Welcome to Posti Group Q1 2026 results news conference. My name is Marja Mäkinen, and I'm heading Posti Group's investor relations, and I'll be your moderator here today. Joining me here are our President and CEO, Antti Jääskeläinen, and our CFO, Timo Karppinen. First, Antti will walk you through some of the highlights from Q1, and then Timo will take you through the financial performance in more detail. Following the presentations, we will be happy to take your questions. You can submit questions at any time during the presentations using the chat function on the webcast page, and we will address them in the latter part in Q&A section. Please note that this presentation may include forward-looking statements that are dependent on future events, and you can find the related disclaimer in the presentation.
With that, let's move on to the result presentation, please, Antti.
Thank you, Marja, and good morning to everybody. I'll start with the, with the highlights. In Q1, this went as we expected. The market changes that we have seen and anticipated for many years and during last year continued and they continued to accelerate. In Posti, we continued to transform the company and become even more efficient. The Finland's digital-first legislation in the public sector mail sending did come into force actually in April, but many actors, of course, started to adjust their sendings already in anticipation of this. We did see an accelerated decline of postal volumes, minus 24% in addressed letter volumes in Q1. At the same time in the market, we saw also an acceleration in the parcel volumes.
This is very positive development, plus 14%, driven by the consumer recommerce, not by the B2B parcel. There is economic uncertainty, the geopolitical tensions, oil price or energy markets, general uncertainty in the market. If we look at Posti's Q1, we do have a slight sales decrease, 1.3% sales decline, which we have to put into the context of this market environment, so relatively modest. Both our growth businesses, the eCommerce and Delivery Services and the Fulfillment and Logistics Services segments, these continued to grow compared to the year before and their combined net sales rose to over 64% of group sales. As you remember from our earlier reporting, Q is our.
Q1 is our seasonally weakest quarter, even more so nowadays when the traditional Q1 mailings of postal items to citizens have been largely digitized. We have adjusted operative EBIT of EUR 6.5 million, somewhat down from the previous year. When it comes to net profit and EPS, we have an increase. Here also the impact is from the first sale of our investment properties that was completed in Q1. As you remember, we have the, let's say large fleet of real estate properties where the divestment program will take several years, but the first part took place now. The operative free cash flow was very strong and increased significantly even before this real estate sale.
We have working capital and EBITDA-related strong free cash flow improvement. On the key actions, I'll go through a little bit in more detail, but we have been continuing our commercial excellence efforts, and we won several new customer contracts during Q1, and we continue to strengthen our position as the leading logistics partner in Finland. Synergy seeking, I'll also come back to this, but we launched the acceleration of our existing strategy of being more operationally efficient in our delivery networks, and now we are preparing to merge our Finnish postal and ECD delivery networks into one entity, where we believe there's plenty of improvement and synergy potential.
We have a target of EUR 40 million cost efficiency improvement by 2029. The so-called first mile of our B2C recommerce side, we have a big development in the self-service points which we developed and piloted during Q1 and have now made official launch and rollout is ongoing. As you remember regarding the changing parcel volume mix, making the end-to-end chain and the first mile efficiency of B2C ecommerce is very important for our customer satisfaction, but also for cost efficiency. Now we have progress here. Moving on to the market, I did mention this already, but if we take a look on the graphical illustration of these existing trends, as said, the parcel volume growth has accelerated.
This is really driven by the ecommerce or the secondhand shopping market. The B2B parcel volumes remained flat. The addressed letter volume has declined relatively sharply. Overall digitalization continues, now this public sector legislation change is really a driver here in the mail side. Maybe another point to remember is that in the comparison period, we did have election sendings or mailings regarding the municipal elections. Another point regarding the letter decline is that when projecting forward, we can only, of course, lose a letter once.
If a, if a public sector letter of a certain authority has been digitized, in the following years, it will not anymore be impacting the decline percent. Transformation is fast, Posti continues to adapt. On the portfolio side, this is reflected. Our transformation is reflected in these portfolio weights. Now we have 64% of our group sales in Q1, up from 62% last year, in these growing sectors, and the share of postal services is now currently 36%. A few highlights on the, on some of the key operational and market developments.
Regarding the synergy initiative and our program that was launched in March, here, as said, we have done synergy and efficiency work in Posti also earlier. We have been taking actions during 2025 and we have piloted this combination of postal and parcel networks in six cities or six areas in 2025. Based on the good learnings and experience there, we have now decided to accelerate this operational efficiency and synergy and we are in the process of merging our Finnish postal and parcel distribution networks into one entity under one leadership. We have a holistic program aimed at strengthening the synergies between businesses.
