Hello, and welcome to the Quadient Capital Markets Day and Full Year 2020 Results. My name is Jess, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, there may be the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to our host, Rob Daleman, to begin today's call. Thank you.
Thank you, Jess. [Non-English content] Good afternoon and good morning to everyone joining us from around the world. Welcome to Quadient Capital Markets Day 2021. My name is Rob Daleman. I'm the Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing for Quadient, and it's my pleasure to invite you and be your host to today's session. Before we begin, I'd like to give you a quick overview of the virtual platform you see before you. You have one area of the screen dedicated to the slides that will currently be presented, as well as another area that features the current speaker. Note that you can maximize this area of the screen to make it easier to view the content. Also note the Q&A box where you may ask questions at any time. These questions will be addressed during designated Q&A time slots throughout the agenda.
Should you accidentally close your browser or need to step away from the meeting, simply revisit the link to the event to return to the live portion of the broadcast. A link to today's event is available on the homepage at invest.quadient.com. In addition a replay of today's session will be available on our investor site shortly after the conclusion of the session, along with a downloadable version of the presentation materials. Today's agenda will begin with an update on our FY 2020 results, which will be presented by our CFO, Laurent du Passage, followed by CEO, Geoffrey Godet, who will present an update on our back to growth strategy. We will then hold a 20-minute Q&A session to address any questions on these two presentations.
At that time, we'll offer an overview of market trends as presented by our Chief Marketing Officer, Tamir Sigal, which will be followed by a presentation on each of our key solutions led by our Chief Solution Officers. We will then provide an opportunity for 10 minutes of additional Q&A on the solutions content presented. Finally, we'll provide an overview of our go-forward three-year plan and provide a summary and conclusion. At the end of the session, we will provide additional time to address any outstanding questions. In total, the running time for today's session is planned at approximately three hours and 45 minutes. Please join me in welcoming our Chief Financial Officer, Laurent du Passage, to begin today's session with an overview of Quadient's FY 2020 financial results.
Thank you very much, Rob. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. My name is Laurent du Passage. I am Quadient Chief Financial Officer, and I have the pleasure to walk you through our full year 2020 figures. We start with a quick snapshot of the year. In fiscal year 2020, Quadient proved agility in the difficult 2020 context. Our total sales stands at slightly more than EUR 1 billion, which is down 7.3% organically. And if you look at major operations, it is slightly better at -5.9%. This limited decline year-on-year was achieved by two things. First, the robust performance of our recurring revenue. Second, the strong recovery in licenses and hardware sales throughout H2. In parallel, we have also performed active cost and cash management, making arbitrage between short-term savings while protecting our key investments and employees to capture the rebound.
It allowed us to reduce in 2020 our OpEx by EUR 46 million against 2019, excluding bad debt evolution. Overall, we've delivered EUR 152 million current EBIT or EUR 145 million excluding the earn-out reversal. We also delivered a strong EUR 167 million cash flow, which both aggregates sit in the high range of the guidance we've been providing to you. Now I move to the next slide, we can see that from September onwards, we've given you a guidance. As you remember, one year ago, we were not able to give you a guidance for the year, and we started to gain more visibility in September 2020, and we've done subsequent upgrades as long as we were getting more and more traction across the H2. Moving to the next slide. Very interestingly, you can look on the left-hand side to the quarterly year-on-year growth.
As you can see, the quarterly year-on-year growth is the green line and is showing a U-shape that basically shows in Q1 and Q2 the strong impact of the decline related to COVID. On the right-hand side, you can see the difference between the light blue and the dark blue line that is showing our recurring revenue and on our non-recurring revenue as well. What we can say is that by definition, the non-recurring revenue has been more affected by the COVID crisis, and that's what you can see, that even in Q2, we dropped to a level of -29%, against last year, when it goes to non-recurring revenue.
At the same time, as you can see, on the recurring revenue portion, it has been very resilient, and we've seen still a drop in Q1 and Q2, because as you know, some of our recurring revenue is our volume-based revenue, such as supplies for Franking Machine or usage fees for all the other solution that have been suffering from the slower business in Q1 and Q2. In summary, Quadient demonstrated its good resilience in H1, thanks to its highly recurring model and delivered a strong recovery in H2, thanks to the relevance of its solution. Now we can see for those who don't know, that we operate four major solution. Our software practice on one side, with Customer Experience Management and Business Process Automation, and our smart hardware practice with Parcel Locker Solutions and Mail-Related Solutions.
All our solutions have been impacted by COVID this year, particularly in H1. As you can see on the chart, they experienced a sharp rebound in the second half. Expense for the delayed recovery you can see in Customer Experience Management, which was still impacted in Q4, also due to a high comparison base. I now suggest we review each one of those and walk through the key figures as well as the main takeaways of the year. First, Customer Experience Management. On the right-hand side, you can see that in 2020, CXM accounts for EUR 126 million revenue, which is down 8.5% organically versus 2019. The year-on-year quarterly revenue evolution just below shows a decline from Q2, Q3, and Q4 versus 2019. This is largely COVID related, but again, also due to a high comparison basis.
As you remember, 2019 second half of the year particularly was a very strong year for CXM, notably, with large deals that were booked in North America. When we look at CXM 2020 revenue breakdown, you can see that on one side you have the license and professional services, which is basically the upper part of the pie that you see here, accounting for 26% and 21% respectively. Those were particularly impacted this year. Indeed, although our win rates are maintained particularly high, we've seen large enterprises delaying some investment decisions, which affected both license and the professional services revenue. From a phasing standpoint on this topic, we have a six to nine-month sales cycle in CXM, which explains why our Q4 was also hit, as it did suffer during Q1 and Q2 from the drop in pipeline generation, notably due to the lockdown situation in Europe and North America.
On the other hand, we have a subscription-related revenue, which is more than half of CXM revenue, which grew high- single-digit, thanks to the growth in SaaS and an increase in maintenance revenue. So to conclude, even if declining versus last year, CXM was still able to secure 60 new customers in 2020, of which large deals were closed in Q4, which is a very good sign. It did show growth in North America, and it was able to increase its revenue in absolute value quarter-over-quarter. Now moving to next slide with Business Process Automation, and starting with the key figures. In 2020, the revenue totaled for EUR 69 million, achieving high- single-digit growth at +9% versus 2019. As you can see on the quarterly figure chart, the containment measures implemented in response to COVID impacted BPA revenue mostly during H1. Q3 was very strong.
On top of the recovery, we benefited from some catch-up on some volume-based activities. And we finished the year with a good level of growth in Q4 at +12.8%. From a business model standpoint, the subscription-related revenue, that includes SaaS, maintenance, and volume-based revenue, accounts for the bulk of our revenues, 71% of BPA revenue in 2020. It grew by about 20% versus 2019, which resulted from the strong growth in SaaS placement, and as well as the usage, notably in the favorable work-from-home context. Conversely, as we continue to transition to SaaS, we have licenses that have logically declined this year. Lastly, YayPay, that you remember was acquired end of July 2020, recorded a very promising first contribution, with 100% organic growth in H2 versus H2 last year. It also has shown early traction from cross-selling through our Mail-Related Solutions channel.
Moving now to the third major solution, parcel locker solutions. The 2020 business performance were particularly remarkable. Revenues exceeded EUR 80 million, achieving about 36% organic growth versus 2019 year that was already more than 30% above 2018. From a quarterly perspective, while the parcel locker business suffered from delayed implementation due to sanitary restrictions and a difficult property management environment. The business overall had an impressive finish at more than 85% growth in Q4. In 2020, more than half of parcel locker revenue is subscription-related revenue. This result from our business model, which combines rental, fully accounted in the recurring revenue, and purchase. For the purchase business model, we have maintenance, consumptions, and usage revenues that are attached to the locker sold and creates the subsequent recurring revenue. Despite the slower rollout in Japan, which is a rental-based model, our subscription-related revenue grew about 25% this year.
The other half is mostly related to hardware sales. Our strong H2 performance was mainly driven by the rollout of 80% of the large contract with Lowe's retail chain in the U.S. The dynamic we see in parcel lockers is explained by the fact volume and parcel continue to boom and have been booming particularly this year. Consumers, carriers, and retailers are seeking for safe, available, and convenient last mile or click and collect delivery solutions. Moving to the Mail-Related Solutions, the revenue totaled EUR 641 million in 2020. That's what you can see on the right-hand side. It's down by 10% organically versus 2019. As we shared with you earlier in the year, the negative impact from COVID was significant in H1. Since then, we experienced a recovery in H2, as you can see in the chart.
To understand the performance of MRS across this year, again, you need to segment the revenue in two categories. The subscription-related revenue, that accounts for 74% of MRS revenue in 2020, are mostly originated by our mixed rental and leasing model. This has shown good resilience except for consumption-related revenue, which stayed below 2019 level. But it has improved throughout the year. On the other side, you have the hardware sales, meaning the new placement or the replacement of the hardware, which accounted for 26% of MRS revenue in 2020. They were significantly impacted in H1. As for new business and replacement, it requires someone physically at the office to install or receive the equipment. It has recovered strongly in H2, although high-end products are still somewhat lagging behind. The performance was contrasted across regions with a much slower decline in North America than in Europe.
Now we have seen all four solutions. If you add that up, it brings you to the figures for major operation that you see on the right-hand side, EUR 919 million revenue, down by only 5.9% and better than the total group sales at -7.3%. To be noticed, North America only decreased by 1.5% in 2020, This is remarkable achievement for a COVID year. Even a low single-digit growth was recorded throughout the second half of the year in North America, and is driven by each one of our three growth engines. Conversely, our main European operations posted a -12.5% organic sales decline. This decline is a result of more stringent lockdowns than in U.S. in H1, as well as the proportion of growth engine in the revenue mix. Their performance, however, improved during the second half of the year, especially in France, Benelux.
Lastly, we experienced solid organic growth in revenue from the international segment, fueled by strong revenue growth from Parcel Locker Solutions in Japan. The remaining part of the group is additional operation with EUR 110 million revenue in 2020, that decreased by 17.6% versus 2019. This is mostly due to a continued sales decline from graphics business that was largely impacted by the COVID context. Sales of graphics are mostly driven by events that were almost inexistent, particularly in the first half of the year. Demonstration physical interaction are key in the sales cycle of graphics. On the other side of the coin, we've seen automated packaging system showing a good traction with 17 CVP units sold in 2020, up versus 2019.
We continue to execute our strategy to grow, improve or exit, with the completion of two divestments, ProShip at the end of February 2020, as well as the graphics activity in Australia and New Zealand in January 2021. As a recap, you can see in this table the summary of what we've seen together. From a top-line perspective, you can notice that the group's current EBIT in 2020, that stands at EUR 152 million or EUR 145 million, excluding the earn-out reversal, was fully generated by major operations. While additional operations were close to breakeven. I will now show you how this current operating EBIT of 2020 bridges with the one of last year. The efforts we have put together to offset the top-line decline. We have been engaged in managing our cost structure across three pillars that you see on the right-hand side.
First, efficiency adjustments, including hiring freeze, partial unemployment, and time reduction measures. Second, restructuring and resizing, particularly regarding our MRS business, that we adjust year after year to take into consideration the structural decline of the business. Finally, one-offs and reshaping that were required to quickly generate savings against the sudden COVID headwinds, including bonuses, marketing events, travel ban, et cetera. These cost optimization measures allowed us to generate EUR 46 million, which is what you see in the middle of the bridge, of savings in OpEx in 2020. Last part was done thanks to short-term adjustments, which allowed us to protect our sales growth potential and our R&D. We were able in H2 to take advantage of the rebound and now be ready for 2021.
At current operating income level, so the first line of this line, we recorded a decline of about EUR 37 million versus last year if we neutralize scope, FX effect, and earn-out reversal. This decline is mainly the result of the lower revenue and hence the lower gross margin that was half offset by OpEx savings. If you look just under this line, you have the M&A-related cost. We have been active in M&A. Two divestments, one acquisition, and another one post-closing. Hence, the expenses are up against last year. You can see a drop in optimization expense and other operating income in 2020, the line just below, because as you can remember, last year, goodwill was impaired for EUR 70 million in additional operation, which is included in the minus EUR 93 million figure from 2019.
Hence, we benefit from this favorable comparison, though it was partly offset by higher restructuring expenses and the impact of the divestment of our activities in Australia and New Zealand. We also benefited from a lower interest expense as a result of all the work we've been doing on refinancing operations, which occurred in 2019 and 2020. All in all, the net attributable income amounts to EUR 40 million in 2020, which is up from the EUR 14 million figure in 2019. Moving now from a cash flow standpoint. From a cash standpoint, the group free cash flow generation, which is the cash flow after CapEx, you can see not exactly at the bottom of the table, but it's just before the acquisition net of divestment line. It was very strong, and it's the aggregate we use for our guidance.
At EUR 167 million cash flow after CapEx, that is to be compared to an EUR 86 million in 2019. This reflected our good resilience of EBITDA, with EBITDA margin close to 24%, which is only down by 80 basis points from 2019, thanks to active cost management and the business recovery we had in H2. Favorable working capital and lease receivable change, particularly in H1, that reflected the lower level of activity year-over-year, particularly on the MRS portion. Last, the reduced interest and income tax paid, mainly due to the positive impact of 2019, 2020 refinancing operations, as well as the lower cash tax paid this year. Last, the decrease in CapEx year-over-year that I will comment on the next slide. From a CapEx standpoint, we can see that the capital expenditure declined from 2019 to 2020 from EUR 109 million - EUR 90 million.
This is showing a lower level of CapEx for rent, so this is the green part, which is detailed in the chart below, and it's notably due to the lower rollout of rented parcel locker in Japan. We maintain the development CapEx to secure the development in the new technology and the launch of new products. Last, we've seen a slight decrease in the maintenance CapEx, which is related to some delay in our new projects. If now we move to the financial structure. Our strong cash flow generation has translated mechanically into a significant decrease of the net debt. That amounts, including IFRS 16, to EUR 512 million as at January 31st, 2021, and is down by EUR 156 million year-on-year. Last year, end of year, we were at EUR 668 million.
Accordingly, this resulted in an improved leverage ratio versus the end of 2019 financial year, moving from 0.9 x- 0.4 x, excluding leasing. Here you can see, and that's a comment I will make, you can see that our financial debt maturities. Just a quick comment, the ratio that I just mentioned of the 0.9x and the 0.4 x are based on the net debt divided by EBITDA ratio, excluding leasing. It also excludes what you can see in the chart shaded in gray. It's shaded in gray because it's a liquid instrument that is called OCEANE, that is worth EUR 265 million on our balance sheet, which is not included in our ratio that we just mentioned. Okay.
In 2020, we have continued to actively manage our debt, notably with the repayment of $450 million of USPP in September 2020. Despite those repayments, our liquidity position at the end of the fiscal year is still very strong, with half a billion of cash, basically, which was fueled by the strong 2020 cash flow. I remind you that we also have EUR 400 million of undrawn credit facilities. Post-closing in March 2021, we took the opportunity to repay EUR 163 million of our 2.5% bond, which is in the chart, the white chart in 2021, three months earlier than its maturity, which will save us approximately EUR 1 million of interest this year. It leaves us with no further debt repayment for this year. The next milestone is in June 2022.
As many of you know, we have the maturity of our EUR 265 million Quadient instrument, which is today booked under equity as per IFRS, and for which we are contemplating a reimbursement next year. This will be possible thanks to our highly cash generative business model, backed with a well-spread leasing portfolio and rental future cash flows that you can see in the chart in green at the bottom of this slide. Our Corporate Social Responsibility program establishes the link between our company strategy and our main ESG, environmental, social, and corporate governance risk and opportunities. Our CSR plan is composed of five pillars, addressing the most material issues for Quadient and its stakeholders. In 2020, we continued to focus on providing our talented employees with an inclusive, safe, and flexible work environment.
Second, we maintain high standards of ethical behavior, and we instituted a new ethics alert process. Third, to complement our long history of responsible manufacturing, we have designed a low-carbon strategy to guide our efforts in the coming years. Fourth, continue improving our customer experience. Last, we implemented a new corporate philanthropy program aimed at increasing the positive impact our employees have in their local communities and on the environment. As you can see at the bottom of the slide, in 2020, several rating agencies have continued to recognize our achievements and progress, either maintaining or increasing our standing. Now I will hand back to Rob. Thank you very much, Rob.
Thank you, Laurent. It is now my pleasure to introduce our CEO, Geoffrey Godet, who will provide an update on our back to growth strategy.
The 2020 result. Thank you, Rob, for the introduction. I'm obviously very happy to be with you today. Let's get started. I will now spend a little time on the first phase of the execution of our Back to Growth strategy, which we launched in early 2019, why and how we chose the strategy, and how we executed for these first two years. In just under two years of execution, our Back to Growth Strategy, and even still on the heels of a worldwide pandemic that is still impacting our world, the thorough focus and disciplined execution of the first phase of our Back to Growth strategy plan has laid strong foundations, putting Quadient in a position to deliver sustainable value for its shareholders and all its stakeholders over the next years and beyond.
The first phase of execution of our strategy was dedicated to the transformation of the company around three pillars. First, simplify and refocus our operation and solution portfolio to become a leader in each of the growth markets that we serve. Second one, define a sustainable value creation model for Quadient based on validated growth engines, recurring revenue, and in particular, subscription-related revenues in our major operations. The third one, become one company to quickly scale our solution, all our solutions, by leveraging shared expertise, infrastructure, commercial relationships, and our global footprint, as reflected by now EUR 100 million in synergies unlocked. Thanks to our dedicated employees, partners, and loyal customers, I believe we have delivered on all these points.
Before reviewing our progress and the result, let me share, especially for the ones that do not know us yet, how we developed our strategy called, at the time, Back to Growth. Our Back to Growth strategy is the result of a holistic and complete in-depth strategic review that we conducted in 2019 under the supervision of our board of directors. At the time, we took the time to assess the company's organization, different businesses, and markets, and we did this thoroughly and with a very open mindset with no sacred cows. We reviewed transparently and openly what we needed to be changed, what could be leveraged, what were our strategic differentiators, what we were good at or not, and if we were the best parent of our existing businesses.
