Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Quadient's first quarter 2026 revenue call. I'm Laura Paxton, Head of Investor Relations at Quadient, and I'm here today with Geoffrey Godet, CEO, and Laurent du Passage, CFO. We will have a short presentation followed by a Q&A, and then you can submit your questions in writing through the web or ask questions live by dialing into the conference call. The presentation and press release are now available on our website at invest.quadient.com, and the replay of the call will also be available on our website. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. I will now hand over to you, Geoffrey.
Thank you, Laura, and welcome, Laurent. Good evening, everyone. Starting on slide five, let me start with a brief reminder of some of the key dynamics shaping our performance as we entered 2026. As you remember, as I have outlined during our full-year results, we continue to operate in an environment that has been driven by key structural trends, right? First one is the acceleration of digitalization, supported in particular by AI and invoicing mandates. The second one is the ongoing structural evolution of the mail market. Along the side of our full-year result in 2025, we also announced a major reorganization of the Executive Committee with a very clear intention: align the leadership with our operational priority, and most importantly, put our Digital Automation Platform at the center of the company with the clear goals to accelerate both growth and innovation.
This has already enabled a sharper and more coordinated go-to-market approach, particularly when it comes to invoicing in Europe. Invoicing is not just a one-size-fits-all rollout, right? It requires local execution aligned with country-specific regulation and ecosystems. Traction is already coming through, so notably in France, ahead of the September 2026 deadline, contributing to the strong acceleration we're now seeing in the digital ARR. Against this, the first quarter is in line with the trajectory that we set out at the beginning of the year. If we now look at the performance by solution, we can see how these trends are translating across Quadient. In digital, ARR growth accelerated sharply, up around 16% on an annualized basis versus the end of January 2026. This was supported by both solid booking activity and low churn and a great usage.
More broadly, this level of activity reflects the continued relevance of our solution and environment, where both automation and AI are obviously, you know, becoming increasingly central to the customer needs that we have. Lastly, the subscription-related revenue continuing to grow in double-digits, in particular. In mail, we move to second solution, we saw a clear easing of the rate of decline, which is a great view, right? With the trend improving significantly from almost an 11% decline in the last quarter, in Q4 2025, to roughly a 5% decline in Q1 2026. This was primarily driven, naturally, by our main market, by an improved performance in North America. We are also seeing some very encouraging signs from a commercial standpoint, right?
In line with the recent change to the Executive Committee, we appointed a new Chief Solution Officer for Mail, and we are stepping up execution, and we have enhanced commercial discipline that support that progress moving forward. We do expect, naturally and consequently, for the Mail to continue easing over the course of 2026. Now, if you were just on Lockers, subscription-related revenue continued to grow very rapidly, driven by an increase in usage and the network expansion at the same time. The overall performance was impacted, on the other hand, with a high comparison basis in the hardware sales, in particular in our international segment, and we'll go with Laurent over in more details.
Overall, if I step back a little bit, these developments illustrate the continued strengthening of our revenue profile with a further increase in our subscription-related revenue and even a much more controlled evolution of our mail solution. As a wrap-up, for the first quarter of 2026, we posted EUR 243 million in revenue, down slightly 1.9% on an organic basis. Just a little word on profitability, we have also made a very good start of the year, and we're tracking in line with our expectation on that front as well. Looking ahead for the rest of the year, we expect Digital and Lockers both to continue delivering some solid subscription-related revenue growth, and while the mail trends are expected to continue easing in the coming quarters. On that basis, naturally, we confirm our full year 2026 guidance.
With all that said, I will now hand it over to Laurent for the business review.
Thank you, Geoffrey. I'll now go over the details of the Q1 revenue performance. Let's now start with slide seven. This waterfall chart illustrates the key drivers behind the change in revenue from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026. Starting from EUR 258 million revenue, we see a EUR 1 million positive impact from scope effect from the acquisition of Serensia and CDP in June and December 2025, respectively. Digital did contribute positively year-on-year, adding EUR 5 million over the quarter. For Mail, we saw a EUR 9 million decline, an improved trend compared to previous quarters. If you remember, on average in 2025, Mail has been declining about 2 times faster at EUR 17 million a quarter. Lastly, Lockers decreased by EUR 1 million in revenue impacted by a strong comparison base for hardware, resulting in an organic decline for Quadient overall at 1.9% for Q1.