This will be a multi-year program consisting of many activities, and it will also include important support functions with a big cost impact where the production sourcing real estate development and ICT and digitalization will be part of this new efficient machine. We are targeting 40 million EUR improvement in cost efficiency by 2029. There is also other benefits: operational efficiency and better capital utilization. We believe that once we have synergistic roadmaps for our capital and real estate roadmaps, there's potentially additional CapEx avoidance type of benefits, but these are not calculated in the target number. Right now we are conducting the appropriate changes in change negotiations with the concerned people.
Once those are properly done, then we hope to launch this new operative unit in during Q2 organizationally. In parallel, we are of course continuing and taking action already during this year regarding these distribution synergies. However, the full impact of the program comes in the later years. Another area which is not strictly related to Q1, but I want to highlight it, is that productivity gains, digitalization, data, artificial intelligence, they are part of this efficiency development and part of our development as Posti. Good to mention this as well.
This, we are a data-rich and transaction-heavy business, we are quite a fertile ground for efficiency development when it comes to digitalization and AI. One of the reasons why these activities are also part of the new unit. Already today, we have more than 10,000 people every day in routes and with daily capacity planning, which are utilizing optimization with intelligent routing and AI. We have close to 100%, 96% forecast accuracy with the new tools and AI on our parcel locker pickup forecasting, which is really valuable information when we do our routing and also has a customer satisfaction angle.
We have 66% of first contact resolution by AI in our customer services today, which has led to relatively significant cost savings already. And our several thousand service point networks where we make changes all the time and add points. Here, the decision-making is very much AI and intelligence driven. We have a systematic scaling in AI and technologies in Posti and we take a humble approach here that there's much to learn, but we are a fertile ground for this and we are business case driven.
There's always some room in big company for some learning and exploration, but we are starting to be beyond that, whether it's customer service or routing or service point networks, we are business case driven and the results accountable people have them in their targets and budgets, so to say, already. We continue to develop. Third point is this rollout of new self-service points. This is an important development regarding the first mile of our growing B2C recommerce business. As you know, our parcel mix is changing. Growth coming from the B2C recommerce side mainly and less growth in the B2B side.
Even though we, of course, expect in the long term also the B2B side to grow somewhat, this trend will probably continue in the future. As the difference between these value chains between B2B and consumer recommerce, the difference is in the first mile. Currently the first mile and receiving of parcels has been happening through our partner network, which is a relatively labor-intensive activity and generates also some costs. Now we have launched the self-service terminals, self-printing of labels, and we have piloted this in Q1, and now we are expanding to basically hundreds of locations during this year and continue to continue to expand.
First reactions from customers and the market has been very positive and we can additionally, of course, send from parcel locker to parcel locker using our OmaPosti application. Then on the sustainability side, we continue to make progress in our sustainability efforts and here, maybe regarding the safety side, we have again 13% improvement or reduction in the accident frequency compared to last year. This is, of course, extremely important for our people and for our labor-intensive operations. This is also in the end also improves cost efficiency. Then we have initiated the upgrade of our SBTi target setting during this year on the back of our good progress regarding the earlier targets.
Posti did set a target of reducing 50% emissions by 2030. As it happens, we did reach this target early and already last year. Well, these are the operational highlights during Q1. A lot of things ongoing on our market customer service and in our operational efficiency side. At this point, I would like to hand over to Timo for our financial results.
Hey, good morning, also from my part. Let's go through on the key financial results that we had for the Q1. Starting from the net sales, our net sales decreased.
Of course, slightly 1.3% from the last year level. We ended up in a strong EUR 353 million kind of sales level. This kind of follows the new norm seasonality that we have for quarters. The normalized parcel was only single-digit growth. Actually, then the growth is coming from the from the consumer side, from the eCommerce volumes and then some growth in our freight business. On the Fulfillment and Logistics areas as well, very continue to be weak market.
The gains here are coming from our gaining of the new customers, and then as well some of the industry logistics area growth that we are seeing through the new customers. The largest kind of decline in the sales is coming from the Postal Services, where it is, as we have expected, the volume decline was 24%, which is mainly coming from the digitalization trend. It is now kind of starting in the government side. As well there was an election on the comparing quarter last year, which was not in this quarter, which contribute something like 4%-5% of the volume loss.
As said, very much as expected and in our estimation for the quarter of getting the sales of EUR 353 million. Moving on to the profit side. The adjusted EBIT decreased to EUR 6.5 million and now representing close to 2% of the net sales. Decline of this close to EUR 4 million of last year level. Again, this is very much in line with our expectation. Q1 is typically the weakest quarter in the year. It's result of that is basically coming from that Q4 is the strongest, the volumes and the commercial activities are the highest in Q4.
