Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the conference call of Austrian Post that will discuss the first quarter volume revenue completed. Here with me is our CEO, Walter Oblin, and I would like to directly hand over to Walter.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our Q1 Results for 2023. As a summary upfront, in a very challenging environment, Austrian Post has had a good start into the year with strong revenue growth. Despite significant headwinds, I think we can look confident into the full year of 2023. Page two reminds you of the three segments that we operate in and that we report. Mail, our incumbent Austrian mail business, Parcel and Logistics, our portfolio of parcel networks in nine geographies in Austria, Southeastern Europe and Turkey. In our segment Retail and Bank, including our post office network and our bank99.
Moving to page three, we are operating in a challenging macroeconomic environment with three strong drivers impacting our business. First, we see a weak sentiment, a consolidation in e-commerce, but also a weak environment in stationary, non-stationary retailers. Second, we see inflation across our cost structure, not only affecting staff costs, energy costs, but pretty much all elements of our cost structure. The third particular driver, given that we have a quite strong exposure to Turkey. Turkey still shows high inflation. At the same time, the Turkish lira exchange rate to the euro has been surprisingly stable, which has led to a strong growth numbers coming from Turkey in Europe.
At the same time, this also means there is a risk once the Turkish lira depreciates and purchasing power adjusts again. Moving to page four. Page four gives you an overview of the first of the highlights of Q1. I'll talk about the numbers later on. I think the summary is double-digit growth, both top line as well as bottom line. Significant challenges are addressed by multiple efforts, both on the cost side as well as on price management. Overall, we do confirm the outlook we have given two months ago with a revenue target with a target of revenue increase in the mid-single digit range, was depending on the Turkish lira exchange rate.
Still a strong CapEx year with CapEx spending in the order of magnitude of EUR 160 million-EUR 180 million. Earnings target where the objective is to get close to last year's earnings level. Page five gives you a multiyear representation of Q1 revenue split. I think there are two messages. Message number one is we do have a strong, profitable and resilient Mail business. I think message two is over the years, we have built up a strong second leg, our Parcel & Logistics business, which is the growth driver and which after a year of consolidation is back in growth mode again, with revenue growth of 15.5%.
I think third message, there is a financial service business which is also growing again after concluding the cooperation with BAWAG P.S.K. in 2020 and building up our own bank99. We now see a strong growth in the quarter-by-quarter comparison from last year to this year. Moving to page six. Our revenue has, we have seen a quarter with strong revenue growth, as I already said, 10.5%. Roughly half of that is coming from Turkey, where the already mentioned combination of strong inflation with a relatively stable Turkish lira has led to a very strong growth in EUR, almost 70%, 66%, roughly.
Still without Turkey, I think a growth of 5.5% is a very good number, given a structurally declining Mail business and a relatively weak sentiment both in e-commerce as well as in stationary retail. Our Mail business has grown revenues by 3.3%. Here price changes have overcompensated the decline in volumes. Parcel & Logistics +16.5%, roughly 5% excluding Turkey. The Retail & Bank segment growing by around EUR 10 million or 42%.
Page seven gives you the overview of earnings last year of EUR 39.6 million. This year, plus 18.7% to EUR 47 million, with our core business Mail and Parcel in absolute terms, pretty stable, which given growing revenues means there is some visible margin pressure as it is challenging to forward all the cost increases that we see across our cost structure to the market. Still, I think overall decent margins in those businesses. Retail and Bank was a very strong improvement of EUR 12 million, the first break-even quarter after three years.
Please do not expect this to be in a break-even situation for the next three quarters as significant migration expenses will weigh on our results in this segment over the next quarters. I think still, it gives us a good sign, a very encouraging sign that our bank99 is on a good way. Corporate, down a little bit from last year and overall, again, EUR 47 million. Page eight reminds you of our strategy, three business directions. Number one is defending our market leadership and profitability in our core business, which means our core mail and parcel businesses. Priority number two, profitable growth in new markets, meaning international growth, but also growth along the value chain.
Priority number three is to further develop offerings for consumers and SME. Here, bank99 is one of the biggest measures. The green arrow in the middle, we do aim to be a leader in sustainable logistics, and diversity and customer focus complement this strategy element. Let me now along this strategy framework, update you on the developments in our four business lines, starting with addressed letter mail. Addressed letter mail has shown to be a very resilient element of our business throughout the pandemic.
