Hello. Welcome to the first half 2021 presentation. My name is Lydia. I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. There will be an opportunity for live questions. This may be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. You may register at any time. Questions may also be submitted online by the web. If you need assistance, please press star zero. You will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Geoffrey Godet, Chief Executive Officer of Quadient, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Thank you for this introduction. Good evening and good afternoon to all of you, and thank you very much for joining this call to discuss Quadient sales and result performance in the first semester ended July 31, 2021. I am Geoffrey Godet, CEO of Quadient, and I am joined on this call by Laurent du Passage, our CFO. Throughout this call, I will be referring to the slide presentation that can be downloaded from our investor relation website, which complement the press release that we have published today after the close of trading. Starting with today's agenda on slide 3, I will first provide you with an overview of Quadient's key achievements in the first half of 2021. As you will see, our H1 financial performance was strong, with organic sales growth above 11%, a 28%+ organic increase in current EBIT, and a sustained cash flow generation.
We have also continued successfully to execute our Back to Growth strategy, as reflected notably by a strong commercial momentum across all solutions, the accelerated shift to our subscription-based model, obviously continued synergies between the businesses. Laurent will provide you with a more detailed review of our first half financial performance. I will share with you our updated outlook for full year 2021 with the upgrade of our guidance on expected current EBIT organic growth for the full year. We will be happy to take your question together. Moving to slide 4. Before we get into the key highlights of the first half, let me first spend a few minutes to remind you of the Back to Growth strategy we announced in January 2019. The first phase of this plan was focused on the transformation of Quadient, as you know.
We successfully moved away from a holding companies of independent businesses to become one integrated company with a simplified and synergistic portfolio of both smart and hardware solution, and with high growth potential and market-leading position in each one of them. In March of this year, we announced the second phase of our strategy, aiming at driving sustainable value for all stakeholders in the next 3 years and beyond. Let me summarize the key components of phase two of our plan. From a business standpoint, we will focus on 3 main areas. First one is scaling fast our growth engines, accelerating the shift to our subscription-based model, and fostering synergies across all solutions.
With regard to our financial trajectory, we have 3 main priorities, and they are around the 1st one, the organic sales growth focus, the increase of profitability, and obviously, deleveraging through sustained cash flow generation the company. We also continue to reshape our portfolio with 1 more acquisition and 2 divestment completed since the beginning of 2021. I will detail them later on. Moving to slide 5. From a strategic perspective, we focus on 3 selected markets based on the needs of our extensive base of 500,000 customers globally. The 1st market is our physical mail market, as you know. This market is structurally declining. However, as we communicated many times, this is a manageable and predictable decline.
Especially as our solution are dependent on transactional mail volume, which, as you know, are much more resilient than mail in general, and also more resilient in North American region. The industry has enjoyed a rebound in H1, in which Quadient's position has been very strong as the number 1 leader in Europe and a strong number 2 in North America. Our second market on the left of the slide is centered on the need for companies to evolve digitally by providing differentiated digital experience and automated traditional processes, and specifically like for Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. Companies no longer compete on product and price only. They do compete by delivering great experience to their client and their employees. The cloud financial automation and customer experience, digital customer experience markets, are fastly growing at double digits.
As anticipated with our acquisition of Beanworks and YayPay earlier on, the landscape is evolving with new IPOs, acquisitions, and infusion of new capital into startups. As you will see when we'll discuss about our ICA business, Quadient is very well-positioned with industry-leading solutions and recognition from customers and analysts as well. ICA also benefit from Quadient's 400,000 MRS existing customers looking to intelligently automate digitally their communications and processes. Lastly, our third market is addressing the booming e-commerce and the explosions of parcel deliveries as a result. Today, consumers rely more and more on online retailers, and the market saw a huge increase of 35% of volume of parcel deliveries in our main countries. It is expected to have double-digit growth this year, and all stakeholders, including carriers, retailers, consumers, and property owners, mandate a solution in which environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and is also convenient and secure.
To address the growth of volume on parcels, there is a strong need for parcel delivery automation. This market is also seeing new IPOs, acquisition, and region expansion. Quadient is already a leader in parcel locker. We're being the number one in Japan, the number one in U.S., in residential, in particular, number one in France for the retail market, running a global network of already 14,500 lockers installations. Moving to slide 7. Now I want to present you a snapshot of Quadient's financial performance in the first half of 2021. We are really pleased with the strong financial performance achieved. We delivered organic sales growth in excess of 11%. We grew current EBIT before acquisition-related expense by more than 28% organically, and we recorded more than a doubling in net income.
We also sustained free cash flow, which led to a slightly improved leverage ratio in spite of the Beanworks acquisition. Part of this performance reflects a favorable comparable base in H1 last year, due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, obviously. It also relates to the strategic decision we took last year. As you may remember, we voluntarily maintain our investments efforts, notably in marketing and go-to-market and R&D, in order to fully benefit from the economic recovery. Before Laurent and I provide you with more details in the following slides on Quadient's business performance for the first semester, I want to share with you some key numbers related to our core solutions.
Starting with our software solution, in line with our strategy of building an even more recurring business model, subscription-related revenue grew by around 20% in H1 alone, driven by SaaS and volume-based solutions for both SMBs and large accounts, including an even higher growth for ARAP, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, cloud platforms. Moving to our mail-related business, we recorded a strong rebound in hardware sales in H1, achieving an organic growth of around 27%, driven by the sustained performance of North America and a good traction with new customer acquisition again. Lastly, regarding the parcel lockers, H1 performance was strong, with organic growth of around 41%. This is driven by a sharp increase in hardware sales, thanks to the continuation of the rollout of the retail contract in the U.S. and the benefit of the 2020 expansion of the install base. Moving to slide 8.
I want to share with you that we're celebrating this month the second year anniversary of the Quadient brand. Quadient represent more than just a name, a logo, or a visual identity. This is who we are. This is our culture. It represent our ambition to bring our clients and partners and employees together with one strategy. As already mentioned, we continued to successfully execute our Back-to-Growth strategy in H1. First, we divested our automated packing systems and our Drachten factory, which is a new milestones in the reshaping of our portfolio, and it allows us also to optimize our mail-related business industrial footprint. We also acquired Beanworks to complete our suite of cloud software solutions and to address the growing need for automated Accounts Payable solutions.
