportunities that we have in terms of new bookings in Q4.
I have mentioned that we have a pretty strong pipeline of large opportunities that also will help us continue the strong growth that we expect next year and the year after for the parcel locker. Do you wanna take the second part, Laurent?
Nicolas, I will try to answer your second part of the question. Let me know if I didn't get the question right. I think your question was basically how do you see the two-year type of evolution of our revenue, and notably in Q3 and Q4. You are asking basically if there is a deterioration in Q4 expected compared to the trend over two years that we had in, for example, Q3. As a quick reminder, Q3 last year was -3%. Q4 last year was -1%. Organic growth, it's a bit tricky because obviously you have a lot of scope moves, but I think the organic growth quarter-over-quarter is a fair way to look at the compound evolution over two years. Q3 this year almost stable and -0.4%.
Q4, you mentioned it, and we mentioned the full year guidance, and we expect probably a negative evolution over Q4. For me, it doesn't mean that it's very different from the -3% and -4% we've seen in Q3, because we had the -1%, which is obviously way better than the -3%. One of the reasons, obviously, is the lost contract and the 88% increase we had in parcel locker in Q4 last year, which was obviously disclosed as such, and I don't think was replicable as such with such a comparison base.
That being said, you have a small thing that also kicks in, and that explains also that portion, is that we used to have a Q4, notably on ICA, very much fueled with large on-premise perpetual license deals. The more we are shifting to our solution, the more we suffer basically from that induced decline in revenue. The impact for Q4 will be obviously higher than other quarters because the pie and the share of the license, the perpetual licenses we used to have in Q4, will be all the more smaller and will impact all the more the overall growth of ICA. That being said, we still expect a good quarter for ICA. The bookings are particularly well-oriented, and we've seen and we are basically embarking a revenue for the coming years.
There was maybe one thing, Nicolas, I think, to address your point on the locker. If we look over two years, I can't remember if it's Q3 or over two years versus Q3 or even in H2 to H2. Even if you take into account that Lowe's project in between net-net, we will be more than 20% growth for the parcel locker over two years. Knowing that the parcel locker contract with Lowe's was upfront on hardware, whereas most of what we do today is obviously more towards the subscription too and rentals.
Great. That's very clear. Thank you very much.
You're welcome, Nicolas.
All right. There are no further questions in the queue. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad now. All right. We've got a follow-up question from the line of Mourad Lahmidi from BNP Paribas. Mourad, go ahead with your follow-up question.
Yes. Thank you. Thanks again. Just to follow up on my question on your EBIT guidance. You mentioned that the starting point is EUR 140 million pro forma for the sale of additional operations. Maybe you can help us and split that out between major operation and additional operations. Is there any reason for that split to have changed on a pro forma basis?
In fact, Mourad, it is mostly on additional operations from a divestment standpoint. Obviously, you have also the acquisition of Beanworks and YayPay between beginning of 2020 and now that basically have been done in the meantime and needs to be integrated as well. So we don't disclose as such this bridge. I mean, it's. We don't guide basically on major operations EBIT if that's the question. We guide on EBIT overall at group level, and that's what we have for this year and for the plan of the three coming years.
The changes are, as you mentioned, on YayPay and Beanworks on major operation.
Yes.
Whereas the divestment of the Graphics and the CVP and the ProShip this year is an additional operation.
Additional operation. Correct.
Okay. Because from my point of view, I mean, the divestment of additional operations doesn't change the EBIT of major operations.
Exactly.
If I'm correct.
That's correct. Yes, you're correct.
That's EUR 153 million. That means that additional operations on a pro forma basis on a negative EUR 13 million, right?
No, no.
Am I right to say that?
No, no. There are two things. First thing is that this pro forma excludes the earn-out reversal for 6.5 million EUR of last year, which is a one-off that we don't consider to be included in the comparison growth year-over-year. That's part of the answer on the major operation. Second is that to compare apples with apples, as we have acquired Beanworks and YayPay in the meantime, you need also to add the EBIT of Beanworks and YayPay for the equivalent period last year.
Clear. Okay, that means that Beanworks and YayPay are loss-making. Am I right to say that?
Before the acquisition, definitely yes.
Yes. Okay.
That's the last.
Are you looking at some improvement at those two assets?
On Beanworks and YayPay, this has been the plan all along, to be able to scale those businesses within major operations, which basically require some cross-selling effort and training in the different respective countries. Being able to have them in a stabilized level in terms of R&D. As a result, we should be able to expect some strong improvement of profitability over time, this year, next year, and the year after, naturally, with the increase of the profitability that we expect from the install base. Because as those businesses are install-based businesses on a subscription basis, the higher the install base, then the higher the profitability you have from during a given period of time.