Therefore, the Q1 typically is then the low season and, as well, the volumes are typically low during the. When you're looking at the seasonality coming through, we can say that the seasonality this year will follow the same pattern as it has been in the last year. Nowadays a trend of where we are, how we contribute the profits. Looking at the kind of operating results change by segment, we can say in starting with the eCommerce and Delivery Services, they're really, the key is that, like I said, on the B2B side, very weak volume trend.
The main growth in sales is coming from this e-commerce side, which is impacting our sales mix, and then as well increasing the operational activity such that there is an minor negativeness in the Q1, which we then expect to improve as we go on throughout the year, where the price increases will come into play starting Q2. As well, kind of operational efficiency improvements will start coming into play. One of those was what Antti Jääskeläinen mentioned earlier, in the e-commerce, the self-serving point in the first mile sending.
On the Fulfillment and Logistics Services really was impacted mostly on the fact that this market being very slow, and therefore impacting the fill rates in our warehouses, which trend-wise is increasing some more cost into the operation. As well, we had a loss of one customer, big customer in Finland. But as well, same time, we are able to add more customers both in Sweden and Finland. These changes typically impact more cost when we do the changes in the warehouses and therefore increasing the cost which impact the profits.
We are extremely positive about the Postal Services operating result when the sales declined more than EUR 11 million, but the EBIT level only less than EUR 2 million, where the kind of profitability level has remained the same as it was year ago, and then therefore contributing now very strongly into the overall profits. What we can then say in the coming quarters there are, we should be seeing these improvements in EBIT levels quarter by quarter. Like I said, both in Postal and parcel side, the price increase is start having a full quarter effects. Then on the operation side, we can now gear up and gain further efficiencies which start impacting already Q2, but more towards the Q...
the end of the year. As well with this synergy exercise project that we have, really comes and will bring most of the benefits for this year towards the end of the year in the second half. On the cash flow, like I said, the operative free cash flow improved significantly. Operative free cash flow change and improvement was EUR 30 million, which is actually per quarter, which is actually one of the highest improvements in absolute value-wise that we have had for years. The result for the period increased to EUR six and a half million from negative level last year.
Actually the biggest gains are coming from the change in the net working capital, EUR 20 million improvement in that area. There really is an improvement coming from the way we now manage the sales receivables and then continuous gains that we get from our payables area and which is now bringing the good results in total into the net working capital area. We are expecting that to continue as well during the year.
On the operative free cash flow, I said, increased to EUR 30 million and the remaining EUR 10 million is coming from the, from the, lower investments, that we have now done in the Q1 compared to what we did, previous year. As, as well, we now in first quarter, we sold the first of our investment properties, and the proceeds of that sale, is visible in the result, but not in here in the free cash flow, results. The proceed from that sale is actually coming on top of the cash flow, report that we are showing here. The investments are decreasing as we have been, estimating and planning.
Now in the cash flow-based investments, which is the main measure that we follow, decreased from the last year level more than EUR 10 million. Now all in all, it's about EUR 27 million in Q1. Now, clearly the investments, what we call strategic investments, which goes into the building a new warehouse for FLS in Järvenpää and then in Baltics in Tallinn is now over. Those are completed, and you will not see any more this kind of strategic type of investment in this year. As well, the kind of operative investment itself, and we can keep them at a lower level in Q1.
There we're really focusing only on the parcel locker expansion and then ICT-related project. Investments are at low level. Here we can continue to say that the cash-based investments on a yearly level is continued to be predictable and around a EUR 120 million level for the year. On the investment breakdown, like I said, compared to last year, same level, more than EUR 10 million reduction in investments. These are seen in this addition to property line, which was most related into the strategic investment that we had one year ago.
Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio continue to be at the same level now at 2.6, around at the level of what our long-term target is. In terms of the leverage, the net debt position, really the maturity part of the leverage is coming from the lease liabilities, and only minor part is coming from the financial net debt. The financial net debt continue to be at the level one net debt adjusted EBITDA ratio. Like I said, the maturity part are under these liabilities. We had some additions in the Q1 in the lease liabilities when we extended a one warehouse in Finland.
We can move on to the results on the segment level, a bit more detail from what Antti explained earlier. Starting with the eCommerce and Delivery Services in Q1. The sales increased by 3%. This is really driven by the recommerce, and the which then increased the total number of parcels delivered by us in Finland and Baltics to 14.4% level. Increase from less than 2% in growth in the last year. Like said, there is only a single-digit growth in a normal consumer parcels and no growth on the B2B parcels. This is driven by the eCommerce all in all.
