Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Worldline Q3 2023 Revenue Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gilles Grapinet, Worldline Group CEO. Please go ahead.
Many thanks, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is Gilles Grapinet speaking, and thank you for attending today's Worldline conference call on our Q3 2023 revenue. As usual, I am with Marc-Henri Desportes, our Group Deputy CEO, and with Grégory Lambertie, our Group CFO. As we release this Q3, we'll share with you today some important new messages and information regarding our revised assessment of the market environment and conditions in which we've been executing our budget and corresponding financial trajectory. We also announced today some very important business and operational decisions to reinforce the medium-term growth and profitability profile of our group. I'll come back immediately on these elements. Our assessment of the H2 of 2023 is that both in Q3 and looking forward to Q4, we face now more challenges than we anticipated, even until very recently.
The first one is obviously the economic slowdown in Europe, which impacts our MS activities, most particularly in Germany. This current macroeconomic situation has been clearly generating an accelerated shift in consumer behaviors. In particular, accelerating their moves from discretionary to non-discretionary spends, which is, in our business, penalizing both growth and profitability that we now need to take into account looking forward. The second ones are also temporary challenges, but more specific to our industry and to Worldline. Regarding the payment sector, we decided to start to implement reinforced regulatory rules and new market guidelines into our merchant risk policies. Consequently, we have taken the decision to terminate certain merchant services activities as soon as this quarter for some, but that will also impact primarily the next period.
More specific to Worldline, but also probably partially connected to the macro environment, which is slowing, obviously, decision-making for new outsourcing projects in many banks. We also face, during this H2, a low conversion of our FS pipeline. Number two message is that we announced today an important decision, an acceleration of our transformation ambition, Power 24. As we were already preparing the next phase of the Worldline strategic journey, we identified that after 10 years of fast buildup, our company could strongly benefit to redefine holistically some aspects of its operating model, making it simpler, more agile, simplifying processes and internal functioning with the clear goal to make Worldline more competitive and ultimately more profitable. We initiate, consequently, our Power24 ambition, with the target to deliver circa EUR 200 million run rate expected cash cost savings by early 2025, with a fast ramp-up in 2024.
Due to our revised view on the market condition, we update our guidance for 2023 as follows: Revenue organic growth will stand now between +6%-+7%. We anticipate to deliver a stable OMDA euros versus 2022, i.e., circa EUR 1.1 billion, and free cash flow conversion rate from OMDA is expected to stand between +30%-+35%. Regarding 2024, thanks to the fast implementation of Power24 next year, we anticipate our OMDA 2024 to increase versus 2023 by circa EUR 100 million, with an overall top-line momentum that will re-accelerate as from H2 next year. I give now the floor to Greg to guide you more precisely into the numbers.
Thank you, Gilles, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by giving you some color on business developments during Q3 2023. As you remember, we enjoyed good growth over H1, with 9.4% at group level and around 13% for MS. In Q2, volume dynamics started to normalize, as mentioned during our July call. Now, as we enter into H2, we see a deterioration on the macro front, mostly in Germany. This translates in a softer quarter in MS, despite satisfactory commercial developments. During the Q3 of 2023, Worldline's revenue reached close to EUR 1.2 billion, equivalent to 4.8% organic growth, with our MS activities of 7.6%, while FS and MTS remained soft.
Year to date, we're posting EUR 3.4 billion in revenues, or 7.7% organic growth. Let me now detail these numbers by business line. On the following slide, you can see the highlights by business line, as well as the elements driving the slowdown. Starting with MS, organic growth has been driven by an overall good performance on the mass market across most geographies. Commercial performance was also good, with several merchant wins and upsells on large enterprise, both in store and online, which Marco will detail later. And finally, our digital commerce activities continued to post double-digit growth, with progressive ramp-up of contracts signed in the previous quarters, combined with an increase in share of wallet with existing merchants. However, this overall encouraging dynamic has been impacted by two main factors, in particular in Germany.
First, we've seen some macro softness driving a shift in consumer behavior with more focus on non-discretionary spend. And second, we started to terminate merchants in our German online portfolio, which had a EUR 10 million impact in Q3, and we'll have another EUR 20 million in Q4, primarily in Germany. It is important to make, to mention that excluding Germany, MS organic growth stands at 10%. Moving to FS. Despite a good performance in digital banking and account payment at low to mid-single digit, the overall division posted a 2.9% organic decline. This is mainly due to card-based payment processing, where pipeline conversion and repricing are slower to materialize. We have addressed this point through change in commercial leadership, as well as the revamping of our sales organization, so as to reposition FS on a better trajectory in the coming quarters.
