Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I would like to welcome you to Allegro's second quarter 2026 results conference call. At this point, all participants' lines are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. I will now pass the line to Tomasz Poźniak, Director of Investor Relations.
Thank you, Rafał, and welcome to all participants of our call. Let me introduce the presenters of today. Marcin Kuśmierz, the CEO of Allegro Group, will provide you with the highlights of Allegro performance in Q2 2026. Jon Eastick, our CFO, who will guide you through the financials and update of the outlook for the full year 2026. As usual, our results presentation is available for download from our investor webpage at allegro.eu.
You may also download the slides from the link available on the webcast. As a reminder, today's presentation and discussion contains forward-looking statements. Our actual results could differ materially from the expectations expressed in such statements. Please make sure that you review the full disclaimer on slide number two. Also, please note this presentation and the Q&A session are being recorded and will be available for replay on our website at allegro.eu. With this, I would like to hand over to our CEO. Marcin, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Tomasz, for the introduction. Good morning, everyone. I am very happy to present our results for the second quarter of 2026. This was a strong quarter for Allegro. First of all, we delivered solid financial results, keeping us well ahead of our targets for both the first half of the year and as we look into Q3. A big engine of our growth is our continuous investment in AI, which we are using to boost both sales and our day-to-day productivity. At the same time, our international business surged at incredible speed, showing just how much customers across Central Europe love what Allegro brings to the table.
On top of that, our financial services and advertising grew fast. We also made great progress in logistics, and our tests in new services look very promising. Looking at the numbers, Q2 was simply outstanding. In Poland, our main business picked up speed with GMV growing by 12% year-on-year, backed by 11.3% increase in adjusted EBITDA. Internationally, our business really took off, with GMV jumping by over 82% year-on-year and revenues growing by more than 46%. Because of this strong performance in Q2 and the fast growth we are seeing right now in current Q3 trading, we are upgrading our full-year outlook for 2026.
To keep this momentum going, our goal is clear. Our main focus is making our core marketplace even better by combining the best parts of 1P and 3P models. We are focusing on building special offers and expertise for key product categories. Second, we are constantly hunting for the new growth opportunities, reaching new customers and product niches, just like we did with our recent launches in travel and healthcare. Third, we plan to share our best-in-class infrastructure in the future by allowing business partners to use our financial advertising and delivery tools.
Thanks to that, we plan to create new revenue streams, optimize our operations, and offer much better value to our partners. This strategy showed clearly results in how we will run our day-to-day business during the quarter. We ran our best-ever Smart! Week campaign, launching it at the same time across all four of our markets, with 22% more deals offers from our sellers. We also strengthened our position as the undisputed price leader in Poland. Our best price guarantee now covers 2.5 million products, beating major stores at almost 77% of compared offers. On top of that, we brought major new global brands to Allegro, like Next, Under Armour, and s.Oliver.
While adding great new services like LUX MED health packages and new holiday options with ITAKA. Technology and AI are moving fast, changing how our buyers and sellers use Allegro. Both shoppers and merchants are adopting our AI tools every day. Our smart AI shopping assistant for buyers already has over 500,000 monthly active users, and our AI assistant for sellers is fully up and running, resolving 89% of merchants' issues automatically without human help. To push this even further, we teamed up with ElevenLabs, the global leader in AI voice technology.
Alongside our partners Google and OpenAI, we are bringing AI voice agents to customer hotlines, giving instant help and creating an amazing customer experience. Our international model is working very well. GMV growth across our international marketplaces accelerated to an impressive 85% year-on-year in Q2. Even better, we officially passed 5 million active buyers across Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. Customer trust also grew fast. Our app reached number one spot for shopping apps in Slovakia, and customer satisfaction scores in Czechia jumped by 8 points year-on-year.
Shoppers are really getting into the habit of buying on Allegro. We achieved this by tailoring Allegro to local needs while giving customers unbeatable prices and selection. Across our three international markets, Allegro prices were 12%-16% lower than local online stores in Q2. We now offer local buyers 40 million active products and 120 million offers. At the same time, Allegro serves a powerful bridge for regional sellers. For example, sales from Czech sellers exporting to buyers in Poland grew by over 100% year-on-year. Moving to fintech, Allegro Pay had another strong quarter.
Total loan volume grew 35% year-on-year to PLN 4.5 billion, funding over 16% of our total sales volume in Poland. Customer uptake broke records. Allegro Klik has become our fastest-growing payment feature ever, and the Allegro Pay Card passed 200,000 users who use it daily for everyday shopping outside Allegro. We also supported merchants, with over 4,000 sellers using our financial options to grow their businesses. In logistics, our Allegro Delivery program scaled very smoothly during the quarter. Allegro Managed Delivery grew to cover nearly 50% of all parcels in Q2.