The second major point is that we benefited from a strong commercial momentum in all solutions, demonstrating from our perspective, the relevance of our strategy and the attractiveness of our portfolio to our customers. Third, as planned, we accelerated the change of business model of our growth engines to focus on subscription-related model, aligning also on how companies today purchase technologies. Lastly, we continue to foster synergies across our core solutions. This is a central objective of our strategy to scale our growth engines and thanks to an efficient cross-sell and upsell approach. Internally, we have many more synergies, such as with R&D, marketing, and obviously our supply chain teams. I take this opportunity to thank our employees, all of our employees across the globe, that continues focusing on making each customer successful, delivering new innovation and supporting our Back to Growth strategy.
Moving to slide 9. As you know, in March this year, we strengthened our existing and long-standing commitment to sustainable development by becoming a signatory member of the UN Global Compact. In H1, we continued to make progress across the 5 pillars of our Quadient corporate social responsibility program. The first pillar, on the left, people. We continued to focus on inclusion and diversity by launching our first inclusion policy and training all of our employees in line with our Empowered Communities program. To support this program, we joined the Valuable 500, which is a global initiative where Quadient has committed, along with 500 other leading national and other multinational companies, to unlock the social and economic benefits of people with disabilities. The second point is on ethics and compliance. We continued to invest and develop our global compliance program.
In H1, we made progress to improve our policies, processes, and training, and controls for both our employees and the partners, suppliers, and all the third parties that we work with at Quadient. The third point is the environment. We focused on the renewal of the ISO 14001 certification for all our industrial sites, and we expanded our MRS remanufacturing programs to the U.S. market. In March, I'm proud that Quadient established a well below 2 degrees initiative to reduce our carbon emissions by 2030. Our fourth solution in H1, our digital solution, received several industry recognition. For instance, Quadient was recognized as a top 10 French software leader for the fourth year in a row in The Truffle 100 annual ranking.
Quadient was also recognized a leader in customer communication management and such for the fourth consecutive year by the Aspire Leaderboard, highlighting our leadership in omni-channel orchestration, communication composition, and business automation. Fifth and final, philanthropy. In H1, we launched Quadient Cares, our new philanthropy program focusing on education, inclusion, and diversity, and protecting the environment. This program is deployed across the organization and enabled via our new community engagement platform that provides opportunities for volunteering and skills-based sponsorship and donation activities to all employees. Moving to slide 10. As we move to our software solutions, and at the same time, we celebrate the second year anniversary of our brand, Quadient, which was our software brand originally, as you may remember, I'm super excited to announce that Quadient has crossed, for the first time, over the 10,000 software customers threshold in this first semester.
This is a huge milestone for Quadient and the best validation that Quadient is in a unique position to help small, mid, and large organization alike across the world to intelligently automate their communications and finance processes. In H1, we continued to rapidly expand our customer base, with ICA acquiring over 1,200 net new logos and such across all region and verticals. The commercial momentum was at particularly strong in the mid-market, and customer demand for our recently acquired Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable cloud solutions. Most of ICA new customer gains came from cross-selling through our MRS channels, which reflects our successful strategy to foster commercial synergies between ICA and MRS. If we take an example, in H1, ICA posted strong revenue growth in mid-market, realized through the MRS sales channel cross-selling. That represented +33% in France and +48% in the U.S.
In just a few weeks, ICA also already signed several Accounts Payable automation contracts from Beanworks with existing MRS customers in North America already. In the first half, we also continued building partnerships, and we extended our partnership with Sage, leading accounting software company. We created a new partnership with UiPath, one of the global leaders in robotic process automation, to automate repetitive front and back office tasks in particular. Last but not least, our solutions continue to be recognized by the industry. If we move to slide 11. Within the framework of the second phase of Back to Growth, we have set KPIs for each solution, which will help us monitoring our growth trajectory as well as our profitability. Let me now update you on the progress we have made regarding ICA 3 main KPIs.
First, and in line with our strategy to shift to SaaS and subscription models, we monitor the share of SaaS and subscription customers in the ICA total customer base. In the first semester, SaaS and subscription customers represented 70% of ICA total numbers of customers, up from 65% at the end of 2020. The second indicator is that we aim at building an even more recurring business model. We measure ICA annual recurring revenue, ARR, which give you a sense of our future revenue trajectory. ARR stood at EUR 133 million in H1, up from the EUR 123 million at the end of 2020. Our third KPI, we monitor the share of subscription-related revenue in ICA total revenue. It was 66% in H1 versus 59% in 2020, and this is driven by the expansion of our SaaS and subscription customer base. Moving to slide 12.
We have continued monetizing our MRS product portfolio. We announced several new versions of Quadient's S.M.A.R.T. Solution, the industry's most advanced shipping, mailing, accounting, and reporting software suite to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. Second point is that ideally fit for high volume, the iX-9 series automatically seals, weighs, meters, and starts large mail runs in just a few minutes. We have also continued to outpace the market by almost two times in H1. Let me repeat this, by almost two times. This is thanks to the renewals and new customer acquisitions. These customers include very well-known brands and from many industries, showing the diverse MRS customer base. Lastly, we continued fostering synergies from shared supply chain and customer services centers as well, notably to scale our parcel local business.
We also, as I mentioned at the beginning, we also optimize our industrial footprint thanks to the divestment of our Drachten facility that I will briefly comment on the next slide. Moving to slide 13. In line with our strategy to continue reshaping our portfolio, we completed the divestment of our automated packing solution business, CVP, for our French colleagues. We divested at the same time our production facility that was based in Drachten in the Netherlands. This transaction marks another important steps in the optimization of our industrial footprint by further increasing the share of outsourcing in our mix, now close to 70% post-transaction. It also reduced the risk related to the decline of MRS production and will lead to significant cost optimization over time. Total consideration for the sale was above EUR 20 million. Moving to slide 14.