Currency effects impacted revenue by EUR 12 million this quarter. Comparison base should ease for USD to euro throughout Q2. The net result is a EUR 15 million decrease. It's a 6% reported, bringing us to EUR 243 million for Q1 2026. Let's now move to slide eight. When looking at the breakdown of revenue, we see the continued shift towards subscription-related revenue across Quadient, moving from 70% to 77% from Q1 2022 to Q1 2026. This is the chart on the left-hand side.
Despite headwinds on the subscription side for the mail business, notably in Q1 2026, Quadient still shows a positively growth on the subscription-related revenue in Q1 2026 compared to Q1 2025 by 1.3%. On the right-hand side, digital and local penetration within this subscription-related revenue has surged from 29% to 43% in the same period of time, resulting today in an almost balanced contribution between mail and growth engines.
Back to you, Geoffrey, to update us on the digital business.
Thank you, Laurent, for those updates. On slide nine, I want to highlight two key things for the digital trajectory. First one is our leadership in Customer Communication Management, and the second one is the acceleration we're seeing in the invoicing in France. First, on our CCM segment, we have been named a leader in the Omdia Universe, which is a Customer Communication Management 2026 report. Our Quadient Inspire suite receive, yet again, the best in class recognition and such for two things, right? For both the technology and solution breadth and with the highest technology score among the vendors evaluated. What I like about this assessment is that it highlights the areas where we differentiate today. Where do we differentiate? A unified omni-channel solution, strong deployment flexibility, and the integration of what we call governed human-centered AI into the enterprise communication capability.
If we talk about the financial automation and the invoicing, the quarter shows a clear acceleration in commercial momentum in France, obviously ahead of the September 2026 reform deadline. As you can see, the vast majority of our orders in the period were driven by the invoicing, and we delivered our strongest quarter- to- date, and let's stress that, this is our strongest quarter- to- date in new logo acquisition in France. It's been supported also by shorter sales cycles and adoption across multiple sectors, multiple verticals, and covering both incoming and outgoing invoicing flow. We also achieve a landmark win with a major vehicle distributor, and we have obviously further expansion and potential across additional solution with that customer. Importantly as well, this is not obviously only a sales story, which we like.
It is also a clear demonstration of the execution readiness and our ability to scale in this market. Through what we call now the Serensia by Quadient platform, we are, as you know, participating in the French government's, we call Grand Pilote, which is effectively the phase where the platforms begin processing invoicing flows and in what I'm going to stress, in real production conditions ahead of that September 2026 deadline. Notably, we're already supporting France's largest invoice issuer, and we expect additional major customers to join shortly, which I think demonstrate today both our ability to onboard large customers and to handle some very high volume flow. Not only does the participation in the Grand Pilote validate our technical readiness, but with fewer than 40 platforms from vendors, right, currently issuing invoicing flows, our level of activity already signal very high degree of operational maturity.
It shows that customers trust us to deliver ahead of the deadline in September, which I think position us as a preferred partner today for businesses seeking reliable and scalable invoicing solution, which is going to be critical for the business moving forward. This commercial and also operational momentum is obviously reflected in our revenue and ARR growth, which we will now look at in more detail on slide 10. We continue to deliver in Q1 stronger than a growth in subscription-related revenue, which increased by almost 11%, 10.8% organically in the quarter, and now represent almost 88% of our digital revenue. This reflects both the natural continued trend of our business model and the increasing visibility of our revenue base.