Our talks for a long-term deal with InPost up to 2031 are going very well right now. The new contract will be securing better parcel prices and long-term delivery capacity. Meanwhile, our network reached over 11,000 One B ox machines, keeping us firmly on track for 12,000 by the end of the year. What is also interesting, we successfully tested our new zero-energy parcel lockers. To carry out these big plans, we keep adding top industry talent to our leadership team.
I am very pleased to present Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann as our new Chief Financial Officer, taking on her role from October 1st. Daniel Rogiński, who already joined as Chief Commercial Officer, and Dariusz Mazurkiewicz as Chief Financial Services Officer, who will join the team in the upcoming months. All of them bring strong leadership and vast experience in finance, retail, and fintech. I can say we have even more great talent joining us pretty soon. Now I will hand over to Jon.
Thank you very much, Marcin. Good morning, everyone. It is great to be with you today. As you have already heard, it is a really great set of results for us to go through together. After that, I will be going over the upgrade of our guidance. Let us get started. We will begin with the group overview, and starting with the GMV. The Polish operations grew 0.4% sequentially to 12% growth for Q2. Our international operations, as you have heard, the segment grew by 82.4%, up from 46% a quarter earlier. So really surging.
That meant that the group GMV has gone up by 14.4% year-on-year, and that is 1.6% higher than in Q1. So really good momentum on the top line. Our active buyers is also growing really well, 0.5 million more added just in the single quarter. We are now at 20.9 million, with 400,000 added in international and 100,000 added in Poland. Also very solid growth on the spend per active buyer, 7.3% in Poland and 9.8% for the group as a whole. Looking at take rates. Take rates came in at 12.59%, which is 40 basis points down on a year-on-year basis. As you will recall, for 2026, we took a decision to pause increases in our take rate policies, our monetization policies.
This is obviously, in itself, supportive of growth on the marketplace. In addition, we have been strongly supporting our merchants to deliver the best possible prices to the consumers, which has also led to some discounting of the take rates in terms of rebates. On the other hand, the advertising business goes from strength to strength in terms of monetization margin, with the revenue up by 31.1%, and we are now at 2.31% of GMV in advertising revenue.
Putting those together, the total revenue was up 14.4% in Poland and at the group level, with 46% contribution from international, 16.1%. Moving on and looking at profit and cash flow. I am really pleased to report that for the first time ever, our group adjusted EBITDA, on a quarterly basis, has topped PLN 1 billion . We have seen the Polish adjusted EBITDA up 11.3%, supported by that strong advertising and also fintech performance, and also very good cost control.
International is 8 percentage points better in terms of loss to GMV margin on a year-on-year basis, which means it is accretive to our overall margin performance, and the group, therefore, is up 11.5% for Q2. Looking at capital investment, PLN 292 million , 37.7% higher year-on-year. The main movement being additional investment into the delivery program. Cash conversion is still superb at 71.6%, and that leads to really strong free cash flow. That brings us to the leverage, which you can see on the following slide.
Our strong cash flow and the strong rise in adjusted EBITDA together has contributed to produce a 0.21x of a turn improvement Q-on-Q to 0.72x net debt to adjusted EBITDA as of June 30th. Everything very much in line with policy. We have over PLN 3 billion in cash, PLN 2 billion of undrawn RCFs, and a new facility with EIB with a six-year maturity, also undrawn and coming online for PLN 1 billion . So we have absolutely tremendous financial flexibility. Quick comment on the buyback. As you know, we have a PLN 1.6 billion share buyback program approved by the shareholders.
We launched the first phase of that, PLN 800 million on July 15th. As of September 15th, we had almost completed this first phase, PLN 777 million spent for 1.71% of stock repurchase. So very near the end of that first stage. Good. Let us now zoom in and look at Poland. As usual, we will start with the key KPIs that back up the growth. Active buyers is up year-on-year 3.1% of 15.64 million customers, so 470,000 up year-on-year. On the spend side, we are up 7.3% year-on-year.
This is just moving up inexorably over time, and we are now at PLN 4,482 per active buyer on a 12-month rolling basis. The 7.3% compares very favorably to around 3% inflation in the Polish economy. As you heard, the GMV growth came in at 12%, and that means PLN 18, 500,000,000 of GMV for the second quarter. The quarter basically started off dealing with a headwind from the calendar effects around Easter, and that slow start was then offset by an absolutely tremendous Smart! Week, where we performed brilliantly in terms of execution and in terms of pricing.