Last, regarding MeTS, Q3 was broadly stable, with very good growth in transport and mobility, which was offset by a slow ramp-up of recently signed contracts and weaker fertilization on existing contracts. Now moving to our full year 2023 guidance. As mentioned by Gilles, acknowledging new market conditions, our revised guidance is as follows for 2023: revenue organic growth between 6%-7%, stable OMDA in absolute value versus 2022, i.e., circa EUR 1.1 billion, and free cash flow conversion from 30%-35%. In the following slide, I'll go in more detail over the building blocks of our revised guidance. Looking at revenues for the end of H2, here are the key revenue building blocks from former guidance to the new—to the revised guidance.
Headwinds versus the center of the guidance should reach approximately EUR 105 million in H2 2023, broken down as follows: EUR 40 million linked the macro effect on transaction volumes as well as a bit of repricing delays, split EUR 30 million from a mostly German macro to circa EUR 10 million due to slower repricing actions. EUR 30 million is linked to the termination of some existing merchant relationships related to the implementation of our revised risk policy. EUR 25 million is related to the slower conversion of pipeline at NFS, and EUR 10 million to METS. Overall, these impacts mean a revised 6%-7% new guidance, implying H2 growth of 6%-7% for MS, -3% to -4% for FS, and flat to -1% for METS.
Moving on to the next page on OMDA. Regarding OMDA, we intend to be stable versus last year in absolute value at circa EUR 1.1 billion, or around about EUR 145 million less, versus where we expected to be with our former guidance. This gap is broken down as follows: first, the macro effect on transaction volumes and repricing delays account for EUR 30 million, mainly due to Germany, as mentioned in the previous slide. EUR 50 million correspond to the margin mix effects relating to the shift to more non-discretionary consumer behavior, as well as the evolution in the card, as well as the scheme mix that we're observing in the semester. EUR 20 million is related to the termination of certain online merchants in our portfolio.
EUR 20 million impact reflects both a slower adaptation of our cost base versus inflation level, and also the implementation of new operating costs to adapt to the risk environment. Missing FS commercial momentum would cost EUR 20 million, with MeTS costing EUR 5 million. As said, our OMDA should therefore remain stable in absolute terms versus 2022, at EUR 1.1 billion. On the next slide, finally, on free cash flow, our revised guidance is mainly impacted by the EUR 145 million OMDA H2 2023 headwinds, and the conversion rate after OMDA impact stands at 60, circa 40% versus 46%-48% previously.
And finally, EUR 50 million-EUR 90 million additional impacts correspond to the acceleration of strategic initiatives, including, in particular, the Crédit Agricole JV, the move to cloud acceleration, and lower working capital contribution, which brings our revised guidance to 30%-35% OMDA conversion. Now let me give the floor to Marc-Henri to give you more color.
Thank you, Grégory, and good morning to all. As mentioned in today's introduction, the payment industry is facing a constant reinforcement of the regulatory frameworks and guidelines in a broader context of a rise of cyber crimes and emergence of always more sophisticated fraudulent patterns. Detecting these patterns is getting more and more difficult and costly, and we are constantly investing and adapting the corresponding teams and systems, leading to regular merchant terminations. It is on the basis of this particular context that we decided to tighten our risk appetite policy and to perform a group-wide portfolio review in our online business. We will proactively terminate all merchants that will not meet our reinforced risk criteria. This was started during this semester and will continue during the next one.
Our first high-level estimate of the business at stake is in the range of circa 2%-3% of Worldline revenue, with a maximum impact of yearly EUR 130 million of revenues. The Worldline remains a strong growth engine, and we need to regularly reinvent ourselves after all the important mergers we went through, with corresponding peaks of investment in adapting systems and teams. Having in mind the next steps of our trajectory, we already prepared ourselves to be able to launch more transformation with, for example, the reinforcement of our Indian development factory or the move to cloud investment. With the new market conditions, we are convinced it is now needed to accelerate this transformation and execute significant cost reduction to reboost our competitiveness while preserving our ability to accelerate growth.
This is why we want to launch with this Power24 plan, regrouping all our major transformation streams with a clear target to reach EUR 200 million run rate cash cost savings, ramping up throughout 2024 and fully delivered early in 2025. Many levels will be triggered around four domains. For product transformation, we will benefit from the effort done to streamline our platform, push it further, and accelerate DevOps adoption. In the technology domain, we will push further the automation of our transactional activity, accelerate the move to cloud, and increase our development productivity. We'll adapt our organization for further end-to-end accountability and overhead optimization with a clear intention to be simpler, leaner, and more agile. Finally, we will evolve our sourcing mix to leverage further our offshore and nearshore enhanced capabilities.