The biggest acceleration of digitization in our society, which happened as a result of the pandemic, has not led mail volumes to decline significantly faster than in the past. Also Q1 2023 was a mail decline on a daily basis of -4%, shows a continued stable, relatively moderate decline. We have raised prices significantly, moving to page 10 last year in three steps. The Eco product in July, the Priority product in October, and pretty much all other products in January this year. With these price changes, we remain one of the cheapest mail markets of significant size. You see here the comparison.
We are committed to a strategy of high quality at moderate prices, and we believe this has contributed to the moderate decline that we have seen in the past. At the same time, in a high inflation environment, just constantly working on the price side remains a priority, and there are further measures for later this year in the pipeline. Page 11. Direct mail remains a strong element of our Mail business portfolio. Direct mail and Media post last year totaling EUR 427 million in revenues.
This has been the business which has suffered significantly during the pandemic and has not, and probably will not, recover fully from the pandemic, as we have seen a strong shift towards e-commerce away from stationary retailers, and stationary retailers are the core customer base of this business. Strong pressure continues to weigh on this product and on our customers in this field, in addition to high paper costs, providing very challenging combination for direct mail. As a result, we have seen direct mail volumes decline by 11% this year. We see an increasing number of industry exits and insolvencies in that field.
Still we are working hard every day to keep this advertising, to keep this important element of the marketing mix of our customers relevant and invest also in digital marketing as a way to extend the traditionally paper-based direct mail products. Moving to page 12, to our parcel business in Austria. Last year has been a year of consolidation, with mail volumes declining slightly. Modestly, this year we are back into growth mode as already in the second half of last year, +5% volumes in Q1 2023. Also in particular in the last weeks, we have seen a good momentum in our parcel volumes. We continue with our investment program.
2023 will be pretty much the last year of a major expansion program in our Austrian logistics infrastructure. The last big project we are currently working on is an extension of our historically most important sourcing center in the south of Vienna. This is planned to go live, go into operations, in the second half of this year. Together with substantial fleet investments, IT investments, and investments in businesses outside the core Austrian business. Our investments this year, our CapEx spendings will total roughly EUR 160 million-EUR 180 million, Q1, as pretty much every year has been a relatively weak start into the CapEx year.
Page 14 shows you the investment program that pretty much started in 2018. You see here that with the logistics center in the south of Vienna, the last big project is now under construction. After that, of course, we will continue to adjust and improve further this logistics network. With this last big sorting center, we will have, yeah, pretty much tripled our sorting capacity over the last five, six years, hopefully making us fit for further parcel growth over the next years. Page 15 shows you the development of our staff structure.
I think the messages here is the transformation towards the new collective wage agreement being the dominant element in our in our workforce and civil servants and the old collective labor agreement employees continuing to decline. This transformation continues. Second message is we have improved efficiency over the last 12 months with despite growing parcel volumes, we have managed to get through Q1 with almost 600 FTEs less than last year. I think a result of efficiency improvement measures and more stable operations and also a result of the investments we have done over the last years. Moving to our international parcel business. Again, here, a good growth again, after a consolidation last year. Volume growth in Eastern Europe plus 12%, in Türkiye plus 8%.
Price improvements in CE a little bit more challenging in Türkiye given the high inflation. Of course, a lot of price changes. You'll see on page 17 some more details about our Turkish business. Our cargo is again growing substantially, also on a real base if you try to find a measure for that. Also taking into account there, that there is in-substantial inflation. We do see, as already said, parcel volumes growing at high single-digit numbers and the company operates on a good profitability. Moving to our third strategy pillar, our retail businesses. Here, the strongest investment of course has been our investment into bank99.
As I said, the first pretty much break-even quarter after launching this bank three years ago. In particular interest income has increased substantially given the changes, the steep changes, in the interest rate environment. Interest income, on a quarterly, for Q1 increasing from EUR 7 million last year to almost EUR 16 million this year. We'll see this increase over the next quarters in Q4. Already last year, we have already included some significant interest rate changes. With that, as I said, a break-even quarter. Over the next, roughly, five to six quarters, we do expect significant integration and migration expenses, as we now have made the decision to how we will integrate the two core banking systems.