Let's now review the 3 KPIs we use to monitor the evolution of our execution plan for MRS. The first one is that we measure how much of our customer base we have converted to our new technologies, and how much upgrade potential we still have in front of us as we roll out our new lines around the world. The share of upgraded install base increased to 8.5% in H1, up from the 4.9% in 2020. Second KPI, the resilience index, measures the difference between the supply revenue evolution and the total revenue evolution. It is at 2.4% in H1 versus 5.2% in 2020. If we look at it in details, in H1, the supply sales rebounded, but total revenue grew even faster due to the stronger hardware sales.
While in 2020, the usage slowed during the lockdowns, but the total revenue did not slow down as much. The third KPIs that we measure is how subscription-related revenue move as a % of total revenue to continue our focus on building a resilient MRS business line. This share slightly declined to 72% in H1 from 74% in 2020. This is naturally the result of a strong hardware sales growth this year. Moving to slide 15. In parcel lockers, we continued, as you could see, to see strong momentum in our four key verticals, carriers, retail, property managers, and education corporate offices. We have three main goals for parcel locker solutions. The first one is to grow open network. Second one is to expand into new geographies. The third one is to leverage commercial and supply chain synergies with our MRS business.
Let's now review PLS main commercial achievement in H1. For carriers, we reach a new amazing milestone with 6,000 unit installed in Japan, and we also signed 2 new contracts in France with Relais Colis and Pickup for a total of 2,000 more units. In retails, we are proud of the successful completion of the Lowe's U.S. rollout in Q1, but we also completed an extension and extended the rollout into Canada for Lowe's in the second quarter. For property managers, we experienced good traction and usage in the U.S. with over 18 million now parcels that went through our network in H1 alone. Last, I would say, but not least, we reached 300 new installations for corporate and universities in the U.S., while booking through our MRS sales channel grew very strongly.
Moreover, the pipeline for universities in the U.K. increased in H1. Moving to slide 16. Let's now review the 3 KPIs we use to monitor the evolution of our execution plan for PLS. First, the first one is that we monitor the evolution of our install base. In H1, we recorded more than 1,500 new installs, bringing our global install base to about 14,500 lockers installation in our geographies. The second KPI that you see on the slide, that we measure the usage rate of our networks of lockers. It improved to 60% in H1 from 57% in 2020, and we have seen an increasing turnover rate for parcels from our customers. The third KPI is that we monitor the evolution, sorry, of our parcel locker solution subscription-related revenues, as we are expanding our install base.
They grew by over 20% organically in the first semester to now reach EUR 23 million. This concludes my review of Quadient's H1 business highlights, and I'm now handing over to Laurent to discuss about our first half 2021 financial performance.
Thank you, Geoffrey. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. I am Laurent du Passage. I'm Quadient's Chief Financial Officer, and I have the pleasure to walk you through our H1 2021 figures. Starting with slide 18, in Q2, we have confirmed our strong recovery in organic growth of revenue. As you can see on the left-hand side, we maintain in Q2 the same level of year-on-year organic sales growth than in Q1 at 11.1%. On the right-hand side, you can see the year-on-year quarterly evolution of recurring revenue on one side. It's typically SaaS, rental, volume, maintenance, and services, and non-recurring revenue, which are one-off hardware and license placements. The trend of Q1 is confirmed in Q2 with the recovery of hardware and license placement at +33.4%, and a good level of growth of recurring revenue as well at +3.4% year-on-year. Moving to slide 19.
If you look at our major solutions in the second quarter, we experienced again a sustained performance across all our solutions, confirming the good recovery we already had achieved in Q1. In Intelligent Communication Automation, our software practice, organic growth has accelerated at 17.3% in Q2 to end up at 11.7% in H1. In Mail-Related Solutions, organic growth remained positive in Q2 at +4% thanks to the strong growth in hardware sales to end up at 5.1% in H1. Finally, in Parcel Locker Solutions on the right-hand side, organic growth decelerated compared to Q1 when we were still deploying the Lowe's contract in the U.S., but we remained in the double-digit territory in Q2 at 17.5% to end up at 40.7% in H1. Now, when moving to slide 20.
To bridge H1 organic growth from H1 2020 reported revenue of EUR 485 million on the left-hand side with the EUR 504 million revenue on the right that we report today, we need to exclude the scope effect for EUR 30 million, which is mostly resulting from Graphics divestment net of the acquisition of YayPay and Beanworks, and you need to exclude the EUR 20 million of currency effect on the right. This allows us to isolate the pure organic performance of 11.1%, which is a +EUR 52 million. The performance was very well-balanced with each solution growing organically between EUR 10 million and EUR 16 million year-over-year. Now, if we focus on the next slide on ICA or software division, it accounts for EUR 97 million over H1, and it grew by 11.7% over the period, thanks to a dynamic Q2 at 17.3%.
ICA revenue mix continues to move more and more towards subscription. It's 66% in H1 with a year-on-year growth at 20%, including a strong demand for AR, accounts receivable, and AP, accounts payable solutions, which are growing by about 70% organically. We have seen small and medium businesses as well as the large accounts are growing their SaaS and volume-based activities by 31% and 13% respectively. The professional services have shown improvement with 10% growth thanks to project resuming and new placements implementations. License sales, which accounts for 14% of our revenue in H1, it declined. It's mostly due to the shift in business model, although one large enterprise deal was signed in Q2, which is a very positive signal from the market. On profitability, ICA solution profit stands at 16% in H1, which is, as expected, down by 2.7 points since H1 last year.
While we benefit from larger base of customer and increased usage, we have further invested in R&D, specifically for the recently acquired cloud platforms for AR and AP. We've accelerated our go-to-market and marketing in our main geographies. We've been specifically focusing on more cross-sell initiative. We also see the temporary adverse effect of this change in business model from license to subscription. On the next slide, with EUR 320 million of revenue in H1, Mail-Related Solutions recorded a sustained positive growth of 5.1% against last year. This positive organic growth was seen across all geographies, with another strong performance in North America. The strong rebound in hardware sales achieved in Q1 was confirmed in Q2, with a total 27% organic growth over H1 thanks to good market traction, the success of our new range of products, and new customer acquisition.