Later in the quarter, demand held up extremely well, and we also saw less competitive pressure, particularly in the marketing area, coming from the Chinese platforms. All of that contributed to a really positive quarter and sequential improvement. The growth was stronger across several categories, quite broad-based, and higher ASPs have also been helping the performance, and there is now a significant inflation component in the GMV growth. I am also very pleased to announce that the Polish marketplace is now a PLN 70 billion GMV business, looking at the last 12-month basis.
Moving on to revenue, which came in at 14.4% year-on-year for Q2. In Poland, that is PLN 3.2 billion. Slightly lower contribution from marketplace than we are used to at 8.2% because of the slightly lower take rates. Sequentially, the take rates were very nearly flat at that 12.59%. However, overall, we see really strong contributions from the other segments of our revenue, which allowed us to grow strongly. As I had mentioned, advertising up 31.1%, logistics storming forward 103% growth year-on-year. Retail at 24%, and other, which of course is mainly the fintech, another 23%.
Moving on to adjusted EBITDA, and we have 11.3% growth for the Polish business year-on-year, which is PLN 1, 153,000,000 . The GMV margin is a highly resilient 6.23%, and this remains above the 5.7%-6% target range that we set back in March for the midterm guidance. How is this possible? This is coming from obviously the accelerated GMV growth, those strong contributions from ads and fintech, which are very margin accretive, and also very, very strong cost control across the operation. Cost of delivery grew by 19.9% year-on-year at 5.4% of GMV.
But breaking this down by components, we have roughly 12.4% coming from volume growth, which comes from the higher GMV and increased Smart! penetration. But a very large item is purely accounting, which is where parcels have moved from agent-based accounting, so net of revenue in the prior year to principle-based accounting and gross cost in the current year. And that is obviously coming from our Allegro Managed Delivery, which is up to almost 50% of the total parcel mix. So that is pure accounting.
There is offsetting logistics revenue that you see on the previous slide. Most importantly, our unit cost per parcel is actually down by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year. And despite the blended mix of pricing going up by 4.8 percentage points across all the players in the delivery space, a 5.1% mix improvement because of the shift towards the cheaper Allegro Delivery and Allegro Managed Services players, means that we were able to deliver that overall cut to the cost per parcel.
Marketing, also looking good, 7.2 percentage points slower growth than in Q1, 14.3% growth. And this is partly reflecting the easing competition for share of voice towards the end of Q2, presumably as the Chinese players began to get ready for the changes to the duty environment that they live with. Other SG&A also looking really good, 7.6% growth year-on-year. Very tight cost control over staff costs and numbers of employees, and also on IT expenses. Lastly, for Poland, capital investments, PLN 284 million is up 47.2% year-on-year. There is about 100% growth across the hard CapEx at PLN 160 million.
And the biggest element of the acceleration here are the investments into the Allegro One delivery network. You have heard about APMs already. We are also working on a big sorting center and additional depot courier network assets. Looking at capitalized development costs, the increase is much more moderate at 9.4%, reflecting a stable team, higher productivity, also aided by AI-based coding assistance. Looking overall, we are at 23.9% year-to-date Polish CapEx, which is within the 25% guideline that we set earlier in the year. That is Poland, which is clearly going very well. Now let us look at the strong momentum that is building in the international business.
As always, I am going to start with the pro forma view of the marketplace only, leaving out the legacy Mall activity, which I remind you is something that we closed down at the end of the first quarter of 2025. Now, this means that what you see here is a GMV gap, or GMV of 85% for the marketplace only is starting now to converge very tightly with the result for the overall segment, which is now up to 82.4%. That is because that legacy activity is really now slipping away into the distant past in the baseline. I will try and cover that as we go through.
Let us start first with that 85% growth that we have achieved on the international marketplace, which is a really phenomenal result. That comes in at PLN 1,58,000,000 , and is up sequentially by 17 percentage points from Q1. I think the first thing to look at is that this has been achieved with 30% traffic growth, which means that the conversion is moving up really significantly. That is because the customers are developing the habit.
The purchase intent is up significantly. The trust in the platform is up significantly. All the other factors as well that Marcin mentioned shows that there is really strong momentum building. Looking at the components, active buyers is up by 33.5% at 5.3 million customers. The spend per buyer is up by a strong 23% year-on-year at PLN 663 per active buyer. Now, when you look at the same KPIs presented for the segment as a whole, the legacy active buyers are still visible in the last 12-month metrics that you see on the left-hand side of the slide, but not beyond Q4 of 2025.