This migration project is starting these days. The other big priority these days is to make sure we remain attractive for customer deposits by introducing also savings products, of course, without paying too much interest on them. Moving to page 19. This gives you an update about our self-service solutions. We continue to invest in a lot in self-service solutions. It's not really big money that we spend here, but it's we think this is an important element of an important source of differentiation in an increasingly competitive parcel market. These solutions are well accepted by our customers. They provide convenience to our customers, and significant volumes already are processed through self-service solutions. Talk a little bit about our progress on the sustainability front.
Two important priorities in our sustainability program are E-mobility and photovoltaics. With 3,000 vehicles end of last year, we operate by far the largest fleet, electric fleet in Austria. We do have a target to eliminate the last combustion engine in our last mile fleet by 2030. End of this year, we plan to have more than 3,800 vehicles, next year more than 4,600 vehicles. This is well on track. The other priority, where we have accelerated our investment and activities is photovoltaic. Given the price changes in the electricity market, we have substantially accelerated our PV expansion program. Last year, added roughly 1.5 MW peak.
This year, we will double, almost double the installed capacity from a little bit above four to around eight MW peak. For next year, we do have a pipeline that should lead us to 15 MW peak. 15 MW peak is a capacity which should generate roughly 20% of the electricity that we need, including the electricity for our electric fleet, from own renewable sources. Our various sustainability efforts, I think are well appreciated, also by different rating agencies, where we typically come out best in class or among the top players in our industry. Several awards that are shown on page 23, both on our efforts as well as on our reporting, also demonstrate, I think, the recognition of our efforts.
Let me now progress with some more details on our financials. Page 24 shows you a few financial KPIs. I have already commented on revenues. Both margins, EBITDA as well as EBIT, above last year. I think we're all aware that Q1 2022 was a difficult one, so it's partly also a recovery. Earnings per share and cash flow, I think, on a decent level for Q1. Operating free cash flow of EUR 75 million, with that order of magnitude, I think we're in a good way of earning enough free cash flow from operations to be in a good position to propose another effective dividend for the current year at the end of the year. Page 25 shows you our group P&L.
I don't wanna go into details, equal details of that. Let me rather proceed with going into the individual segments on page 26. Starting with the Mail division, the core letter mail business, including our Business Solutions activities, showed a revenue increase of 5.6%. As I mentioned, a relatively stable decline in volumes of around 4%, plus significant price changes, led to this revenue increase. On the direct mail side, the volume losses, and this is a combination of unaddressed and addressed direct mail losses, were again compensated by price changes. The revenue impact was in total relatively small, minus 0.8%.
With those revenues and a very disciplined and cost-focused approach in our operations, we were able to secure decent margins in Mail, with a total EBIT of 41 million EUR and an EBIT margin of around 13%. Page 28, moving to Parcel & Logistics. Here, revenue's up 15.5%, with all regions contributing to this growth, Austria, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. Already mentioned the Turkish lira inflation asymmetry. Austrian parcel volumes up around 5%, revenues up 8.3%.
We see significant mix changes here, which partly dilute our price increases. Same development or, but even more pronounced in Eastern Europe, where we have a 5% volume growth, but only 2.3% revenue increase. There is also a change in the way we account for in a cooperation with one big customer in Slovakia, where we change from showing the full revenues to a provision based way of invoicing. Part of that lower than volume revenue increase is the impact of this. In logistic solutions, we show a decline in revenues. This is coming from one-off revenues from the pandemic that were still included last year in Q1, which are not present anymore.
We're talking about test logistics that we provided for the largest Austrian COVID testing corporation, as well as for Austrian school testing. Page 29 shows you the segment P&L. The pretty much stable EBIT in absolute terms. The loss of special pandemic-related logistic services here overcompensating the increase in absolute EBIT generated by the other activities. As a result, a small EBIT compression from 6%- 5%. Page 30, moving to Retail & Bank. Here, a revenue growth of 41.8% predominantly coming from the from the top line growth in Bank99, plus almost +60%, roughly EUR 10 million in top line growth in the bank.
As I said, on page 31, you see that here we can show the first full quarter with the segment breaking even after three years. Of course, we hope to see more such quarters in the future. Page 32 updates you on the structure of our balance sheet. We continue to operate a healthy and conservative balance sheet with a low level of real financial debt with banks, EUR 150 million one loan. A conservative accounting, which is demonstrated by a high level of provisions, in particular, stock-related provisions, low level of intangible assets and goodwill. Quarter-by-quarter increasing balance sheet, which is driven by the growth of Bank99.