We also noticed a strong resilience in the subscription-related revenue, which is coming from our installed base. It's leasing, rental, and that's thanks to good retention. From a profitability standpoint, as you can see at the bottom, the solution profit margin stays very high at 44.5% and is down by 1 point against last year. This is related to the mix within the revenue, as hardware is less contributing to the margin than our subscription-related revenue. The good news is that this hardware will add incremental revenue, recurring revenue, in the coming years. We also have been impacted by higher freight costs, notably at the end of H1. Moving to slide 23 on our third major solution. Parcel Locker solution recorded a very solid growth over H1 at +40% year-on-year.
After Q1 at 67%, we achieved 17% organic growth in Q2, with no large hardware sales deal like this was the case in the past 3 quarters, which were positively impacted, notably by Lowe's project. The +20% organic growth in subscription-related revenue reflects the further expansion of the installed base with 1,500 additional new lockers in H1 2021, as Geoffrey was mentioning. Hardware sales has sharply increased in Q1 with the completion of Lowe's contract. Over Q2, it was still very dynamic, although at a lower level, and driven by higher education segment and residential in the U.S. We also noticed a promising start of the U.K. market over H1. We have a solution profit margin at -1.4% in H1. It shows a strong improvement compared to H1 2020, +540 basis points.
On one side, we have, in fact, a high profitability of the installed base, which is expanding and contributing to this margin. On the other side, we are still also investing, notably in R&D and in go-to-market for the launch in the U.K. and in France. From 1 semester to another, this solution profit margin also depends highly on the mix between hardware, that provides revenue and margin upfront, and rental additions, for which the revenue and the margin is spread over time. That's also been impacted by increase in freight cost on the new installation side. As a summary, if we move to the next slide, selling all those 3 major solution, we see that major operation revenue for H1 is up by 9% year-on-year. It's EUR 458 million. Subscription-related revenue accounts for about 70% of the revenue.
All categories of revenue have been growing year-on-year, with a significant recovery in license and hardware, as well as our professional services. Finally, we see a 3.6% growth overall at major operation level of subscription-related revenue. North America revenue growth is particularly remarkable, which you see at the bottom, with +12% year-on-year, and it accounts for 55% of major operational revenue. This was driven notably by the rebound in all solutions in North America, and in particular, the double-digit organic growth across both ICA and parcel locker solution businesses. While the level of activity is improved in Europe, notably in ICA, it has still been impacted by COVID health measure over H1. Current EBIT for major operations stand at EUR 71 million, is improved by close to 20% against last year.
That's thanks to a strong pickup of the activity combined with improvement of the installed base profitability. Again, this has been partially offset by the increase in planned investment in R&D, go-to-market and marketing. ICA shift in business model is, of course, impacting the near-term profit as planned, and increased freight cost and longer delivery lead time have affected H1 as well. On the next slide, you see a summary of the group. You see that major operation accounts for 91% of our group sales in H1. It grew by 9%, again, with all solution growing. The fact that it's 91% of the total group is a result of the refocus of the company on its major regions and solutions.
The additional operation that you see on the last blue column on the right, it consists in our major solution in other geographies, as well as our other solution, and it have benefited for a significant rebound with 39% organic growth year-on-year. This is notably thanks to the CVP, the automated packaging system, the performance that has experienced a significant growth in Q2 with 9 units delivered this year versus 2 units last year, and which was divested at the end of H1, together with our Drachten folder inserter factory. Total current EBIT stands at EUR 17 million in H1. It's up 28% organically against last year, and it is entirely produced by major operation segment.
In order to bridge this EBIT figure between H1 of 2020 and H1 2021, again, like for the revenue, we need to exclude both scope effect, EUR 3 million on the left-hand side, and currency effect, EUR 4 million on the right-hand side. This results in a net organic growth in current EBIT of EUR 16 million or 28% year-on-year. The stronger level of activity in H1 2021 resulted in an increase in solution profit while we continued increasing our investment in R&D and go-to-market, despite the ongoing impact of the shift of model. Overall, as you can see in the chart, we had EUR 10 million in solution profit, it's an increase, equally split between major operation and additional operations.
Also to be noticed, significant improvement, that's the gray stack, triggered in 2020 have been done in G&A thanks to additional synergies implemented, which include further simplification of the organization and a reduction of our global real estate footprint. This translated into an overall reduction of 7 million of G&A and innovation expenses in the period to reach a €74 million current EBIT before acquisition-related expenses at last year rate. Moving to next slide. The net attributable income of €45 million is up from EUR 21 million compared to last year. It has more than doubled since last year. Walking you through the table from the top, it is obviously fueled by higher current operating income and lower acquisition-related expenses, notably due to lower level of M&A activity. Optimization expenses and other operating income are up due to the impact of the Drachten factory divestment.
Within this number, the restructuring expenses are declining against last year. If you look at cost of debt, it's significantly reduced thanks to the 2020 refinancing operations. We also recognize a strong financial income thanks to the increased valuation of our interest in two investment funds, Xange and Partech, during the period. The tax level in H1 was back to a more normative level compared to last year. Finally, the net income for the period stands at EUR 45 million, which is 8.9% net margin. Moving to the cash flow. From a cash standpoint, despite the much higher level of tax paid, we recorded a robust cash flow generation with EUR 54 million cash flow after CapEx in H1 2021.
This compares to EUR 76 million in H1 2020. This reflects a strong increase in EBITDA at the top of the table, up by two points against last year, despite the dilutive impact of recently acquired Beanworks and YayPay. One line, which is other items, which is increasing and reflects the lower addition in provisions this year than last year, which is a non-cash item included in EBITDA that needs to be removed. A very strong working capital management with a good receivable collection, resulting in a very limited degradation of working capital compared to H1 2020. We had a more modest receivable decrease than last year, thanks to business recovery. We had a normalization of tax paid compared to 2020 and a CapEx level in line with last year.