Okay. Again, on major operations, your guidance for 2021, I mean, if I'm not wrong, it means that you have some margin dilution for the major operations. Can you maybe give us the main moving parts for that?
Before, Laurent, maybe just and so you just wanted to add a comment on the first one on the ICA software solution in terms of profitability, we gave not only a top-line guidance, obviously, on the growth momentum that we expect to maintain on the subscription basis over the plan. Same thing in terms of profitability, we said that we expected the profitability to go from the profitability of this year or last year, if you want, to up to 30% solution profitability. The improvement of profitability is not just on Beanworks and YayPay, but it's also on Impress, on Inspire, it's on the entire portfolio that we expect to have.
The impact on the profitability, what is this year compared to last year, is also related to the change of model, right? As we have less license and we focus on the shift to subscription, in particular in the first year, part of the change in profitability of the degradation, if you want, is related to the change of model. Mechanically, that's something that will also help us go back to a higher level of profitability, just apples to apples in 2022 and 2023.
Mourad, here if I understand well, you are trying to see if we have margin dilution at major operation level and over the full year 2021 without having yet done the H2 fully. It's probably quite complex to estimate over additional operation that has changed scopes between end of H1 and now. The full EBIT of this portion. The only thing we can say, I think, at this stage is guiding at more than 4%, around 4% of top line for the full year and guiding at around 5%-6% in EBIT induces an increase in terms of margin at group level. This increase would be of a couple of basis points.
In other words, if there is a slight delta between additional operation and major operation, is gonna be limited, and we expect at least a margin broadly in line with what we had last year in terms of percentage on both parts.
The thing is that you gave us the starting point, EUR 140 million, but not really the margin. Maybe if you can share the margin, we have all your input in hand to forecast.
We don't guide on the EBIT margin today because obviously we have a mix of solution, right? The three could evolve slightly differently. This is why I think we're gonna need to wait until the H2 is completed. What we do know is obviously based on the mix and the volume and the expectation that we have, that overall, we're gonna be able to improve the profitability at group level. Some improvement that has been ongoing on additional operation. Obviously, by maintaining the profitability in a pretty tight range on MRS, we do expect on a regular basis to have both Parcel Locker and the software to be able to improve in terms of profitability.
After that, we have different phasing during the year, different comparison basis, and that's why we're gonna wait, I think, I'm sure to see H2. With the guidance of this year, overall, the profitability will likely improve as we expect the EBIT growth to be slightly higher than the growth of the top line.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
The next question on the line comes from Patrick Jousseaume Patrick, when you are ready, your line's now open.
Yes. Good evening, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. It's about the new organic sales growth guidance. What impact of the current observation tensions are embedded in this guidance? Maybe expressed in million EUR, which is another-
To the question of what would have been the guidance without this situation, tensions higher or in line with the one you had on the twenty-seventh of September.
Let's take the backlog. I think it's a great way to explain it. In Q3, we had the backlog that instead of reducing or being stable, which usually we would expect in H2, for example, in Q3, the backlog has increased by EUR 5 million. Two things, it's been increasing quarter-over-quarter this year. It's at the highest level this year, but even compared to the previous years. In Q3 alone, it had increased by EUR 5 million. In an ideal world, which never is, you could have said that the booking and the performance, if we had maintained the backlog at the same level, could have been augmented by this value or some of it, obviously.
This is where we don't know, obviously, getting into Q4, the level a little bit of uncertainty. That's why we try to obviously, out of caution, to try to take into account that it could repeat itself. It doesn't have to be. When we look at our supply chain constraint or issues that we see, we obviously had additional issues in Q3 that may be either stabilizing or improving getting into Q4. But it's not just us and what we can do, it's also what our customers can do and the planification on their side, whether they can receive and install, obviously, the hardware. There's many interdependent aspect that make us look at that range.
If you take that range of EUR 5 million in Q3, you could either double it in Q4, let's say it's the same level, that would be EUR 10 million. That would be to some extent on a worst-case scenario. Maybe we can maintain the EUR 5 million and have a more stabilized view. Or we could improve altogether and have actually an additional benefit in Q4 and for the second part of this year.
Okay. Thank you.
Just to complement, sorry, that's on the top line. You know, the gross margin on the hardware is pretty decent. There's the mechanical impact on the EBIT. This is why we have also looked at the EBIT range, logically, from those few millions of delta that could happen on the hardware. If they do happen, that will help us be on the higher end, obviously, of the range we gave. If it doesn't happen to be on the lower end of the range that we have given.