If you look at the blended spend per active buyer, the last impacts of this last 12-month metric from the legacy business, which we closed Q1 2025, comes in Q1. The Q2 2026 numbers are purely the marketplace activity, and it will be the same going forward from here. You see the same thing in the GMV at the segment level, which grew 82.4% versus the 85% delivered by the marketplace itself. The reason for that is just an PLN 8 million difference in the baseline for Q2 of 2025 that related to the legacy store closed down back in 2025. Looking at segment revenue, it is up by 46.3%, and this is obviously driven by the marketplace, which is up 65.5% year-on-year.
That is lower than the GMV growth of 85% because the take rate is at 7% for the second quarter, and that is reflecting promotional programs that we are running, both in terms of pricing, similar to what we do in Poland to help the merchants hit really great price points. Secondly, also new unique selection is also receiving promotional take rates to really drive extra selection into the marketplace, which is also way superior to anything else that is available across CE-3, but we want to double down on that and keep growing selection.
Looking at the overall retail, the overall revenue performance, retail is also a bit of a drag on the overall revenue, as it was up 7.1% on a year-on-year basis. But we do expect that to be much stronger in the third quarter. Lastly, on the international section, let us look at the adjusted EBITDA. The loss edged up very slightly by 8% year-on-year to PLN 122.8 million . This is reflecting the investments that we are making to scale the marketplace growth, and we are really leaning into the evidently very strong demand conditions that we are seeing in order to drive the flywheel faster and faster.
The marketplace component of the adjusted EBITDA loss was at PLN 100.7 million , but the margin is improving significantly, 11.6% negative to GMV versus 19.6% a year earlier. The extra spending is coming in areas such as ATL with an extra PLN 12 million spent during Q2, including the first ATL campaigns that we have run in the Hungarian market. We are also spending more on PPC, but at much better ROIs to help drive that flywheel faster. Last thing to point out is that Mall- as- a- Merchant, now operating in a lean model, has had a loss of PLN 22.1 million , down 53% on the old model a year earlier. So that is the international, and that is the end of the tour of those results.
Now let us move on to look at the management outlook. Let me start with current trading for the third quarter, and these comments all relate to GMV. Starting with Polish operations, in the first 10 weeks of Q3, we have seen a further acceleration in the business, with the growth moving up to between 14% and 15% year-on-year.
Now, that means that on a year-to-date GMV basis, the growth has now moved beyond the 11% higher end of the outlook that we set earlier in the year. When it comes to Allegro International segment, again, in the first 10 weeks of the quarter, we have seen the business going from strength to strength with further acceleration, and we now are seeing growth rates typically around 100% year-on-year. As a result of that, on a year-to-date basis, the GMV in the international segment is now above 70%.
Looking at the consolidated group, this means that for the 10-week period, we are seeing 17%-18% across the group. On a year-to-date level, about 15% growth. So this really strong performance has obviously prompted us to make a significant full-year outlook upgrade across the group, and I will go through that now. So on the left-hand side, you have got the last updated guidance in May, on the right-hand side, the new outlook. Let me start with GMV in Poland. So we are moving up the guidance for 2026 to 11%-13% growth for Poland.
Allegro International, we are now seeing, for the whole segment, between 65% and 70% growth for the full year. That is translating to a group result now of between 13% and 15% growth. On revenue, we are seeing 13%-15% growth for Poland, higher than before. Allegro International segment moving up strongly to 35%-45% growth. For the group, therefore, 14%-16% growth. On adjusted EBITDA, we're seeing 11%-14% growth for Poland, so moving up significantly. That's coming from the higher GMV and also for this strong cost control performance.
On Allegro International segment, we're seeing a fractionally lower improvement in the loss at 3%-7% lower loss versus the prior year. We're continuing to invest to support the growth into the fourth quarter. On the group level, therefore, we're seeing 13%-17% growth in our adjusted EBITDA, which equates to PLN 3.9 billion-PLN 4.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA. On the CapEx side, no changes required to the guidance. That's the outlook, and the final slide of the presentation covers financial takeaways for anyone who's going to be reading this and coming to the document later.
Marcin has graciously given me the last word today, as this will be my final earnings report as Allegro's CFO, and it's probably going to be the last one in my career as well, which I've calculated I'm up to around about 78 of these during many, many years. So as I'm standing down on October 1st, after nearly nine years in this role, it's really great to be finishing with such a really strong set of results, and even more so because I'll be handing over to my successor with the group in such excellent financial condition. It's been a great privilege to be the CFO of this amazing business and work with this tremendous team for such a long period of time.
