Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this conference call of Austrian Post, where we would like to discuss the third quarter and the nine-month figures of the company. Here with me in the board is Walter Oblin, our CEO, and Barbara Potisk-Eibensteiner, our CFO. I would like to directly hand over to Walter. Go on, sir.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our Q3 results and our outlook for the full year, including a strategy update. Let me start on page two with our environment. I think for those of you who follow the postal industry, it's quite clear we operate in a challenging economic environment. The macroeconomic context remains subdued, and the postal megatrends continue to be quite pronounced. Mail continues to shrink in a somewhat accelerated order of magnitude. At the same time, e-commerce and parcel remains the growth opportunity, however, with strong competition in all markets. In this environment, I think we have shown that we operate a solid and stable business model. The numbers after three quarters are as shown on page three.
We are a little bit behind our 2024 figures, but substantially above 2023 revenues. Let me remind you that 2024 was a year with a number of positive one-offs. On the one hand, there were three countrywide elections in the Austrian mail business, which helped support revenues. On the other hand, we had a relation of Turkish lira inflation to the currency development, which was very favorable. Let me just point you to two figures. Türkiye revenues in 2023 after three quarters, as opposed to 2024, a growth of 33%, which did not come from volume growth, but mostly from an inflation that was much higher than the currency depreciated. In the absence of such positive special effects, such positive one-offs, the megatrends, and the economic environment is dominant. We see that we operate, and let me move to—no, sorry, we see—we'll come to that later.
We see that we grow in parcel, however, on a relatively low growth rate given the special effects last year. In mail, we see a decline. EBITDA and EBIT also a little bit below last year, but above the last, I would say, "normal" year, 2023. Page four reminds you of our new strategy that we communicated in Q2 in May. Our ambition is to be one of the leading logistics and services groups in the region of Austria, Eastern Europe, Türkiye, and beyond, with three core pillars. One is we want to be the clear leading market player in the Austrian postal market, but we want to go beyond post. We want to be a leading provider of key services: post, bank, telecom, and potentially further services. Second, international e-commerce is our main growth opportunity.
There, we want to be the leading partner for e-commerce platforms and online retailers in our region. We are reaching today already 150 million people with daily high-quality delivery networks. and want to invest and grow in this region. Third, we want to strongly exploit the synergies with a one-group approach and with operational excellence and technology leadership. Let us use this framework to go through our core businesses. Starting on page five with our incumbent letter mail business, here we see now, in the absence of positive one-offs, as you already mentioned, elections last year, we see the pure volume decline this year, a little bit accelerated, minus 8%, similar order of magnitude on the direct mail. Media post side here, we see a trend towards digital advertising and a crisis of the stationery non-food retailers, which continues to lead to volume declines.
The Austrian letter mail market, moving to page six, remains one of the cheapest in Europe. We think that our strategy to offer good quality services at moderate prices continues to keep mail relevant. We want to stick with that strategy. At the same time, this also, I think, shows that we have headroom in increasing prices without losing our customers. We already got regulatory approval for a number of tariff adjustments as of January 1st next year. These will be mostly outside the core standard mail products or registered mail, international mail, direct mail, or letter mail product. I think we look for some adjustments during the course of the year. So much on mail. Let's move to our bank.
Bank 99 has had a number of very positive events over the last months, including the harmonization of two core banking systems on the Easter weekend. We have seen good, continued growth. We continue to operate a very stable, risk-averse balance sheet. Most recently, we made our debut on capital markets with the issuance of a preferred senior bond with a volume of EUR 85 million, which was 2.2 times oversubscribed. That followed an initial rating by Moody's at the investment grade level. I think we think bank 99 is becoming an adult, and we are satisfied that in the fifth full year since launching bank 99 in the Austrian marketplace, we are very optimistic to reach break-even for the full year. After three months, after three quarters, we are already showing a positive result, and we are optimistic for the fourth quarter.
Going forward, which gives us a lot of optimism, is a number of very positive ratings of bank 99 on the consumer side. Number one in customer service among Austrian retail banks, top mortgage loan product, number two in current account products. That, in a competition of very established, very strong Austrian retail banks with a lot of marketing spend, I think, makes us very optimistic that the concept of a focused retail bank that leverages the Austrian Post platform has a strong future ahead. Moving to page eight, we continue to strengthen our networks, our postal network in Austria, through self-service 24/7 solutions. These are very well accepted by customers. Last year, 32.4 million shipments handled by our customers through self-service solutions. This year, we are already seeing a double-digit increase, so definitely we'll see more than 35 million shipments for the full year.