At the same time, our non-recurring revenue, which is mostly services and license, combined decline by 16.2%, which naturally reflects the lower professional service revenue. It's mostly linked to two factors. One, we have an increasing of mid-segment customers being onboarded, as you know, in the total mix, which requires fewer services compared to a large enterprise customer in that segment. Naturally, that makes a difference in the mix. The second point is the fact that we have a large proportion of our professional services to our network partners. Consequently, digital revenue grew by 6.8% organically year-on-year, reaching now EUR 71 million in this first quarter. Beyond the revenue, I think most importantly, looking ahead, let's talk about our forward-looking indicators, which remains very strong. Our future annual recurring revenue, or ARR, reached EUR 257 million at the end of April.
That acceleration represented annualized growth rate of 16%. This performance is supported, obviously, by some solid year-on-year growth in both the booking during the quarter, but also, and most importantly, an increased usage combined with a lower churn, which I think highlights the relevance of our platform and its stickiness with our customer base today. In terms of drivers, we continue to benefit from the strong invoicing momentum that we have on the market in France, which I spoke about on the previous slide, as well as a very good performance across the board of our Customer Communication Management, in particular, by the way, in one of the regions, North America. We've seen also sustained traction from the SMBs across all regions.
Overall, I could say that Q1 confirms the strength of our digital platform with continued double-digit growth in subscription renewal revenue and a clear acceleration in ARR, which naturally gives us some strong confidence in the trajectory for the remainder of the year. With that said, over to you, Laurent, on Mail.
Thank you, Geoffrey. Let's now move to Mail performance on slide 11. After several quarters of stronger decline, market trends are improving, as you can see on the graph, and Quadient performance is converging towards market levels, halving the pace at which Mail was declining on average last year. Indeed, the market is now recovering following the post-decertification period in NOAM with an eased comparison basis and a resurgence of replacements and new logos opportunities seeking to upgrade or be equipped with our latest Quadient offering. In Europe, we've seen as well a strong order intake over EUR 2 million for highly differentiated folder inserter, the DS-700 , and we also launched the DS-67iQ, the next generation of mid-volume intelligent folder inserters, expected to support future upgrades in this market segment. Let's now move to the figures on page 12.
As you could see from a high-level standpoint on slide 11, Mail revenue decline narrowed to 5.2% after declining by around 10% year-over-year in 2025. The most important point is the significant improvement in the hardware trends, with a clear easing from -15.6% year-on-year in the last quarter to -3.6% in Q1 2026. That's 12 percentage point improvement led by North America and the U.K. This trend is expected to continue over 2026, while decline in subscription-related revenue is reflective of the evolution of the installed base and a consequence of last year's lower hardware placements. We also continue to deploy cross-sell strategies, particularly linking Mail customers to digital solutions, such as invoicing and accounts payable, where we've seen strong demand ahead of the invoicing mandate in France. Let's turn now to Lockers on page 13.
Our installed base reached approximately 28,200 Lockers at the end of Q1 2026, thanks to about 500 new Lockers deployed this quarter, fueled by U.K. and North America in particular. The adoption in the U.K. is extremely strong. Thanks to this, our open network in Europe has nearly doubled over the past 15 months, and the volume of parcels processed through it has been multiplied by an impressive 5 times over the same period, with another record in April 2026.
This strong momentum is a direct result of the strategic partnerships we established and the quality of the Lockers deployed in differentiated locations, which we'll continue to deploy also thanks to a major open network deal with Morrisons in the U.K. that will provide us 500 locations and around 11 million customers weekly. In North America, we further deployed our Parcel Pending by Quadient solution with the University of South Carolina.
We also continue to enjoy our number one position in the university market segment. Let's look now at slide 14, with the Locker revenue. The strong adoptions mentioned in the previous slide translates into an extremely strong development of the subscription-related revenue, which now represents 80% of Lockers' total revenue in Q1 2026. It is + 18% quarter-over-quarter, increasing again compared to the trend of Q4 2025, where we've seen 17.3%, which was already increased throughout 2025. This trend is reflecting volume usage and low level of churn across our base. In particular, it is a result of the expansion of our open network in the U.K., the usage initiatives we have in the U.S. to enhance monetization and turnover, and also the strong parcel momentum in Japan outperforming the market.