While there were things that required changes, I also found a company with so many talents and very strong assets to leverage, such as, among others, an amazing and resilient mail equipment business with a serving a position worldwide with strong cash flow generation, a very large customer base of hundreds of thousands of customers with further cross-selling potential, a very interesting parcel locker Japanese practice and a very strong Customer Communications Management software business with a seven position worldwide as well, and with a great software engineering practice. As part of this in-depth review, which involved several months of internal and external analysis, we contemplated many strategic scenarios, which were all very rigorously challenged and tested. Our final plan was then selected, taking into account, obviously, its potential execution risk, and on the grounds of providing the highest value creation prospect for our shareholders.
The result of this work was the foundation of our Back to Growth strategy. Our strategy is simple and straightforward. We decided to focus on high-growth markets centered around smart hardware and software solutions to help our customers with their challenges today and the challenges to come. The first pillar of this strategy is our software pillar. We have a very rich customer base who rely on our solutions to manage and optimize physical communication. By talking to our customers, we took the time to do so, as you can imagine, we know they trust us and look for us to provide additional solutions that can further enable a digital communication flow. It was obvious for Quadient to continue focusing on helping its customers to drive to digital transformation. This is a natural shift from physical to multi-channel communication.
In today's world, communication between a company and their customers are no longer limited to physical paper. They must be digital and available across all devices. It is a key enabler for delivery of exceptional customer experiences and automating business processes. This is the reason why we have focused on leveraging further our award-winning Customer Communications Management solution, also known as CCM, into the customer experience market, and how we develop solution to automate business processes, which is our BPA solution. The strategy for which we outlined in details during our last education sessions. You will hear Chris Hartigan later today on how we help them overcome these challenges. Our second pillar is the Parcel Locker Solutions.
As the world shifts from mail to parcels and the necessity to connect hardware to cloud application, we develop solution to bring automation and convenience to the last mile parcel delivery for all their stakeholders, from carriers, retailers, property managers, corporation, as well as consumers in today's booming e-commerce market. You will hear more about our Parcel Locker Solutions from Daniel Malouf on this solution, I guess, in a few minutes from now. Our third pillar of the strategy is our Mail-Related Solutions. We decided to refocus on our traditional business because of its resilient and highly cash generative model. Our goals are, for the Mail-Related Solutions, to gain market share, extend the value from this business, and protect its high profitability.
Last but not least, leverage our sales organization to cross-sell our newest software and hardware solution into our customer base of more than 440,000 mail-related solution customers. You will hear from Alain Fairise on these solutions as well, I'm sure, in the next few minutes. Another point is that we selected these three pillars not only because they were great opportunities by themselves, but we also selected them because they were highly synergistic among each other. Our strategy is to foster these synergies across our solution, and we decided to integrate the company to truly unlock those synergies. In summary, our Back to Growth strategy aims at repositioning Quadient's portfolio by building sustainable businesses with high growth prospect, and leading market potential that are synergistic with our structurally declining but highly profitable and cash generative mail business. However relevant and grounded our strategy was, execution is what matters.
Execution and execution. How do we operate our people, our values, and how we work together, our KPIs, et cetera. This is what makes a difference in how strategy come alive. To lay the foundation of this transformation, we launched a number of strategic initiatives to profoundly change the way we work. We changed our organization to simplify its operation model, gain efficiency, and unite the entire company under a strong common culture. The executive team has been reviewed with new talent hired to lead the transformation with notably international and software background. Linear management layers were put in place with a strong regional focus, and also centers of excellence were established to streamline internal tools and process and better leverage the team's expertise while continuing to be close to our customers.
The adoption of a new, unified, and modern brand entity, Quadient, that we could leverage in the digital space and common to all our solution. We also put in place the refocus and simplification of Neopost from more than 15 independent businesses to Quadient. We focus on its Parcel Locker, Mail-Related Solution, and software solutions. As part of this first phase of transformation, we have also been reshaping our business portfolio with the objective of strengthening and scaling our major operation through a combination of organic initiatives, targeted bolt-on acquisitions, and while implementing a grow and improve or exit plan for additional operation. Regarding M&A, our approach has been very selective and disciplined with three bolt-on acquisitions completed since the launch of our plan for total cash out of a little less than EUR 200 million to date.
Including our first acquisition, Parcel Pending, in January 2019 to reinforce our market share in the U.S.A. Parcel Pending is the leading U.S. player in Parcel Locker, we have been scaling this business successfully expanding into the U.S. retail market. Now exporting its franchise in the residential property market in new geographies such as the U.K. and France, as recently announced. The second phase of acquisition are the two leading North American fintech software companies with YayPay in July 2020 and Beanworks, as recently as March 2021, to bring advanced SaaS accounts receivable and accounts payable automation capabilities to our software portfolio. In the meantime, Quadient has divested its data quality business, Satori Software, and Human Inference.
We have significantly reduced our shipping and software activities with the disposal of ProShip and the shutdown of Temando, and we have recently sold our graphic activities in Australia and New Zealand. The net cash spent in M&A over the period amounts to around EUR 105 million. Speaking of M&A discipline, within our current major operation scope, Quadient has shown a good track record of conducting successful M&A operation in the past and today, and especially in the field of Customer Communications Management software. Let's share a couple examples. GMC, which was acquired in 2012, an industry recognized leader at the time in the field of Customer Communications Management, from which we built our Inspire Platform, our Quadient's award-winning Customer Experience Management platform. We also acquired icon in 2016, which allowed us to reinforce our positioning in Germany, in particular in the insurance sector.
Both of them achieved double-digit growth rate in year three post-acquisition of around 16% and 28% respectively above the WACC as per our financial discipline guidelines. Since the launch of the first phase of our Back to Growth strategy in 2019, we made a few targeted promising bolt-on acquisition to reinforce our smart hardware and smart software solution portfolio. As I shared with you just earlier, Parcel Pending acquired in 2019, the market's U.S. residential leader, which exceeded our growth ambition in 2020, as mentioned by Laurent earlier. YayPay was acquired in 2020, as I mentioned, a fintech specialized in accounts receivable automation solution, recognized for the first time by IDC as a leader in accounts receivable automation, as recently as in December 2020, barely less than six months after we acquired them, validating the quality of our choice and our assessment.
Another key direction of the Back to Growth has been to favor, across all its solution, a resilient value creation model based on recurring revenue. In 2020, subscription-related revenue accounted for 69% of sales within Quadient's major growth, with increasing services attached to the sale or rental or hardware solution, and a swift transition towards SaaS and cloud models for our software solution. A few more numbers to better understand the success of the first phase of our transformation. Revenue from our growth engine, which combined our parcel locker and software practice, grew by 45% over the last two years and accounting for 27% of the total revenue in 2020, up from the 17% in 2018, reflecting today lower dependencies of Quadient compared to historical Mail-Related Solutions business.
And lastly, the revenue contribution from major operation remained broadly stable in absolute terms between 2018 and 2020, demonstrating our ability to compensate the structurally declining recurring mail-related revenue by growing on the other side recurring revenue stream from our growth engines. As you can see on this slide, the first year of our Back to Growth strategy delivered strong results with an organic sales growth at 1.6%, our best performance since 2013, and with Q4 2019 being our seventh straight quarters of positive organic growth in a row. The COVID-19 pandemic obviously impacted our 2020 top-line performance, as Laurent just shared with you. Quadient has, however, demonstrated the strong resilience of its business model in the first part of 2020, and recorded a sharp rebound in the second part of the year, boding very well for our organic growth to resume in 2021.
If we look at the individual performance of our solution, our three growth engines delivered double-digit organic growth in 2019 versus 2018, and this is a great achievement. A 36.8% for our Parcel Locker Solutions, 18.8% organic growth for BPA solution, and 12.6% organic growth for our CXM solution. Our Mail-Related Solutions business also recorded its best organic performance since 2013, with only a 2.8% organic decline, outperforming the market. Of course, 2020 was an exceptional year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were able to go through this crisis thanks to the resilience of our recurring business model, obviously, a very strong and passionate team of employees, our strong go-to-market capabilities and our commercial successes, and as well, our synergistic portfolio solution.
When you look at the numbers for 2020, our Parcel Locker business grew above 36% organically, despite a challenging 2019 comparable base, with sales already exceeding EUR 80 million and driven by large contract wins. BPA, our software, sales rose 9% organically to EUR 69 million, returning to double-digit growth level in H2 after an H1 impacted by the lockdowns. We strengthen our offering with the launch of Impress, our own cloud-based multi-channel document automation platform and the acquisition of YayPay. The CXM revenue declined 8.5% on an organic basis to EUR 126 million, reflecting the COVID impact on our pipeline of project, but also our voluntary strategy to shift the business to a SaaS-based model, as reflected by the high single-digit growth of subscription-related revenue, even in a COVID year.
Lastly, our mail-related business proved resilient during the year, down about 10% organically, but with a material recovery in H2, particularly strong in the U.S., a still high, stable profitability. Our strategy to promote revenue across a large install base of customers for each of our solution has resulted in an increasing share of subscription-related revenue in our total revenue. And this is creating a resilient value creation business model for Quadient. For MRS, we have about 440,000 customers with a high share of subscription-related revenue at around 74% of MRS sales in 2020. It's coming from the rentals and financing and supplies and services activities. For our parcel locker solution, we have about 5,000 customers already with a share of subscription-related revenue, around 50% of our parcel locker sales in 2020, which is also the reflection of our different business model, purchase, rental, and pay-per-use.
In our software, we have more than 8,000 combined customers across CXM and BPA segments. BPA by itself has about 7,000 customers and benefit from a strong contribution of our subscription-related revenue, which is already reaching 71% of BPA sales in 2020 due to its predominant, sorry, SaaS and subscription model. CXM has about 2,000 customers, many large organizations, but also mid ones, and is still transitioning from a one-off license to a subscription model, as reflected by 53% share of subscription sales in 2020. So the successful transformation of Quadient as one integrated company has profoundly changed its organization. It's simplified its operating model. We gain efficiency, and we united the entire company under a unified brand and a strong common culture.
This is what has allowed us to benefit from a strong capability sharing in a number of areas, in particular within our operation, product development, go-to-market capabilities or supply chain. With, for instance, our MRS and Parcel Locker Solutions sharing already the same warehouses, for example, in the U.S.. If we take another example regarding our proprietary asset, we have shared technology and IP. If we take the example of CXM Inspire and BPA Impress platform, our customer relationship, very important, with significant strong cross-sell opportunities across our Mail-Related Solutions customer base and our unified Quadient brand and value proposition. And lastly, management capabilities, and mainly in the field of marketing or regulation and even M&A. We have also identified a number of areas where we see strong potential. Sourcing, customer experience, tangible assets, talent management, among others.
Beyond those capability synergies, from the outset of the plan, fostering synergies has been an imperative objective to scale our growth engines. Let's start with our software business. During our education sessions in the last quarter, we already discussed that we have one common software practice under one leader, Zbynek Hodic, sharing best practices, tools, processes, and expertise. Furthermore, the leading software platform from CXM, Inspire Platform, and from BPA share the same code. In addition to the R&D synergies, it is important to highlight the synergies from our customers, which is the ultimate validation of our strategy. Approximately 75% of BPA revenue and 10% of CXM revenue is generated by cross-selling with our mail-related solution organization and customers. This is done by sharing the same commercial teams across our software and mail organization.
As we move to our Parcel Locker Solutions, we benefit already from noteworthy synergies with our MRS business and in hardware R&D and in supply chain. It's also managed by one leader, Thierry Le Jaoudour. Let's take another example. Our MRS sales teams in North America successfully grew the Parcel Locker Solutions business in corporate and education market with over 200 universities as Parcel Locker Solutions customers. Outside the U.S., we leverage the Mail-Related Solutions teams, the relationship that they have with postal and carrier organization, and this is the reason why we've been able to secure JVs and partnership with Yamato or Geopost from La Poste in France, which helped accelerate the launch of our Parcel Locker Solutions a few years ago. Thanks to our integration, we also centralized all core business function, support function, IT, human resources, legal, marketing, finance, transformation activities.
So concretely, in terms of hard euro and dollars savings and synergies. Quadient has successfully unlocked around more than EUR 70 million in revenue synergies in 2020. Thanks to our commercial cross-selling between the solution and mostly between our software and mail-based solution business so far. With this new integrated organization in place, we estimate between EUR 25 million and EUR 35 million were saved in cost synergies, including centralized marketing and administrative functions, back office efficiencies, mutualized R&D, as well as an integrated supply chain and logistics between MRS and PLS. This is already a great achievement for our strategy in such a short period and such despite 2020 being a challenging year across the board. I would like now to spend time to present the second phase of execution of our strategy.
After these initial two years of execution, we also needed to take into account the impact of COVID on our future. We did a holistic and in-depth review of our assumptions of our businesses, tested our business plan, we reevaluated our risk of execution moving forward, we estimated our future synergies, and even considered alternative scenarios. We did so with the same open mindset, with no sacred cows. Our reviews are always tested and challenged by our board of directors. A result of these assessments, to continue to maximize value creation over the long term for our stakeholders and shareholders, we have decided, as part of the phase two of our Back to Growth plan, we're strategically focused on driving sustainable value.
We will do so in part by accelerating the convergence of Quadient software strategy with a newly created Intelligent Communication Automation segment, combining our Customer Experience Management and Business Process Automation solution. This is driven by the customer needs and market drivers that we see. We will continue to unlock more synergies between our solutions and operation, powered by unified company. Defining forward-looking objective to measure the impact of our Corporate and Social Responsibilities activities, led by being a signatory member now of the UN Global Compact. As a quick reminder, when the Back to Growth strategy was unveiled in 2019, even though we already had one strong software pillar, we intentionally kept our software solution separated as CXM and BPA for a few reasons.
Early on, we realized that customer communication and experience management, accounts payable and accounts receivable, and electronic document delivery were converging into one market. However, we assessed that we were lacking the organic capability to build timely all of these solutions. This is why we decided to achieve our accounts receivable and accounts payable roadmap with bolt-on acquisition. Until we brought them in, the internal convergence was still in its early phase. The second factor was centered around cloud maturity within our own customer base. What makes Quadient really unique in the market is that we are listening very carefully to our customers. In 2018, few large customers from CXM were ready to rely on cloud and SaaS as a platform for their critical customer communication needs. However, BPA customers, more smaller and mid-sized customers, had a strong requirement to run in the cloud already.
As such, we accelerated the launch of Impress, which we communicated in June 2020, to enable our mid-sized customers to leverage our cloud capabilities. This allowed us to better prepare ourselves to support our large customer needs for the cloud. To ensure a strong execution, both organically and through acquisition, we intentionally put in place focused and dedicated management for CXM and BPA to reach first the required maturity, and specifically for our fragmented and incomplete BPA solution at the time, while ensuring continued market share gain in our flagship CXM solution. Why now? What are we announcing today? First, when our customers in the market look at how communication are created, how and when these communications should be delivered, and how communication drive automated processes, they see this more and more as one integrated value chain.
These are integrated components to better serve the customer and drive stronger efficiencies internally for business-critical application. Second, the team has done a tremendous job elevating the maturity of each solution, BPA and CXM, and especially on the software and the R&D side, which was detailed in our BPA education day. Third, the recent announcement of YayPay and Beanworks acquisitions have been completed and have reinforced our cloud and SaaS software offering. We now need to integrate them to realize the synergies. By combining CXM and BPA together, they are a strong benefit to all stakeholders. Regarding our partners and each customer segment, we have a more holistic, integrated, and simplified value proposition centered around the automation of communication and business-critical application. This will help unlock more revenue synergies. Quadient will also continue to unlock further material cost synergies between CXM and BPA solutions on product management, marketing, and go-to-market.
Having one R&D team allows customers to benefit from stimulated innovations with additional features, leveraging cloud and artificial intelligence already in our solutions. We heard from clients the need to provide a solution, end-to-end digitized customer journey. Across the entire value chain of how a communication is designed, how it is personalized to each customer, and how it is delivered across all channels. Let's take an invoice, for example. An invoice or a bill is a commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer relating to the sale transaction and indicating the product quantities and agreed price the seller had provided to the buyer. Payment terms are usually stated on the invoice. The creation of this invoice is not so easy, especially if it is required to be delivered across many channels.
In addition to just creating and delivering the invoice, there are many processes linked to it, such as the contract, the purchase order, the proposal that was sent to the customers, and so many more customer communications and interaction that the company creates from managing additional correspondence, payment terms, collection of cash. Company needs this entire process to be super accurate, future-proof, automated, and intelligent. To do this on top of it in a personalized and efficient manner. This is just one example of how process and communication documents interact together. In 2020, with the pandemic hitting everyone overnight, there are many reputable third-party research firms that illustrate how companies have accelerated the digitalization of the customer journey.
This is due for many reasons: people working from home, companies needing to provide better experience to their customers, stronger cash management, and the adoption of communicating in new digital ways. As we look at the market and listen to our customers, it is important we cover the needs of the different segments. Yes, at a high level, the need is the same: create, deliver, and automate communication in an efficient and simple manner. However, we understand the needs of a top 10 global customer worldwide will be different than a mid-size insurance company. Our specialized teams talk to our customers all the time, and we make sure we understand the business requirements and mapping the right solution. Our customer segments are split into three categories, making it very simple to understand.
Starting at the bottom of the triangle, we have small clients who have low volume of transaction and are requesting more convenience and fewer manual tasks. They typically have no dedicated IT organization. The next segment is our medium-sized customers with obviously more transactions and more requirements, but still little IT resources for which a cloud solution brings many benefits. The last segment is our large customers who have enormous volume, more compliant mandates, and required to deliver highly personalized communication. Our sales organization is obviously organized by customer segments, and we focus them in priority on the mid and large customers. The validation from our customers is a strong indication. However, we also look at other companies who compete for our business.
In this diagram, we look at the value solution providers, and you can easily see there are numbers of players who play in more than one category, which is another indication that they are seeing the same requirement and market trend as Quadient. Quadient has been recognized for many years by industry analysts, as you know, such as Gartner, IDC, Forrester, Aspire, and others, as a leader with a strong vision on the industry. We do not take our leadership position for granted, and we work every day to continue to innovate. As we shared our vision with customers and partners and analysts, I would like to share with you very recent feedback we received from a very respected analyst from IDC, Marci Maddox. She states that combining CXM and BPA together into one business unit is a logical step for Quadient.