This is very well accepted by the marketplace, and we continue to strengthen our network. We have moved from 1,900 postal access points to, in the meantime, almost 2,900 for the full year. We will reach around 3,000. With that, we have in urban areas a density where the aspiration of the so-called Schlapfenradius, to be really within short walking distance, is reality. In Vienna, 75% of consumers have a self-service outlet within 250 meters. The Schlapfenradius, to translate it, is the so-called slipper distance, the distance where you do not need to put on your sneakers, where you just can stay in your slippers. Let's move to page nine. Our telecom offering, we remain in a partnership with A1, the Austrian telecom incumbent, until the end of this year in a sales and distribution partnership. After that, there will be three months of silent period.
In Q2, the beginning of Q2, we plan to launch an MVNO under a postal brand. This project is running quite well. We are now in the process of de-branding our branches, and we are very optimistic that this mobile offering will be well- received. Let's move to our parcel business, page 10. We continue to grow in the Austrian market after strong growth last year, a little bit of consolidation, but still 2% growth volume-wise, 5% growth revenue-wise. We continue to be the clear market leader with the strongest network in place, in particular in the growing B2C market.
Given that we are now starting the Christmas peak season, there is a number of services that we have put in place to allow for a very convenient online shopping by Austrian consumers, ranging from a relaunch of our Alles Post service, so a service where we provide a virtual address, irrespective of which last-mile carrier the sender has chosen. The recipient can receive all parcels by Austrian Post. We have equipped our Post app, which has 2 million downloads in Austria and 460,000 active users, with features where you can more or less real-time, during the course of a parcel arriving at your door, redirect the parcel to wherever you wish, be it the next postal self-service station, be it the next branch, be it a specific place at your home. We continue to see an increasing number of customers using those services.
Moving to Eastern Europe, there, we started out, we started into the year with some challenges on the volume side. Given the volatility of Chinese volumes in Q3, we got back to a growth record after this, compared to a quite strong last year, where in the first three quarters, we grew 19%. Q1 to Q3 cumulated, we're still 3% below last year, but that would still mean 16% growth over 2023. Overall, I would say a solid development in Eastern Europe. However, the market is very competitive there. Page 12, brief update on Türkiye. Türkiye remains the most important and biggest foreign market for Austrian Post, revenues of more than EUR 360 million in the first three quarters, a plus of 5.3%. This year, inflation and currency is not as favorable for Austrian Post as it was last year.
Therefore, in EUR numbers, not that strong growth that we've seen last year. Volume-wise, we are relatively stable in a very competitive market in Türkiye, where the core e-commerce platforms continue to build out their own networks in Turkish Lira. Given the inflation, we still show a strong growth. Moving to page 13, technology remains ever more important, remains an ever more important success factor in our industry. I already talked about the Post app, which is very successful. We are increasingly using automation and robotics in our operations, are rolling out an integrated operating system, a self-developed one in Eastern Europe, and continue to deploy technology across all areas. With that said, let me hand over to Barbara, who will give you more details on our financials.
Hello. Also warm welcome from my side. Let me start with the financial highlights for the first nine months of 2025.
Due to the outstanding year 2024, with the elections, Bolt already mentioned, we decided to do the comparison not only with 2024, but also with 2023. I think this absolutely makes sense. In terms of top-line growth, the first nine months of 2025 implied a 1.1% decline compared with the same period in 2024, but a 12.3% increase against 2023. Similarly, EBIT was down by 6.6% if compared with 2024, but up by 3.4% against 2023. Other highlights of the first nine months in 2025, we still have a very solid balance sheet structure with a very low debt, net debt to EBITDA amounting for 0.4 times, logistic equity ratio at 29%. Also, a very strong cash generation with an operating free cash flow higher than in the recent year, with a cash flow of EUR 240 million.
Coming to the next slide, looking to greater details of revenue development, the decline in mail continues at -7% compared with the first nine months in 2024, but remains only 2.3% below 2023. In this context, major elections in 2024 provided an additional revenue support of about EUR 35 million. I think that's very important to consider. While we achieved a continuing growth of parcels and logistics in Austria, as already mentioned by Walter, and also in Türkiye, we suffered a 3.9% decline in parcels in CE, which is largely due to the massive peak of parcels from Asia in the first half of 2024, given by a very strong e-commerce business in CE. Finally, the top line in retail and bank was down by 4.5% year- on- year, which was essentially a result of low interest rates.