This was offset by a 44% decline on hardware, reflecting a softer performance in the U.S. multifamily, but for the biggest part, due to a large sale in international segment last year with Lockers delivered across 2025. This comparison basis on the hardware side is therefore likely to continue in the coming quarters. Revenue declined by 3.8%, organically, from EUR 27 million last year to EUR 24 million in Q1 this year. Moving now to slide 15. This slide summarizes our Q1 2026 performance across all solutions as described. Recovery is particularly strong in Mail compared to past quarters. The strong performance in Digital and Locker recurring revenues sets a solid foundation for the rest of the year. I suggest we now move to the outlook on page 17.
As we look ahead to the rest of 2026, the trends we are seeing in Q1 gives us confidence in our trajectory. The significant easing in the rate of decline in Mail. The continued solid growth in subscription-related revenue across our growth engines and the accelerations in the ARR to 16% provide a good visibility on our development for the coming quarters. At the same time, we've made a good start to the year on profitability and are tracking in line with our expectations. Taken together, these elements indicate that we are on track with the trajectory we set at the beginning of the year. On that basis, we confirm our full year 2026 outlook, with 2026 organic revenue change expected to range between -2% and +2%, and 2026 EBITDA margin targets confirmed across all solutions, digital above 20%, mail above 25%, and Lockers above 10%.
Thank you, Laurent. Thank you, Geoffrey. We're now ready to take any questions.
Thank you. This is the conference operator, who will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Ms. Paxton, there are no questions in the conference call right now.
Okay. Perhaps we can move on to written questions. First of all, should we expect a lag effect between the significant acceleration of digital ARR and its translation into organic sales growth?
Thank you, Laura. Technically, the ARR is representative of the coming 12 months, basically subscription and revenue. If you look at the ARR at the end of 2025, if we take the growth of the ARR in 2025 was about 10%, we can see Q1 this year is 10.8%. You have, as a forward-looking indicator, the materialization of this ARR is coming in the coming months and quarters that follows, basically, that additional bookings and trend. That being said, if you were to do Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 at that level of 16%+ growth, it would translate in the coming 12 months into 16% growth. These additional bookings that we capture in Q1, yes, we progressively translate throughout, obviously Q2, Q3, Q4.
When you look at Q2 compared to the Q2 the year before, obviously what counts is the overall development of the ARR over the 12 rolling months. The 16% will not translate immediately. It's going to be delayed and cover the coming 12 months.
Thank you, Laurent. We'll stay on the digital. On the ARR growth, what is the total percentage of new ARR driven by e-invoicing? Is the 16%-ish growth likely to be replicated in Q2?
Laurent, I'm going to give maybe a first part of the answer, and then you can complement as you see fit, because I just want to remind everybody of what is included in our bookings in ARR today and what is not, and how the invoicing will impact us moving forward. When we talk more broadly about the e-invoicing, there are different segments, right? There is the actual platform that is certified by the government that will be active and in production starting in September 2026. On that portion, the actual revenue will only start to materialize from now and from then, September 2026. With the mandate not being applicable to all type of customers starting September 2026, progressively, companies will move from large enterprise, mid segment and the low ones.
The mandate initiating the compliance for incoming invoice versus outgoing invoice, that will happen progressively over 18 months from September 2026. On the other hand, we have now embarked customer contracts, orders, to be able to anticipate that go live. Those value of contracts that we have ahead of time are not included in our ARR calculation yet. This is further acceleration that will come and be recognized both in our ARR as we can materialize the revenue in the next 12 months, which is not the case yet. We will start in September 2026. Two, we will start being able to also recognize booking along the way from that date on.
In terms of volume or scale, obviously, as more customers use it and more customers use it for more invoices, depending on the different type of flows of invoices, we will have an acceleration on the volume base and the subscription really related to this approved platform. What we have included and what we're referring to in the acceleration of the booking, including in Q1 for that annualized 16% of ARR, is because when we talk about e-invoicing, obviously customers don't look just at the approved compliance aspect of the invoicing, but on how to manage the incoming invoices, the accounts payable workflow or the accounts receivable workflow. On that, we have applications that we are installing for customers or plan to install. We have the orders and that's what is calculated in part of our booking and part of our obviously usage.