Perfect. Thank you.
You're very welcome.
Once again, star one, if you do wish to ask a question. The next caller is a follow-up question from Nicolas Tabor. Nicolas, when you're ready, your line's now open.
Yes. Hello again. Just first to follow up on the previous question, the EUR 5 million incremental backlog, is it a next twelve months basis? Is it just a next quarter basis? I mean, would have been EUR 5 million over the next twelve months or basically over the next three months? How should we look at that? My other question was on the fixed cost base between the solutions profit and the EBITA. I think it was around EUR 96 million in H1, slightly down versus H2 and H1 2020. How should we think about it for H2 2021? Is it still going down? Is it stabilizing? I know you don't give guidance for the different solutions, but at least for the fixed cost base, how should we think about them? Thank you very much.
The first part on the backlog, this is really the backlog we would have expected to be able to deliver within the quarter. These are really orders that within a reasonable amount of time could have been there. It's not the backlog like the large contract that we were referring to on the parcel locker. Just as an explanation on that, when we mentioned the increase of EUR 5 million in that backlog, we don't take in the calculation of our backlog, orders that cannot be delivered within six months. That's the limit, more or less. That means that some of the large contract that I referred to that may be implemented into next year are not included in the increase that I mentioned.
This is why it's a valid near-term backlog that has an impact on the near-term performance of the company.
Just a quick comment on the backlog. We have a rotation of this backlog. It's not the same backlog that, you know, we make sure that the aging of the backlog rotates and that we really install what has to be installed within the period of time. There is no toxicity as such in the backlog. It's healthy backlog that has been generated in the past three months for most of it, and it will be delivered in the next three months for about all of it. To your point, I think, Nicolas, your point was basically the difference between the solution profit and the EBIT, which is basically our G&A plus innovation cost. You were mentioning the EUR 95 million, I think, for H1.
Yes, we did a bridge that we shown in during H1 of the reduction of this bucket of EUR 7 million between H1 last year and H1 this year. A lot of that is related, as we mentioned at that time, to real estate termination. We've been closing actively during H2 of last year offices, notably in North America. Not using them, obviously, we were rationalizing them as well. As we started in H2 last year, obviously, it had a good impact of H1 this year. The impact will still be there in H2 this year, but at a probably lower pace, just from a comparison standpoint, effect.
That means basically slightly less of an impact, but still a slight decrease in fixed cost in H2, if I'm listening correctly?
Year-on-year comparison, if you compare, H2, GN innovation to H2, coming, GN innovation, the drop that we've seen in H1 will be potentially slightly lower, but there will still be a drop.
Okay. Then on the backlog, have you quantified some kind of range of the delay in months of timing that you're seeing for your backlog? I mean, you have the six months range, and I guess you had to review some of it and push back some of that backlog beyond the six months and therefore exiting the backlog. That must have driven the change in guidance. How much more time are you putting on most of your hardware sales and therefore pushing some out of the range? I mean, in terms of timing, if you can share millions of euros, I'm sure.
I think there's a few things. In terms of methodology and the way we calculate the backlog, nothing have changed. We didn't have to adjust it. Things are fairly consistent now for several years actually in that method. I think what you're referring to, and if I can express it from a business perspective, the impact from the delay of installation, we really took the brunt of the impact already in Q1 and in Q2, meaning that the average time we used to be able to deliver products, which in the case of the mailing business, it was a few days, if you want, sometimes max a week. For the bigger equipment, a little longer, but not much. Which is
We shared that already in H1, so that was the same feedback in H1 is more like a month or sometimes a month and a half. This is why that rotation is done usually within a quarter, obviously at the end of the quarter could spill over into the following quarter. This is why whatever increase in backlog that we are talking about is not related to the elongated time to deliver, just because we had stronger bookings. Knowing the time that it takes with the stronger bookings, considering the customers and on our side, we have not been able to deliver as much of that backlog within the third quarter. On the parcel locker, the timeline has always been a little longer. It's more around three months from an order to installation.
Since the beginning of the year, that timeframe in the H1, and we share that the same way, is over three months. It's more over four, five, six months now. This is why the impact, obviously, a lot of those has been taken into account already in H1. What we're looking at after our H1 guidance is really the incremental impact that we've seen in the three months of the third quarter, which is obviously the result of higher bookings, but just not recognized.
Okay. You mean that it's broadly, I mean, the delay is the same as in Hone, but the higher bookings have driven to push back some orders?