Page 33 update is the usual illustration of our cash flows. We try to focus on the column in the middle, operating free cash flow before growth CapEx. This is where we have the target to generate an operating free cash flow that well covers the dividend with EUR 75 million in the first quarter. I think we're in a good way. Let me finish with the outlook on page 34, which is pretty much confirming the outlook we gave two months ago. We continue to see a challenging market environment with strong inflation and weak consumer sentiment. In this environment, we target a mid-single-digit revenue growth with the growth again coming from Parcel & Logistics. Mail for the full year, probably, a slight revenue decline.
On the Retail & Bank segment, we will continue to see revenue increase driven by the improved interest rate environment. On the CapEx side, we confirm the EUR 100 million, roughly EUR 100 million maintenance CapEx, plus EUR 60-80 million growth CapEx. On the earnings side, despite significant inflationary challenges, leading to increases in staff costs and costs across the cost structure, the target for 2023 remains generating earnings at about the prior year level. With that said, I'm ready to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. The first question is from Paul Kirjanovs of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Paul Kirjanovs from Bank of America in place of Muneeba Kayani. Two questions from our side, please. First, on guidance, could you give a bit more color on why revenue guidance for the full year increased from low single-digit, mid-single-digit to simply mid-single-digit? Where are you seeing confidence, and is that all driven by strong performance in reselling? As a follow-on to that, same time for EBIT guidance, that remains unchanged. You're targeting about same level as last year. Is that driven by cost increases coming in from July, or are there other elements at play here? For our second question, wanted to check on parcel volumes. Those are, evidently quite strong. Seem to be better than your regional peers and likely better than what you expected.
Could you give a bit more color on what's driving that and what the expectations are for the rest of the year? Believe you mentioned previously to expect to see a bit of growth in parcel volumes 2023. Has that changed at all or not? Thank you.
Thank you Paul for your questions. Let me start with the guidance. Yes, I think there is some increased level of confidence that we will see good revenue growth for the full year after what we've seen in the first three months. I think we're still cautious given that there is a very strong influence of the Turkish lira, which is even made stronger by the hyperinflation accounting, which well, basically it's almost the end of the period which is used to translate revenues into euro. I think we're all aware that tomorrow there are elections in Turkey and I think it will be interesting to see what happens after that.
Turkish lira has stayed, as I said already, surprisingly stable over the last 12 months. I think there is caution on our side on what happens with the Turkish lira. Also on the rest, I think we still have high volatility in our business. We have good months followed by less good months. I think there are different different predictions by by different economists and they revise constantly. I think visibility overall is still low, but I think we're confident with the guidance we've given on the revenue side. So much on the revenue side. On the EBIT side, yes, it remains unchanged since last time.
The question, you know, if I understand the question is why do we, for the full year, we're not more optimistic. I think you gave the answer in your question. We just negotiated a collective wage increase. We always negotiate that for July 1st as an effective date. I think we came out with a very good result given the economic context. We were faced with an inflation rate of nearly 10% for the relevant last 12 months. We came out for an increase, it was an increase for 10%, which will only be fully effective as of January 1st next year.
For the next six months we use an instrument that the Austrian government provided, which is both tax-free and free of social security expenses for both the employer as well as the company, which in effect will provide the 10% income, 10% income increase for almost all employees on the lower income side, even more on a net basis, while the company will save significantly the 2-digit million EUR figure on basically social security expenses. Still, this will mean that I'm seeing the order of magnitude of EUR 35 million-EUR 40 million of additional staff costs will hit our PNL in the second half of this year. Of course, this will weigh on Q3 and Q4 results.
Of course, we're working constantly on implementing price changes. Specifically, the end of the year is in many contracts, the date where prices change. Despite some projects in the pipeline on the MADA side and also continuous work by our sales force on individual customers, I think you should expect for Q3 and Q4 some weaker results given the increases in staff costs. On parcel volumes, yes, I think we saw good momentum, probably above what we had expected in the first three months. Also over the last weeks, this continued to remain quite good.
I think we have to remind everybody that we're comparing us with quite weak parcel volumes in the in the first months of last year, were a combination of the Ukraine War, and other reasons led to quite strongly consolidating parcel volumes. I think in the relevant geographies, a bit in Austria as well in Turkey, we also seem to be gaining somewhat market share. Again, here the outlook is, or the visibility is modest, but we are optimistic that we will see some digit volume growth throughout the year.