As well then on the freight business had a net sales increase in the Q1, which then impacted the kind of segment sales positively. We see that trend then now to continue when this spring activities are coming into play in the freight business and during the Q2. Then the profitability was slightly impacted by the higher cost of providing these services, which then is result from this parcel mix, parcel product mix in Q1.
Like said earlier, we expect that trend to change in starting in Q2 and the rest of the year, with the fact that there are price increases coming into play and the activities where we can improve the overall profitability in the parcel and ECD business all in all. On Fulfillment and Logistics Services, net sales increase of 1.8%, coming from on Finland is 1.5%, where the increase is mostly coming from the new customer acquisition, and which are main part is coming from the in-house logistics. On FLS Sweden, net sales increase was 2.5%.
In Sweden, it is really driven by the improved demand in contract logistics, despite that the market overall continued to be quite weak in Sweden. The decrease, there was a decrease in the profitability of EUR 4 million in total, just roughly about EUR 1 million more than it was a year ago. It is primarily due to lower utilization rate that we have in the warehouses with this result from the weak market environment, all in all.
In Postal Services, like said earlier, the volume decrease was 24%, coming out from the digitalization kind of acceleration which impacted the sales negatively, but as well on the fact that the election was not happening in Q1. All of that is kind of going as we have been expecting. We've been already able to offset this by price increases. If the volume decreased by 24%, the sales only 8%. It's a product mix and then as well the price increase is impacting here. The full price increases are coming into play starting fully in Q2 and then later on the year.
What we are really proud of and happy about is at the profit level. The adjusted operating result was close to EUR 60 million or minor decrease from the last year level and overall the profitability of the Postal Services segment remained intact relative terms. This is now coming from the fact that we can continue to improve the production efficiency, improve the delivery models, optimization in resources, and then utilizing the high level of the sorting automatization, which then supports the profitability for the segment. Then, like said, the profitability only declined slightly, which highlight the operational efficiency and the strong profitability generation that we have in the Postal Services.
Talking about the guidance for the year and the midterm financial target. The guidance for as we gave in a previous result announcement, guidance remains unchanged. We are expecting the net sales to be in the range of EUR 1.4 billion-EUR 1.5 billion and adjusted EBIT to EUR 63 million-EUR 79 million for the whole calendar year. I explained earlier, the Q1 was the kind of weak start of the year, but we are strongly expecting the whole year results to improve and reach the guidance that we have given. Midterm financial targets have just a recap here, of course, have not changed and we're keeping the same.
This is then contributing to the fact that the net sales growth in three-five period is at least 2% group level and 5% outside Postal Services. Adjusted operating result over 5% increase in three-five period on average going forward. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA less than 2.5. Of course, the ordinary dividends payout rates of at least 60% is the fact and we are continue to be aiming at the continuously increasing the ordinary dividends based on our policy. That's ending on my part. You can...
Thank you, Timo. Before Q&A, just to wrap it up, key takeaways. First of all, the Q1 in line with our expectations reflecting the typical seasonality, Q1 being our smallest quarter. Operating environment was characterized by this continued economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and the structural change trends when it comes to postal and parcel volume trends. They continued to and accelerated both of our growth businesses, the eCommerce and Delivery Services and the FLS segment, they continued to grow, and their share of the group net sales is continued to grow. We have very strong cash flow that improved significantly in Q1 mainly with operational measures. Then on top of that, the first divestment of our investment properties portfolio was completed.
Posti continues to take decisive action to improve our cost competitiveness, network synergies, and our parcel first mile parcel efficiency. Thank you.
Thank you, Antti and Timo for the presentation. Now we will move into Q&A section. Just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, you can send those through a chat function on the bottom of the audiocast webpage. We have here a large number of questions. Let's start with the question regarding the rising fuel costs. Do you expect these rising fuel costs from the start of the year to affect your costs during this year through an increase in your own fuel costs or through subcontractors?
On the direct impact of fuel costs to Posti, we are neutral. We were neutral in Q1 and we expect to be neutral going forward. In this industry, the normal commercial practice is to have something called fuel surcharges, where we price forward on a weekly or monthly basis the fuel increases. Yes, there are fuel cost increases, but we will neutralize the impact in our normal trade terms.
Good. Thank you. You mentioned that you have won several new customer contracts. Under which businesses are these new contracts?
In all business groups. We have both in the postal side, we have certain, some of them might become public through our customers' announcements, but I can't name them here. Also in the ECD side, we have several contract enlargements, some new wins. In the Fulfillment and Logistics side, several both industrial and other customers onboarded. Timo mentioned already, it's in our report, that we have also lost one major large customer in Finland. As we see from the top-line numbers, we have been able to compensate for that with onboarding several new smaller customers.