The cost of this plan should be similar to our previous integration synergy plans, slightly above the run rate savings and close to EUR 250 million, mainly in 2024. Now, coming to our usual merchant services commercial activity, we had a very dynamic quarter, which is, for us, a very reassuring factor about our underlying business momentum, despite the temporary slowdown of revenues and the temporary effect of handling our risk policy. I will start with the install and omni-channel new wins. You know that we believe in the unattended sector, and we are active in signing as many partners as possible in this domain. As we progress constantly in this field, I can mention two examples this quarter.
S&M, a German pioneer in the vending machine telemetry, for which we are integrating their connected vending system with the Worldline acquiring solution, and the Norwegian OPay, a payment provider specializing in the unattended sector. On the upsell side, we did expand our agreements with several prominent brands. Alsa, Spain's leading road passenger transport operator, for whom we will expand its online payment services, starting with the Spanish market. MGS, an Italian, company founded in 1984, specializing in the distribution of cash and cashless payment solution, who selected our acquiring services and our Worldline Tap on Mobile, another confirmation of the success of this important new product. And finally, the French Railways, with SNCF Voyageurs, who decided to use the Worldline tokenization services to deploy several customer experience, like the one-click payment or the buy now pay later.
We also had important wins for online payment services, and I want to mention here a few examples. The Goethe-Institut is the world's largest provider of German language courses, for which our online multicurrency platform solution will be used for our workshop. Costway, a worldwide furniture provider, in particular in the U.S. and in Europe, for which Worldline's smart routing solution will be used, for card processing in Europe, before potential extension in Australia and in the U.K. And finally, Gamers Outlet, which is a platform that offers digital codes for game at best prices and joined the Worldline global orchestration payment platform, which remains remarkably successful in the gaming world.
Besides, we continue to expand our solutions and offering, and we are glad to mention this time Worldline Consulting Services, which we have tested and grown successfully over a year, and which is proving a fantastic tool to boost client conversion rates, leveraging our end-to-end knowledge of the payment industry. Coming back now to the MSV indicator we regularly share with you, we observed that it was up circa 7% in the Q3, so the trend is globally similar to Q2. The trends are consistent in in-store and online volumes, with respectively +6% and +15%. This being said, this indicator does not reflect per se the macro slowdown that we experienced in the Q3 revenue.
What is impacting us is rather the shift, like Grégory mentioned, inside the total MSV between discretionary and non-discretionary consumption, between big retail and small retail. We do not earn the same when consumers go to the hard discount instead of going to the restaurant. I will now give the floor back to Gilles for the conclusion.
Many thanks, Marc-Henri. I would like now to move to two key takeaways. Number one takeaway, today's announcements are clearly a double acknowledgment. First, an acknowledgment of the sudden changes of the market condition in which we have to operate now, in particular, due to the German slowdown, and also an acknowledgment that we, as a management team, don't want to bet that it will improve meaningfully and quickly in the near future. Number two key takeaway is that correspondingly to this assessment, we act, and we'll act quickly and firmly to give to our company with Power24, new, powerful structural costs and efficiency levers to be best positioned, both from a competitive standpoint for the medium term, but also to contribute quickly to overcome the current temporary challenges with a strong and fast managerial priority on our cost base optimization during 2024.
This said, I don't want to miss this opportunity to remind a few key facts about our payment sector and about Worldline. If we revise our trajectory today for 2023, and if we launch Power24, it is in order to overcome a combination of temporary headwinds and to make our company even more competitive tomorrow. Because I invite you not to forget the big picture and the fundamental qualities of our sector, our European position, and of Worldline as a company. Because at a point in time, we all know that macro will also get better. Worldline operates in one of the most favorable payment market in the world, with still a very meaningful amount of cash to be displaced in the coming decade, and with many local complexities and entry barriers that only an EU-born payment player can fully operate at scale and take advantage of.
We have crafted Worldline Merchant Services to have precisely a very well-diversified footprint, a solid business mix, and more importantly, quite a uniquely diversified value proposition and distribution network, which give us one of the largest portfolio of both mass market and enterprise-grade merchants, that we will further leverage moving forward to cross-sell and upsell many added value services. And last, as you know, we constantly progress on our integration roadmaps and improve, consequently, our Worldline technology stack and product value proposition. And we have also ahead of us many new strategic growth priority projects, like for example, our future JV with Crédit Agricole to open the French acquiring market for us.