Regarding the last line, which is acquisitions net of divestments, the EUR 72 million reflects the acquisition of Beanworks, but not the Drachten sale as the cash was at hand only a couple of days after the closing. Net cash evolution is minus EUR 18 million over H1, but can be summarized as EUR 54 million of cash flow after CapEx, net of EUR 72 million of acquisition cash out. A quick focus on the CapEx on the next slide. You can see that the total CapEx is steady between H1 last year and H1 this year. Please keep in mind that we expect an acceleration over H2 2021, and notably in the rated equipment. The development CapEx was maintained at EUR 16 million, and maintenance CapEx was broadly stable against last year. Now slide 30.
The net financial debt is only slightly up against end of full year 2020 at EUR 526 million in spite of Beanworks acquisition. With improved EBITDA, the leverage ratio at group level has even been improving from 2.1 times to 2 times, and the degradation, if you exclude leasing, was limited from 0.4 times to 0.7 times. The addition of our leasing portfolio and rental future cash flow that you see on the right-hand side remains much higher than our net debt position. Today, Quadient still enjoys a strong liquidity position with EUR 722 million, out of which EUR 322 million in cash and EUR 400 million of undrawn credit facility. This concludes my session, and I'm now handing over to Geoffrey for full-year 2021 outlook.
Thank you, Laurent. Moving to slide 32. I want to discuss about Quadient's outlook for full-year 2020. Let's start with the revenue trend by solution we expect for the second half of 2021. Regarding ICA, we expect a continued strong momentum for subscription-related revenue. At the same time, we should expect an acceleration of the shift of our model from license to SaaS. Regarding MRS, we expect organic sales decline to be at a low single-digit level in H2 2021. Lastly, regarding PLS, there is a particularly high comparison basis set by the Lowe's contract in H2 2020. Just as a reminder, PLS organic growth stood at +29% in Q3 last year and around 88% growth in Q4 last year.
This is the reason why, even as we expect a dynamic rollout of new lockers planned in the second half of the year, and we also expect a growing level of subscription revenue from the install base, we do expect an organic decline of around 15% in PLS revenue for the second part of the year. In addition, we are factoring the divestment of our automated packaging solutions business as from early August 2021, and its negative impact on the expected total organic sales growth for the full year 2021 compared to our initial guidance. On the other hand, thanks to a better-than-expected performance across all solutions, offsetting the negative impact of the divestment of the automated packaging solutions, we have maintained our full year 2021 organic sales growth guidance unchanged at above 4%.
With regard to profitability, we expect that the operating efficiencies that we have implemented, in particular, thanks to the simplification of our real estate footprint, but also our organization, will positively impact the group's current EBIT and more than offset the anticipated increase in freight cost in H2 2021, as well as the active hiring campaigns and continued investment in talent to support the future growth. As a result, we have revised upward our full year 2021 guidance on organic growth in current EBIT before acquisition-related expense, which is now expected to be above 6% versus the between 5% and 6% previously. Moving to slide 33, let me spend a few minutes to discuss about Quadient's midterm ambition by solution. We shared during our last capital market day specific targets by solution for the 2021-2023 3-year period.
Starting with ICA, subscription-related revenue increased by around 20% on an ongoing basis in H1, which is in line with the over 20%-25% subscription revenue CAGR we target over the three-year plan. ICA profit margin stood at 16% in H1 versus our target of around 30% solution profit margin. By the end of the three-year plan and reflecting as planned the near-term impact on profit margin of continuing shift in customer base from license to SaaS model, as well as increased investment earlier. For MRS, organic growth was above 5% in H1, which favorably compares to the better-than-expected minus 5% organic revenue decline CAGR that we target over the three-year plan as well. While solution profit margin stood at 44.5% for MRS, in line with the 43%-45% range expected by the end of the three-year plan.
For our parcel locker solution, we target an install base of more than 25,000 lockers by the end of the three-year plan, representing an increase over 12,000 units compared to the 13,000 lockers installed we had at the end of last year. In H1, we recorded already more than 1,500 new installs, bringing our install base to 14,500 units. That is a great achievement in line with our ambition, and our backlog is strong. In addition to our install base, our install base has remained highly profitable with a profit margin of between 25%-30% in H1, which is also in line with our ambition to reach a 35%-40% profit margin of the install base by the end of the three-year plan. Moving now to slide 34.
With regard to Quadient's 2021-2023 three-year plan, we naturally confirm all of our midterm targets with a minimum 3% organic revenue CAGR over 2021, 2023, and a minimum mid-single digit organic current EBIT CAGR over 2021, 2023 as well. This will conclude today's presentation, and Laurent and I are happy to take your questions. I remind you that you can submit your question orally, directly through the conference call, or in writing via the webcast interface.
Excellent. At this time, again, it will be star one for questions live on the phone as well as submitted online just as he said. We will begin with a question from the phone lines. We have a question from the line of Mouad Lemini of Exane. When you are ready, please proceed.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Geoffrey, for the presentation. I have a couple of questions on your guidance. The first one is on MRS.
How much visibility do you have on the low single-digit decline for the division? The comparison basis is quite depressed in the second half. What are your main assumptions in terms of hardware sales into the second half for MRS? Second on ICA, you talk about an acceleration of subscription-based revenues. What does it mean for total revenues? That comes down to asking you, what's your pipeline in terms of license sales, and do you intend to continue to basically sell licenses in that business? Thank you very much.
Okay. Do you want to take the first one maybe, Laurent? I take the second one.
No problem. On MRS, Mouad, again, we have a very strong momentum on MRS. I think there is no doubt about that. H1 was very strong, as you could see. I remind you that the H2 last year was minus 7%, as far as I can remember. That compares to the minus 14% that we had in H1. It was twice a lower decline than what we had in H1. The comparison basis is not necessarily comparable, I would say, between H1 and H2 last year, which explains why here we are communicating the guidance that we are looking at the sales decline at a low single-digit level in H2 2021, which I think when you think about H1 and H2 last year, you can easily make up your mind about the trend it could have.
The booking in hardware keeps at a very strong momentum, just the comparison basis is very different.