I wish Marcin and the team great success as they continue to explore new avenues to grow the business in a more and more exciting way. Lastly, I'm really excited that Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann has agreed to take over the role. She's a really highly experienced CFO, and also in public companies, and she's coming from a sector which is highly relevant to our business. I'm sure she's going to do a really great job, and I'm going to be here for another four months after October 1st to actually help her with her onboarding. So that's it from me. I'm just going to hand it back very quickly to Marcin.
Thank you, Jon. I'd like to thank Jon on behalf of the whole Allegro team. Thank you, Jon, for helping us grow, helping us to or pushing us to achieve the highest standards, and mainly for being a true role model for all of us. Wish you all the best in your next chapter and finger crossed for everything ahead.
Thank you, Marcin.
Thank you, Marcin. Thank you, Jon. We are now ready for the Q&A session. If you are connected via the phone and you would like to ask a voice question, please press star two on your phone keypad and wait for your name to be prompted. If you are connected via the web, you can also request to ask a voice question or send your question as a text. We will start the session with a question coming from Andrew Ross from Barclays.
Great. Good morning, all. Let me start by congratulating you, Jon, on your time at Allegro. Thanking you for all of your support in the six years since the IPO, and also wishing you all the best going forwards. I've got three questions, if that's okay. The first one is about the competitive environment. It sounds like you've seen some easing in Q2. Curious as to whether that was just towards the end of Q2 or for the whole quarter? Then if you can give us some color in terms of how that's changed into Q3 would be very helpful. Second one builds on that.
Just remind us how much share of volume or GMV in the market you felt that the Chinese platforms had, and how much of that you think you can gain back. I guess third one also builds on that. Clearly, you've seen an acceleration in Q2, that's continuing nicely into Q3. Do you guys think about this as being a one-time benefit of competition normalizing, but then as you annualize through that growth goes back to a kind of more normal trend rate? Or are you seeing something in the KPIs and the cohort behavior that might suggest this could be the start of a kind of multi-year improvement in the growth profile of the business? Thanks.
Andrew, thank you very much. Really appreciate the cooperation over the years and also really, really good questions. Let's start with the Q2- Q3 competitive environment. Obviously, when it comes to the Chinese platforms, the key topic has been, July 1st, the introduction of the EUR 3 per parcel charges. What we saw was some level of disengagement during Q2 on the part of the Chinese platforms when it came to the top of the funnel activity and acquisition of traffic. Share of voice became easier to come by, and the cost per click started to come down during the second quarter.
Obviously, the more recent data is showing both lower traffic or sequentially lower traffic month-on-month for these players. We are also hearing anecdotal or reported evidence around Europe of significantly less parcels coming in across the continent. I think that is true of Poland as well. When it comes to the impact on growth as a whole, this is obviously a factor, but it is not the only factor that we see in our strong performance. I think the first thing to say is that the Polish consumers are holding up very well, despite all the global turbulence and the fuel prices.
Demand is pretty stable. We have actually been executing extremely well in addition on surfacing the best possible prices for the consumers. You see it in the take rate changes or the take rate discounts that we have been giving to help the partners hit those great price points. They are really responding to that. I think the merchants themselves, the partners, are also responding positively to the fact that we are not changing take rates this year. There is also growth coming from that.
I also need to say that Marcin has given Daniel, our new head of marketplace, and the whole team really, a lot more flexibility to move at their own speed and to be innovative. This is really also starting to pay off at a marginal level in terms of how quickly we are moving. There is quite a lot going on. It is also worth pointing out that Q1 was a bit flattered because of the Easter calendar, and Q2 was negatively impacted because of the Easter calendar in April, which actually means the growth was picking up more strongly than it looks, more strongly than the 0.4% that you see in those numbers.
That has continued, obviously, into the Q3 with the 14%, 15% growth that we are seeing. China is part of the story, but it is not the only thing. The second part of your question was, how much did we think the Chinese platforms had? We think it was mid-single digits, sort of 5%, 6% type of area between those players. Altogether, we think that the alternative platforms to us have about 10% share when you throw in Amazon and a few others.
Some of that will go into reverse in the short term, obviously, because of these charges, but we do not underestimate the Chinese players. We are hearing lots about them taking warehousing space around Europe, and they may obviously start to experiment with other ways of doing business to change the situation. What really matters is this is long overdue, this regulatory change, and it levels up the playing field, and fair competition we have no problem with.
Jon, next question comes from Cesar Tiron from Bank of America. Go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Congrats on the results and best of luck to Jon on your new ventures, and thanks for the help over the years. I have three questions, if that's okay. The first one relates to the acceleration of revenue and GMV growth. I think we spent some time on Poland, but if you can please also explain the very substantial acceleration in international, especially in Q3. Linked to that question, if my GMV growth accelerates, and I reach a certain milestone in GMV in international, is it not possible to break even earlier than 2029?