Coming now to profitability, when applying the same analysis for EBIT on the next slide, group EBIT declined by 6.6% versus 2024, or 3.4% versus 2023, with earnings in mail being down by 21.2% and in parcels and logistics by 26.6% year- on- year. I would just want to add that we managed to increase earnings in Austria on the back of good volume growth and price development, whereas intense competition and also some investments done for the out-of-home business in Türkiye and CE impacted the profitability in these market segments. Overall, EBIT decline coming from volume was compensated up to a certain extent by cost efficiency measures, which I will come to on the next slide.
Please have a look on staff costs and also other operating expenses, where you can see our cost discipline already initiated in Q1 2025, as we saw the market not really getting up, not picking up, and also seeing that mail business is sharper declining than expected. EBIT of EUR 135 million is about EUR 5 million higher than in 2023, but down more than EUR 9 million compared to 2024. Earnings per share, EUR 1.41, that's a decline. On the other hand, we were able to increase earnings per share compared to the first nine months of 2023. Coming now to the segments, I think a lot of things already mentioned. I think the main message of key income statement for mail division is that this lack of elections in 2025 is the main reason for the decrease in all under-segments of segment mail division.
What we also have to mention is that the division still has a very good EBIT margin of 10.7%. Coming now to parcel and logistics division, similarly, there we see revenue was up by 2.8%, and then taking into account the reporting change of logistics solutions, up by 3.9% year- on- year, with strong growth both in Austria and Türkiye, but in Türkiye, mostly supported by the Turkish Lira. However, it's worth mentioning that we face strong competition in our markets and also note some volatile customer volumes, especially in Türkiye and CE. This resulted in an EBIT decline of 26.6% compared with 2024, but there we also have to mention that in the year 2024, we have a sale of property of EUR 6.5 million, which is also stated on the slide.
Coming now to the third segment, retail and bank, already said that there we have a top-line decrease of 4.5%. That's mainly coming from the low interest rates in Europe. In retail and bank, we are particularly encouraged by having achieved the break-even now, as already said by Walter in bank99, and also in the branch network, we took great efforts on the cost savings side. I already mentioned the solid balance sheet. Coming now to the financial debt, which amounted for a little bit more than EUR 160 million. Also considering IFRS financial debt, IFRS 16 financial debt, it's about EUR 526 million. Financial debt to EBITDA, 0.4 times, and financial debt, including IFRS 16 versus EBITDA, 1.3 times. This is also the basis for further dividend payments and also for further growth in Austrian Post.
The cash flow shows a solid picture with an improved operating free cash flow and also free cash flow for the logistics business. If compared against the same period last year, and in the wake of having completed our major investments in processing logistics centers in Austria, we had maintenance CapEx down by more than EUR 10 million and gross CapEx by about EUR 4 million. In turn, bolt-on M&A was up by EUR 1.6 million year- on- year. Let me reiterate that our financial strategy of focusing on free cash flow generation allows not only for providing sufficient cash for our dividend commitment, but also investment opportunities for future growth. Slide 23 shows our CapEx development since 2020, with a massive investment program for logistics centers, mainly in Austria. This program has now been largely completed. There is only one project to be done. It is in Salzburg-Wals.
This will be done in 2026 and 2027. We see CapEx in totals below the level of previous years. In line with these trends, a number close to EUR 150 million is expected for the full year 2025. On the right-hand side, you can see current investment split of about two-thirds of CapEx done in Austria and about one-third done in the international subsidiaries. International subsidiaries mainly means electric vehicles, and on the other side, out-of-home business. I now want to hand over to Walter for giving the outlook.
Yeah, thank you, Barbara. Let me close our presentation with the outlook for the full year and the first glimpse into 2026. I think, as a summary, we are cautiously optimistic. We do not expect the market environment to substantially improve. The megatrends of declining mail volume and the growing e-commerce market, characterized by heavy competition, will remain.
In this context, we do expect a broadly stable revenue development on the back of the strong increase in the previous year, with a modest decline in the order of magnitude that we have seen for the first three quarters for 2025, for the full year. In 2026, we do expect and target a slight increase again. I think on the individual segments, I more or less already said the important things. On mail, we do expect a steady decline with some support from tariff increases. On parcel and logistics, we do expect further growth. Of course, there is always the Turkish Lira to EUR exchange rate that we are dependent on. In retail and bank, we do expect a slight fall in gross revenues due to the lower interest rate environment. In our group P&L, we show gross income and provision income.