Yeah.
The next question is from Marco Limite of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Coming back to what you just said about additional EUR 35 million-EUR 40 million of additional staff costs. Just want to clarify that that figure relates to just us here, not on the full year. When I think about 2024, when there will be a 10% salary increase, of course, you won't pay the one-off or, let's say, you know, in the base you have got a one-off and the base clearly needs to be cleaned up. The question is how much additional staff costs we should expect in 2024, take into account that in 2023 you're paying, let's say, one-off amount. That's the first question. The second question is about pricing power or price increases in a way.
I guess in the parcel business, you can clearly increase parcels according to what you think is the best strategy. you know, what shall we expect in terms of mail price increases going in 2024? The final question, if you could clarify, please, what you're expecting in terms of EBIT for the banking unit for the full year. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for your questions. To clarify, the EUR 35 million-EUR 40 million is probably rather EUR 35 million than EUR 40 million, is a figure for the second half of the year. It's not a full year figure. We're talking about roughly EUR 1 billion staff costs in our Austrian core business, that's what we negotiated about. This is the gross increase. Of course, as you saw, as I pointed out in my presentation, we are working on efficiency, we have reduced the number of staff compared to last year. We also have this factor cost effect of an ongoing change from civil servants to employees under the new collective wage agreement.
Absolute numbers here, of course, changing, become smaller, but still, typically, we are talking about on a cost per productive hour basis of halving them if we replace a civil servant by an employee under the new collective wage agreement. For next year, the 10% is kind of the like-for-like salary figure that will come into our P&L. You know, we have to expect a gross impact of roughly 10% on our staff costs. We will continue this transformation, lower number of civil servants by a number of employees under the new collective wage agreement will increase. Of course, we're working throughout the company to save costs, to reduce overhead costs.
You know, with that, we will try to minimize this figure. I think in terms of order of magnitude, this is what we have to expect. Pricing power, of course, you know, this, the Priority, in a high inflation environment is to forward cost increases to customers. On the Mail side, we are talking here about working with the regulator. The regulator has typically allowed us over the last years to increase prices in line with inflation, which has been very low, when inflation was low, which now of course is higher.
Given that, end of the year, the last, we're already middle of the year, the last, price changes, in the Mail portfolio will start to be 12 months already in the past. As I already said, we do have measures in the pipeline, to, increase effective prices in the Mail side still this year, in the course of the second half of the year. On, parcel, there is a. I think if you look at our figures, there are also, of course, efforts to raise prices. The result, given a different purchasing power of customers, is somewhere in the mid to higher single-digit figures.
At the same time, we have a significant mix change, where we have an increasing B2C share in our portfolio with lower average prices. We have also customers down buying from premium products to more simpler products. Pricing remains challenging, but we are consequently working on it. We are of course also trying to add value added services on the parcel side, be it same-day services, evening delivery also to to command premiums. On the banking side, to answer your question, I think we always said the aspiration for this year is to reduce substantially losses from the EUR 30 million that we roughly showed last year and the year before.
Given the substantial migration expenses that will start to come in, over the next weeks and months, I think we would currently expect a result in low double digit negative numbers for the segment.
Hey, thank you. If I can briefly follow up, on pricing in Mail. Just wanted to check if you're actually kind of discussing with the regulator for, let's say, bulky price increase to be introduced at the start of next year or, yeah, maybe in the second half of the year. Thank you.
Yeah. Please bear with me that I'm currently not in a position to provide more details than I already provided. I think what I said, we're working on pricing measures in Mail. The target is to introduce some price and product changes still this year. We will update you whenever we are ready with the regulator to be able to communicate.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear.
The next question is from Nikolas Mauder of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Three questions, if I may. First one is on the acquisition spend of EUR 12.9 million flagged in the free cash flow bridge. I wasn't able to find anywhere what that money was being spent on. Secondly, I noticed, and maybe I'm seeing ghosts, but that the number of parcels reported for Aras Kargo has been revised down in all reported years between the fourth quarter reporting and the first quarter reporting. Maybe you can tell me why that was the case. Thirdly, I noticed that customer deposits have stopped growing on a quarter-on-quarter basis. Do you expect to raise deposit interest rates further to attract some growth here again? Or would you prefer to sort of have that nice gap with the ECB deposit facility? Thank you.