That has started to benefit our French revenue already to date in Q1, and it will continue even before September 2026. In addition, obviously, what has not taken to materialize in our recognized revenue is the backlog of orders. We have signed a lot of customers since September. It's been an acceleration month-on-month, and we keep accelerating the numbers of new customers we're signing up, and we're going to see that materialization of onboarded customers in the coming months up to September 2026 and after September, naturally. All that will translate into revenue along the way.
There's going to be a delay from when we have signed and not recognized yet in booking and ARR, it will come later, and we'll have a fast-track acceleration of recognized revenue starting from September 2026, and probably with a full-blown, full speed of the benefit of that invoicing volume probably in the year 2027 or probably even 2028. Laurent, feel free to add and complement.
Yeah
as you see fit.
I would comment one thing, Geoffrey. As you rightfully mentioned, from September in 2026 in France, those volumes that are signed today will materialize and are not factored in today. Basically, this increase in 6% of the ARR for me is a very positive news because it's in addition of what we expect to come in by the end of the year. It's good bookings, obviously, but it's also a very nice retention. I think it's important to see and to acknowledge that our solutions are very sticky, and that we've seen in Q1 is that the stickiness seems to be again improving, which I think is giving us also a confidence of the quality of the service and solution that we provide.
All right. Thanks, Laurent. Thanks, Geoffrey. Could you tell us a bit more about the higher externalization of services in the digital segment?
Yep. Absolutely. As you know, professional services is mostly the implementation of the software. It's particularly coming from the enterprise segments, meaning where we have a larger scope of integration within backend systems. Could be Guidewire, could be also other backend systems. I think it is not necessarily where we see the most strategic part of the revenue, nor the most profitable part. Obviously, part of our strategy has to be to focus on where we had the most added value, and we had the trend in the past of a declining professional services level. We still are expecting in the coming quarters to see that level of professional services going down, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's also to refocus on the most strategic part of our business, and it's also tied to the overall mix. The mid-market part is growing faster.
It's consuming very little professional services, so as a mix effect, you also have a relative decline of professional services.
Okay. Thank you, Laurent. Another question on digital. How do you see the upcoming invoicing mandate in France? Are you expecting an acceleration of bookings, or are we already in the peak phase of market adoption? I think we've already covered most of this, perhaps something you'd like to add?
Sure. I think it's a good point. I think we expect some continued acceleration until that September deadline, but also after the mandate and probably to continue another six months, another year. I think there will be distributed, there will likely be also some shuffling from a post-mandate perspective because we've seen other vendors, as you know, there's roughly hundreds of vendors that are applying for this certification, and some of them are struggling to be able to have the platform ready and successful, and some of them are dropping out. I think that it will continue to be a strong active market, at least six months after the mandate, getting into Q1 2027. That's really how we see it today.
We're getting ourselves ready to be able to onboard further customers as we move forward, and also to help vendors that will require the platforms to either white labeling, which we have also done in the recent past, so to be able to enlarge the scope of services and the scale of the market we can support in France.
Thanks.
Personally, I see many colleagues, many CFOs, obviously, going to the race of being compliant by September 1st. We know that, as mentioned by Geoffrey, there's going to be some lag. We know also that sometimes we select vendors that are not providing fully satisfactory levels when it comes to volumes, when it comes to the quality of the integration. We expect that we have, obviously, a lot of demand coming up, and some would be also second-level demands of people that have been successful with the first vendor. We expect the period to be extremely busy between now and September, and even after.
Thank you, Laurent. Regarding the bookings for e-invoicing in France, the overall software revenue, does it include implementation services?
No. When we talk bookings and we talk about only SaaS, when the bookings that comes into the ARR is basically SaaS level, so an equivalent of annual recurring revenue compared to the annual recurring revenue booked at the same date last year. We don't include professional services.