Exactly. Then after that, you have a cutoff period, obviously, for the last few weeks of a given month in the quarter, for the last month of the quarter. We have the same risk getting into Q4, whether or not some of the installation in the last two or three weeks of the month of January for us, as you know, we have two more months to go, could spill over or not into February.
Okay. I mean, you mean that the higher orders with the same clients, right? Because otherwise you could deliver to the clients you had who had already ordered, and you could still recognize that revenue, and you would just have to push back the new clients, let's say.
Mostly existing, same customers for PLS. It could be new customers for MRS, because the MRS cycle is obviously much shorter.
Okay. Just, I struggle to understand, I mean, if it's not more delayed, why asking more orders is delaying the rest that was already ordered and you already had in the backlog? It's just, that one thing I struggle to understand.
Because the delays could come from us or the customers at the end of the period of the quarter. There's no-
Okay, great. Thank you.
You're very welcome.
All right. There are no further questions in the queue. As a final reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad now.
Maybe, Laurent, we could pass if there's no additional question to the question we had on the webcast.
Yes. Thank you, Geoffrey. We have received a number of questions through the webcast, so let's answer to some of them. The first three questions come from David Sardon. Question number one, do you expect some supply chain disruption in early 2022? Second question, can you explain why your cash position is so high? Would it make sense to use it to further reduce the gross debt? Third question, can you disclose the biggest parcel locker tenders, and how are you positioned on them?
Okay. Many good questions, so I'll try to remember them. For the supply chain disruption in early 2022, it's obviously too early to anticipate. There are some encouraging signs happening now that, you know, make me obviously a little bit more confident about those things being less impactful in 2022. That being said, things could also change quickly. We've seen with the health situation, it could impact different areas, different ports, different shipping companies or even different regions of the world. I'll try to be cautious. Obviously for us, the high level of backlog can help on the one hand mitigate some of those issues as we get into next year, because we'll be able to continuously deliver to our customers.
I guess it's difficult to anticipate this time. I think for us it's probably more stabilized at this point. We need to see probably, you know, for the rest of the year if there will be further stabilization and improvement or if there is anything new that happen. On the larger pipeline, in terms of multiple, you know, key tenders that we have or that we're bidding on today in different regions of the world, this is what we referred to at the end of H1 already. We had a few more obviously since. We're talking usually when I talk about those large tenders, about large distribution chains, a bit like Lowe's that we had, so it would be large implementation of many lockers.
Whether they could be a hardware up front or subscription. They're more towards subscription to lately or with also big carriers. Carriers in most countries today are thinking actively and have issued RFPs or process that we obviously participate into about the rollout and the use of open network in most cases about the lockers. Obviously, when you talk about those large deals, you're gonna talk about several hundreds, like in the case of the Lowe's contract for a distribution chain to several thousands of lockers that could be included in each of those potential projects. Do you wanna take the-
Yes.
the rest of the question?
We take the one on the cash, which I think was the last one. At the end of H1, we don't discuss the cash position at the end of Qs previously, but at the end of H1 for example, we had EUR 322 million of cash at hand. We did raise EUR 270 million of Schuldschein, which in fact resulted in only EUR 140 million of additional cash because we benefited from an immediate repayment of some maturities from 2022 and 2023. That's what you can see on the chart page 17.
Which makes that after the operation, if we were to have the same cash as at end of H1, we would have a total of EUR 460 million of cash basically. When you look at the maturities that we have to come, we have about EUR 300 million to reimburse just between now and end of June next year. Which means that after June next year, we'd have left 160 million-ish amount of cash, which significantly decrease the amount of gross debt and the amount of cash at hand. That, I think, answers your question, David. Obviously to face CapEx potential CapEx program that we would have in parcel locker, and we currently have in parcel locker notably, we need to and have obviously the variation of working capital across the year.
We assume we need about EUR 100 million. We still have this, you're right, excess of EUR 60 million plus because we have also the cash generation as we go to this date. We have the opportunity to reimburse also potentially by anticipation some of our other Schuldschein variable rate, if it makes sense, every year, without charge. We can use it as well, early next year if needed and if the cash position is not required as such.
Thank you, Laurent. We have received some other questions from Olivier Lombard. You have already answered some of them. Maybe we can take this one. Can you explain why you track modernized asset base at your Mail Related Solutions business? Is it more profitable than previous generation?
Very good question, Olivier. The new smart device that we have several benefits. They're obviously connected, which is not necessarily the case with the older generation, and they come with a range of new capabilities in term of compliance with current or future requirement coming from the postal organizations. Obviously from those requirements compliance, a whole set of new capabilities that improve productivities for our customers, cost savings in particular. In addition to that, they also come with the connection obviously of our cloud platforms, in particular the S.M.A.R.T., which is the name S.M.A.R.T., cloud platform on the mailing side, which allows our customers to not only manage mail but also parcels, and do also a lot of optimization in term of cost and accounting, for those customers.