Well, thank you for your questions. The acquisition is the EUR 12.9 million is the purchase price, the initial purchase price for a company called Agile Actors based in Greece, which we communicated, I think end of February, that we acquired 80% of the shares of this company. It's basically a nearshoring IT services provider, where one of the core targets is to build a strong Post team in Greece, given the shortage of IT experts in Austria and our appetite, our growing appetite for them. Of course, the target is to continue to have this company being active on the market and just is a profitable business model, and it will also add to our bottom line.
I hope I clarified that question. There is communication on that available, and I think we're happy to send it to you. Passes on Aras Kargo. I think there is thanks for your diligence. There are basically two types of products that we deliver in Aras Kargo. One is real parcels and the other is what we call documents. Documents are kind of express mail. Now we are just reporting the parcels where some of the figures you have rightly seen which differ from this also included express mail documents that are also delivered through our network. Yeah. Sorry for the questions we raised with showing different numbers here.
I think that your last question was on bank deposits, customer deposits in bank99. Correct me if I got it wrong. Yes, we of course you know, we are now at every bank, on a weekly basis, we have to navigate through the question of what is the right level of interest to be paid on deposits and in particular savings products to make sure we attract enough deposits and avoid outflows of deposits while at the same time not, you know, increasing interest rates across the whole deposit base more than necessary in order to optimize our net interest margin. I think our banking has done a good job so far, basically stabilizing deposit.
There has been some little outflow in January, which we were able to stop through some modest measures and through some fixed rate savings products that we introduced. With short-term interest rates further increasing, of course, we will add further savings products to make sure we will keep the deposits that we have.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is from Teresa Schinwald of Raiffeisen Bank International. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon. I have two questions more aimed at gauging on potential one-off effects. Although you said that there weren't that many in the past, could you still remind us of the impact of the two most recent regional elections in Austria, in Lower Austria and in Salzburg on revenues? Coming to the government announcing fighting inflation with an emphasis on fees and also on energy. If utilities have to offer monthly invoices, and given the potential system changes that the retail electricity is facing, could there also be a one-off impact from this change in fee and contracting structure on revenues? If yes, how high could this be? Thank you.
Thank you. There is a great question. I think on the regional elections, there have been 3 regional elections in Lower Austria, Salzburg, and Carinthia in the third quarter. We had good turnout of mail votes. Still, this is a relatively small absolute number. I think that the previous year where we also had some elections, we're talking about maybe 1 million EUR. This order of magnitude additional impact. At the same time, you know, we have other one-offs missing that we had last year, where we still had some pandemic mailings, pandemic-related mailings. I would, you know, say this is, you could also see this among a series of one-off volumes that we have in almost every quarter.
On the fee energy side, if I understood your question correctly, you were talking about the government measures that were announced over the last days. I think it's a little bit too early what they really mean. To be honest, I don't think they will have an impact for us, but maybe there is a positive surprise. I, you know, we typically secure, we make forward contracts on electricity. We also last year were well hedged against the price hikes that we saw on the electricity market. We have contracted a substantial part of our energy for this year already. My understanding was not that this is relevant for large corporate customers of utilities, but maybe we will be positively surprised.
Our strategy is to save on energy. Actually, we were quite successful in saving gas this winter. We saw month by month, minus 40% gas consumption, given a series of measures that we implemented, in particular, turning down temperature in our logistics centers. The other direction is to increase PV and implement it.
Thank you very much. Maybe to clarify, it's more about utilities having to inform retail customers about changes in the contract terms. If the government, as they announced, want to change the terms to more monthly billing, then I would expect more customer contact from the utilities. Maybe this is one of the positive surprises.
Oh, okay.
going to happen.
You're talking about some impact on our mail volumes?
Yeah, on the Mail volumes.
No, I got you. Yes, I, but, you know, we have seen, of course, communication around electricity prices, you know, three, four times going up last year. Some Austrian utilities canceling 100,000 of customer contracts. This has already supported and hopefully will continue to support mail volumes also over the next months when hopefully electricity prices come down again. Yes. I think that there will be some impact, but again, it's, we've seen it last year and we see it more on a constant basis.
Great. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Harald Hagenauer for closing comments.
Well, thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for this call. If you have some more questions or things to clarify, don't hesitate to call us the next day. Thanks, have a good weekend. Bye-bye.