For next year, also the discontinuation of the A1 partnership will result in a short-term decrease of revenues of approximately EUR 20 million in 2026. Despite all this, again, for next year, we do target a small growth again. On the CapEx side, Barbara already mentioned that for this year, we do expect roughly EUR 150 million in cash CapEx. I would say for next year, roughly similar order of magnitude. On the earnings side, our aim remains to be a stable earnings, to show a stable earnings profile. Earnings 2025 are expected to be slightly below the extraordinary strong prior year, in line with the performance during the first nine months. Expect a few percentage points below last year and for 2026. This is a cautious outlook into the next year in a volatile environment.
For 2026, Austrian Post targets a broadly stable earnings development in the order of magnitude of previous years. Thanks again. Thanks for listening to our presentation. We are now happy to take questions- and- answers.
The first question is from Patrick Steiner ODDO BHF. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, Patrick Steiner speaking. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I have four in total. I will take them one by one if that's okay. First one, could you give us please some more information, also maybe some numbers on your plans to become a virtual network operator in Austria? How can you leverage your current infrastructure? The kind of planned revenues using numbers you just mentioned, the temporary EUR 20 million revenue decline due to the discontinuation of the partnership in 2021.
If you just could give us some more info on this, this would be appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah. As mentioned, we will discontinue our current distribution partnership with A1, and we will launch an MVNO as of Q2 next year. While we do not disclose our precise targets for that, I think our bank shows a good benchmark. After five years, we have been able to acquire 300,000 customers. This, in our view, is a reasonable five-year benchmark that is also relevant for our new MVNO and fits well with the run rate of sales numbers that we've seen in the past. In terms of profit contribution, we expect some startup losses in the lower to mid-single-digit numbers in the first two, three years. Of course, we do expect positive earnings contributions to Austrian Post relatively soon.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
You also mentioned that you would potentially like to offer further services apart from telecommunication banking services. Could you maybe give us some examples if that's possible?
I think the European postal companies show that positioning as a provider of basic services fits well with a postal brand that stands for trust, that stands for proximity. There are no specific plans that I'm ready to talk about. I think for the moment, the three pillars, post, financial services, and telecommunication, are our clear focus. I cannot exclude that we will have some ideas going forward to strengthen and broaden this service proposition.
All right. Thank you. Understood. Third one, you mentioned that you received regulatory approval for tariff adjustments in February next year for non-letter mail products, if I understood correctly. For letter mail products, you seek to increase service throughout the year a bit later.
Can you give us more information on the magnitude of the targeted price increases, as well as why you aim to address the letter mail part later in the year?
We just had a product and tariff reform on the core mail products in May of this year, so just more or less five months ago. Our current regulatory framework, and that is also an answer to your question on the order of magnitude, basically allows us to increase prices in line with inflation across the whole product portfolio. This is, I would say, the order of magnitude. We have seen around 3%-4% inflation in Austria over the last 12 months. I think this is the order of magnitude across a business that is worth roughly EUR 1 billion in revenues that we aspire to gain from price adjustments.
Okay, perfect. Thanks.
Last one from my side. You highlighted the implementation of this integrated operation system in CE, CE and in Turkey. What kind of benefits in terms of cost savings or delivery KPI improvements do you expect from that?
I think we're not in a position to, and we should not expect strong cost savings. I think the main target was to become independent, to leverage synergies across the group, to offer one interface to our big e-commerce customers, and to enable further growth in volume, but also in innovative new services going forward. This is an in-house development out of our Turkish Aras Digital subsidiary. We are in the midst of the rollout. This is running well. We expect to gain more traction from that over the coming months. All right. Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll get back in line.
Thank you very much for your time.
The next question is from Marco David from Barclays UK. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I've got a couple. The first one is on your 2025 guidance. With Q3 results, you were guiding for EUR 200 million. Now the wording is slightly changed. My question to you is, if you could give any indication on Q4, I mean, Q3 was kind of a bit down over a year. Shall we expect probably the same trends also for Q4 as Q3? Is that a question? Maybe if you can reply to that, and then I will move to the second.
I think the interpretation of the wording should be more or less look at the results over the first three quarters.