With these fundamental assets, I want to reiterate our commitment and conviction that Worldline will be very quickly back on its long-term growth and profitability improvement journey, even more so as we benefit from our new strategic initiative, Power24. Thank you very much for your attention. Of course, I am now ready with Marc-Henri and Grégory to take your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now take the first question. One moment, please. From the line of James Goodman from Barclays, please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Thank you. My first question, and where I'm really struggling is the profitability impact in the guidance versus the revenue impact. And I can see these effects that you've spoken to on slide 11, for example, including EUR 50 million impact from mix effect on consumers and schemes shift. I wondered if you could talk through that again in a little bit more detail. I mean, is that, are you effectively saying there that scheme fees were a bigger proportion of pass-through costs than expected? I'm just struggling with, you know, 1.5% down on revenue, but, you know, an absolute greater reduction in profit than in revenue for the year.
As I look out as well on OMDA, it looks to be that the restructuring is now really the only source of OMDA growth, as opposed to any underlying OMDA margin improvement in the business. Is that correct, and why? The second question that I have is around the merchant de-risking, if you could go into some more detail there. I mean, I'm surprised to see you suddenly need to reassess your book. What exactly is it that's changed? What verticals is this, geographies? If anything, you know, with some of the airline customers that we've been signing recently, I'd actually perceived you to have been able to manage a slightly higher risk tolerance. So some more detail around the merchant de-risking would be helpful. Thank you.
... Hello, James. Good morning, and thank you for your questions, which, of course, we're gonna take one by one. But let me just maybe before I give the floor to the team here, frame the high level answer. As you all know, the payment business is largely a fixed cost business with operating leverage. So consequently, when you face evolution of your top line, on the very short term, it has a significant impact on profitability at all, because the speed at which you can adapt the fixed cost level is, of course, not immediate. The main message regarding your second question, which is Power24. Power24 goes much more than only addressing short-term challenges. Power24 will exactly tackle the point of the fixed cost base level of Worldline to structurally improve our operating leverage moving forward.
That is the big picture I want you absolutely to keep in mind. It is a program to improve structurally and decrease the fixed cost of the Worldline cost base to precisely take advantage tomorrow of both top line momentum that will come back, and we work on that, of course. And then, in parallel, to help accelerate and make the company even better suited to take advantage of growth trends. This said, I will give the floor maybe to Greg, to drive you again on the OMDA profitability bridge, and then, of course, we will take the other questions that you have raised. Greg?
Yes, hi, James. So in terms of the margin pressure that we're observing in H2, what we mentioned the two main impacts we have relating to revenue slowdown that Gilles just alluded to, and the shift in consumer pattern as well. Clearly, we are making less money and less margins when consumers shift from discretionary spending, a HoReCa transaction, a travel transaction, or a specialty retail transaction towards non-discretionary spend in grocery retail. So that's one of the most important impacts that we need to absorb in H2, which is a shift in consumer contribution margin. We also absorb the temporary pressure, margin pressure from the termination of our HBR portfolio, which Marc-Henri will spend some more time on in a second.
Regarding FS, we had to absorb a tougher comp in 2022, where we had good signings, the largest of which was ING at the end of December. As we've mentioned previously, sales cycle tends to lengthen, and when we sign a new contract, we book revenue and margin, which we don't see towards the end of H2. What we believe is that at this stage, once we have absorbed this temporary impact, there is still some good operating leverage in the company. When we strip out those impacts, we are still around the 35% operating leverage that we have mentioned previously, and closer to 40% in MS.
Clearly, work is needed to get back to those levels in a standalone manner. We think it's gonna be better going forward because of the work on Power24, because we think we have absorbed the bulk of the shift in behavior in this semester, and because we should be back to growth on FS and METS as new contracts ramp up next year.
Marc-Henri, on the merchant risk policies?
Yeah. On the merchant risk policies, no, it's not, it's not related to a line or to a vertical sector in particular. Our ability to handle the financial risk associated to the merchant service activity remains excellent, and we have everything in place to manage it. Here, the concern is more about, as I said, fraudulent patterns, cybercrime behavior of some merchants. And so, detecting the merchants that are not transacting as they should on the business they should, and in this case, we need to take a very cautious stance. So, hence, a high level assessment at this stage, because it's not something on which you can have a very, very detailed and precise, you know, identification.
In some cases, you end up finding a merchant in a cluster, and you need to terminate the full cluster to simplify the analysis and not take the risk of having a situation where it's not fully correct. So not a matter of sector. In terms of geography, obviously, we started with the online business in Germany, to be very clear, and we are now continuing it for the full Worldline portfolio.
In terms of level of magnitude, what we are talking about is what we put in the press release, which is run rate revenues of a maximum of EUR 130 million for 2023 comparable. There's already EUR 30 million that will come out in H2 2023, and the remainder, EUR 100 million comparison effect, will be mostly impacted in H1 2024.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you... We will now take the next question. One moment, please. The next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. If I can come back on some of the headwinds you identified in Germany, can you maybe share with us the level of growth you've seen in the German business in H1, Q3, and MSV developments? And then if you can discuss the underlying assumptions you've taken in your kind of minimum EBITDA growth for 2024, around, you know, revenues at large. And I don't know if you can go into a bit more detail around the three segments. And maybe last question around competition.