For the second question, Bernard, for ICA. We do push today most of the sales in the pipeline as a subscription model. As you probably know, our sales cycles sometimes are over even 1 year. As we had engaged that shift now more than 6 months ago, there's still relationship with customers on previous deals that may still happen as licensed. We'll take the deals, obviously, if the customer preference is for licensed, we will obviously satisfy them. We have also some existing customers that did not necessarily migrate to a cloud platform, for which they could benefit from a subscription model. Sometimes they may still from time to time ask us for additional usage or seat license, which could also, on a longer basis, still generate some license amount.
Disconnected from those elements, the push is global for us today to get all our sales force to promote subscription from now on, and every new sales and opportunities are towards subscription. This is what Laurent, I think, explained just earlier. We do expect the subscription likely to accelerate and the license from quarter to quarter. Like in Q2, we had a large yield in license, but we are still in a depressive or declining license trend. This is why at some point, obviously, in the future, the top line of ICA will normalize with the subscription rate, especially for the next two quarters. We will have a little bit of some impact of the license decline.
Okay, thank you very much.
All right. At this time, we'll move to our next question from Jean-Francois Bergeon of Oddo BHF. When you're ready, please proceed.
Yes. Good evening, everybody. Just my first question is regarding ICA. What do you expect in terms of margin due to the decrease after the first half? Do you expect the same magnitude of margin for the full year for ICA? My second question, when you mention organic growth for the EBIT above 6%, if I well understand, the pro forma last year will be EUR 140 million. Is it exactly? My third question concerns the positive Forex impact. There's a huge impact on the net income. What do you expect for the full year? My last question regarding the SG&A. If I well understand, the SG&A decrease during the first half, do you expect the same magnitude of decrease for the SG&A for the full year? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Jean-Francois. Let me take the first one. On the solution profit margin, we obviously don't give today a particular guidance by solutions. What I think I could share naturally is that we're going to have in H2 likely more subscription revenues. Subscription revenues that will be generated from the new customers we have embarked in the first part of the year will likely be more contributive. We may have also more usage. There's obviously some element that could help contribute to a higher profitability coming from the install base in H2 that we inherit at the end of H1. Obviously, we will have also, compared to last year, the comparison basis on the level of license. As you know, the license goes almost straight to the bottom line. We have a little bit less license.
On the other hand, the positive of the profitability from the existing base and the usage will be offset in part from the change in business model, which is as planned and as we had anticipated at the beginning of the year when we did the shift. Laurent, do you want to take the other points?
Yes. Second point was about the comparison based on EBIT full year for 2020, if I remember well. As you remember, we reported an EBIT last year at EUR 151.6 million, on which need to exclude the earn-out reversal effect of Parcel Pending that we disclose for EUR 6.5 million, which comes to EUR 145 million. EUR 145 million is the starting point on which you want to do an organic EBIT growth. You need, of course, to restate all the scope effect. Of the scope effects, we divested ProShip end of February last year. We divested Graphics in January 2021, and we acquired, in the meantime, Beanworks, YayPay, and we divested, finally, Drachten with the CVP and APS, I would say, activity.
All this scope effect over the 2020 EBIT being taken pro rata temporis on the divestment and acquisition is EUR 5 million, which makes the comparison base at EUR 140 million to treat a comparable scope. You had a question on the net income, I think. I didn't catch, I think it was ForEx, related to ForEx. Can you let us know? Was it about the currency gains and losses on this line?
We see a strong impact on the ForEx in the first half. What you expect for the full year? There's a huge impact on the net income. What do you expect for the full year regarding the positive ForEx impact?
ForEx, which has an impact on net income, is the increased value in our share in two firms, which are Xange and Partech, where we invested back in 2015, which has significantly valued between end of fiscal year 2020 and first half, the 31st of July this year. This accounts for the bulk of the EUR 14 million of financial gain that you see here. Obviously, I will not make assumption on how it will turn in the coming six months, because as you could see, this was a significant gain, and that we had in the last six months. Does it mean that it's going to reproduce? It's not something we make assumption on. We still have a portion of this investment in those firms that we'll keep until this firm is closed.
The last question was on.
The last question, sorry, I think it was on the G&A. It's G&A, it's not SG&A that we report, it's just G&A. The sales are in the solution profit. Yes, you are correct. We see a decline over H1. It's partially due to the measure we've taken in H2 2020. As we've been taking this measure in H2 2020, we expect that, of course, it has produced a strong impact on H1 2021. Depending on when those measures has happened over H2, it will likely continue to produce in H2, but at the level of when they have been triggered, basically. On the trend, yes. On the amount, probably depending on when we started the closing of the real estate, notably.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We'll proceed with our next question on the phone from Nicolas [Devoe ] of Jefferies. When you're ready, please go ahead.
Good evening. Thank you very much for taking my question. A number of them were already answered. Can you give us an idea of the pro forma organic growth of the additional operations that we have an idea of what the rest of the business is doing? Same for the solution profit. You've given us an idea of the, let's say, the savings you intend to deliver with the divestment of the Drachten plant and the CVP, and what can we expect in term of ramp-up and what is the pro forma today if we had the 1st of January over the full first semester, the impact on organic growth and on the solution profit, just for us to have an idea of what to expect for the rest of the year and the second semester. Thank you very much.
Me answer the first part of the question, and you take the second one, Laurent, on the rest of the year on the impact. For additional operation, if I remember well, I think around 2018, probably, pro forma, before we make the change, it was a little bit more than EUR 200 million of revenue, EUR 220 million. We have obviously divested along the years many of the different non-core business that we had. The latest one that is obviously impacting additional operation for the second part of the year is the CVP in H2. I mean, at the end of H1, but it will impact H2. We also divested our Australian business at the beginning of the year. Now in term of pro forma, Laurent-
Yes.
What would be a good comparison basis?
Nicolas, if I understand well, the question is basically compared on our 2020 full year, what is the impact of those divestment basically on the overall trajectory for additional operation? As you have seen, the APS business, which was the external revenue recognized on this part, was producing significant growth in H1. It was expected to continue producing this type of growth in H2 with a strong backlog. The overall impact that this growth in H2 would have brought to the group is around 1.3 point of growth over H2, which means over the full year, it's 0.6 point roughly. Okay? That's the top line impact. Of the divestment of this APS business on the top line. Now, from a solution profit or an EBIT standpoint, because we did divest the overall entity.