We are down a little bit above 1% in revenues, and we are down mid-single-digit number in earnings. I think that is roughly the picture we do expect for the full year. There is quite some uncertainty in it, in particular on the revenue side. The most important unknown variable is the Turkish Lira, where you could calculate different scenarios. Depending on where the lira comes out at the end of the year, the revenue will be higher or lower. Let me remind you that we are accounting our cargo revenues under the hyperinflation accounting standard, which basically means that we use the exchange rate at the end of the year for more or less recalibrating the revenues we have already shown. The lever of the exchange rate on the last day is quite big, given this hyperinflation accounting standard.
On the earnings side, I think that there is no strong message in the readjusted wording. I think we've just tried to be a little bit more precise. I think on the revenue side, there is a little bit, yeah, we're a little bit more precise in the sense that the guidance so far was some stability. Stability, currently, we do expect a slight decrease in revenues. On the earnings side, I think we're pretty stable. It's a little bit modified wording referencing to the results that we've shown after the first three quarters.
Okay. Thank you. My second question is on your 2026 outlook because I think there are quite a few moving parts when we think about the retail and banking division. I think in your slide seven, I'm just trying to pull it.
Yeah, slide seven, you are showing bank 99 earnings up a bit compared to the nine months. I guess EUR 26 million up year- over- year as well. You are mentioning interest rates down next year, and then EUR 20 million less revenues from A1, and some losses from startup costs from the launch of your own network. Any indication of, let's say, the net effect, what sort of EBIT level we should expect in the retail banking unit in 2026? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for that question. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Maybe some wording is resulting in that. Let's distinguish three things. One is the top line shown in our group P&L.
There we show gross interest and gross provision income, which means that in a landscape of decreasing interest rates, even if we have growth on number of customers and even with an expanding interest margin, we show probably slightly decreasing gross revenues in our group P&L. In our solo accounts for the bank, we report as any bank, we typically report net interest and net commission income, which is stable to increasing. Then we're talking about profit before tax. Sorry for the misunderstanding, the word earnings trend, bank 99 on page seven, might have induced. With earnings here, we mean profit before tax. Here in 2024, we had a loss in a single million- digit order of magnitude. This year, we have break-even, so a small positive number.
For next year, we expect a positive result for bank 99 in the order of magnitude of a mid-single- digit million EUR figure. Sorry, your line just broke up when you were mentioning the number. You said you expect EBIT mid-single digit figure for next year? Yeah. Last year, mid-single digit negative. This year, break-even. Break-even. Next year, mid-single digit positive.
Okay.
This is million EUR.
Yeah.
This is just the bank. That's just the bank.
Yeah. Yeah. What kind of number or range should we think about the retail and banking unit in 2026?
In the year 2026, we are going to report bank 99 as a segment for itself, and the ambient O will be shown in the main business. There will be a restatement and a new segmentation of our business.
We think we are more transparent if we show the pure bank as opposed to the retail network, including the bank, because the retail network is heavily induced by internal transfer prices from mail and parcel. We will present our figures as of next year showing, the mail, including the retail network, showing our international parcel and e-commerce business, and third, showing the pure bank 99.
Okay. Makes sense. Let me squeeze a third one. Just to confirm what you have said on our previous question. The 3%-4% price increase on EUR 1 million revenues is from the 1st of January. We should expect a new wage increase from the 1st of July in Austria in 2026. Is that right?
By and large, yes.
I mean, the increase on the mail side will be a combination of the hangover or the spillover, however you want to call it, from the product reform, product tariff reform as of May 1st. We're in the first five months. We haven't seen it this year. In the previous year comparison, we will see the price increase still effective. It will be a combination of price increases outside the core mail product as of January 1st. It will be some price adjustments during the course of the year, which are not determined yet and which will still require regulatory approval, but where we are confident that with the inflation that we see in Austria, at some point in time, we will have enough degree of freedom to raise prices further.
Overall, I would say this order of magnitude is a reasonable assumption to work with. Okay. The price increase will not be on the 1st of January, it will be over time in 2026? Yes. It is a combination of price adjustments on different products at different points during the year. Some residual impact on the first five months from an adjustment May 1st last year on the core mail product. Price increase is effective January 1st on core non-mail products. Then again, some adjustments on the core mail products during the course of the year still undetermined.
Okay. That is very clear. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference back over to Harald Hagenauer for the closing remarks.
Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for being in this call of Austrian Post.
If you do have some more questions today or the next days, just don't hesitate to call us up. We are available. Thank you very much. Good night.