On the other hand, from a recognized revenue, we have some services that are included to set up the platform, and those services, as they get delivered, will be recognized from a revenue standpoint.
Absolutely.
Have you observed the emergence of new players and material progress from competitors? Do you think that they are leading the race?
It hasn't materially changed. I think recently what we're seeing is obviously different type of players. There's the one like us that really have an ambition beyond France and to other countries, and are also helping customers in Belgium who are getting ready for the mandate. You would have the quarterbacks or the major player that are getting ready. The one also that have already embarked on some larger contracts, a large volume, that will likely be able to support those French customers moving forward. As we could see with the Grand Pilote, we haven't seen the hundreds of players yet getting to that stage, and they may come to that point later.
Our assumptions or current belief today is that as we get to the more tricky parts of the validation on the performance, the scaling, the testing, we're more likely to see a few more vendors dropping out. We see also already getting calls for some customers or some organization that haven't been able to move forward with their current choice that they had made before. We see deals that are coming back to us naturally, and being able to help them. There's less likely to be some attrition. It's difficult to predict at what level. I think what we're doing is focusing on our capability operationally, to scale those customers, onboard those customers properly one by one, because we have obviously a large amount of backlog as well of orders that we're going to need to fulfill from now and then.
Geoffrey, I think one point as well is that we are delivering through our platform the invoicing capability, but obviously what's key and rejoicing for the mid to enterprise side is really having the ability to do both AR and AP and integrate the full process around the invoice, which is not necessarily what other players would focus on, that's clearly a one-stop shop. I've seen with my team being able just to retrieve the invoice, but also process it and match it to a PO or the other side, being able to do the dunning for an unpaid invoice is critical for the larger organizations.
Thanks, both. Perhaps we'll move on to mail now. What is the trend for mail hardware in Q2? Is it likely to be positive?
I think on mail side, we had a huge step up already in Q1 compared to the trend we had all along 2025. We've seen Q2 with the good fundamentals we see in Q1 being reflected already as for Q2. I think that the trend we're on is one that clearly is to continue ease compared to where it was. The step-up we had compared to last year is large, and I don't foresee any reason why it would not be at least at the same level. The question mark is how much more we could do, possibly on the hardware part. That seems to be more dynamic again, with again that lag between the decertification we had back in 2024, 2025, where the market was quite dry and 2026 now people are coming back and there are new opportunities of replacement and upgrades.
I think that's where we are. When we said overall, we mentioned the full year that we would be at around EUR 500 million by 2030. The implicit CAGR was about -5%. We're already at -5.2%. Can we do better? That's what we'll see in the coming quarters, but we are pretty confident.
Thank you, Laurent. Moving on to lockers now. You installed around 500 new lockers per quarter on average. Is there a risk of a slowdown in locker sales in the midterm if you maintain this pace?
No, I think one comment is we don't build by locker necessarily, and all the open network is obviously the main driver is the usage, which we could see on the slide I did present, where we were seeing the overall volume throughout Europe. A locker that you deploy on an open network, if the level of volume and traffic is low, is not going to produce a lot of revenue. The key lever when it comes to revenue and profitability is really that usage rate. It's a usage rate that we see today particularly dynamic, not only in Europe, but also it's in Japan. In Japan, we know the market is slightly more mature than what it is in Europe, and also installed base is more mature. Yes, we see volumes going up, so it's not necessarily linked.
I think the volume on the open networks and when it goes to multifamily, the amount of monetization we do on the base is also a big driver for revenue. I don't expect that being a problem going forward.
Thank you. In your Q1 2025 results, you mentioned a large hardware deal in Lockers in H2. Should we expect another high comparison basis then? Should we expect a low level of growth in Lockers this year?
I mentioned that when I was commenting the slide on Lockers. Yes, we had a large deal in 2025 in international geography regarding Lockers. It's been spread across the year, mostly Q1, Q2, Q3. We're talking about EUR 7 million for the year, EUR 7.5 million, if I remember well. That's going to set a higher comparison base. That being said, we expect good bookings and good revenue coming from the multifamily side moving along in 2026. Obviously, the volumes I described will be a big push towards a revenue that would more than compensate what we've seen in Q1. In other words, Q1 has been negative, but we don't expect that to happen in the future with Q2, as we expect more dynamic from a multifamily and from a volume standpoint that will offset that comparison base.