It's on one side, an APS business on which we've been losing money historically, that with the volume was coming closer to break even. On the other side, DS, so Folder Inserter manufacturing that we have been divesting, where there was some margin being kept at the factory level. All together, it's very close to zero. You can assume that on this full year EBIT, you have a very limited impact at the group level after the divestment of this entity. That being said, as we mentioned, and as Geoffrey mentioned on the Drachten focus, we have a plan to progressively, basically, not source our folder inserter machine from Drachten, and being able to significantly leverage and benefit on the MRS solution from economies tied to an outsourcing outside of Drachten.
Those savings will come in the coming years.
Yes. Two to three years.
Yes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Nicolas.
All right, we'll move on to our next question from Patrick Jousseaume of Societe Generale. When you're ready, Patrick, please go ahead.
Yes, good evening. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you on the call. Please proceed.
Yeah, okay. Okay, I have three questions, if I may. The first question, to come back to the one which was asked just before myself. I understand that when you guide for still to 4% organic growth, this 4% now includes 0.6% negative impact generated by the disposal of CVP. Just for confirmation. Second, regarding this fund in which you have invested a few years ago, could you come back to the reason why you invest in this fund? What does it bring to you except this very welcome capital gain or let's say, revaluation profit? Can you come back on this? Finally, could you provide us some, let's say, if not guidance, colors on the cash flow after effects that you expect for 2021, please?
Thank you, Patrick. I will take the first two, and I will let Laurent respond to your last one. On the first one, Yes, we do confirm that the 4% organic growth top line guidance does include the negative impact that we'd have expected from the growth of the CVP that we're not going to have. That would have been obviously a better top line without it, We did take it into account. Despite that negative impact, we did confirm the 4%. On the exchange and the other fund, it's mostly related to the strategy for Quadient to also invest into a private equity fund that look at different startups, have a privileged access, obviously, to different business model, to new concept, to new trends.
Being able from an innovation perspective, to always have an eye on what is being done outside of the company and have better way, obviously, to understand those dynamics and therefore makes better educated decision on our own investment in terms of technologies or new business model, and in particular, on the software side. The choice of those 2 funds was related, in particular, to some of the software investment that those funds were committed to.
Sorry, Patrick, I got the first two questions very well, and I didn't catch the third one. Geoffrey now answer to the two easy ones. What was the third one?
The third one was about cash flow after CapEx that you expect for current year. If not hard guidance, at least some colors.
In H1, Patrick, we generated EUR 54 million. As we mentioned, the level of CapEx that we had in H1 was a little bit lower than it's lower than what we expect in H2. All in all, when you look at your profile of EBIT or CapEx, that should increase a little bit. We expect that the cash, and it mostly depends on the EBIT to maintain the working capital as good as we had at the fair H1, but it will sit probably in the range of EUR 8,200.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
At this time, we have no further questions, and we'll turn to Annie from the web.
We have question on the webcast. The first one is from Olivier Lombard. "Was the packaged investment a profitable activity?" Thank you.
I believe Laurent gave the answer earlier. The APS business has never been a profitable activity, unfortunately, for Quadient for the last several years. As Laurent mentioned, as the growth of the business picked up in the last few years, year-on-year, we did reduce the impact of the losses that we had up to this point to this year in H1 where the loss was fairly reasonable, with still an expected loss in H2, but much more minor compared to what Laurent shared.
Thank you, Geoffrey. Another question now from Dominic DeQuid. Could you tell us what would be the cash impact of a divestment in H2?
If Dominic is talking full cash for the company, as you saw from a sales standpoint, we sold Drachten APS activity for consideration above EUR 20 million. Okay. This amount has been partially paid. The majority of this amount has been paid, and the rest of this amount is either deferred or conditioned to some performance and will be collected later. From an operational standpoint now, which is a different question, I'm answering both of them. From an operational standpoint, we don't see the divestment and having Drachten being now external, having an impact on the cash flow, operational cash flow that will generate over H2.
You still expect the proceeds from the sale that you receive for H2 to impact H2 cash flow.
Correct. We are ready. To be clear, the majority of the cash that we already collected was collected, as mentioned, in the presentation earlier on during the 1st of August. We are not accounted for as of the 31st of July, but will be in the next closing.
Thank you very much. Another question from Olivier Lombard for MRS. Leasing portfolio seems to be decreasing while you said to gain new customers and you posted rise of hardware sale. What was the retention of your existing customer base?
I can take this one. Olivier Lombard, you need to keep in mind that in the leasing portfolio, basically, we have contracts that end and customer either leaves or disappears. Basically, go bankrupt. This turns some accounts off of the leasing. We either replace them, is the end of their term, or we either gain new customers. It's all about the balance between the two flows. Having a very strong booking of hardware, depending on how many contracts will end up in the same period of time, could result still in decrease in leasing portfolio. That being said, if you look at the decline we had in H1, it was much more contained than what we had 1 year before, and it was very comparable to the one we had 2 years ago, which is a very good sign for us and shows the stickiness.
Although the underlying driver is declining, the stickiness of our leasing portfolio.
I would add, there's also a little bit timing difference from the moment you recognize the hardware sales to the moment you recognize the full benefit of the leasing. It's like any recurring subscription amount. If you had the hardware sale at the last week of July, you're going to have a very small contribution on the recurring part of the leasing revenue, which will come in the coming months. The hardware sales of today will be the recurring of tomorrow. That's why you could also see some difference from a timing perspective.
Thank you very much. Another question for MRS. Could you tell, in MRS business, how much was consumable products? What was growth for this part in H2 last year, please?
Very good question.