Anything you've seen, in terms of shifting competitive dynamics, whether in-store or online, from a pricing standpoint, or you put it all down to, to just, you know, slowdown in macro in Germany? Thank you.
So I'll take the first one in Germany. What we've seen in H1 is a fairly healthy dynamic in Germany, with high teens dynamics slowing down to very low single and one month in negative territory. Clearly also impacted by the termination of some merchants that Marc just alluded to. So as I mentioned earlier, this is a heavy impact on the overall MS activity, since when we are excluding it over Q3, we are in double-digit at 10%, meaning a slowdown compared to Q2, but very concentrated.
No, no, no topic of competition or market share move, and we are still moving very well in terms of overall evolution, number of merchants. No change in pricing dynamic, as we have observed on the market. And I'm coming back on the, on the question of the evolution of the mix. You should have in mind that if someone goes to a restaurant, the level of take rate that we have on a transaction would be circa five times the one we will have if he's spending the same amount of money in our discounter.
Given our market share, you see the MSV remains in growth because we cover all sectors, so we have the transaction from the hard discounter as much as the transaction for the restaurants. But it has an impact. It has an impact in the overall revenue mix, in the overall than corresponding profitability that we derive for the same volume of activity.
Just to comment here, and Fred, I think we did not fully capture. I think you had a second question, if you could be kind enough just to repeat it. But just as a general comment here, what is very unusual, what we could observe, probably after two years of hyperinflation, and particularly in the country, in Germany, that is largely also exposed of other factors like energy prices, that has been extremely high due to the dependency, as we know about the war in Ukraine and Russian gas and so on. I believe it's the magnitude of the shift in these consumption patterns that we never saw before, and the way people have been adapting their consumption patterns to probably cope with their purchasing power situation.
Of course, on a big country, you have people that are going through without too many troubles, but you have also tens of millions, probably, that had to adjust the standards of living, at least the way they, they spend. I think that is what is standing currently behind the shift that we have been only measuring at the end of Q3, and that we want to consider for the timing, as long as the macro does not get better, being probably the new normal we need to adapt to. Then, if you would be kind enough just to reiterate-
Yeah, I think so. Yes, so my—so I think the commentary was around that point. I mean, you mentioned on the call, you're saying it's a temporary headwind, but now you're saying this is a kind of a new normal for now. So what are the underlying assumptions you have expected for MS growth? So you give us a 24 EBITDA kind of commitment, but what's the underlying revenue MSV assumptions you've taken for the group as a whole, and maybe Germany in particular, for next year?
So as a whole, we have taken as an assumption that the dynamics we are facing in H2 are somehow continuing in H1, and then we are back on acceleration, having passed the period where we under the risk portfolio exit. It's not a significant. There is no improvement of macro factors in our forecast. We are seeing the current market condition continuing into the future.
Fundamentally, I mean, just as Greg said, if we strip out Germany once, I mean, still despite these relatively unfavorable market conditions, I mean, the MS business is still growing at 10%+. And so fundamentally, we see that once we will have dealt with this probably relatively exceptional period of macro impact, and of course, we have no crystal ball to say how long should it last, so we take a cautious stance on fundamentally the message of this publication. We do want to de-risk our future trajectory. We are confident, of course, that once all that is behind us, after H1 2024, and hopefully, of course, with no further deterioration of the macro environment, then we should probably get back to re-acceleration of growth at group level, but of course, primarily driven by the MS business.
... Okay, many thanks.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for letting me on. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the medium-term growth expectation. I mean, you touched a little bit about it in breaking it down by divisions, in particular, financial services and MTS has seen quite substantial headwinds, even though there were some merchant or some new contract wins called out. And then maybe in terms of the margin progression going forward, so what do you think you can really deliver sustainable over the years? And in particular, when you think now, post-2024, which seems to be a transition year, where can you end up in underlying margin growth?
Yeah. Thank you, Hans. Of course, as you can guess, as we navigate into relatively difficult to predict environment, and I must say that, of course, we may have, of course, short-term unexpected events. I mean, I don't want to here refer too much to what has been this drama that has been happening in the Middle East couple of weeks back. But of course, we need to be cognizant, of course, that we operate in an environment where geopolitics has been playing quite a severe negative role. But let's look again at what is fundamental. We are only managing temporary headwinds here. We are not yet in a situation to give you, of course, a fully revised three-year ambition, because we need fully to assess the macro. What we share with you today is very clear.