Let's say if international GMV continues to surprise your business plan on the upside. Then I think, last question, I noticed all the new hires. Just had a question just on fintech. Any read there? Is fintech strategy going to change with the new hire? Can it become a bigger component for Allegro? Thank you so much.
Obviously, I'll give the second part of that question, Cesar, to Marcin. Yeah, on the first part, I think the key point with the growth in international is that we have totally in our control the take rate lever, and we're deliberately holding that one back until we choose to monetize a little bit more strongly with our partners.
As you saw, right now it's running at 7% take rate, so it's about five points down on the Polish rates. So whilst the demand is growing the way it is at the moment, and the customers are responding with such enthusiasm, and the momentum is building the way it is, it doesn't make sense to take our foot off the gas. It makes sense to keep supporting the business and try and grow it into being as big a business as we possibly can.
So getting to that break even in 2029 is something that we're committed to, and take rates will be part of that story to make that happen. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that the trajectory that we're following won't be somewhat better than it would've been otherwise, obviously, if the GMV growth was lower, because obviously the fixed costs are going to be spread over a much bigger base. Second question, Marcin, on fintech.
Thank you, Jon. So of course, we do believe that with fintech business, we can do much more. We are very strong providing buy now, pay later service on the Polish market, the most proper one and the strongest one. But of course, hiring Dariusz and making the team stronger, we have much higher ambition to conquer some new parts of the market. We want to do much more with insurance, like for example, extended warranty related to some products we have on the marketplace. We have pretty strong pipeline related to new products, also based on some partnerships like we do it with PKO BP.
What we mentioned today during the presentation, we have great example of Allegro Klik, the fastest-growing payment method on the marketplace historically. So we feel that we can be much stronger. And of course, some of services will be provided by ourselves, and we want to increase our expertise in this field. But also some of them will be provided based on partnerships like with PKO BP, because we see that the appetite of some partners is also really high, and they see that can also achieve with us much more.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Marcin. Thank you, Cesar. Next set of question comes from Roman Reshetnev from Goldman Sachs.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on strong results. Thank you, Jon, and all the best in your next chapter. Firstly, based on your guidance, the implied range for Q4 Polish GMV growth looks quite wide at roughly 6%-14%. Could you please help us understand what would drive the low end versus the high end of that range? In particular, what operational competitive or macro variables do you see as the key swing factors over the next few months? Secondly, could you please give us an update on the discussions with InPost following the letter of intent, and where do things stand today, and what are the main areas that still need to be resolved before a final agreement can be reached?
Actually, as a follow-up to the second question on delivery economics, how do you think about the long-term target for net cost of delivery as percentage of GMV? In particular, in the medium term, would you consider simply stabilizing that ratio as a good outcome, or is ambition to drive it lower over time? In the context of your negotiations, is the focus mainly on preventing further cost inflation, or are you also pushing for a meaningful reduction in per parcel delivery costs that could technically support margin upside going forward? Thank you.
Thank you, Roman, for those questions. Yes, you are absolutely right. The range is effectively quite large on the Polish GMV. If I am totally honest about it, the lower end of the range is partly just the mathematics of the fact that we are trying to work with round numbers here. It is as simple as that. The top end of the range, I think, deserves more examination. The fourth quarter every year in Poland for Allegro brings some uncertainty for us because we always worry about what version of the consumer is going to turn up, because there is a lot more discretionary demand in the fourth quarter than we see in the everyday shopping that people are doing in the rest of the year.
The fourth quarter does have quite a big weight of around 40%-- 35% rather, in the overall GMV. We always try to take something of a cautious position on the fourth quarter, and this year is no different to the others. Although, the geopolitical aspects and the fuel prices, I would say, are the major threats to the momentum that we are seeing at the moment. Because the mix is a little bit different, it is hard to be 100% confident that what we are seeing in Q3 is going to continue into Q4. We are being cautious on that. I will pass over to Marcin to tell you how the InPost situation is developing.
Thank you, Jon. I can say that we stay optimistic, and of course, as I said before, we continue our negotiations with InPost, and I think we are on the right path. Of course, we expect the economics related to our logistics cost will be significantly better, but we should wait, because, again, we are still negotiating some conditions. At the same time, we want to continue our investments to develop our network and to have better capacity on our side and to improve efficiency of the whole network. We do not expect any revolution thinking about the future in logistics. Of course, year-over-year, improving efficiency of the whole network and cooperating also with our partners quite closely.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Roman, sorry, the last part of that question was around cost of delivery to GMV. We are not going to say anything specific regarding guidance until that contract is actually signed. We do not want to preempt that. Obviously, the lower prices that we have got negotiated in the LOI will have, at the margin, a positive impact on us. But we do not want to say too much more than that at this moment.