Making sure, because I'm not sure we have the number top of the mind. What happened in H2 last year is that we saw two things or two trends were going on. One is obviously the sales organization being able to reengage with customers from what they've been presented to do during the lockdown phase. The hardware sales were picking up, but the usage was also coming back. Where most customers on the existing part of the base did not renew ink cartridge, basically, at the beginning of the year, as they were slowly coming back to the office, we've seen them as they need to use the machine again or coming back at the office, reengaging on the supplies. I believe we had some, I wouldn't say some catch-up effect, but the Q3 and Q4 were much stronger, obviously, than H1 on the supplies.
I think with some catch-up effect. Overall, more forward-looking, I think, for our own H2 this year and moving forward. The usage is obviously lower than it used to be. First, because even in H1, not all customers came back yet to the office. In particular, we've seen in Europe that we still had health restrictions that prevented people in the U.K. or France or even Germany to be back in the office until even sometimes in late July or even early August. The usage is still lower than pre-COVID, and it has more or less normalized a little bit itself on the H2, actually, probably H2 COVID level in H1 this year. As we look at H1, H2, getting into H2, as the European countries seems to be relaxing those health rules, we may have some positive momentum on supplies that we didn't have in H1.
At the same time, usage, again, is not at the same level as it used to be. It's probably a comparison basis that is a little bit easier, but I would not count so much on it. I think we still are going to have, in H2, a more favorable basis on the hardware sales.
Just to add a little bit of color, Dominic, this supply part is not the bulk of our revenue. It's a little bit more than 10% of our revenue. Just to put things into a perspective, it's not what our total revenue depends on. That being said, as Geoffrey mentioned, in last year, notably in Europe, as you remember, March, April, May were strong lockdowns where people were not going to the office. This, of course, has been waiting on the supply revenue at this time. We can see it coming back progressively when the people come back to the office, but it's not at the level yet where it was.
This is certainly a small portion of even the recurring revenue.
Correct. Yes.
Thank you very much. A question now on PLS. How is the pipeline in PLS, and do you see larger contracts to come in the next quarters?
We'll not make a projection on our capacity to sign a large contract for the coming quarters. What we could say, because we've been sharing that all along, is that the pipeline is strong and the pipeline has been growing. We see a few things in the pipeline. One is that we have launched some of our offers and some of our verticals in new countries at the end of last year, beginning of this year, in the U.K. and France. Clearly, we see the pipeline building up very nicely and progressively quarter on quarter. We see that positive momentum likely to continue and to yield at some point additional revenue and contribute to the growth.
Where we have seen differently since the beginning of the year is an increase as well in the numbers of what you could call those larger contracts, in particular on the retail side and the carrier side. We do have active discussion in most of the countries that we operate with some of those large organization. I think the fundamental point is that the COVID-19 having accelerated the e-commerce usage, it has aggravated the need to automate a solution in term of the numbers of parcels and the need for their automation. While some of those deals could not potentially be initiated during a COVID-19 year, definitely we see new opportunities as we got into 2021.
As any large deals, those large deals could have a much longer sales cycle. It's difficult to predict when they would come. We feel pretty confident about those opportunities in the longer-term future.
Thank you. Could we have more insight on the perspective, especially on cross-selling for YayPay and Beanworks, and as well in parcel for iGrowth and Parcel Pending, especially?
Sure. On the ICA side, if we look at our net 1,200 net new customers or logos we have onboarded in H1, I think it's a relevant case. Probably more than 2/3, if not maybe 80% of those net new logos came from the cross-sell of our MIS sales channels. This is definitely an increase in terms of new logos because of the success of those cross-sell synergies. We already had some countries highly advanced in the training and the cross-sell of those software solutions in France. Now what you're seeing is the progressive contribution of the other countries, obviously trying to catch up, if you want, in those levels of cross-sell. The U.S. has definitely had a huge increase in contribution in Q1 and has accelerated even in Q2, and now probably coming on par with what we've seen in France.
We also see some progress, and I think there's more to come in the coming quarters, both in our other region. Specifically around AP/AR, we had a certain numbers of net new AP/AR customers in H1. As you know, for Beanworks, it was a very recent acquisition, we just had a few months, barely 4 months of track record after the acquisition. Even though the period was short, in 4 months, we have been able to initiate our first campaign on our MRS customer base, in North America in particular. Through those cross-sell campaigns, we've been able already to add more than 10 customers on Accounts Payable solution coming from those cross-sell campaign.
It's a very encouraging sign for us, obviously, to be able to continue to build the cross-sell synergies, not just on our Customer Communications Management platform, but also on AP/AR in the coming quarters.
Thank you very much. When do you think the parcel and software activities would be above 50% of the revenue, please?
It's likely to be depending, obviously, on those big deals. We have given a trajectory during the capital market day of what our growth engines could do in the next 3 years. For the parcel locker in particular, we're looking at having the base to double. We're basically around 13,000 lockers before the next 3-year plan, and we shared our commitment to double the base to go from 13,000 more or less to 25,000. Obviously, we will be eager to be able to accelerate this if the opportunity comes. I think all the initiatives that we're making in the first year of that 3-year plan, as Laurent mentioned, to increase in the go-to market, to launch those product into other countries.
Making all the necessary investment this year as the first year of the plan, accelerating the transition from licensed to SaaS the same way, should all lead, obviously, to having both our growth engines representing a higher proportion of our revenue, which they are already representing after the first two years of our strategy.
Thank you very much. On parcel locker solution, can you please give the split of the install base between sales and rental model, please?
I believe, so I don't have it in H1, but I believe last year it was 50% was based on hardware and 50% was based on subscription model, rental model. Right, Laurent?
Correct. I think it's not very different at the end of H1. It's broadly 50/50 out of the 14,500 lockers we have.
It was, for me, the last question on the webcast. If you want to ask another question on the webcast, please go ahead, or by the phone, please.
At this time, we have no further questions on the phone. A reminder, please press star one if you would like to ask a live question.
Just before ending this call, as it doesn't seem that we have new questions, just want to thank everybody, obviously, for all your questions. Let me remind you of the date of our next financial communication event. We will publish our sales for the third quarter of 2021 on December 7th after the close of the trading. Thank you again for attending today's presentation, and have a good evening.
Thank you all for joining today's event. You may now disconnect your lines.