This move will broaden their reach in the communication services and automation market, offering their expertise to organizations both large and small, with a strong foundation of communication management and its newly acquired SaaS cloud-based account receivable and account payable automation capabilities. Quadient, according to her, is uniquely positioned to help its clients transition to a modern architecture with an eye towards customer experience excellence. There was also another IDC report that came out in late 2020, who also pinpoint the use cases of how traditional customer communication includes communication related to statements and invoices. Now, on the right-hand side of the slide, you will see a sampling of our partner ecosystem who support our software portfolio by cross-selling several of our software solution already.
If we take the example of Capgemini already promotes both Inspire, our current CXM platform, and YayPay, our current accounts receivable platform, for which they have a relationship together. Sage is also, I think, working with both YayPay and Beanworks. We also have another example with Canon, which is reselling both our Customer Experience Management platform and our BPA platform, and even, by the way, our Parcel Locker Solutions. Chris Hartigan will go into a little bit more details and relate to the importance of our partner ecosystem in a few minutes with you. Our two software solution address the same customer needs, each for a different type of customer, and both solution benefit from the reuse of the same IP and shared R&D team.
As explained at the time of our last BPA education session, when we look under the hood of Quadient Impress, you will see the same core components and similar modules as Quadient Inspire. Both software applications have indeed been created from the same roots and are designed to meet specific customer needs. Inspire for large enterprise and Impress for smaller or midsize customers. We estimate today that more than 60% of the source code is shared between Inspire and Impress together. Building on one R&D software team, we were use the proven architecture and technology stack from Quadient Inspire to deliver enterprise-grade software platform to small and midsize customers with Quadient Impress. These customers automatically benefit from high availability, scalability, load balancing, multi-tenancy, and all the certification related to quality control.
As we look at the synergies, we have saved significant time to go to market and save several hundred years of man development here. We have, obviously, additional R&D synergies we plan to leverage between Beanworks and YayPay, and also between Inspire and Impress on one hand, and YayPay and Beanworks on the other, all around cloud and artificial intelligence, UI, and UX development. Our global R&D software team include core developers dedicated to Quadient solutions, Inspire, Impress, obviously now YayPay, and the recently acquired Beanworks accounts payable platform. We have also integrated some non-shared functions on R&D. For instance, around architecture, quality engineering as well. Starting in 2020 now and going forward, former CXM and BPA will become Intelligent Communication Automation, also known as ICA.
Chris Hartigan, our new ICA Chief Solution Officer, will go over in more details how our solution is at the center of every customer communication and business process automation needs. Continuing to work as a unified company, we are confident we will bring existing and new synergies to the next level. With an increased software portfolio focused on better responding to our customer needs for digital and automation, that will allow us to scale our cross-selling synergies with our mail-related solution and our hundreds of thousands of customers. The same cross-selling synergies can be further leveraged between our parcel locker solution and our mail-related solution sales organization in the coming years. As we scale further our parcel locker solution business, we are also able to extract more synergies from our supply chain and service organizations to deploy and support our lockers in so many countries.
The integration of YayPay and Beanworks into our software solution, ICA, enables Quadient to also unlock further cost synergies for product management, marketing, and go-to-market. It will bring technology and R&D synergies to the next level as well. While we do all of this, we will also benefit from more efficient centralized support function. For phase two of our Back to Growth strategy, we also plan to continue driving sustainable value in areas of corporate social responsibility as well. For the first time, we have set forward-looking targets on several meaningful objectives to provide our stakeholders with the foresight on our anticipated CSR impact. As of March of this year, Quadient is now a signatory member of the UN Global Compact, which officially formalizes publicly our commitment to sustainable development. Our objectives for 2023 specifically support eight out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations.
Among our objectives, we're committed to the implementation of multiple programs to foster inclusion and diversity in the workplace, including the launch of employee-led support networks and a women's environment leadership program. We're also going to focus on low-carbon approach, aligned with the well below 2 degrees Celsius scenario, the remanufacturing of our hardware solutions, and over 90% of industrial waste recycling. Increase in our impact in our local communities and the environment. We have additional objectives that we will be introducing before 2023, notably related to our effort to continuously reduce the impact of our solution on the environment, and our approach on responsible procurement, and also, very importantly, our philanthropy programs.
The thorough execution of the first phase of our Back to Growth strategy plan has laid strong foundation, putting Quadient in a position to deliver sustainable value for shareholders and all the stakeholders over the next few years and beyond. We truly transformed our company. We deeply changed our operating model, simplified our organization, reshaped our portfolio, having completed acquisition in the business areas that we validated and targeted. In the meantime, we have also successfully developed our software and parcel lockers activities, constrained the decline of our mail-related solution, increased the proportion of subscription-related revenue, recurring revenue, and unlocked significant synergies.
As we're entering now the second phase of Back to Growth, we're confident in our capacity to leverage our leading market position to reap the benefit of further digitization of the economy and an increasingly high volume of parcel deliveries while maintaining our mail business highly cash generative. Our new profitable growth trajectory is primarily based on organic initiatives, they will be ranging from investment in delivering high risk-adjusted returns, the development of our end-to-end SaaS cloud Intelligent Communication Automation software portfolio, and also the generation of further synergies and a strong focus on innovation. I will now pass it over to Laurent, so that he can share how we plan to report and monitor the progress of our execution with you. Over, Laurent.
Thank you very much, Geoffrey. In the continuity of what Geoffrey just said, please let me illustrate what it means for our reporting. In this slide, you can see the way we have been reporting our 2020 fiscal year. From now on, basically, Intelligent Communication Automation will replace CXM and BPA. In combining CXM and BPA together, we are also restating a small portion of software to MRS for approximately EUR 12 million. Going forward, for each of the solution, we will provide you with a new profitability KPI, being the solution profit or the solution profit margin that will stand in the line below. The rest of our reporting remains unchanged. What is the solution profit or the solution profit margin? It's basically the revenue minus cost of sales and minus all costs related to sales, marketing, support, implementation of the solution, as well as R&D.
The only costs that are not included in the solution profit or the solution profit margin are G&A expenses. This is because support functions are mutualized across solutions, mostly at regional level, it's HR, legal, finance, et cetera. It reflects how, in fact, we change our operating model. This metric, therefore, is the best possible measure of our profitability by solution, which enables us to monitor the real financial performance and the profitability as such by solution. Now if I take back my 2020 reporting, we were already disclosing the revenues that you can see on the third line and on the columns separated by solution and geography for major operation and additional operation. You already knew the EBIT, split by operation, major versus additional. Finally now, the solution profit margin by solution. As well as major operation as a total and additional operation level.
What it means for 2020 is a 21% solution profit margin for ICA, 45% for MRS, and 5.6% for PLS, which results at major operation level to 36.9% solution profit margin. On the additional operation side, you have slightly dilutive 15.4% solution profit margin. The total group solution profit margin is hence reaching 34.6%. Thank you very much. I think I need to hand back to Tamir for the next and the market dynamics.
I think we're going to do a little Q&A.
Q&A first. Sorry. Thank you.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally as you will be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one, if you would like to ask a question.
Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you, Laurent. We'll now take time to address questions. If you haven't yet posed your question, please do so in the chat window. We do have a number here that have been set up, and we're ready to go. I'll just ask our moderator to open the lines so that all of today's speakers contribute to the Q&A session. All right. Here we go. I'm going to start with our first question from Patrick Jousseaume. Patrick asks: Could you elaborate on professional services, CXM and BPA, which is new in the reporting, if I'm not incorrect. What is it exactly, and to what extent is this recurring or not? I'll address that question to start with you, Laurent.
Ready? Okay. You're completely right, Patrick. We now are disclosing professional services. It's new as such. Before you had only recurring and non-recurring revenue for both CXM and BPA. Now you get subscription-related revenue, professional services that were part of the recurring portion, and then you have the license portion that is still separated, but you had it as a non-recurring item. Professional services as such, is repeatable and was qualified as a recurring up to now. I know, also some competitors disclose it as a recurring revenue. But we felt that as it was not related to a subscription as such, and it was mostly time and material related to an implementation or a customization service that followed either a SaaS subscription or a first license implementation, it was maybe clearer to separate them and be able to monitor them separately.
I don't know, maybe Geoffrey, you want to complement that?
No, it was very clear. Thank you, Laurent. Rob, do you have another question for us?
Another question from Patrick: What tax rate should we model going forward?
You want to take this one?
Yes, I will take this one, Geoffrey. The tax rate, I believe you should use 22%-25%. You have some variability depending on the mix or the geographical split where you do your profit, basically, across the group. 22%-25% is a fair narrow range of what you should use, I think, for the coming years.
Okay. Thank you. Our next question is from Mourad Lahmidi. He asked: C ould you split out cash tax and cash interest for 2020, please?
Yes, sure. As you saw in the cash flow statement, the simplified cash flow statement we showed you, we moved on this line that is a bundle of interest and tax cash aspect from EUR 85 -EUR 37. Last year on tax, we had EUR 45 million, and this year we have EUR 10 million cash out. Last year in interest, we had EUR 40 million, and this year we have EUR 27 million.
Okay. Thank you. Another question from Mourad. Could you please give us an apple-to-apple comparison of your 2023 leverage target, in terms of end of 2020 leverage?
Yes. What we mentioned at the end of 2020 is the 0.4 x we saw is the ratio of net debt over EBITDA, excluding leasing, at the end of the fiscal year 2020. Now, your point is very interesting because you're saying, in fact, you're anticipating a little bit the presentation, but you're saying compared to your guidance from 2023, how this compares to basically my open floor. What you need to know is first, you need to take into consideration that OCEANE from June 2022 onwards, as we are contemplating the reimbursement, will be re-qualified as a debt. Either in the net debt calculation, basically, it will increase our net debt by this amount. That's the first point you need to take into consideration. We could do. What we will do for 2020 is, you're asking apple to apple.
We are assuming that this year we will treat the EUR 265 million of OCEANE as a debt. Okay? And if you do that, you would move basically the 0.4 x- 2.1x this year. Okay? That being said, you need also in the—emancipating a little bit, perspective of the 2023 guidance, you need also to include the fact that we purchased, in cash, Beanworks, that we announced last week, for more than EUR 70 million, that you need to factor in. All that being made together, apple to apple with the 2.1x of this year, plus this effect of Beanworks that we will have throughout 2021. We are looking for a leverage ratio, which is again, the net debt divided by EBITDA excluding leasing, well below 1.75 x. From 2.1x in 2020, we are aiming apple to apple at well below 1.75x .
You need to take into consideration, because I'm trusting in your model, you will do year after year. You need to take into consideration the fact that we've purchased for more than EUR 70 million in cash, Beanworks this year.
Great. Thanks, Laurent. There's a follow-up question from Mourad as well, which is: Could you give us an idea of the deleveraging trajectory that corresponds to your 2023 leverage target?
Yeah. As of...
You addressed it.
I think I addressed it, but basically we are moving from 2.1x to well below 1.75x.
Yes.
Okay. Great. These two questions are very similar, so I'll group them together. The first is from Marc Saint John Webb, who asks: Could you please give us EBIT per division and trend for the four divisions? And another question from Franck Couturier, who asks: Can you give the details with EBIT by solution as only revenue is given? Would help us to follow the progression of the flat tax growth plan. He says: [Non-English content ] which is very, very nice. Thank you. So maybe if you could address those two questions.
Yes. First, thank you, Franck, for your support. Second, that's what we want to address with the solution profit margin and the solution profit we've been disclosing. I trust it was slightly after maybe you asked the question, because it's a written question. The idea being, we have overall at the group level, you need the top line, you need the EBIT between major and additional operations. By solution, you want to have an indicator. The way we have transformed Quadient and that we have, I would say, leveraged the DNA across the board for each given geography makes it very, I think... I would say, meaningful to have a solution profit because the EBIT would basically, you would have to cut into pieces generally that are mutualized, there are always many methods and, I would say no perfect method.
We are providing you with something that you could work back the metrics, I think, the way you want. Basically the solution profit is anything that today we can qualify as being direct cost related to the given solution. And that will give you and enable you and us to qualify the evolution of this profitability by solution moving forward. I think the second part of the question, oh, sorry, I think that I addressed it.
Yes.
Our next question is from Jean-François Granjon, who asks: Could you give us the level of debt and EBITDA without leasing?
2020.
In 2020. Yes. The net debt excluding leasing, if I remind well, is around EUR 70 million. Basically, that's including IFRS 16 now. Including IFRS 16, in 2020, the net debt amounts to EUR 70 or EUR 71 million.
EUR 70 million.
EUR 70 million.
Thank you. EUR 70 million. And the EBITDA, if I take my EBITDA excluding leasing, I'm at EUR 160 million, a little bit more than EUR 160 million, which makes back your 0.4 x, I think, ratio that we communicated.
Thank you, Laurent. Again from Mourad, a quick question, which is: H ow is the solution profit margin similar to gross margin?
I think it's quite different. Basically, Mourad, in the gross margin, you would assume that what we usually call the cost of sales, which are basically all the cost triggered by a sale. In the solution profit, we add up everything that contributes to the value of your solution, including the R&D, that will mean not tied directly to the revenue, including the sales OPEX. Basically, every revenue-generating cost plus the cost tied to the production of the solution, R&D, service, as well as marketing, including product marketing, basically anything but the G&A, I think is the best definition I could give. Anything but G&A.
Thank you. From Olivia Lombard, we have a question: H ello, thanks for the excellent presentation. Thanks, Olivia: Can you please share with the current profitability between CXM and BPA, which are up to be merged into ICA?
Up to now, we have not given any solution profit, it's a new KPI that we disclose. And today we are, I would say, merging ICA because I believe that we, as explained by Geoffrey just earlier, is that we have been building our BPA suite based on the backbone of the CCM R&D. Today it felt to us that trying to now cut in pieces an R&D that serves both solution didn't make sense. We have not computed, and we have not made the exercise either, because it's again, trying to reallocate things that are merged together, the management, the R&D, the product marketing as well, part of the go-to market. Basically, we've not done the calculation, we believe it's not so relevant as they are basically based on the same infrastructure and part of the same cost.
Excellent. Thank you. A question from [Hoke Raftjens]: What explains the high level of central costs, EUR 200 million approximately? How do you expect central costs to develop going forward?
Let me take this one, Rob. It's a good question, Hoke. Thank you. We have obviously, as you know, we operate in two several continents, in 27 countries. This is also why we've been also progressively trying to reshape and simplify the business model. That's also the benefit of serving 500,000 customers. You have a lot of different customers that our back office, our finance team, has to be able to process with some complexity in our model. If you look at the EUR 200 million, I think that you're referring to in 2020, in this reporting, it gives you probably a little less than 20%, around 19% for those G&A. I think we have to appreciate that it's a level that is on the heel of a year in which we've been severely impacted.
So, it's definitely a level that is after the impact that we had from the COVID of reduced sales, as you know, from the top line. This is, though, both a percentage that has been improving from 2019. And also in terms of absolute number, we've been able to reduce the G&A this year in 2020, based on the measures that Laurent described, both on short-term measures on the G&A, but also some measures that we're going to be able to have the benefit moving forward, such as the reduction of, for example, the numbers of offices that we have closed during the year, a little bit more than 30 offices this year.
To your point, moving forward, and I think that is also the benefit of our project of simplifying the organization and focusing on major operation, is to also get more efficiency on our central functions over time and progressively, hopefully, be able to reduce the percentage of G&A within the group so that our central function could be more efficient and provide a better support, probably with less effort than before. Progressively, as we improve the trajectory on the solution profitability, we have also an improvement coming from more efficient G&A. All in all, helping improve the overall group profitability trajectory that we are describing in this second phase of the plan.
Thanks, Geoffrey. Our next question is from [Roland Keenan], who asks: Your 2% growth target for 2021 seems not to be very ambitious. Having in mind that the 7% sales decrease in 2020 and the seven quarters of growth before COVID, why is there not more growth possible in 2021?
Thank you, Rob, for the question. I'm sure Laurent and I will be happy to address that part of the questions. We'll potentially keep them for the end of the presentation. We will get to the guidance specifically of 2021 and moving forward, maybe just a quick answer. Even as we speak, there are countries that are considering sometimes some more stricter confinement, like in France, as we are both sitting. We don't have yet the same level of visibility that we had in 2019 before the COVID impact. I think definitely there is a measure for us to take into account that uncertainty. We definitely see, I think that 2% as probably, hopefully, something that we should be able to improve upon if the conditions improve in the coming months.
We've seen in February and March a good trend as we were exiting the trend of Q4, continuous improvement across the business. We haven't seen yet the impact of the new confinement. We remain hopeful that hopefully we can potentially do more. Thank you, Rob.
Thank you. Our next question is from David Cerdan, who asks: Are you impacted by the issues on electronic components?
Very good question, David. The world is actually progressively exiting the year that we went through with COVID, sourcing, traveling, being able to order electronics is obviously putting stress on the worldwide supply chain. This is something that we're, as a hardware manufacturer, obviously on top of and managing with lead time quite ahead of the moment we need to produce and manufacture our own product. Some of the electronic components, some of the lead time that we are usually having in ordering them is up to one year. We have time to be able to anticipate, but this is definitely something that is to be of notice. We've seen already some costs on travel. Shipping is obviously a little bit more expensive.
That's an ongoing optimization of our supply chain and sourcing that basically is capable of sourcing things both in Asia, and bring them to North America as well as Europe. So far it's okay, but it's definitely something we'll have to continue to monitor in the coming months. Hopefully, after the world is getting back to a normal level activity, things will probably recede.
Thank you. Our last question for this portion of the session comes from Olivia Lombard, who asks: H ow much acquisition costs incurred in 2020 were dedicated at Beanworks? How much M&A costs should be added in 2021 on top of the EUR 70 million price acquisition?