Thank you. Let's move forward to Postal Services. You raised prices for letter mail by an average of 12% at the start of April. Do you expect to implement further price increases for Postal Services in Q2 or later during this year?
If I first recap. Yes, it is in the public domain that we have, in February, done some price increases regarding certain postal products and then, in April, yes, certain other increases. When it comes to rest of the year, We don't announce them now. We will see. It is possible that there would be.
That there would be further price increases, but we haven't made those decisions yet. If we look at our history, there has been typically in the previous years one or two price increase rounds during a year. As said, February and April have been now done.
Thank you. There are a couple of questions regarding the Astra renewal program. How are the annual cost saving targets of the renewal program progressing? What is the target per year? Is it accelerating towards the end of the period?
Yeah, that, as the program is a many year program. It's now basically because we are now able to start. This year is bringing some benefits already this year, but actually majority of the cost savings are coming starting in a larger scale next year, and they are running throughout this was a three-year period. Then, then, even this year, this will bring some additional benefits and savings compared to what we had the plans earlier on.
Thank you. How are these savings split between Postal Services and eCommerce and Delivery Services?
These savings are, will come into the Postal Services and then on the ECD services. We don't give the split of where does it will come on. Actually both of these business groups will benefit out of this.
Right. There is the continuation, that, is the goal to keep Postal Services profitability at the similar level as today?
Yeah, we are aiming to keep the profitabilities in similar levels. Yeah.
Still staying with the program. Are the savings, from this program incremental due to previously announced cost savings?
The cost savings coming out of this project are included in our plans and the guidance for this year. Some of those are additional to what we have had in the plans before, but it's minor part of that. Basically we have had plans for, you know, operational efficiency improvements in both of these postal or ECD Business Group anyway coming through this year. This is bringing some benefits towards the end of the year. Maybe if the question continues to the future years, then this program is aimed at accelerating and bringing more cost savings than our earlier, let's say usual run rate of this cost savings we have done so far.
Good. Thank you. Still, regarding the Program, what kind of one-off costs should we expect from the Program?
One-off costs?
Yes, like a special costs.
Not, not major. Those one-off costs that would come through this are already booked in Q1 and are visible in the special items that we have reported this in Q1.
Thank you. To the new teams then. What did you sell specifically from your real estate portfolio, and what still remains?
In our investment property value at the end of last year was around EUR 98 million. Now the first part of the sales was related to a one land plot that we had in near the airport area and we sold that in Q1. Total proceeds of that sale was EUR 15 million. The net profit impact was EUR 12.4 million. The remaining value roughly in an investment property investment portfolio is EUR 70-something million, 95 minus 15. We continue.
As we've been saying, we continue to divest and/or sell these properties and aim is that towards the end of the year, probably in Q4 would the next wave of the sales would materialize. That is depends and somewhat uncertain whether it's actually will happen this year or move on to next year. Aim is to do it next year. Like said, most of that property portfolio that we have will be sold during the next three-year time.
Good. Thank you. Regarding the digitalization. As digitalization progresses, do you expect OmaPosti usage to increase driven mainly by private companies rather than a large increase by governmental and public sector institutions?
Well, there's potential in both. What we have now, for example, signed deals in the beginning of the year, they are with private companies who are sending. Today regarding the public sector messaging.
Well, I'm not sure whether it's the right term to use here, but Suomi.fi, which is part of the DVV authority, a public authority in Finland, it currently still has a, I would say in brackets, a monopoly on this government sendings. This should be opening up in the latter, in the second half of the year so that a citizen could choose where he or she wants to have their public sector messaging. Of course we in OmaPosti, if citizens are today forced to use this Suomi.fi, we want to promote and have a customer-friendly application where people would voluntarily want to have their messages. We of course do marketing actions on that front.
Technically, from a information technology point of view, the opening up of this public side happens only or is planned to happen in the second half of the year.
Thank you. We have a further question regarding the price increases. Are we going to introduce price increases also in the parcel business this year?
Mm.
Does this include e-commerce?
We are doing some price increase in the parcel business that come effective in April and will contribute to the Q2 results. We don't give specific details of that or where does it go, but across all segments of the parcel business.
All right. Thank you. Now it looks like there are no further questions at the moment, so we will conclude the Q&A session. Thank you for all your questions and joining us today, and thanks for our presenters as well. Posti's Q2 results will be published on August 14th. We look forward to seeing you then. Now wishing you a sunny spring and approaching summer. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.