We don't see fundamentally anything changed in the long-term confidence we have for growth and OMDA acceleration, thanks to the fact that at a point in time, all the headwinds will be behind us, and we see no structural changes in our core markets, particularly in Europe. And number two, we give ourself, with Power24, a very powerful new set of levers to both improve the operating leverage of the company by working on our fixed cost base, but also making the company more agile, having more deployed all its technology stack at scale, will give us also many competitive advantage. That is really the way I think we will further engage with you.
And as soon as it will be feasible, in particular, looking at the macro trend, we will be of course, coming back with a more elaborated view of both our 2024 ambition at the full year, and hopefully also starting to give you more colors of what will come next. But you can be sure that today, for this management team, it is clear that from 2025, 2026, and onward, we will pursue accelerating both growth and profitability. Yeah, do you want maybe to give a couple of additional elements?
Yeah, indeed, Gilles, I think if we take the three business lines one by one, what we expect for MS, sorry, is that over H1, we will have dealt with the bulk of the termination of that online portfolio, where we are revising our risk appetite. So we would be expecting better dynamics following that. In terms of MTS, we are seeing the contract ramp up of all the good signings we've had this year. We've mentioned a very good hit rate. We're working on better farming, and here we expect to be back to growth in 2024. But we'll be more precise, obviously, during the full year.
And regarding FS, with an easier comp and a better sales organization set up for 2024, we also expect improvement here. And again, we'll be more specific during our full year guidance call in February 2024.
Okay, thank you. Just a follow-up on this. So this EUR 130 million you called out is a group of merchants, I assume, given you usually have quite a more diversified portfolio. Your MSV growth seems to be fairly resilient, and also looking at chart 17 of your slide deck, seems also to have started well. So that group is just like in the card acceptance, so in your gateway business?
No, it impacts also with the acquiring, but it's not, it's not, huge in terms of volumes and overall, the underlying business is, remains solid, in terms of overall MSV, in, in other sectors, which we have shifts. And as I explained, when it shifts to, to big retail, it's not that favorable for our revenues. But in overall MSV momentum, we believe that this, exit of online merchants will not be something significantly impacting the MSV, trend.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Alastair Nolan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Just a quick one, firstly, on the H1 2024 growth. Is the right way to think about it, that we should have at least a six-point headwind in merchant services, given the hundred million run rate that you're talking about, kind of coming mainly in the H1? And I guess kind of to add to that, it sounds as though you have assumed no further deterioration in the macro.
I mean, is that a fair assumption, or clearly there appears to be some risk here that things could spread and get worse, and this may not be isolated to Germany. So just trying to kind of feel, get a better feel for what you are baking in there. And then secondly, just can you update us on what, Gregory, maybe what non-recurring charges are expected to be for next year? Thank you.
Hi, Alastair. Thanks, yeah. Okay, so on the MS growth headwinds, indeed, there is impact in H1 next year, but it's closer, probably between 3%-4% in H1. That's the first part of your question. We don't anticipate further deterioration in the macro context. So we are at this stage, even though we're not yet putting any particular specific guidance on our business lines for 2024, the scenario is one where the H2 environment continues. And I didn't catch your third question, Lisa, please, in terms of what else you asked?
Yeah, just to get a better feel for how that looks, you know, in the H2 and into 2024, just so we can kind of make sure we're updating models correctly and getting the right trajectory for non-recurring charges.
Yeah, I don't think there is any major non-recurring charges that would impact next year. If there is a effect from H2 that impact next year, we'll deal with that during the guidance. I think the shift in consumer that we've described has happened behind us, and that constant conditions, we don't expect any further shift. But for the moment, we're focusing on—I mean, launching our Power24 ambition, and ensuring that will deliver margin improvement.
There's no big shift related to Power24, to the Power24 core savings program in terms of the kind of charges associated with implementing that?
Well, the large share of Power24 will be expected to be in 2024. But as I mentioned in the free cash flow, in the free cash flow bridge, what we will have in 2023 is the beginning of the design, the preparation costs, that will impact free cash flow conversion. So a small part in 2023, the vast majority in 2024. Yeah, that's the point. And still very clearly, as explained in the presentation, you have implementation costs concentrated for Power24, that will be in 2024, and the bulk of the EUR 250 million we mentioned. That's a fact.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Josh Levine from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I want to go back to the merchants which you terminated. How many merchants did you terminate? When did you know this was going to happen? And did a regulator tell you to do this, or were you reacting to regulatory guidelines? And if so, which guidelines or regulations were you addressing?