I'll let Laurent give you more some of the breakdown information. But generally speaking, in our M&A, in the acquisition cost, you have the yearly amortization. This is the structural part that Laurent will refer to. And then you have more of the one-off cost associated to M&A. This is obviously, as you've seen our press release, this is not something that we plan to incur for the coming years. Our plan is an organic plan. We may remain opportunistic on M&A, but there is no particular amount that we should take into account from an acquisition cost for those one-off costs. Do you want to maybe answer more on the amortization side, Laurent?
Yes. Up to now, Geoffrey is completely right, first. Just to give some color around what he said, we have in those M&A-related expenses that amounts to EUR 20 million this year, a chunk of that, which is PPA depreciation. Which is basically the amortization of some of the assets we purchased and the value we give to them. Could be IP, could be a customer base, et cetera. Geoffrey is mentioning that in the future, and the guidance that we'll give you afterwards are mostly related to an organic plan. As such, in fact, we are moving forward to decline, at some point, this PPA amount, the more we amortize what we have been acquiring in the past. Just for the sake of the clarity on 2020 figures, we have EUR 7 million, roughly, of PPA for this year.
From the EUR 7 million, you can, I would say, trend down progressively in your model. If it's the question, I guess it is the question, towards maybe something from EUR 3 million-EUR 5 million at the end of the plan. That's, I think, a fair assumption.
We have also the divestment-related cost.
Yes. Beanworks, more specifically, so basically, out of the EUR 13 million, a relatively small portion, and as you know, the M&A activity this year was quite intense. We divested two companies, acquired one, and did an acquisition post-closing. Beanworks is relatively minimum. At the top of mind, I have between EUR 500,000 and EUR 700,000 of fees on Beanworks.
Excellent. Thank you for that. At this point, we're pretty much caught up on questions. We do have a couple that we set aside for either after the solutions presentation or after guidance and looking at the three-year plan. We'll leave those in those sections, and we will address those questions. Please continue to ask them as we go throughout the presentation, and we'll be sure to answer those as we progress. We'll now move on to the presentation on current market trends. Please welcome our Chief Marketing Officer, Tamir Sigal.
Good morning or good afternoon, everyone. I'm Tamir Sigal, Chief Marketing Officer of Quadient. It is my pleasure to provide you with a more detailed view of the trends we see in our core markets. As we move to the first slide, when we created the Back to Growth strategy, we spent a tremendous amount of time looking at our core and adjacent markets, understanding the underlying drivers, the past and current and future trends, how these trends impact our customers and partners, and finally, what do these trends mean to our solutions and to our overall strategy. Quadient has a strong global team with specialized and diverse skills to monitor external sources, analyze many different data points, and access to a wealth of trusted resources. A core principle of our Back to Growth strategy in 2019 was to focus on three major topics.
The first one, the impact of e-commerce and parcel volumes. Second one is the acceleration of digital agendas within all companies. Last but not least, keeping a close eye on the mail volume. In 2019, over 100 billion parcels were delivered globally, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone on today's call that parcel volumes are growing fast as a consequence of customer reliance on e-commerce, driven primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Looking forward, e-commerce is predicted to further grow by 10% on average per year over 2019 to 2024 in our four main countries, U.S., U.K., France, and Japan. Digitalization, which continues to be a long-term business trend, has been accelerated by new work from home habits and enables business continuity, especially for our small, medium-sized customer segments. Furthermore, new regulation mandates in some countries are further driving this trend.
Last but not least, all companies today do not simply compete on product and price but are pushing their digital agenda to deliver great experience to customers, partners, and vendors. And while the mail market continues to decline, there has been an estimate of 185 billion pieces of mail sent every year in our major operations. Quadient still has only 20% market share in the mail market, with significant room to gain more market share. Let's move to the next slide. Let's now look at the underlying drivers for Parcel L ocker Solutions, which is split into three main categories. The left chart demonstrates that even pre-COVID-19 context, e-commerce sales are poised to increase by 26%.
That's just from 2019 -2 020. In the middle of the chart, the volume of parcels increases at a similar rate, creating tremendous and different challenges for consumers and all e-commerce stakeholders, including side effects on our environment. Last but not least, when you look at our major countries, all four postal authorities show a huge spike in parcel volumes. This volume increase triggers the need for proven solutions to better manage last-mile deliveries. When you go to the next slide, let's push the fast-forward button for a minute. All indications and sources show e-commerce will continue to grow exponentially. According to third-party data, the combined e-commerce market in our main countries is expected to amount to $1.5 trillion by 2024, a staggering growth of 66% over 2019.
It is our belief that this growth will continuously drive the demand for parcel lockers across these countries in the years to come. Our market insights and competitive estimates indicate that there were roughly 2.4 million boxes installed across our four key countries in 2019. Comparing this network density to the most advanced countries in Europe and globally, we believe this number could potentially grow from 3x to up to 10x by 2025. That gives you a perspective of how massive the opportunity in front of us is for our Parcel Locker Solutions. When we move to the next slide, we continue to scrutinize the development of mail volumes across our main markets. While physical communications continue to decline, it is still very important channel and not going away completely anytime in the immediate future.
As we separate the marketing mail from the transactional mail, it's very clear that transactional mail is much more resilient, especially during a pandemic. This makes complete sense as people still need to receive statements, bills, correspondence, health records, investment portfolio updates, insurance documentation, medicine, legal documentation from the government, and the list continues. It's worth noting that our MRS customers rely on Quadient smart hardware solutions for processing transactional mail. This resilient segment of the mail volume is our most relevant underlying driver. It'll come to no surprise that mail volume experienced one of its steepest year-over-year decline in 2020. Looking forward, our market intelligence, backed by publicly shared insights from some major postal organizations, suggests that mail volume will evolve broadly in line with its historical trend. That means a pace of decline that is manageable for our customers and by our teams.
As we move to the next slide, in addition to the increase in e-commerce and parcel volumes, the acceleration of digitalization also should not be a surprise. Our mobile devices are usually the last thing we see before we go to bed and the first thing we see when we wake up. As individuals, we rely on our mobile devices and tablets for more than just email, social media. We use our devices as our wallets, as a vehicle for driving our banking and investment, and for doing our job and work from anywhere outside the office. In light of COVID, companies had to adapt to a new way of working, enabling their employees to work from anywhere.
A few fascinating dynamics related to working from home include 55% of companies surveyed in the U.S. expect that portion of their employees will work remotely at least one day a week post-COVID. That's up 30% pre-COVID level. In France, 60% of companies surveyed expect that more than 25% of employees will work remotely at least one day a week after COVID. IDC published a great report in September of 2020 on how small and medium-sized organizations are investing in new technologies that help employees work remotely to ensure resilience, high levels of customer support, and enable business continuity. As we witnessed in the last few years, the drive of digitalization agenda is being pushed by regulators across the world, in particular with Germany recently in 2020, France in 2023, and in the U.S., the subject continues to be the top of the mind.
Our local teams are keeping a close eye on these regulations and working with customers on key digitalization projects. Last but not least, in our annual survey to our large software customer base, over 50% indicated they intend to increase their usage of Quadient Inspire to drive more customer communications for the sole purpose of delivering great customer experience. As we move to the next slide, to summarize, the Intelligent Communication Automation market is driven by a number of trends, including the prevalence of remote working for all companies, regardless of the size and regardless of the location, driving a better and personalized experience for customers, for suppliers, for vendors, and for employees. The evaluation and replacement of legacy systems using future-proof technologies that support all communication types, all channels, all formats, and making sure that the future proofing of demanding business requirements.
The acceptance of using SaaS-based technologies for digital communications with stronger cash management capabilities, especially in times of economic uncertainty, like the ones we're still living in today. When we look at the combined software solution, Quadient is active in a EUR 6 billion+ market, with sub-markets growing double digits, as you can see on the slide. We are really excited about the future of our software business. As a summary, we chose these three markets for their current and future potential. We have confidence these markets will continue to drive the demand for our innovative solutions. This concludes my overview of the market dynamics. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you, Tamir. Now that we have an overview of the market forces and trends that are impacting Quadient and our customers, we will provide more detail into each of our solutions. We begin with an overview of our new combined software solution, Intelligent Communication Automation. Please welcome our Chief Solution Officer for Intelligent Communication Automation, Chris Hartigan, who will present from Boston, Massachusetts.
Wonderful. Thank you, Rob. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. I am Chris Hartigan, the Chief Solution Officer for Quadient's Intelligent Communication Automation business. I'm thrilled to be with you here today. Quadient Intelligent Communication Automation generated EUR 183 million of revenue in 2020, of which approximately 60% was subscription-related recurring revenue, which grew double digits over 2019. Our software solutions are used to power over 1 billion customer-facing communications and interactions every single day, and are therefore absolutely critical to the operations of our over 8,300 customers around the world. A 55% of our customers are on SaaS contracts, a figure which will continue to grow as we expand our SaaS footprints and accelerate our SaaS offerings in the market.
We work with customers across multiple segments, from large enterprises to mid-market and small businesses as well, and we operate with a global footprint, with approximately 85% of our revenue coming from North America and Europe combined. We owe a great deal of our traction to our synergies with MRS, where we share approximately 35% of our customers as of the end of 2020. And we contribute to the group's profitability and achieved a 21% solution profit margin in 2020. Providing more background of ICA to you.
Our world is powered by connections, and at the center of every customer connection are communications, documents, and interactions that need to be personalized and delivered at scale. But in today's changing environment, organizations need solutions with built-in intelligence that know how to better engage customers, enable remote work, integrate new and legacy systems, and manage cash more effectively than ever. From simple to complex, these interactions need to be automated and connect dynamically across a growing ecosystem that spans customers, suppliers, employees, regulatory and financial bodies, and external applications to create and deliver communications, policies, statements, notifications, and invoices that are accurate, governed by internal processes, compliant with regulations, and delivered across all channels. Automating these business-critical workflows saves time and money while creating better customer experiences and more constituent engagement.
Over 8,300 global companies rely on Quadient's Intelligent Communication Automation software solutions to manage over a billion customer-facing communications and critical business interactions each and every day by leveraging our Customer Communications Management platform to automate personalized document creation and delivery at scale, regardless of the complexity involved. Omnichannel delivery. Digitize documents and other communications and engage customers on the channel of their choice automatically. Personalized digital documents. Empower agents to build compliant communications personalized to every client. Accounts receivable automation. Complete accounts receivable management that gives your accounting team more time, more insight, and more control. Accounts payable automation. Approve invoices and pay vendors remotely while reducing AP costs. Journey orchestration and analytics. Map, automate, and orchestrate exceptional customer communication experiences. Enable your remote workers to connect with confidence. Automate business-critical workflows to save time and money.
Differentiate from competitors by delivering a better overall experience for your customers. Discover Quadient Intelligent Communication Automation solutions.
On the next slide, we see Quadient's Intelligent Communication Automation customers depend on our business-critical software solutions to manage and automate those communication activities that lie at the heart of their business operations. Customer communications are the foundation of customer engagement, and our customers need to manage the creation, digitalization, and delivery of communications at scale, including contracts, policies, statements, notifications, and of course, invoices. Some of these documents and communications are simple, while others can be very complex in structure and format. All companies, regardless of size or industry, need to make sure that these communications, critical business interactions, are compliant and secure, and are also consistent across channel based on the customer's delivery preference.
Our customers also need to make sure that these communications and business interactions are highly personalized and are enhanced with the right data and the right content so they deliver the right experience to the right customer in the right way. Oftentimes, a business communication is just the beginning of a more complex business process, which our customers also need digitalized and automated. This is the case especially when the document being managed is an invoice, which for many of our customers, makes up the majority of their business communications. In these cases, our customers need solutions that automate invoice presentment and all the collection activity that follows so they can better secure payment inflows. When that communication flow is reversed and our customers need to manage payable activity, they also need automation solutions so that they are fully in control of payment outflows as well.
As these various communication and process flows grow more complex, our customers need to map all of these interactions together into holistic customer journeys so they're able to provide the best possible experience and level of engagement to all of their internal and external constituents. Automating critical customer communications and business processes saves time and money. Doing it with an intelligent set of integrated technologies helps drive better customer experience and better overall constituent engagement. These are the benefits customers realize with our ICA platform. Next slide. Our ICA solutions allow companies to digitally transform their communication and business process flows. As a result, we complement closely the MRS solutions that many Quadient customers use to manage physical communication flows. Do this across segments, just like the MRS solutions do.
By being able to map both ICA solutions and MRS solutions by segment, we can of course, unlock synergies across our go-to-market efforts, but more importantly, we can bring enormous benefits to our customers, no matter their size or their related communication or invoice volumes. At the core of our ICA platform are our customer communication management or CCM solutions comprised of Quadient Inspire and Impress. Quadient Inspire is recognized as best in class for companies with very large communication volumes where scale and compliance are critical requirements. Quadient Impress, which shares 60% of the code with Inspire, is specifically designed for the needs of companies that have lower volume and complexity requirements.
Our depth and expertise in the CCM space provides us with the ability to effectively map leading digital communication capabilities to all of our MRS customers, regardless of their size and regardless of their volume of communications. Of course, our ICA platform also includes AP automation, now centered on the Beanworks solution, and AR automation centered on YayPay. We believe that the most attractive market opportunities for these solutions is the mid-market segment, are not necessarily as large as those of big companies, but where the volume levels do suggest real benefits to automation. The market fundamentals in this segment are very strong, and the majority of these companies have not yet equipped themselves with either type of automation solution.
Our CXM offerings, which include our customer journey mapping solutions and other digital capabilities to support two-way and intelligent communication flows to enhance customer experience, are used by companies across the various segments as well. For our ICA solutions, we find that customers look for digitalization options when the size of their communication volumes or invoice volumes reaches a level that is large enough to justify the investment in automation capabilities. By the design of our solutions, we have the ability to scale up and scale down with customers as their business needs change and their communication and invoice volumes change as well. Next slide, please. In intelligent communication automation, we have an expansive sales force of direct sellers, but our go-to-market is enhanced further with the large ecosystem of partners that we benefit from working with around the world.
We have well over 100 go-to-market partners who are leaders in helping companies navigate technological change and who have built expertise around our ICA solutions. These consultancies and system integrators, as well as regionally focused firms who perhaps specialize on just a specific area of digital transformation. Many of these go-to-market partners work with us on one of our solutions, but several of them partner with us across more than one solution area. Capgemini, for instance, as Geoffrey mentioned, has a go-to-market focus both for Quadient Inspire for communication management and on YayPay for AR automation. In addition to go-to-market partners, we are closely aligned as well with a number of reseller and distributor partners who embed our solutions into their go-to-market efforts and have developed expert position, sell, and support ICA solutions to their customers.
We have some resale partners that are large global organizations that embed our solution into their go-to-market across many geographies, such as Canon, Ricoh, or Xerox. We have scores of others who cover the mid-market and small business segments, and who extend our solutions to their local customers. Just like with go-to-market partners, some of these resale partners also work with us across our different solutions. Ricoh, for instance, is a partner for both Impress and Inspire, as Geoffrey mentioned, Sage is an active partner of ours, both with our Beanworks AP solution and YayPay AR. A growing area of focus for us is our work with technology partners who we align with on embedded technology integration so that our customers realize the benefit of an extended value proposition.
These partnerships cover integrations with core business applications such as Duck Creek or Salesforce, as well as specific technological needs that bring further power and extension to our solutions, such as DocuSign for e-signature or Kitewheel for journey orchestration. Next slide, please. Our ICA software solutions are trusted every day by more than 8,300 customers, not just across different segments and different geographies, but across many different verticals as well. Because of its enterprise-grade features and best-in-class performance capabilities, our Inspire communication management solution is the market leader at the high end of many regulated industries. In these verticals, such as financial services, healthcare, or utilities, we have a lengthy customer roster that includes many of the world's premier brands. These customers trust us every single day to manage their most sensitive and most important customer communications in support of billions of customer interactions across their business.
Our Impress solution is trusted by small and mid-market customers that have important communication automation and distribution needs, but where simplicity at scale is a critical factor. This includes many of the same regulated industries, but also cuts across other industries such as property management, government, and services sectors. Due to our overlap in market focus and go-to-market synergies, our Beanworks AP solution and YayPay AR automation solution are also well represented in these same verticals, but do as well provide extension into additional adjacencies such as high tech and manufacturing, which are often characterized by large invoice volumes. Clearly, the need for communication management and business process automation solutions is not bound by any restrictive vertical use cases. The strength of our ICA platform and the appeal of our solutions is exemplified by the expanse of our customer roster across these verticals.
This further provides us with great support for our overall growth ambitions as we will compete for business and extend our solutions across a very large and compelling market opportunity. Next slide, please. Our ICA business is a global business with customers, partners, and operations across all of the key regions that Quadient operates in today. Today, 50% of our revenue is driven from the main European countries, our revenue in North America is growing meaningfully due to the dynamics of the communication management and business automation market in that region, and also due to the recent addition of YayPay, and of course, Beanworks, which historically have been primarily focused on North America. In addition to this, some of our ICA solutions have enjoyed strong adoption in key international markets such as Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
Given the rapid rise of digitalization in these markets and the early buying cycle for many companies, we expect this trend to continue for years. As I mentioned, we are truly a global business, and we have proven customer adoption of all our ICA solutions across North America and European countries, and adoption of selected solutions in further international markets. As a result, we are confident we have the foundation in place for successful expansion of all of our solutions across all our key regions going forward. Next slide, please. Like many other software companies, we have been adapting our business model to place greater emphasis on recurring revenue, notably in the form of SaaS revenue and other forms of subscription-related revenue.
Due primarily to customer preference, we still do offer some of our communication management solutions via upfront sales, but this has been transforming over the past several years. Going forward, we expect a larger mix of customers to be engaging with us through SaaS and subscription contracts. These types of recurring revenue contracts are understood and appreciated in the market, both from customers and partners alike. Whether it's a subscription license, a SaaS license, a consumption or usage-based license, recurring revenue contracts allow us to better position the cost of the solution in line with the ongoing operating budgets of our customers, which provides our customers with easier onboarding and better runtime control of their overall operational spend.