Last but not least, I think it's important to mention that this large deal was also from a margin standpoint, relatively dilutive, and I think it also has a very limited impact when it comes to the overall margin of Lockers.
Thanks, Laurent. On the profitability side of things, do you think that a bit the target for Lockers is challenging given the start of the year?
Yeah, it's a great follow-up question compared to the one I just answered. As you know, the recurring piece is much more contributive than the hardware piece. It's not because the hardware is declining by 44% in Q1 that will prevent us from any improvements. We did large improvements last year in 2025. We'll continue to do improvements in 2026 that will be driven by the mix, by the amount of usage we have on the open network and the contribution of this. Obviously, what I just mentioned as well is the monetization of the base in the U.S. that has been quite successful last year and will continue to be successful this year.
Thank you, Laurent. Last question on Lockers. Is the slowdown in residential revenue the one-off in Q1, or do you see this trend lasting through the year?
I think we definitely see good opportunities for the rest of the year on multifamily. I don't foresee that trend would necessarily be repeating in the coming quarters. We have quite dynamic level of booking today in the market.
Just, Laurent, maybe you already said it, as a matter of context to double down on what you said on the usage and the contribution to profitability, just I think if we look at the U.K., April was probably the highest month in terms of volume we ever had. Why does that matter is because obviously, traditionally, the peak season for us is more about November, December or January. Being in the month of April to be able to continue to increase the volume significantly and have April being the highest month ever is obviously a very good sign of the continued increase and current increase of usage of the Locker base in the U.K. It's also a very good sign for what's coming up, most likely. Obviously, we need to get there by the end of the year.
It means that we're starting the year from a really high utilization and high volume, and that should set us from higher contribution as well coming from the U.K. as part of what Laurent described, the U.K. being part of it.
Okay. Thank you, Geoffrey. One final question. Zooming out, where are you at in terms of the alignment of the businesses by legal entity? Is the reorganization announced earlier this year a signal that it is now completed? What implication, if any, does this have on your strategy?
This is an important topic as well. Definitely less business-oriented and more strategic. If we think about the profound change we're making, the alignment organization is both a legal alignment, a financial alignment, a system alignment, people alignment, business alignment, right? We could really operate three independent businesses to some extent, even though we're having synergies as part of a group. That's what has been going on. What we said is from a legal perspective, we're roughly in the end phase and all the final touches. What we have announced in March and what I've shared with you from a functional perspective and a leadership perspective, was really to adapt our European organization that was fully integrated versus the U.S.
U.S. was already aligned by solution. What we really did, updating obviously the ExCom structure, is pivoting in Europe from an integrated Quadient to in Europe having an organization by solution. That's in the progress. Obviously, we still have some work to do on that front because as you can imagine, it doesn't happen just because you change your leadership people. We have fastly executed in Q1 and even in current beginning of May. We're obviously moving at a fast pace on that front. We expect that to continue obviously in the coming months.
From a pure shareholding or strategic perspective, what we have operated now means that we have those three independent businesses and that we can now benefit from the fact that we could leverage those businesses independently or differently, or we could bring investors at each of those business level, and we could start considering any strategic acceleration, which is really a means to an end because we were not in a position to enable those strategic option before. This is obviously something that we can consider. We're quite happy with the progress made and obviously the new opportunity that we have ahead of us.
Right. Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you, Laurent. That's all for the written questions. I'll hand back to the Operator now.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Ms. Paxton, there are no more questions registered at this time. I turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you everyone very much for joining and for submitting all of your questions. Our next events are our AGM on the 18th of June and our first half 2026 results on the 23rd of September. In the meantime, we look forward to meeting some of you in the coming days during our roadshows. Thanks again and have a great evening.
Thank you.
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