As Marcin said, we are still committed to developing our own capabilities. We are committed to being diversified in terms of suppliers. And most importantly, what we really like is the fact that the consumers have got access to just about every locker in the country, which is around 60,000+ at this point, 70,000 even. And that means closest locker to you is going to be available if you are shopping on Allegro, and that is a brilliant situation.
Okay. That is it. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Jon. Next set of question comes from Michał Potyra from UBS Securities. Michał, go ahead.
Hello. Thank you, everyone. I have three questions, please. The first one is on the lower take rate in Poland. If you could break down the key drivers here and also perhaps comment, is this a temporary effect around this kind of easier competitive environment, or should we factor a structurally lower take rate into medium-term expectations?
That's the first one. Second quick one is on Allegro International CapEx, which looks relatively low comparing to the scale of growth ambitions. I'm wondering if is the current run rate sustainable, or should we expect a step up in investment over time, or perhaps some of that CapEx is actually recognized in Poland? The last question is on your guidance. You may upgrade to your full year guidance, but you have left the medium-term margin ambitions unchanged. I'm wondering, is it something you are just waiting to do, or you are seeing or planning some margin investments going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much, Michał, for the questions. Starting with the take rate, the big picture is that these small changes to the rates that you're seeing are really mainly reflecting one thing, which is the discounting that we do to share the cost of making sure that we're hitting the best price points in the market as much of the time as we possibly can, because this is extremely important to keep the customers coming back, to have the confidence that when they come to Allegro, they're getting great prices.
In essence, we see this lever as more and more important to us, and at the same time, we also see it being more calorific for demand than spending the money on the marketing side. I would say that this will continue for the foreseeable future. That we'll continue to press maybe harder on this lever, possibly somewhat less on the traditional marketing levers that you see lower down in the P&L. There's one other thing to add on that as well. Keeping a much better take rate for the partners than are available with other players is obviously a cornerstone of our strategic positioning as the biggest player in the market.
Whilst we have so many positive levers to pull on the cost side, across delivery, across AI and productivity, across marketing, it doesn't make sense to be moving up the take rates. It makes much more sense to focus on the cost side as a way to deliver margin. This was the thinking also behind the fact that we didn't put the rates up in March for 2026. The second question, international CapEx. It's a fair observation that the numbers are extremely small, but this is really just a function of the fact that the way that we run that business is that we are leveraging software that initially we're writing for the Polish business.
We add new functionalities. They immediately become available for the international platform as well. We don't really assign any specific allocation of the CapEx to that fact. So the numbers are really quite small. When it comes to hard CapEx, we're not really spending on anything other than some APMs going into the former WE|DO logistics network that we own in the Czech Republic.
We've switched to an outsourced provider for our 1P transactions when it comes to fulfillment. So there isn't too much CapEx to spend there. Lastly, the question on the medium-term guidance and the medium-term margins. As you're probably aware, our cycle is that we're in the seasonal annual planning cycle at the moment. We tend to look at these things in March each year once we finish the planning with the Board.
Thank you.
Next set of questions comes from Sven Sauer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Sven, go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you. I only have one question left. The other ones were already answered. I was just wondering about the news on expanding to China a few days ago, that you were opening an office in Shenzhen. It looks to me like the strategy has a bit changed. Previously, it was my understanding that you were a bit restrictive towards Chinese or Asian sellers, and now it looks like you are opening up a bit. Is this, of course, a result of the A-EU tariffs that have been implemented now? Just wondering what the intention and the strategy is behind this.
Thank you. This is super interesting question, but in our strategy, nothing changed. Of course, we are open to support all merchants or partners on the platform. Of course, opening our representative office in China is to identify some new opportunities for Polish sellers, but also for some Chinese vendors or producers, and to have access to innovative products. This is very competitive market with a lot of innovation. Thanks to that, we see that our value proposition and the selection of products or offers on the marketplace can be even more attractive. Of course, we want to support them also to meet some European requirements related to regulations, to taxes, and so on.
All right. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. Next tough question comes from Aaron, I would assume Armstrong, from Ashmore. Go ahead, Aaron.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks very much for taking the questions. Just a couple outstanding from me. Firstly, on the new management, obviously some very high-quality individuals have come in at C-level. It would be great to hear what their priorities or their key deliverables would be over their first, say, one or two years. Secondly, just on the services. Obviously we announced two categories at the beginning of this year in health and travel. Could you talk a little bit about scale-up within those service categories?