All of these license types are part of our definition of subscription-related revenue, as Laurent mentioned, with the addition also of maintenance revenue, which is highly predictable recurring revenue that flows in subsequent periods from the sale of an upfront software license. As evidence of our success in evolving our business with a greater emphasis on recurring revenue, we witnessed a strong increase in subscription-related revenue in 2020, achieving EUR 107 million, up 13% from EUR 95 million in 2019. This speaks especially to the market acceptance of these types of license models, as well as to the timeliness of our push to prioritize these types of licenses over upfront software sales as we move forward. On the next slide, we can see that Intelligent Communication Automation benefits greatly from and contributes greatly too.
We actively leverage the install base of over 400,000 MRS customers, and today, over 35% of our revenue and over 60% of our customers are aligned with our MRS solutions as well. Having the ability to align our solutions with the larger Quadient customer base is a significant competitive advantage of ours, and of course, will continue to be a core synergy for us. Further, we also leverage greatly sales and marketing infrastructure that covers our MRS customer base in key markets, and we equip those teams with the right marketing messages and the right sales skills to help them promote ICA solutions to their customers. The combined focus also expands our local and corporate marketing efforts, where we enjoy shared leverage effects.
Of course, this provides enormous cost synergies to us and significant time to market benefits for ICA. Because of our portfolio approach to communication management and business automation solutions, we're able to share customer service, customer support capabilities as well across the entire ICA platform. As noted previously, we have deep R&D and product synergies throughout ICA, where we leverage common software practices, code bases, tools, frameworks, as well as shared centers of excellence for functions such as documentation, quality assurance, cloud infrastructure, cloud operations, and many other areas as well. All of this helps us to move faster with better best practices at greater scale and with lower overall costs than we could if we had to organize each of these efforts independently. Next slide, please.
Since we announced our back to growth strategy in early 2019, we have been focused on building out our portfolio of software solutions and transitioning our platform to cloud and SaaS-based models. Also while enhancing our go-to-market efforts in order to expand our market presence. Early on in 2019, we broadened our market focus for Inspire to target utility, telecom, and government clients, and we have made several key hires and forged several new partnerships in these areas. In 2019, we also enhanced our Inspire solution with new cloud capabilities to help our customers continue their transition to cloud deployment models. In 2020, we built new market efforts around strategic partnerships such as Kitewheel for journey orchestration and Duck Creek for insurance claims communication support, both companies being well-recognized as SaaS leaders in their space.
In 2020, we also announced major advancements to our ICA platform with the acquisition of YayPay, of course, in June, and the launch of our cloud-based Impress solution shortly thereafter. Both of these events allowed us to accelerate go-to-market effort as we use them to correspondingly build out distribution capabilities across our sales teams and across our key regions in order to grow customer adoption of these important solutions. In 2021, we're obviously continuing our transition to cloud and subscription-related capabilities with our recent acquisition of Beanworks for AP automation, which will as well drive even further go-to-market efforts in the future. Next slide, please. In 2020, our ICA revenue saw an organic decline of 3.5%, driven primarily from two factors.
First, sales of large one-off software licenses and professional services engagements tied to our Inspire solution were delayed due to the COVID pandemic, as large organizations were not able to execute cross-functional IT projects with the same level of agility as they were used to. Remember, when a customer adopts an enterprise software solution like Inspire, there is a great deal of project coordination required across multiple different groups to execute all of the integration and implementation work required. As a result, there was a slight slowdown in 2020, partly resulting from many of these large Inspire projects being temporarily halted. The second reason for the organic decline is due to our transition to a recurring revenue model, which we described earlier.
As noted previously, our subscription-related revenue in 2020 increased 13% to EUR 107 million, driven from our prioritization of recurring license models, including subscription, SaaS, and volume licenses, as opposed to upfront software license sales. As has been exhibited by many other software companies who have similarly transformed from one-off license models to recurring license models, such a transition results in a recalibration of revenue as the mix of revenue improves with each new SaaS and subscription license that is sold in lieu of an upfront software license sale. As a result, despite the organic revenue decline, in 2020 our mix of revenue was enhanced during the year, and we made great strides in improving the underlying growth fundamentals of our business as a result.
As noted, and as a result of our 13% increase in subscription-related revenue, this subscription revenue now makes up 59% of our total revenue, up from 50% in 2019. Next slide, please. As we execute our transition to a true recurring revenue business in those areas, that will help us drive further expansion and sustainable growth in the years ahead. Our ICA solution profit margin of 21% in 2020 has benefited from the fact that nearly 60% of our revenue is recurring in nature and provides a high degree of leverage that we can use to efficiently operate our business. As described previously, we will be continuing to transform more of our customers to recurring license models as opposed to upfront software license sales. This will, of course, have an impact on margins as we implement this change.
While this transition is happening, we will be making investments in R&D and go-to-market so that we can enhance our platform to address even more customer requirements and so we can extend our reach into as many customer verticals and segments as possible. The markets that we compete in with our ICA solutions are fast-growing and dynamic. We are highly motivated to capture as much market share as possible. From a product standpoint, this means making sure our solutions remain extremely competitive.
From a go-to-market standpoint, this means making sure we are leveraging and empowering multiple different channels across all the regions we compete in. We are very confident that our transition to a true recurring revenue business and our investments in these areas will derive an ICA business profile that will benefit over time from more effective customer acquisition and retention attributes, which will, of course, lead to greater stability, predictability, and higher levels of solution profitability. Next slide, please. We utilize a very data-driven approach to understanding and managing our ICA business, but the three KPIs that we elevate above all others and use as compass points to measure how well we are executing our strategy are these three. The first is the percentage of customers that are on SaaS or subscription contract.
Increasing the share of customers from these types of contracts will deliver more stability and sustained growth to our revenues over time, which is why this is important to us. The second KPI that we focus on is, of course, ARR, or annual recurring revenue. ARR is the measure of committed annual recurring revenue that we have in the business and is a forward-looking indicator that helps estimate future recurring revenue growth. ARR also takes into account new bookings as well as renewals of existing recurring revenue customers. As ARR increases, it provides guidance as to what recurring revenue growth in future periods will look like. The last KPI that we focus on is the % of subscription-related revenue we have in our business, which is correlated to the first two.
As we increase the percentage of customers on SaaS and subscription contracts, and as we grow ARR, we can better predict and manage the percentage of recurring revenue that we record in our business. The historical evolution of each of these KPIs for ICA has been favorable, with nine points of increase in percentage of SaaS and subscription customers with double-digit growth of ARR, and with nine points of increase in the share of subscription-related revenue over total revenue, all as measured from 2019 - 2020. Recurring revenue ultimately is what will drive our overall growth, and it is also the foundation for our profitability as it allows us the financial and operating leverage required to scale and optimize our cost structure over time. That is why these three KPIs are so critical to us. Next slide.
As Geoffrey mentioned earlier, our ICA software business is poised to benefit from the rapid convergence that is happening across previously separated communication management and process automation landscape. The lines are blurring between managing the creation and delivery of critical communications and automating the complex business process workflows that those communications are often linked to. In each of the various segments where our ICA solutions excel, there exists strong and capable competitors. While most of these competitors focus on just one portion of this dynamic market, other competitors are also taking advantage of the convergence that is happening by looking across segments to expand their offerings in support of customer needs. Companies like OpenText and Adobe, for instance, traditional competitors in the communication management market, also have strong capabilities in the broader omni-channel communication space and are pushing aggressively on customer experience management with orchestration and analytics.
Companies like Esker in France and Unifiedpost from Belgium, both of whom have document output and delivery capabilities, which they marry together with a similar focus on AP and AR automation. Of course, there are many companies, such as Bill.com, that bring together both AP automation and AR automation capabilities together for a more complete process automation value proposition. Ultimately, however, it is the customer who decides. The customer decides how and when these things fully converge. Our customers are asking for communication management and process automation solutions together, and we are clearly seeing a strong and compelling shift in the market that we believe will enhance our competitive position as our platform continues to strengthen and expand in all of these areas.
By having a strong solution in the market that is well-adopted across all of these individual segments, we feel we are better positioned than anyone else to benefit from the convergence that is happening in the market. Next slide, please. Our strength in Intelligent Communication Automation comes not just from our integrated portfolio, but also from the fact that the individual solutions within the platform are well-recognized in their own right as leaders in the markets that they focus on. IDC, in fact, has recently ranked both of our communication management capabilities, represented by Inspire and Impress, and our AR automation capabilities, represented by YayPay, as clear leaders in their respective markets. In both of these rankings, our solutions are recognized for their overall breadth of capabilities as well as innovative SaaS delivery models, implementation of artificial intelligence, proven market penetration, and customer adoption.
It is notable that Quadient is the only provider to be ranked by IDC in both the communication management landscape and the AR automation market landscape, much less recognized as a leader in both of them. Also to our point in the previous slide, the IDC MarketScape for Customer Communications Management here is further evidence of market convergence, as the IDC landscape includes together many competitors that previously would have been identified as direct CCM competitors, as well as several organizations that previously would have been identified as pure BPA competitors. Of course, we expect to continue to see more analyst coverage moving forward. Of course, not to be left out, Beanworks as well has received several positive accolades from market analysts and based on our own extensive market research, we know that Beanworks is a clear leader in the larger market for AP automation solutions. Next slide, please.
Our ICA business is a strong global software business that has established leadership positioning in the market for communication management and business automation. ICA will record meaningful revenue growth by expanding the capabilities of our solutions in order to address more customer requirements, as well as by extending our footprint across our key geographies so that we can capture as much of the market's growth as possible in the years to come. Our revenue growth will also be boosted by evolving our customer base and revenue mix to more of a recurring revenue model. We will also benefit from the upsell and cross-sell of various solutions within ICA in line with the market's convergence.
As we grow our revenue, we will strengthen our profitability as our subscription and SaaS models will scale with every new customer, and our investments in R&D and go-to-market will be leveraged across a larger and more expansive customer base. We are confident that our ICA solution is just at the beginning of being able to show strong growth and sustained contribution for many years to come. Next slide. To that point, and as a result of the many factors presented over the course of our three-year plan, we expect compounded annual growth in subscription-related revenue of between 20% and 25%, and a solution profit margin exceeding 30%. Both driven in part from the compelling and dynamic market opportunity that we are well-positioned in, as well as from the prudent management of our business as we execute our strategy in the coming years.
On the last slide, we'd like to summarize. ICA brings together the very best elements of CXM and BPA to allow us to take advantage of the market convergence that is happening with a highly synergistic and customer-oriented approach. ICA is the digital future for many of Quadient's historic physical mail customers, which is clearly a unique differentiator in the market and will support our sustained scaling growth for years to come. ICA delivers many benefits to the group, and we also benefit greatly from being part of the group, as evidenced by our high percentage of revenue and customer aligned with the MRS business. ICA is transitioning more and more to a recurring revenue business by emphasizing SaaS and subscription contracts for our customers, and as a result, our annual subscription-related revenue growth is expected to be 20%-25% over the course of the plan.
Business is highly distinctive in the market by harnessing leading solutions across the CXM, CCM, AR, AP value chain, which especially brings a compelling best-of-suite capability to mid-market customers, where we expect to see the strongest overall growth. Together with the dynamic market conditions that exist, the solution capabilities that we bring, and the synergies that we can leverage within Quadient, we are very confident that ICA will be a premier software competitor in the global market for many years to come. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. We'll now move to Milford, Connecticut, where our Chief Solution Officer for Mail-Related Solutions, Alain Fairise will offer an update on that product line as well. Please welcome Alain.
Good morning or good afternoon, everyone. My name is Alain Fairise. I am the Chief Solution Officer for mail-related solutions. Today, I will give you an overview of the MRS business, which is the foundational business of Quadient and represented last year close to 70% of our revenue in major operations. You will see that MRS is a strong asset for Quadient, despite the slow decline in mail volume, and remains a business with high profitability levels and strong fundamentals, where several market opportunities exist, which give us visibility over several years of sustainable performance. If we start now with a few highlights, going left to right, we can start with the revenue reported in 2020, which came in at EUR 653 million for our major operations. That revenue is achieved with a large number of business clients across the world, businesses of all sizes, more than 400,000 of them.
We are the second-largest player in our market, with a global presence in each major country. A 75% of our revenue is recurring and mostly tied to long-term agreements with our clients. We have built over the years a large portfolio of intellectual property patents, numbering more than 550 to date. Our contribution remains very good, with 45% of solution profit last year, even in a year impacted by COVID. MRS is a global business, like all the Quadient businesses, with a large weight of North America, which is the largest MRS market in the world, plus a strong presence in Europe, and about 10% of our revenue achieved in other smaller geographies.
We employ over 2,800 highly engaged associates around the world, many with a long tenure and unique expertise in this business. We are a key solution line for Quadient and have demonstrated leadership in this business since the very early days of postage metering technology. To help you better visualize what the value is that we bring to our customers, I would now like to invite you to watch a short video.
For most businesses, preparing and delivering critical documents efficiently and effectively is a challenge. There are complex and ever-changing requirements to comply with and security measures to account for. Many companies still rely on manual mail processes that compromise the integrity of business communications, waste time, and leave employees frustrated. Quadient's S.M.A.R.T. Mail-Related Solutions offer a better shipping, mailing, accounting, reporting, and tracking experience from a single dashboard with one user interface. Available on the next generation Quadient iX-Series mailing systems, Quadient S.M.A.R.T. software leverages cloud-based technology to improve customer interactions and business practices and reduce shipping costs by comparing package delivery services across multiple carriers. From mailing to shipping, Quadient provides clear insight into your spending and activity trends. Quadient S.M.A.R.T. Mail-Related Solutions streamline mail production at every stage, from filling envelopes automatically to rapidly posting outbound mail.
By reading integrity codes, our solutions securely automate and monitor every step of the mail assembly process, even when envelope contents vary by customer, providing peace of mind and absolute proof of compliance. When it comes time to outsource or digitize your mail, we help integrate your digital and physical mail output, reducing your operating costs at every stage. Quadient is committed to providing intuitive, easy-to-integrate solutions that drive operational efficiency and optimize costs. Gain agility. Reduce risk. Engage with Quadient. Discover Quadient Mail-Related Solutions.
Our core business is focused on two use cases. The first is the pricing, printing, and payment of postage to enable mail distribution with our postage metering technologies. The second one is the creation of ready-to-mail communications addressed by our folding and inserting solution line. Around these two essential capabilities, we also offer a wide range of additional Mail-Related Solutions. Most of our customers start their day using our technology in the morning when mail gets delivered using tracking and opening solutions. Then, as the day unfolds, we will help design and create documents for efficient distribution, including scanning optical marks on invoices to determine what inserts need to get in the same envelope or what invoices need to be mailed together.
We also manage address printing and increasingly, the production of shipping labels as posts around the world vie for a bigger share of the growing shipping market and add to document mail the tracking and service levels previously available on parcels only. That wide array of solutions caters to the needs of a large range of clients. For small businesses, we help make mail more accessible, providing convenience and savings through accurate postage management. In many countries, the postal operator will also offer a price incentive to meter users, recognizing the improved operating margin versus the production and distribution of physical stamps. At the other end of the spectrum, we enjoy highly engaged relationships with high-volume mailers, large mail rooms, and service providers, where mail is mission-critical and requires optimal service levels and sophisticated productivity solutions.
In a nutshell, we make mail easy, efficient, and compliant for our clients, large or small. Our presence across most segments of the mail solutions market represents the first strategic decision made by Quadient to differentiate us from competitors. The solutions that we offer keep evolving with technology, of course, increasingly leveraging internet and cloud capabilities. The smart devices that we sell today are connected to remote management platforms for funding, for rate updates, automatic ink reordering, management dashboards, or statistics. We provide our mailing clients access to cloud-based shipping applications and document preparation tools. Connections also facilitate remote diagnosis and service in case of a problem. Our technology assets have evolved more and more towards a combination of hardware and software as IoT and cloud technologies greatly broaden the range of features that our smart devices can offer.
Our design is based on reusable platforms across the entire Mail-Related Solutions lineup. On the left side of the page, you will find pictures representing some of our product lines, our main ones, with pricing ranging from an entry level of EUR 20 a month for a manual feed postage meter that would sit on the corner of an office desk, and going all the way to a half a million euro investment for a high-speed folder inserter that will fill an entire room. I would also like to highlight the fact that we enjoy technology leadership on the folding inserting market and the number one position on that market worldwide. Our commitment to technological excellence is the second strategic decision that drives our MRS strategy. Our business model now is focused on creating long-term relationships which produce sustained cash flows over several years.
We focus our sales approach on rental or leasing packages, which in both cases involve a multi-year commitment from our customers. The rental offers are sometimes dictated by local regulations, which forbid the sale of the money printing devices that postage meters are, in order to ensure appropriate registration and tracking procedures. We print money. After the initial order is received, we continue to recognize various revenue streams during the term of the agreement. Service income, proprietary supply sales, rate software updates, and postage financing revenue. We manage billions of postage dollars through our meters and help many customers with the financing of their postage. The combination of all these streams makes our revenue more predictable. The focus we have on creating sustainable recurring revenue has allowed Quadient to build a very sound business over the years.
I also want to mention that we provide a very high level of service excellence. Satisfaction levels upwards of 95% are consistently reported by our customers, supporting a very high retention rate. Also noteworthy is the fact that we have no dependency on major customers as our revenue mostly comes from a large number of individual transactions with known maturity dates and scheduled renewals. All in all, the resilience of our MRS business is a very great asset for Quadient. Let's now review our market position. MRS is a large global market, estimated at EUR 2.9 billion worldwide, with four well-established actors. The underlying mail volume decline creates an interesting dynamic with smaller players finding it hard to continue manufacturing their own lines with reduced runs.
Quadient is able to leverage this situation through agreements to provide white label products to those players, and today two of them source products from us. We believe this trend will continue. The two major players on the other side, Quadient and Pitney Bowes, are both investing in their growth engines, leveraging the cash that they generate from MRS. Barriers to entry, like the necessary certification by local postal operators and the heavy regulatory obligations, make it unlikely that new entrants will come in. From a geography standpoint, it's important to remember that 60% of the world market is in North America, where mail usage is particularly resilient in business communications. We have a unique advantage, a strategic advantage in terms of geographic presence.