Okay, so, in terms of number of merchants, we are talking about a few thousands. We believe so. Again, it's a high level estimate, but already done. We started the terminating business in the H1 in Germany and accelerated. There was a widespread BaFin audit, which impacted the full industry throughout 2020-2023, and it ended for us in 2023. So BaFin was part of this analysis. In terms of regulatory framework, you have many different layers, but in particular, recent EBA guidelines.
Of course, the decision then, based on this latest assessment and situation to extend it to the group, was based on more detailed analysis, assessment, understanding of the patterns, where to check and detect it on the wider portfolio, and it took place in October. It was a more recent result of our analysis.
Thank you. And one follow-up, if I might: If you go back to the conference call in the Q2 of 2022, you said that Worldline was well positioned to take advantage of the move from discretionary to non-discretionary spend. But today, you're talking about how consumer switching to non-discretionary has negatively impacted merchant services. What happened? Has the portfolio changed in the past year or so?
Obviously, obviously, the portfolio has not changed. We have this strength of capturing, in particular in the travel domain, a lot of volumes and business. That remains. What surprised us, and here we are very clear with you, is the change of consumer behavior on certain geographies and market. Here today, we observed it massively on the German market. It's not, again, as I said, due to vertical specific exposure. We are covering all markets in Germany. We have a very, very significant market share over there. But at the country level, at the whole country level, people shifted their consuming habits and their buying habits.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Alexandre Faure from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
... Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I've got two, I believe. The first one, Marco, is just following up on something you just said around this shift from discretionary to non-discretionary. I think you suggested that you've seen some of it happen in a number of countries, but it was particularly pronounced in Germany. Trying to understand if in the OMDA guidance for this year and next, that you shared, do you factor in any contagion of that trend to other countries outside of Germany? And my second question is on the renewed investment effort. You're talking about move to cloud and so on and so forth. And I think you've spent quite a lot on integration, and CapEx intensity has gone up in the last few years.
So trying to understand what's been done with those investments and what you think, why you think you need to do more now, to you know make Worldline a bit more future-proof. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Regarding your first question, in terms of shift, we have analyzed it at the full group level. And indeed, we are factoring continuity. So this shift is embedded in our forecast. We have not factored a major international crisis, making people to stop any travel or these kind of things. Some slowdown that we are observing, yes, it is there. So it is continuity of the current economic situation as we speak, and the shift and the fact that it may happen, or it's happening here and there in our geographies, not, that's, that is embedded.
In terms of investment that you're mentioning, a lot of the investment we've performed, the logic of the plan for 2024 is to harvest somehow this investment, so it doesn't goes with a CapEx peak. It's rather the contrary. We are in this moment going to leverage what we invested in technology, in platforms, and we are rather foreseeing for the year to come to go down on CapEx and platform investment, and harvest this investment through accelerated transformation on all elements and in particular on our overall teams implementation.
That makes sense. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. From the line of Deepshika Agarwal from Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.
Hi. Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. So first one is basically on these, you know, on the, the contracts that have been taken out because of, you know, all the evaluation that has been done. So one is basically, what is the impact in the Q3 from this, in that EUR 30 million that is there? And what is at risk, like, you know, in terms of any fines that might be associated with it going forward? And then, like, do we have any impact of scheme fees in terms of growth in the merchant services? So I think those would be my questions.
Thank you. Greg?
So I'll take the scheme fee impact, which is something we've discussed a number of times. Effectively, scheme fees in Q3 represent between 2% and 3% of the top line. As you know, they've always been in our top line. We are discussing it now more in the last few months, but that's the level of magnitude. And the first question you had was around Visa contract impact on over Q3? I didn't catch it.
So the contract, doing away of contracts, right, related to these cyber-related stuff and fraudulent activities, which is basically impacting the revenue by EUR 30 million altogether. So out of that EUR 30 million, how much is in the Q3?
In the Q3, it's around about EUR 10 million with the remainder over Q4.
Okay, got it. Thank you so much.
So circa 20 in the Q4, because he-
That's right
... Gregory mentioned 30. And so, for the following year, as a difference, it could be up to circa 100.
Okay, and just one last follow-up. I like, in terms of the FCF update, there is a EUR 50 million-EUR 90 million because of a certain, you know, initiatives that you have. Within that, how much is Crédit Agricole? Because there was a CapEx associated with the Crédit Agricole deal of EUR 40 million. So out of that EUR 40 million, does this EUR 50 million-EUR 90 million have something out of that EUR 40 million?
Well, probably between EUR 10 million and EUR 20 million on the Crédit Agricole project. This is a serious project for us, and this is one where we really wanna set the venture up for success.