There's several features. By placing the new equipment, it's an opportunity for an upsell for us 'cause we're obviously capable to go and see an existing installed base of customers and providing them a new capability and upsell the new hardware, smart hardware. With the addition of the hardware, upsell those new software capabilities that are in high demand. We are getting to one existing revenue stream that yes, will be also more profitable, but more importantly, the capability to cross-sell a software package within the MRS business. I'm not talking about our ICA portfolio here. And that's another subscription revenue stream that we expect out of the software.
All in all, yes, the modernization of the base come with an expectation of progressive improvement on top line and obviously profitability.
Thank you. Another question from Olivier Lombard. Can you detail how much savings you will get from your latest refinancing?
Thank you, Olivier. I guess, this one is for me, Geoffrey.
No.
Olivier, we raised, again, EUR 270 million of Schuldschein private placement. We mentioned in the press release that the average rate was around 1.6% per annum. It's a combination of fixed variable, so it's at a given date, and it's mixed between USD and euro as well, which have different rates as well. If you just compare to the previously issued Schuldschein of 2017, 2019 notably, it's about 25 basis points below. If you do the quick maths, you could argue that it's 25 basis points times 270, couple of hundred thousand per year, probably 700, 800 thousand.
That being said, you need to just keep in mind that we use this additional cash to reimburse mostly OCEANE and Schuldschein maturities. It's not only Schuldschein. OCEANE as such is treated as an equity within our IFRS accounts. The payment of OCEANE yearly, I would say, rates are qualified as dividend in fact, so they don't appear in our P&L. It's necessarily significantly more expensive than the Schuldschein we just raised. You know because it's public and it's based on another report, we pay about EUR 8 million-EUR 9 million of equivalent dividend for this OCEANE yearly. That basically will be replaced by a significantly smaller amount.
If you take this EUR 267 million at 1.6%, that will give you the saving in cash, which is not the saving you will see on the P&L. Because again, this EUR 8.9 million doesn't appear on the P&L.
Thank you. Maybe a couple of additional question from Olivier Lombard. First one, have you reduced your business scope with Esker following the acquisition of YayPay and Beanworks? Second question, I think this relate to our Parcel Locker business. Considering your backlog, do you keep your CapEx at EUR 40 million for 2022 and 2023?
Okay. Let me take the one on Esker. We primarily through our joint venture that we have leverage the Esker technology thanks to the agreements that are in place to promote our Neotouch brand, which was mostly started in France. After that, historically speaking, from the French base, I believe other countries have started to develop also Neotouch. The Neotouch obviously is mostly related now to the in terms of comparable or different capabilities related to hybrid mail capabilities and customer communications. We have actually launched a new product called Impress that is also of differentiated but similar capabilities into the other countries.
That's really where I think the impact is that we have started to promote, in addition to the Neotouch portfolio, additional capabilities on the market that are either complementary or differentiated by segment. In terms of geographies, today it is mostly focused on the Neotouch brand on the French market, where we continue its promotion. On the AR and AP side, which is related to the acquisition of Beanworks and YayPay, we did not really promote the Neotouch AR, which is the accounts receivable or AP outside of the French market, and therefore there's no really much change. On the other hand, we on our side have started to promote actively the Beanworks and the YayPay solution, in particular in NORAM.
We look forward obviously to some announcements in the coming months about the release and the launch of those AP and AR solutions outside of the U.S.
I would take the second part of the question regarding, I think, the CapEx you mentioned, Olivier. EUR 40 million, more than EUR 40 million was the CapEx for rent. Again, that's the tangible asset for rent. It's mostly lockers, but also a franking machine we're expecting on a yearly basis. You are very right to mention the level of backlog, which is strong, because we have obviously orders on parcel locker, I would say for rent. This year, as you saw in H1, we were showing about EUR 15 million of CapEx, which is a bit less than the 40 divided by two. We basically should be relatively in line or slightly below that.
That being said, for the coming years and due to the strong pipeline we've seen in Parcel Locker, yes, we could be above, as well, EUR 40 million. It's mostly tied to basically the business model of the large deals that will come in in the coming months, in coming quarters, notably in Parcel Locker.
Thank you, Laurent. I think it's time to end the call.
Thank you very much for your time, for your questions, and I look forward to meeting with you again for our full year results probably at the end of March 2022. Thank you very much.
Thank you.