We can benefit from the consolidation in Europe under our brand or not, and we are the only competitor with enough critical mass in North America to gain market share there. Our MRS market position is another strong asset for Quadient to build on. Now, you have heard today about mail volume across the world and the secular decline that it is experiencing. It's important to understand that the Quadient MRS new business does not move at the same pace. First, mail decline is quite different by geography. As individuals, our perception of mail may vary greatly depending on where we live. In countries where the government mandates the move to digital communications, like Denmark, it will decline faster than in markets where there is no such mandate, like the U.S. It so happens that the U.S. is the largest market in the world for mail.
As a player in the MRS market, it's important to be strong in the right geographies. Second, our business model serves as a natural shock absorber against short-term movements, as most customers make a renewal decision only at the end of their multi-year agreement. If you take a five-year leasing term average, that means only 20% of the clients will be in play with a decision to be made every year. Plus, when there is decline in usage, we have offers that enable the customer to right-size their equipment as mail usually remains a necessary media for companies, even at a lower volume level. Third, product innovation and adjacencies like the growing shipping needs, make it possible to offer an attractive upgrade path to our clients, irrespective of mail volume. The value we bring is enhanced by new functionalities like management of shipping labels, progress in connectivity, user ergonomics.
You saw earlier that Quadient is committed to targeted investment in innovation to keep that value add coming. Finally, we have opportunity to gain market share in the most resilient markets of the world, starting with North America. Our operations there are at scale. We have a track record of performance, and we have critical mass. We have room to grow our footprint further from the 20% share of the U.S. base that we command today. The same goes for another market where mail is more resilient and Quadient is also a sizable challenger, Germany. We are leveraging the four elements I have described on this page in our strategic plan for MRS. The last point that I would like to highlight in this review of the MRS assets is the benefits that we derive from being part of the Quadient story.
We are able to leverage the full array of Quadient solutions in many different ways. We can expand the customer relationship created through MRS products to include other solutions, from the ICA software suite in particular, and to generate cross-selling opportunities. Today, 60% of the customers using our ICA communication software are also using our MRS solutions. The strengths of the MRS sales channels can also be shared with the other solutions, with sales professionals carrying both product lines, enabling us to share distribution costs and increase productivity. The same applies to our marketing support. Overall, 35% of our ICA revenue originated from the MRS sales organization in 2019, 35% of our Intelligent Communication Automation revenue. On the field service and customer support side, costs are shared between MRS and parcel lockers around the world.
In R&D and supply chain, we leverage shared talent and expertise in the common sourcing and delivery organization. The synergies between all the lines help MRS make the relationship with the client deeper and more relevant, as conversations can extend beyond just mail solutions. The benefit is material on the top line and on the bottom line, both for MRS and for the other solution lines. Over the last couple of years, we have continued to implement our strategy, despite COVID. We were able to introduce in North America, our new generation of mail and parcel management solutions, the iX-Series smart line. The success of our virtual launch in the COVID year is a testament to the quality of our product design and the efficiency of our marketing and sales channels. We have shipped to date more than 15,000 units.
Progress was also made in critical areas of our strategic plan, in particular with the expansion of our white label reseller agreements in Europe. On the after-sale side, we activated new self-serve options for our customers who demand choice in the digital age. That investment was made. We have made great progress in the reconfiguration of our sales channels to increase the weight of inside sales for the more transactional side of the business in order to free up our field sales professionals for high value add solution selling, in particular to support the cross-selling of our suite of ICA digital communications and AR automation solutions, Impress and YayPay. In terms of revenue evolution, in 2020, we suffered from the COVID crisis, of course, as you can see on the graph.
We were able to limit the revenue impact despite lockdowns that affected usage of our solutions around the world, and despite the slowdown of the business cycles. The proof that the strength of our business model is very much real. We took at the same time, very strong action to preserve our contribution in this unique year, delivering a very strong 45% profit margin level. Let's take a closer look at how we achieved that performance. In fact, the fiscal discipline that we were able to exert in 2020 is a continuation of years of focus and efforts to constantly adapt our cost structure as the business of MRS evolves. We took extraordinary measures, short-term measures for expense control last year, reducing cash outlay and spend wherever possible, but without damaging our business engine.
We also continued to reduce our fixed costs for the future by moving to an optimized distribution center in North America, in Mississippi, and by outsourcing more of our R&D efforts to offshore partners. We also implemented new, more efficient ways of designing our products, and we announced the divestment of our direct operations in Australia in line with our geographic focus strategy. In addition, MRS benefited last year from expanded sharing with the other solution lines of some of our assets, namely sales, service, supply chain, and R&D. The result was a very strong profit contribution in 2020. Now, how do we manage our business in MRS? Well, we track three important KPIs to monitor the evolution of our execution plan.
First, we measure how much of our customer base we have converted to our new technology and how much upgrade potential we still have as we roll out our new lines around the world. We have room to grow here, as you can see. Second, the resilience index is a measure of the difference between our supplies revenue evolution and our total revenue evolution. It confirms that mail volume is not our only driver, and as you can see during COVID, the gap has been quite significant. Usage slowed down during the lockdowns, but revenue did not slow down as much. We expect the spread will continue to reduce as COVID fades going forward and usage comes back.
We'll see about that in 2021. Finally, we measure how our recurring revenue moves as a percentage of total revenue to continue our focus on building a resilient business in line with the Quadient strategy. When you look at the global picture for MRS, we have two priorities to drive the business in 2021. We will drive revenue in several ways. We will continue to roll out our new smart device line with four new geographies introducing the iX-Series this year, pushing for market share and upgrade revenue. Our focus will remain on the two main geographies, European Tier 1 markets and North America. The recent divestment of our Australian direct operations is in line with that strategy. MRS is also committed to growing cross-selling of the other Quadient solutions, leveraging and sharing both customer base and sales channels.
On the other side of the coin, our cost optimization program will continue. We will continue to adapt our sales channels to better fit the market opportunity available to us, both in the transactional and in the professional segments. On the supply chain side, we are leveraging responsible manufacturing to reduce our environmental footprint and to generate savings. Thanks to our platform design philosophy, we are able to reuse many components for remanufacturing. We're also adapting our manufacturing facilities, applying the successful mix of outsource and insource that we've used for mailing to our folder inse rter lines going forward. Our R&D organization, on the other side, will benefit from streamlining of development centers in the document systems area. A lot of projects, both on the revenue and on the cost control side.
When we look at the past trends and also take into account the current impact of COVID and the digitalization trends, we feel confident that we can continue to take market share and outpace the competition. We feel that for the next three years, we can do better than 5% decline, and in particular, in 2021. We are planning to put in place several cost improvement initiatives in the coming years, as we highlighted in this presentation, in order to protect the MRS profitability. In terms of numbers, our ambition translates for the coming years into a revenue trend CAGR of less than 5% decline, and the profitability maintained at 43%-45%. Wrapping up. In summary, we have covered today an overview of the MRS assets that support our business plan.
You've seen that we are a global business with a large offering, servicing small businesses and large volume mailers alike. We are investing in the renewal of our line, leveraging innovation and our strong technology expertise. Our business model is exceptionally resilient and not prone to short-term swings. We are uniquely positioned on the geography standpoint as a challenger in the largest market in the world, with the means to grow share in North America, and we are well-positioned to benefit from industry consolidation in Europe. Our track record is one of performance, as highlighted by our 2019 results and our resilience during COVID. We benefit from the Quadient solutions story and the portfolio of solutions that Quadient offers to expand and secure the MRS business relationships over time.
All of which leads to our ambition for the business, which is to contain the long-term trend of slow decline and to maintain a very high contribution and cash generation level. We have every confidence that we will deliver on those goals. I thank you for your attention, and I wish you a great Investor Day with Quadient. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alain. Finally, we go to our Chief Solution Officer for Parcel Locker Solutions, Daniel Malouf, for an update on Quadient PLS. Please welcome Daniel.
Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. It is my pleasure to provide you additional insights into Quadient Parcel Locker Solutions strategy and activities. I would like to start with an overview of our parcel locker business. Parcel Locker Solutions generated revenue of EUR 83 million in 2020, a very strong organic growth of 36% year-over-year. A 2020 growth was driven by the expansion of our network in the U.S. and Japan, as well as by increased subscription-related revenue coming from our existing install base. By the end of 2020, subscription-related revenue represented over 50% of total PLS revenue. PLS generated a solution profit margin of 5.6% in 2020, which is the result of a highly profitable install base, in part offset by the investment to continue accelerating the growth of our install base.
The retention rate among our install base is very high, with a churn rate that remains below 0.2%, which is to us, a great indicator of the quality of our offer and the high level of services our expert teams bring to our customers. In terms of number of lockers, Quadient is the second largest global player behind Amazon, with 13,000 lockers installed at the end of 2020. Lastly, we have experienced very significant growth in both parcel volumes and usage rate of our lockers, which validates the added value of our innovative and patented solution to our customers and to consumers. Parcel volumes are booming, driven by a strong e-commerce growth, and all indications show this trend will continue to accelerate for the years to come. Let's review the challenges that are generated by the strong increase of parcel volume.
Consumers are obliged to adapt their schedules to delivery times or have to go through long queues at collection points. Moreover, due to the COVID-19 context, human interaction and package handover continues to be a health concern. Carriers and retailers are seeing their last mile costs increase dramatically as more parcels require more stops and generate more misdeliveries. Labor constraints are also strongly emphasized. Property and collection point staff are overloaded with incoming packages, and the risk of loss or theft is increasing significantly. Finally, the increase of packages creates a side effect on the environment since 25% of CO2 emission and 20% of traffic in urban areas come from delivery vans. This situation is not sustainable. Short and medium-term solutions are now essential for all e-commerce stakeholders. Traditional hand delivery and return brings a lot of pain points to both carriers and consumers.
Parcel lockers are the only automated and proven last mile delivery solution to answer these challenges. Parcel lockers brings consolidations of deliveries, safety, speed, and convenience. Consumers can choose to pick up and return their parcels whenever they want, wherever they want, at home, at the office, and out of home, and in totally secure way. Let me now introduce you to Quadient's Parcel Locker Solutions and share with you why we are unique on the market and why our customers rely on our solutions. Let's share first a quick video.
Parcel deliveries are expected to increase to 200 billion by 2025. Today's consumers demand convenience, speed, and a seamless parcel delivery and return experience. Quadient's suite of parcel locker solutions optimize and automate parcel delivery by creating a streamlined, intuitive process. Today's online shopper wants convenient and safe parcel pickup and returns. Deliveries are scanned, and the tracking number is recorded. Parcels are placed into the lockers. A notification is sent to the parcel recipient to inform them of their parcel's availability. The recipient retrieves their parcel at their convenience by scanning the barcode from the notification or by typing in the one-time pin on the keypad. Quadient's parcel locker solutions provide end-to-end tracking while managing all parcel activity from one location with an easy-to-use interface, delivering an optimized process that ensures a seamless and convenient customer experience.
Quadient has helped thousands of leading organizations around the globe modernize their parcel management process, including retailers, shipping carriers, including successful first-time deliveries, optimization of routes, agility during peak periods, and increased loyalty. Residential customers, including time savings and outstanding delivery experience and safe contactless delivery and storage. These same benefits appeal to corporate offices and higher education customers. Parcel Pending by Quadient makes it easy to pick up a package, return a package, or ship a package. Quadient Parcel Locker software makes it easy for locker administrators to manage and set up their lockers, register end users, track packages, and monitor locker usage through intuitive dashboards. Advanced APIs allow customers to integrate with third-party parcel management systems to design a process that meets their individual needs.
Quadient Parcel Lockers are the most efficient and convenient solution for last mile parcel operations. Are you ready to deliver differently? Learn more at quadient.com.
I hope you have now a good overview of what we do and the added value we deliver to all stakeholders. Our primary focus is to offer to consumers an outstanding delivery and return experience and to bring to retailers, carriers, and property staff the most efficient and convenient solution for their last mile parcel operations. Our solutions address at home, at the office, and out-of-home deliveries. Quadient PLS mission statement is to grow and monetize a large, dense, and open locker network with a carrier-agnostic approach. We target cities and countries where e-commerce is strong. Our ambition is to be at less than five minutes' walk from every consumer by installing Quadient lockers in every building, office, store, and collection point. Thus, we will maximize convenience and boost usage, which will drive profitability.
We aim to automate both home and out-of-home last mile parcel deliveries, returns, and consumer shipments, targeting the four verticals that handle most of the parcels: carriers, retail, property managers, and corporate offices. Last but not least, our parcel lockers contribute to the reduction in CO2 emission by consolidating parcel flows and reducing vans traffic in urban areas. This is made possible thanks to our proven solutions and our comprehensive range. Quadient Parcel Locker Solutions breaks boundaries to create an integrated experience using a combination of smart hardware, intuitive mobile interface, and cloud platform. Let's start with the smart hardware, which is the most visible and tangible part. We provide a comprehensive range with indoor and outdoor, standard and lite lockers, enabling customers to fit a parcel locker in virtually any location and handle any volume.
The design, which is mastered by Quadient, has been optimized for total cost of ownership. It is modular and scalable. It is totally configurable to adapt to customer requirements and evolves while volume grows. The safety of goods and people are totally guaranteed, and the contactless delivery option is available. The user interface and mobile app offer a unique parcel experience that is fast, secured, and intuitive. It serves both consumers and delivery agents for delivery and return parcel flows. We are glad to report that our app is rated 4.9 o n App Store, which shows that it is highly appreciated. Now, let's highlight what makes our solution unique, our cloud-based network management platform, which is the core of our system. This platform is instrumental in the tracking of all the parcels and the management of the network.
With this, we can monitor the state of each locker and analyze key indicator of the install base to make data-driven decisions. With our network management platform, we are integrated with 100% of our customers, dealing with million of parcels per year across thousands of locations. This is the core where security, robustness, and scalability are a must. Thousands of diverse businesses already rely on our vertical agnostic, location agnostic, and open parcel locker network solution. Thanks to our unique combination of great user experience, rich and scalable software, and a comprehensive locker range, we meet the parcel management needs of carriers, retailers, property managers, and corporate offices. By addressing these verticals, we provide parcel locker automation for both home and out-of-home parcel deliveries, and we relieve the last mile parcel management pain points of e-commerce stakeholders.
This value proposition to our customers goes with a strong added value to the consumers and a positive impact on the environment, which is a real must given the strong sensitivity in cities on these topics. In order to enable the expansion of a large locker network, we offer two flexible business models to accommodate our customers' requirements. Both models generate already profitable subscription-related revenue. For the purchase model on the left-hand side of the slide, subscription revenue attached to the one-off sale represent 40% of total revenue over a five-year period. These subscription fees encompass software subscription, support, and maintenance. This significant percentage of subscription-related revenue is achieved thanks to the high retention rate of our install base, with a churn rate below 0.2%. We already see that our customers tend to extend the use of our solution beyond the five-year period.
As time passes, the long-term value of our solution increases, with higher percentage of subscription-related revenue going further than the 40% rate. For the rental model on the right-hand side of the slide, 100% of the revenue is recurring, as it is spread over the rental contract, with a commitment period from three to seven years, depending on the contract signed. In addition, we continuously monetize our existing install base by adding volume-based revenue streams, such as resident fees or per parcel fees. Let's focus on the rental model. In the case of an open network, Quadient manages its model securing a minimum return by renting a portion of the lockers with first orders. We drive additional revenues and profitability by onboarding other customers once rolled out. PLS in Japan is a perfect example of this model.
Our first customer and main partner, Yamato, had made a seven-year commitment on a portion of each machine, securing a minimum payback to Quadient within a decent time frame. On the basis of this commitment and the secured minimum payback, Quadient and Yamato have been able to roll out the locker network very quickly. As soon as the locker network became large and dense enough, Quadient was able to add new customers and new services. I am referring here to other carriers like Sagawa or Japan Post, or the development of a C2C service. This is how we have been able to improve the internal rate of return.
Indeed, as you can see on the chart, with additional secured volumes since rollout, Japan Parcel Locker currently sits at 11% internal return rate with 76% of boxes subscribed, and could reach up to 20% internal return rate with 85%-90% of boxes subscribed. Calculation is based on the seven-year lifetime. If lifetime exceeds those seven years, internal return rate will mechanically increase. As mentioned previously, our goal is to launch and expand our open local network in countries where e-commerce is strong. We decided to focus on four countries out of the 10 largest e-commerce markets. The U.S., Japan, and France, where we are in a leading position, and the U.K. that we have just launched. We selected top largest e-commerce countries where we are able to leverage Quadient's existing strong operational and commercial capabilities. The United States is the second-largest e-commerce market in the world.
There, we are a market leader in the residential segment, thanks to the Parcel Pending acquisition. We also have a growing presence in retail sector, thanks to the Lowe's contract, as well as in the education segment, where we have more than 50% market share with universities. Japan is the fourth-largest e-commerce market. We have a strong market leadership thanks to our joint venture with local top carrier, Yamato. You will see the scale of our local presence in a few slides. We also are the leading carrier-agnostic player in France, which is the seventh-largest market. Lastly, thanks to our market recognition and scale, as well as our existing operations, we are also developing in the U.K., the third-largest e-commerce market globally. Our countries of focus are the largest e-commerce markets as of today. They still have a lot of headroom to grow.
Since our launch for the carrier and retail markets in France in 2014, we have focused on growth in our selected geographies and verticals. We have been leveraging Quadient's commercial relationship and operational capabilities with its MRS business. As an example, we leverage our existing relationship with La Poste to establish our first joint venture with Geopost. We have executed our plan and built a sustainable model step by step over time. We have accelerated the execution of our strategy since the beginning of 2019, following the acquisition of Parcel Pending. A few major events have structured Quadient PLS history and demonstrated our model is repeatable. The first years allowed us in France to understand the challenges of carriers and retailers in the last mile, and to develop solutions in adequacy with the needs of these two verticals.
We launched a joint venture with Yamato in 2015 in Japan, leveraging our experience with Geopost in France. This joint venture has been the foundation to our Japanese success, which was expanding now to working with Sagawa, DHL, Japan Post, and many retailers and convenience stores on a unique scale project. In the U.S., the launch of the education segment in 2017 and the acquisition of Parcel Pending in 2019 have made us a leading player in this market. We are now expanding to the retail sector with a major contract signed with Lowe's in 2020, leveraging the experience we have gained over the last few years in the retail vertical. Our entry in the U.K. residential segment, leveraging Parcel Pending experience in the U.S., has been successful, and we are now scaling PLS presence in this market.