Okay. Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We will now take the last question. From the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi, yes, thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. I have a couple of question as well. The first thing, I'm sorry to come back on the merchants you have to terminate, because I remember that Worldline was very selective in the past when selecting people they wanted to work with. So does it mean that the 1,000 merchant plus are mostly coming from M&A? And have you made due diligence that were detailed enough? Any clarification on this would be welcome.
My second question is just maybe to wrap up on your comments for the coming quarters on the different unit. Do I get it right that globally, we should expect very modest organic growth for, like, the next three or four quarters? My final point is on the technical breakdown you had two days back, just if you could, give us a bit more detail. Thank you.
Well, on the merchant fact is the first portfolio that is exiting is one from PAYONE in Germany. So yes, it is the impact of an M&A and an overall situation where, you know, the condition of the Ingenico deal, it was not a due diligence deal. So that, that's an element. That being said, as I mentioned it, it's not something on which there was an issue that could be detected as something inappropriate before. It's the guidelines evolved. The level of scrutiny, the complexity of the patterns that you need to identify, and on which you need to be suspicious, as has evolved, and we need to adapt consequently. And so, that's what is behind this change.
There is something more, Laurent, if you allow me to step in here. I mean, we totally acknowledge that the environment and the market conditions have changed, and what we want to do is to de-risk our future medium-term trajectory. Given the fact that the... clearly, the guidelines are tighter, that the card scheme policies are taking into consideration what Marc-Henri described in terms of potential fraudulent patterns and sophistication of some merchant setups, we just want to make sure that we don't embark in the next semesters to come, any type of long-lasting risk of progressive ammunition. As a matter of fact, what we've been seeing in Germany, we also came to this decision in October, that we cannot have tourist policies in a given company.
If a red flag exists somewhere and brings us to believe that we should terminate this relationship, if the merchant cannot put itself in the right and proper documentation order, the red flags should be also the same one everywhere else. So it is, for us, a way to make sure also that our future growth trajectory will be, of course, non-impacted in the medium term by this tightening of compliance rules. And we will stay, and we have always been extremely cautious in the merchant arena, as a matter of fact of life, as we know, also, the world is creative, and we need also to be constantly upgrading our game in that space, and sometimes take this type of decision. But after H1 2024, this will be behind us.
With regard to your, Good morning, Laurent. With regard to your question around organic growth for the next few quarter, it hinges on what you mean by modest. What we are saying on this call is, at a time when we are knowledgeable to change in the environment, I don't think we want to over-promise on the, on the future environment. However, what we're saying is we expect an acceleration as of H2 in 2024. We expect a back to growth environment in MTS and in FS, as soon as early next year. And we expect to have dealt with the majority of the merchant portfolio we've just been discussing in MS by the end of H1.
Thank you very much. The technical breakdown, if you could?
The technical, you mean the phasing of the?
No, no, the issue you had in France,
Oh!
A couple of days ago.
Oh, yeah, sure, sure. I will take this one with Marc-Henri. I mean, over my 10 years of tenure in Worldline, it is the first time that we've been experiencing an incident with that level of visibility. It is absolutely exceptional. We will make sure, and we are currently in the process of lessons learned, that this will never happen again, that you can be sure of. And, of course, this has been only a 50-minute incident, unfortunately, on a very, very successful and very stable platform, the acceptance platform for the large retailers. Consequently, it did happen at a peak time moment, so with a significant visibility. But fundamentally, we are absolutely taking all the right steps. I must say, the technical teams have been pretty reactive. Now, you all know that you are all working in large organization.
It is part of the business sometimes to face such absolutely exceptional disruption. We always take the necessary steps to make sure that we operate at the best-in-class level, and it will be the case for the years to come. Marc-Henri, you want to add anything here?
Thank you. You said the main point, it's a platform that has a super high level of availability. The fact that it was so visible is also proving that nothing visible was happening over the last decade in this domain. So, exceptionally, we had a pretty tricky and very complex technical glitch. We were able to solve it very fast. Unfortunately, as it was complex, it spread to a massively resilient platform with a lot of backups. But we understand it, we have solved it, it cannot reproduce. It's something really exceptional, but completely under control, and the fact is the number of transaction impacted, if you compare it to the total of online, it's minimal, but the concentration makes it super visible.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
So-
I'll go back to-
I think it was the last question. So I would like to thank absolutely everyone here for being that interacting with us, and we look forward to pursuing the dialogue with the community, both of analysts and investors in the coming days. My last message is very clear. We manage unexpected headwinds that have been clearly ramping up at the very end of Q3. We want to take a very cautious stance regarding our future financial trajectory, and we take all the necessary steps. But most importantly, we will fundamentally improve the long-term profitability of online through Power24, which is the very strong focus that we will have in 2024, as well as to prepare grocery acceleration as soon as H2 2024. Many thanks.
That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.