Thanks to its positioning and its repeatable model, Quadient PLS has achieved a leadership position. Our future growth will be repeating on the same success factors that have brought us where we are today, with further potential to seize on our four verticals across our targeted geographies. Quadient PLS high growth trajectory continued in 2020 with a 36% organic revenue growth and over 50% of subscription-related revenue, as you can see on the chart. This very significant growth was driven by a strong dynamic in all our targeted geographies. In the U.S., we are scaling on property managers since the acquisition of Parcel Pending with market share gain over Luxer One and Package Concierge.
We have also launched the retail vertical with the successful rollout of the Lowe's project, which includes more than 1,300 units installed at the end of the year, generating a very significant revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020. In Japan, we are continuously rolling out our large, dense, and open network strategy. We have successfully implemented this strategy in Tokyo with a fast ramp-up and with circa 3,600 lockers in October 2020. Thanks to the density that we have reached, we have been able to onboard new carriers, including Sagawa, DHL, and Japan Post, into our open network strategy. We have been able to add new services such as C2C. C2C now represents half of the volume. This further proves that with density comes convenience and proximity for consumers, driving benefits for all stakeholders.
In our four main geographies, we have further expanded our addressable market thanks to the launch of our new Parcel Pending Lite to complete our comprehensive range. Our growth is based on the profitable and sustainable model. While our focus is to grow our PLS solution and gain market share, our priority is to grow a highly profitable recurring model. The profitability of our installed base per country increases with the growing number of locker install. Once each country has reached a scale network, the profitability increases even more rapidly. For example, our installed bases in the U.S. or Japan are already at scale and are already highly profitable in the range of 25%-30% solution profit margin. We are expecting the profitability of these installed bases to continue to increase in the coming years thanks to a few additional levers.
As far as the rental model is concerned, we have set up a conservative depreciation policy, five to seven years, depending on contract length. This is lower than locker life cycle, which is above 10 years. This means that once customers extend their rental contract, it is driving our profitability higher as long as we don't have to replace the locker. Second, the user rate of locker boxes should continue to improve, and with it, further monetization of the base. We also focus on upselling our customers through additional boxes and new services over time, which in turn further improves profitability. Our base in France and the U.K. are not yet at scale.
In 2020, we have delivered a 5.6% solution profit, which is the combination of, on the one hand, the 25%-30% profit margin from the installed base, on the other hand, the level of investments made to develop our market share and to enhance our solutions and complete our offering. We have enjoyed an ongoing improvement of the PLS solution profit margin for the last three years, and we expect it to continue to improve. We have set up many business indicators to help monitor our progress. In particular, I wanted to share with you three of these indicators that we constantly track to drive and monitor our growth trajectory and our profitability. First indicator is the size of the installed base with the number of lockers installed, which allow us to monitor customer acquisition and churn.
It shows the speed of expansion of the installed base, and it is the criteria we have chosen to estimate our market share. The second indicator is the usage rate, which shows the increase in usage for our customers and the level of consumer adoption. It drives the profitability for all stakeholders and for us in particular. We consider that the optimum in terms of usage rate is around 75%. We have set up a series of programs to help increase this usage over time. The third indicator is the growth of subscription-related revenue, which is an indicator of the robustness of the revenue. Coupled with the duration of the contract and the very low churn rate, this also gives us a very good visibility on the revenue base that is secured for the years to come.
The subscription-related revenue growth is key for our model, given the high profitability of the installed base. We remain confident that our unique positioning in the parcel locker market set up for success in capturing the parcel locker market future growth. Our geographic footprint, our value proposition, and capability to address at home, at the office, and out-of-home deliveries separate us apart. Our installed base is among the largest in the world. In particular, when we compare ourselves to other carrier-agnostic players, our global installed base is between two times to four times bigger. That puts us in a unique position to act as the key partner for all the different e-commerce stakeholders who want to leverage our local deployment capabilities and network. We are the only locker player able to address the needs of carriers, retailers, residential property managers, corporate offices, and education alike.
Thanks to our expert teams, as well as our proven and repeatable model, we have the ambition to be a leader in each country we address. Quadient's model is based on three differentiating pillars, our integrated and comprehensive solution, our unique positioning and scale, and our unified service capability. Integrated and comprehensive solution. We provide software capabilities and a comprehensive range that meets e-commerce stakeholders' needs. Our proven integration capabilities and scalability allow us to onboard thousands of customers and deal with millions of parcels and transactions. Unique positioning and scale. A leading position in the U.S., Japan, and France with a promising launch in the U.K. . We have built strategic partnerships and have proven vertical expertise that will enable us to scale. Our carrier-agnostic positioning and our adaptive business models will allow us to quickly deploy a large, dense, and open network that can serve all e-commerce stakeholders in each targeted country.
Unified service capability. We have proven capabilities to operate and monitor a local network. In each targeted country, we leverage Quadient's operational capability and are able to scale network and services. PLS business differentiation is strengthened by synergies within Quadient. We are able to leverage Quadient's relationships with postal and carrier organizations. This synergy has been foundational for PLS business. Moreover, we are at the beginning of benefit from the synergies of large existing MRS customer base in corporate, education, and property management. At Quadient, the supply chain organization and capabilities are fully shared between MRS and PLS. This generates economies of scale, while we can deliver best-in-class quality and service to our customers, from sourcing in Asia to delivering in the U.S. and Europe. R&D capabilities are shared between PLS and all other Quadient solutions, which enable us to leverage existing competency and standardized processes, tools, and infrastructure.
Most PLS R&D resources came from MRS R&D teams, which allowed us to benefit from their mail and parcel expertise acquired in the postal domain. Last but not least, Quadient is leveraging its service, support, call center, field technician, and operational capabilities to support the install base and accelerate PLS scale development. As a result of its differentiation and its ability to leverage Quadient's commercial and operational capabilities, Quadient PLS ambition is to become a leader in parcel lockers in a selection of the top 10 e-commerce geographies. Our strategic focus is to gain market share in our existing verticals and scale additional verticals in each country we address, thanks to our repeatable model. We also aim to expand into new countries among the top 10 largest e-commerce markets.
Our goal is to scale fast, since the install base profitability will continue to increase through scaling and monetization due to our strategy to create a large and dense network. This organic growth will be fueled by the related sales and marketing investment to expand our local network, while R&D investment will be maintained to remain competitive and stay on the cutting edge of innovation. We are targeting ambitious top-line and bottom-line growth for PLS. In the coming three years, it is difficult to predict with accuracy the mix between subscription and purchase model, but we aim to almost double the size of Quadient PLS local network across our core countries. We believe we will achieve this target by combining our standard and light lockers across our regions.
As we continue to increase the size of the install base in countries where we operate our lockers, we are planning to reach a 35%-40% profit margin of the install base on a full year basis by the end of the three-year plan. Let's finish now with the key takeaways on Parcel Locker Solutions. Quadient is best positioned on the fast-growing market with strong underlying drivers. Quadient focuses on the key e-commerce countries, aspiring to build a large and dense local network in each one, targeting more than 25,000 lockers by the end of the three-year plan. We are the unique parcel locker solution provider addressing the needs from all verticals, carriers, retail, property managers, corporate, and education, with a repeatable and scalable model. Quadient promotes environmental friendly solutions by consolidating parcel flows, reducing traffic congestion in urban areas, and cutting down on CO2 emissions.
We are among the leaders in our targeted countries. Number one in Japan carrier, number one in U.S. residential, and number one in France retail. Quadient builds a sustainable subscription-related revenue model with high profitability, and we have a secured 50% subscription-related revenue with low churn and multi-year contracts. Finally, it's important to highlight that we have extensive commercial and cost synergies with the rest of the Quadient organization. This concludes my overview of Quadient's Parcel Locker Solutions activity. Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel, and thank all of you for your inbound questions. At this time, we're going to hold on to questions and address them at the end of the session when we'll host an extended Q&A. We do encourage you, however, to continue asking your questions via the Q&A window or hold them until the end when we can unmute phones and you can pose your questions then. Our next session will cover Quadient's three-year plan, followed by a conclusion. I welcome back our CFO, Laurent du Passage, and our Chief Executive Officer, Geoffrey Godet.
Thank you, Rob. Our approach in terms of capital allocation is to maximize the long-term value for our shareholders by delivering sustainable returns. This implies that we are continuously reassessing our options, evaluating if our capital is well invested, and our cash well allocated. We are doing so with an open mind. For instance, we like to always ensure that we are the best owner of our businesses, meaning that we ask ourselves if we can create more value over time in owning them and operating them than by divesting them. When it comes to undertake a full strategic review, we like to consider as many suitable alternatives as possible. This was the case with phase one of our Back to Growth strategy. When we announced it early 2019, it was the outcome of a holistic strategic review conducted in the second part of 2018.
After two years of strong execution and due to the impact of COVID, we decided to perform another in-depth strategic review. In doing so, we considered potential divestments and/or portfolio rationalization. Phase two of Back to Growth, which we presented today, is the result of a thorough analysis. I remind you that our invested capital is split between, on one hand, major operations, where we have scalable growth engines and Mail-Related Solutions across which we unlock significant synergies. On the other hand, we have additional operations which we manage separately to either grow, improve, or exit these businesses. The way we reallocate surplus cash is also the result of a thorough analysis of opportunities based on risk-adjusted returns between organic investments, M&A, and potential share buybacks. In line with this discipline, please let me introduce our financial trajectory to 2023 and our capital allocation policy priorities.
Our new profitable growth trajectory is based on organic developments. Here again, what is different from phase one, Back to Growth, is that in phase two, our base assumption is that we will not rely on further acquisition. This is why both our top line and our profitability guidance are defined by organic growth indicators. We are providing you with both 2021 and 2022-2023 period perspectives. From a top-line standpoint first, we expect to deliver at group level for 2021, a minimum 2% organic growth. Current context requires us to be prudent, but we are confident that this 2% organic growth is a minimum we can achieve this year, notably if the trend we see in February and March continues. For 2021-2023 period, we expect a minimum 3% organic CAGR, compound annual growth rate.
From a current EBIT standpoint, we expect to deliver at group level for 2021 an EBIT organic growth between 4% and 6%. For the period, we expect a minimum mid-single-digit organic CAGR. Now, if we move to capital allocation. From a capital allocation standpoint, over 2021, 2023, here are our priorities. First, CapEx. We will focus on investing into organic growth opportunities if they offer attractive risk-adjusted returns, which mean EUR 70 million to EUR 80 million per year of R&D and maintenance, which includes IFRS 16 CapEx over the period. CapEx for rent for EUR 40 million + per year over the period, particularly to support the parcel locker and site-based growth. Second, deleverage. To ensure a healthy balance sheet adapted to the company evolving profile and taking into account OCEANE repayment in June 2022.
As you remember, our OCEANE is currently classified as an equity instrument in our balance sheet. We are committed to bringing our leverage, excluding leasing, strictly below 1.75 x in 2023. This will be post repayment of OCEANE. As a comparison basis, if we had included the OCEANE in debt at the end of the fiscal year 2020, our theoretical leverage, excluding the leasing and including OCEANE, would have stood at 2.1 times. This is an estimate at the end of 2020, please bear in mind that this is obviously before taking into account the EUR 70 million that we just spent early 2021 in acquiring Beanworks. Third, portfolio management. We will continuously assess if we should divest or spin off assets, no sacred cows, and redeploy this capital, but not more, unless excess cash is available in more attractive areas, including potential opportunistic bolt-on acquisition.
That should cover cost of capital by year three post-closing. Four, our shareholder return policy. We keep our dividend policy unchanged. We will maintain a minimum 20% dividend payout of net attributable income with a EUR 0.50 floor dividend per share. We will consider also yearly excess cash available for share buyback subject to value creation criteria. Quick focus on dividend. You may remember that last year, taking the COVID situation into account at the time of the first lockdown, the board had decided to maintain a dividend, but adjust the EUR 0.50 dividend down to EUR 0.35. This year, even if we are all still impacted by the COVID pandemic, considering our fiscal year 2020 performance and future outlook, the board of directors has decided to resume our usual dividend policy, and we recommend to the general assembly a dividend of EUR 0.50 per share.
Before I hand back the microphone to Geoffrey, let me recap the ambition by solution over the plan. ICA, over 20%-25% subscription-related revenue CAGR over the period, and circa 30% solution profit margin on forward basis by end of the plan. MRS, better than -5% organic decline, which is a floor over the three-year plan, while we will maintain a high solution profit margin of 42%-45%. Parcel Locker, more than 25,000 lockers at the end of the plan, and 30%-40% of solution profit margin on the installed base on forward basis by end of the plan. The combination of these trajectories should allow us to reach a well-balanced, growing, and profitable profile, delivering sustainable value to our customers and shareholders.
Of course, the execution of this plan will need to rely on an excellent operational discipline, which will be monitored closely, notably thanks to the three KPIs by solution presented earlier. Now please let me hand back the microphone to Geoffrey for an overall wrap-up.
Thank you, Laurent. Before we go to the Q&A section, to briefly conclude this capital market day, I would like to summarize a few key takeaways for you. First, we hope you enjoyed this opportunity of making a deep dive into our key solutions. It's a chance to better understand how we intend to leverage our strong positions to benefit from the latest trends of acceleration of digitization on the one hand, and from the ever-growing issues surrounding the higher numbers of parcel deliveries that Daniel explained to us today. And of course, our ability to manage the impact of declining mail volume in a confident way. When we embarked on our Back to Growth journey two years ago, our first ambition was to transform Quadient.
I truly believe that we have come a long way in deeply and profoundly changing our operating model, simplify our organization, and make it more efficient. This new approach is what is allowing us to be able to look at the second phase of our plan with confidence and to be able to rely on a trajectory that doesn't depend on M&A, like the first portion of our plan. All the guidance we have presented that Laurent have shared with you are on an organic basis. Our growth engines, which accounts for 20% of our total revenue at the end of 2020, meaning that we're in a better position to grow moving forward for the second phase of the plan.
Cross-selling and mutualized costs generated close to EUR 100 million in synergies last year, meaning that we're also in a better position to not only grow for the next few years, but grow profitably. Last but not least, we completed the key targeted acquisition that we aim for. And yet, thanks to the good divestment, we only spent a net amount of around EUR 105 million in M&A. This means we'll have more cash to allocate in the coming years to keep investing organically in our future growth, to optimize our balance sheet through an appropriate deleveraging that Laurent presented, to take into account the OCEANE repayment in 2022, to maintain the same dividend policy. Finally, not least, to choose to use our excess cash every year, either in additional investment, in bolt-on acquisition opportunistically, and/or in share buybacks, depending obviously on the opportunities every year.
We are entering the second phase of our plan with a clear goal of maximizing long-term returns to our shareholders and drive sustainable value. Our new midterm financial guidance is first and foremost organic, as we're now in a stronger position to leverage our key assets. As we are introducing new KPIs, notably the solution profitability, but all the other ones that were shared with you today, we will have the possibility to better monitor our performance quarter after quarter, semester after semester. So, we're looking forward to sharing our future success with you. I thank you on behalf of the team for taking the time with us today, and we're now ready to take your question. Rob, if you want to coordinate those questions for us.
Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, Geoffrey. Well start with a couple of questions. One from [Julian Shaatska], who asked: C ould you detail what is the business model of Parcel Locker Solutions? Rental revenue versus use revenue or sale of equipment. Do you intend to develop the scope of activity of parcel lockers such as InPost? So, now we covered a little bit...
Described by Daniel's presentation pretty well. I think the question came just before. As Daniel mentioned, we don't intend to be a carrier. Some of those activities, I think, being provided by InPost are not in our scope. We remain to, you know, focus on developing a reputable and scalable parcel locker business as a provider.
Excellent. From Franck Couturier, we have: What is the potential of the Parcel Pending business? What is about the concurrence or what is the competitive advantage of Quadient on this market segment?
Daniel, do you want to take the question to summarize it? I think you addressed a lot of those points as well.
Yes, of course. As shared during the presentation, Parcel Pending experienced a strong double-digit growth this year, despite the COVID crisis, where we had some delays on residential installations. What we can say is that we are in a leading position in residential vertical, and we gain market share against Luxer One and Package Concierge. We are also in the leading position in the education segment with a market share that is above 50% in higher ed. What the great achievement of this year is that we could leverage Quadient experience and solution in retail and win our first significant customer in the retail vertical with Lowe's. Now what we're going to do from now on is obviously to leverage this strong reference to develop this retail vertical.
Coming back to the differentiation, what we can say from Parcel Pending, first, that we have a great team there, very focused on consumer experience. This is the first and main strength of the company. We have expertise in the three verticals that we are addressing, that's absolutely great compared to most of our competitors. Our solution and our integration capabilities are a strong differentiation against the competitors, and these are absolutely key assets for our customers and on these markets. That's what I can say about Parcel Pending.
Thanks, Daniel. There's a question that you've almost preempted here: Is there a risk of sales drop or sharp slowdown in 2021 due to the high base of comparison with the Lowe's contract? Which part of the contract was executed at the end of 2020?
Again, as mentioned during my presentation, we had a successful rollout of the Lowe's project. Actually, we shipped close to 80% of the total volume by the end of our fiscal year. The remaining quantities will be shipped in Q1 2021. Obviously, it has generated a high hardware sale revenue at the end of 2020. At the same time, the growth in NORAM was driven by our subscription-related revenue with a very strong growth and high double-digit growth in 2020. We plan to have another double-digit growth of our subscription-related revenue in 2021 in NORAM.
Thank you.
Complement to add on that, Rob, just to add on that to Patrick Jousseaume. Not just the subscription revenue, the growth of parcel lockers will be double digit this year, I mean, in 2021. Definitely at a lower level, probably considering the comparison basis as Daniel mentioned.
Excellent. Thank you. For PLS, this is from Olivia Lombard: For PLS, do the installation fees invoice to customers cover the on-site installation costs? Put differently, is the on-site installation phase profitable or unprofitable? Laurent?
Yeah, good question. We are invoicing to the customers the installation cost as well as the shipment cost. This is part of our ASP.
Another PLS-oriented question. Do you want to grow organically? If there's a chance, would you consider buying a smaller competitor? What are the current M&A multiple sales and/or EBITDA you would have to pay? This is from Roland Keenan.
I'll take this one. Just I don't know, Laurent, did you want to add something on the personal? On the M&A, as we just presented, we don't have any current intent in the plan to achieve our guidelines to take into account M&A. That being said, we obviously will remain opportunistic on that. On the parcel locker, as a reminder, we did our first acquisition, so we did already allocate capital to this business with Parcel Pending acquisition. We took the last two years, the time to develop a comprehensive range. We are today very well equipped to address the market needs, as Daniel mentioned, across the four segments. There could always be opportunities to consider the market in the coming years, so we remain open to that. I think we're pretty well equipped organically to further develop and grow this business.
Thank you. Another question from Olivia: Would you try to sell or promote your ICA software solutions in the other minor geographies, or would you stick to the main geographies?
Good question from Olivia. The plan of Back to Growth, since the beginning and moving forward, is a refocus on our three now main solution, but it was also refocused geographically. That's the case for all our solution, the three solution. We pick and choose our battles so that we have basically the most chance of success and scale efficiently and profitably. Sometimes if you dilute yourself by going after too many small countries at the same time, you may not get the full return on your investment. This is why the focus in the next few years for the three solution, not just ICA, will be to focus on the scope of countries included in major operation.
Another question from Olivia: What are your expectations regarding the split between cloud and perpetual license models for new customers of CXM?
So it's a good question. This is a shift, as Chris explained earlier, that we're looking at for all ICA customers, whether they are small, mid, or larger enterprise. The pace at which the market is taking cloud and subscription-based solution is obviously evolving differently based on region and based on the type of customers. In our plan, there is obviously room to account for different transition rate, if you want, to go from an on-premise model to a subscription model, likely to be accelerated, as we could see already in NORAM, versus Southern European countries. Like if we take Germany, they will probably be a little bit slower in this adoption. Across the next three years, we expect probably the small and mid-size customers to finish their transition.
Whereas on the larger organization, it will probably take the first two years, potentially three years of the plan to complete this transition. It will be a progressive transition from on-premise to cloud.
Thank you. A question specifically focused on MRS. This is from Patrick Jousseaume: F or the fourth quarter of 2020, MRS showed a - 70% or versus 0% for Pitney Bowes' SendTech division. How do we explain this, or how do you explain this?
There is a few points on that, because I think we had the same discussion in Q4 2019. There is an element of a comparison basis, and Alain will correct me. I think Pitney Bowes' SendTech division was probably a -11% or so in Q4 2019, which makes it obviously a very easy comparison basis for them in Q4 2020. The second thing is that between PB and Quadient, just to remind that we don't have the same fiscal year. We start our year February 1st to January 31st, and therefore, we have not been impacted the same way with respect to a COVID year, which benefited, I think, as well Pitney Bowes on that comparison. After that, I think there is probably specifically two other element to take into account. We don't have the same geographical mix.
I believe probably for Pitney Bowes, NORAM, which is the primary region, represent 85% or so of their business. For us, NORAM is probably 50%. Why is it important in the evolution of the business is, as we have shared regularly, NORAM mail industry segment is obviously much more resilient than the one we see in Europe. We see a decline rate usually a little bit stronger in the European countries than we see in NORAM, and we have seen that also in 2020 as Alain and Laurent described for us. Therefore, we have a geographical mix that is a little bit more unfavorable for us this year. After that, I believe PB probably benefited from a one-off larger government contract that is probably not repeatable moving forward.
Thank you. A question from Olivia: What is the current retention rate of the MRS subscription? Do you still manage to gain new customers from competitors?
Alain, do you want to take the question?
Sure. Our cancellation rates in MRS are in the single digits, and they've remained very stable during COVID, which is great for us, of course. We also are very much helped by the success of our cross-selling efforts, which help us extend the customer relationship with the MRS customers by offering, when it's applicable, a smooth transition into digital communications. That will be for the retention rate question. On the customer acquisition question, we absolutely continue to acquire new customers. We paused a little bit during COVID at the height of the lockdowns, but we are back at it full force in 2021, and gaining market share is definitely one of our major drivers.
Thank you, Alain. This question is around our packaging solutions from Olivia as well: Do you still aim to exit your packaging solution, which is currently included in the additional/non-major operations? Is there really no synergies with the current MRS segment?
Thank you. It's a good question from Olivia . We did do a divestment as part of the reshaping of our portfolio, especially related to companies that were in the scope of additional operation. Like I reminded you at the beginning, that being said, the strategy of additional operation is not just divestment, but it's to grow and improve the businesses that we have into this division. The CVP is a great product, that automated packaging solution. We're very happy to have been able to grow it this year, in a COVID year. As Laurent mentioned, we did, I think, 17 machine this year versus 16 last year, and some of a higher end capability. But fundamentally, the businesses that we have put into additional operation, part of the reason for some of them was because they were not necessarily bad business.
They were good business, but not synergistic with the rest of our domain solution. That's what I explained in the beginning, is that within major operation, we kept the solution that were synergistic among themselves and with our core business on Mail-Related Solutions. We don't have much exposure to the warehouses, which is really where the play is for the CVP, because it's really the optimization of the warehouses and the automation that they need within the warehouses, and we don't have other solution within the group, synergistic with that approach.
Thank you. Another question from Patrick Jousseaume: Is reducing the percentage of MRS in total sales to less than 50% initially a goal for 2022 still a target, and if yes, when?
All right. Good question, Patrick, as well. The goal was not to necessarily reduce MRS to less than 50%, but to grow the new businesses, the new growth engines above 50%. We still have the same ambition. Obviously that ambition, as it relates to the share of what MRS represent in the total of the company, is function both of the rate of decline in MRS and the performance of the growth engines. Definitely, this year in 2020, the COVID has impacted the difference in the performance of both. As we move forward, I think we feel fairly confident on the level of decline, and we can anticipate for the mail business.
This is why for the first time with Alain, we have been able to share a floor on the decline, and we obviously think we can do better than that in the next few years. The stronger or the more resilient our mail business is, the better. Probably now to respond to your question, we're probably going to get closer to that 50% ratio by the end of the plan or after the plan, depending on the performance, obviously, on the growth engines combined with the performance of MRS.
Thank you. Our next question, two people asked a very similar question. David Cerdan asked the question: Can you give us the transformation rate into FCF for ICA, MRS, and PLS or FCF per solution line? We got a similar question from Arthur Bernasconi, who asked: H ello, and thanks for your presentation. Could it be possible to have an idea of FCF for each division?
On the free cash flow, it's a good question. We had question on the profitability by solution before. I fully understand where you're coming from. Today, we're looking at the profitability by solution, which as Laurent explained, does not include the G&A. Providing a free cash flow by solution, we would need to address the G&A point. This way would be more like the profitability solution, the contribution of the solution without the depreciation coming from, in particular, the investment in R&D or CapEx that we're making. This is not an indicator that we're currently providing. We provide, you'll be able to see the free cash flow, obviously, at the group level, and over the next three years.
Thanks, Geoffrey. Marc Saint John Webb asked: Thanks for publishing the solutions profit margin by division. Now that you've done it, could you please explain the low level for parcel lockers? And also give targets for this margin per division in the medium and long term.
I believe, Marc, that we have addressed for it because I think I have seen the question coming before the Parcel Locker Solutions. Just as a reminder, as Daniel mentioned, yes, we have around 6% solution profitability for Parcel Locker in 2020. This is already a mix during the year between the profitability that we get from the install base existing, which is fairly high because it's around 25%-30% already, versus the investment we're making the same year to acquire, obviously, more market share in the different countries that we're launching our solution. For example, U.K. or France, or where we're also gaining market share, like in the U.S. or Japan. That will continue, obviously, to evolve year-on-year.
What we have guided, or what we have shared as an ambition for the parcel lockers, that we feel that even the profitability on the install base will continue to increase over the plan. That's the benefit of this model, is that as we scale it and the more lockers we have in the base, the more profitable the existing base will become. Obviously, we will also be able to monitor the investment we're making in acquiring more market share or continue to grow the business, and also being able to monitor the level of investment, knowing that those level investment may become smaller and smaller as we continue to grow that install base over the coming few years, with a view to be able to more or less double the install base, a little less, from 13,000 lockers at the end of last year to 25,000.
Okay, thank you. This is from Just lost that question. My apologies. Oh, here we go. From David Cerdan: Have you made any material changes within your top management along with the second phase of your plan?
Good question. No, because the organization fundamentally has been established at the beginning of 2019. This is where we did adapt the leadership team globally. Obviously, as we evolve, we make some further change. I think the change related mostly to this new phase of the plan and this change that we have announced is related to ICA, with Chris managing now both the former CXM and the new ICA solution. Alina, which has been leading the BPA solution, will continue to work with Chris and leading some of the effort with integrating the Beanworks and YayPay, obviously, under the leadership of Chris.
Thanks, Geoffrey. From Jean-François Granjon: What will be the trend of improvement for profitability for ICA and PLS, the timing of the ramp-up? I think this is which stage to reach 35%-40% versus 5.6%, for example, in 2021, 2022, or 2023. The second part of the question, to reach 25,000 PL, do you expect M&A or not?
I'll take the second one, you take the first.
I'll take the first one. On ICA and Parcel Locker solution. ICA first. We are coming from 2023, as far as I can remember, and we have directionally the 30% solution profit margin on a fiscal year basis by the end of the third three-year plan. This is likely to be, considering that we are changing more and more business model from on-premise licenses to SaaS, will be affected probably the first and the second year to basically catch up with the guidance we are providing here. On Parcel Locker Solution, the ramp-up is very steady compared to the current situation.
The second part, no, we don't need M&A to be able to reach the scale of 25,000 lockers. It's a good opportunity also to remind that we don't need M&A to reach any of the target that we have shared with you for the second phase of the plan to get to 2023. This is really, I think, that inflection point where we needed to equip ourselves at the beginning of the transformation in terms of capabilities, whether they were on the product side or the R&D. We completed that phase now even on the software side with the acquisition of Beanworks and YayPay, which means now we feel equipped for our three solution to be able, in a sustainable way, to grow organically without the benefit of M&A.
That was what I shared with you in 2019, even though at the time we still needed the M&A, but we said that our goal ultimately was to be able to grow the company at some point sustainably, organically. This is what we're presenting now in this plan is without M&A, we're going to be able to grow the top line, but also grow the profitability of the company in the next years without M&A as well on the profitability side.
Okay. Next question is from Olivia. How much shareholder return do you plan for the next year? Which part could be allocated to buyback over dividend?
You want me to take that?
Sure. Again, on the dividend side, we've provided the policy basically on the dividend of 20% of the net attributable income to be certain dividend with a floor of EUR 0.50. Again, any surplus of cash that basically is generated from our capital allocation policy will be considered to be eventually filling a share buyback program. That's basically our philosophy moving forward on that topic.
Thank you. Our next question is from Stanislas Perrot. Says: Hello, everyone. What is the point of maintaining even a symbolic dividend when our company has now adopted a growth profile? It would be better to invest this money in investments that will be our future growth drivers. It would also be a good signal for shareholders with a short-term vision, who are ready to sell business units without business logic. Thanks in advance for your answer.
Thank you, Stanislas, for the question. It's important because we obviously, with the board, take a lot of time to consider our allocation priorities. The benefit of, as I mentioned at the beginning, that was part of the holistic reviews within 2018. We did, again, especially to take into account the impact of what the pandemic had in the assumptions of our business plan or business, but also look at whether or not we're the best owner of each of our business. I think this is something you need to be able to do frequently and always be open to look at are we operating each of the business that we have in the best ways. There's somebody else that could basically operate this business better than us.
That's based on that also that you could look at the rationale of the synergies that you could extract yourself, because if we're best owner and we bring something that others don't bring, we can exploit those synergies, and that's part of the rationale. After that's organically once you've made your plan and you've made your assumptions, then you could look obviously at the return that you get from a cash perspective and what you need to sustain your plan. That's the proposal that we have been able to work on, is that we believe today with the current course of the growth that we're planning and the increase of profitability, we are allocating the amount of investment that we need to each of the businesses that are sufficient to be able to address those business plan in a satisfactory way.
Therefore, it leaves the room for further return to our shareholders in the form of the dividend policy that we have set, and everything that Laurent just actually mentioned, everything that will be in excess within the constraint that we have set, that will also be able to be returned to shareholders in the form of share buyback opportunistically. If there is other opportunities, we'll also remain opportunistic on other additional organic plan beyond our plan or potentially M&A, as we mentioned at the beginning. I think we have shared some of those clear assumptions today.
Yeah, a very similar question coming in from Roland Keenan as well. I'll just maybe flip to that one in case there's any additional, you know, insight to give here. The question in direct is: Y ou promised to pay to the shareholders excess cash that is not invested in M&A. That would be roughly EUR 200 million. I recognize to bring down debt, but instead of share buyback, I would appreciate higher dividends. What are your thoughts, your strategic thinkings about the future of the CVP business? I guess a two-part question. For that first part, though, any additional insight? We've covered a bit of it there.
Do you want to—
I think just one comment on the arbitrage between dividend and share buyback. It's not exactly the same, I would say, mean or mechanism. At some point in the share buyback decision, there is one element that also you need to consider is basically the price at which your stock is being exchanged. This is the main driver that will basically make us arbitrage between dividend, share buyback, or other potential spending of the excess of cash.
When we talk about shareholder return, there could also be a special dividends that could happen also on top if the opportunity is there. What was the second part of the question about?
What are your strategic thinkings about the future of CVP business?
Part of our additional operation scope, our goals for each of those business, which include the CVP obviously, is to grow, improve, or exit them. As long as we are able to improve them or grow them, which is the case of the CVP in 2020, we're obviously very happy. All the scope of the additional business follows the same logic for us.
Thank you. Also from Roland: W hat would be the best guess for optimization expenses in 2021 and the next years?
Yeah. I'll take this one.
Please.
If you look back to what we mentioned last year, you had about EUR 10 million of the figure I presented. There was a combination of depreciation of goodwill, the - EUR 93 million I presented back in the P&L, EUR 10 million of that last year. In fiscal year 2019 was optimization expenses. This year, as I mentioned as a commentary, this has slightly grew, because basically we had to transform additional people this year as we are suffering basically from the COVID impact. From EUR 10 million, we moved to EUR 16 million. Keep in mind that we are a business in transformation, and MRS, as I mentioned, will need to resize along the way as the business basically structurally declines. I guess a good assumption would be somewhere between EUR 10 million-EUR 13 million moving forward. Yeah.
Okay, thank you. From Mourad: C ould you give us an idea of the embarked EBIT contribution of acquisitions, for example, YayPay and Beanworks?
Okay. These were as you know, small companies, they were not profitable, so they will be dilutive at the beginning in term of EBIT contribution, in particular in 2021. We will be able, as we integrate them, to obviously benefit from the synergies and the cross-sell and the acceleration that we believe we could bring to those two business platform that we could leverage our great MIS sales channels the same way we have done so far, but accelerated now with the platform of Beanworks and YayPay.
Excellent, thank you. This question came up before we concluded, so we may have covered it, but what is your leverage target for 2023, including leasing? That's from Patrick Jousseaume.
Very good point, Patrick. Including leasing, so again, excluding leasing, we mentioned significantly under 1.75x. That was the target for 2023. This is the target for 2023. If I include the leasing, it will bring me below 2.6x. So again, 2.6x would be the maximum leverage ratio, including leasing and including IFRS 16 by the end of 2023.
Okay, thank you. From [Nicolas Tadoux]: Thank you for the presentation. Could you please detail on what segments and end markets you could be making further M&A over the coming years?
Thank you, Nicolas, for this question. It's a good question. If I was to summarize the opportunity. Again, it's a little bit different to look hypothetically of what opportunities could bring in the next few years to achieve our targets, to achieve the growth in the Parcel Locker base, to achieve the growth in the subscription model and our ICA solution, and to achieve the resilience of our Mail-Related Solutions business. We do not count and need any M&A. After that, we'll need to remain open and opportunistic. There could be opportunities in the segments in the market we're bringing into. Obviously, as we have market leadership position, there could always be opportunities of consolidation that exist across our solutions. More interestingly, probably also to add capabilities that we may not be able to have, to complement our platform or our offering.
Today, knowing what we have been able to achieve, for example, on the Parcel Locker business, we have a range that we feel is fairly unique already today between the Parcel Pending Lite and the standard lockers, and already four segments that we're covering. There's not a strong opportunity there in the coming years. Potentially, the consolidation later. On the ICA side, we obviously have just finished the completion in terms of capabilities. There could always be consolidation opportunities in coming years. On the MRS side, we're obviously one of the key players, and as I mentioned in 2019, we'll always also remain opportunistic to look at potential consolidation if that was relevant and if it was to make sense in a particular geography that we are growing into.
All right. We have one last question to get to. This is from Roland: Just a comment on optimization costs. As you book restructuring costs every year, you should include this cost in current EBIT and not as one-offs?
Please, Alain.
The policy is that any non-replaced people related cost of restructuring will be classified in this line. As mentioned, this is mostly related to the fact that we are transforming. Again, those people are not replaced, so they are really one-offs. The transformation is spread across a couple of years. We will not restructure tomorrow the full amount of MRS, but at some point, it's something that doesn't come back. As such, is basically the turn, the switch in model and the switch in business that Quadient is doing over the longer term. I think for the sake of clarity, it's very separate in the P&L we provide you. I think you're able to assess it the way you need.
Excellent. Well, we're done with our questions. I want to thank all of our presenters today. I want to thank all of you for joining us on the line, and for staying with us through the entire event. Very much appreciate all of your time. Geoffrey, any final words?
Thank you all for taking the time to be with us today. Obviously, we're looking forward to engage with you and getting your feedback and engaging also one-on-one discussion. I want to thank the team, all of you for sharing our plans and our visions and how we intend to get there. We look forward to sharing the progress, and how we execute on this plan every quarter and every semester moving forward. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Thank you.