Then in terms of the pipeline of any new additions. Perhaps just finally from my side, in terms of the competitive landscape from the duty implemented on the Chinese platforms, would you say that is more meaningful on the international side? Is this transformational given that those were the dominant platforms in those markets, or perhaps they were more present over-indexing those markets?
Start with the question related to new executives joining our company. As we mentioned before, we have Daniel Rogiński for several months in the company, being in charge of all commercial operations and further development of the marketplace. Of course, this is the guy with the past in Zalando and many other e-commerce platforms. So he brought to the company deep expertise how to develop, especially some expertise in some dedicated parts of the market. Of course, we wait also for Dariusz and Katarzyna joining quite soon to the organization and supporting our further development.
But our priority is quite clear. We want to speed up our development. We want to speed up growth of the organization, but also keeping very healthy margin and investments under control. I think, following what Jon said before, our investment or our CapEx, it is something under control. We have very flexible platform. We do invest, of course, in innovation to update our value proposition. But of course, we stay strong and we want to have the strongest team on the market because our appetite is even bigger than in the past. The second question was related to services.
As we mentioned many times, this is still in the test mode, let's say. So of course, we can say that we are satisfied with the first month, and how we see progress in development of travel services or healthcare services. We still have quite limited selection of services because this is the initial stage of those projects, and we do cooperate with LUX MED, we do cooperate with ITAKA, and of course, we should expect new partners being implemented quite soon with their services to improve value proposition in both categories. But of course, impact of both categories is quite limited on current results, because we just started several months ago, and this is still very early stage.
Thanks, Marcin. The last part of the question was about whether or not the situation with the Chinese players might be more significant in international than it is in Poland. I think, yeah, you're very well informed when it comes to the relative shares in things like top of the funnel in traffic and things of that nature. They are more material in the CE-3, in Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Hungary, than they are in Poland. But I don't think the nature of their play is that different in that it's still really kind of a niche demand, which is not directly what Allegro is about.
Allegro is much more about branded Western European products, so we're mainly competing with all the more legacy incumbent players across those three countries. But this more sort of treasure hunt type shopping, as we've called it in previous quarters, that's being done by the Chinese. That really doesn't survive well with these three euro charges. So they probably are under a lot of pressure all the way across Europe, and it may be that it's showing up a bit more clearly in the growth rates, in international than it is in Poland. But as I said, I don't think what we're selling is a direct substitute for most of what they do.
Thank you, Jon. So we are now ready to wrap up with a follow-up question from Cesar from Bank of America. Cesar, go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for allowing me for follow-up. I just wanted to discuss about the new initiative. For now, to boost GMV growth, for now, you have two, in terms of these new services. I have two questions. First, when do you think you will be ready to share some preliminary KPIs so we understand what to track and how well this is progressing? The second question, is it possible that in the next year, we see more of these initiatives, more of these services being sold on the Allegro platform? Thank you so much.
Cesar. Of course, in 2027, we will be ready, I guess, to share some data related to development of both categories. I can say that, we see and we have much more initiatives, and I guess, one of the key ones is related to AI, because we see huge opportunity to use AI and to boost our GMV. As you know, this is something deeply implemented in every single piece of our platform. Of course, we have quite big appetite, and being strong player on the services market, and we see that first reaction of the market, and how we are able to combine services with physical goods we have on the marketplace and also with value-added services like financial ones.
It looks very promising, and we see that, thanks our Allegro Pay, thanks to other capabilities we have on the platform, the demand is really high and satisfaction of customers, what is even more important, on the very good level. So it looks promising. Of course, this is again, quite early stage. So I guess in 2027, we will be ready to share some details, about development, about some perspective of growth of both categories. But, I guess we will be ready also to share some bigger picture related to our presence on the services market. Because the value of the services market is really promising. So we want to play one of the crucial roles.
Thank you so much for that. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcin. The last question today comes again from Andrew Ross from Barclays. Andrew, go ahead.
Sorry, guys. I thought I would squeeze one in on AI. Interesting that the AI system has got to 500,000 monthly users. Can you talk a bit about how those users are behaving? Are you seeing engagement deepen as people start to use that tool? Then, I guess a follow-up from that, there is a lot of innovation and development going on in kind of generalized AI agents right now. I guess a good example is the Muse product that Meta came out with recently. What is your kind of latest thinking in terms of how the Allegro platform or agents on Allegro could start to engage with generalized assistants to facilitate agentic commerce going forwards? Thanks.
Firstly, we are very satisfied achieving 500,000 active users using our assistant every single month. This is really great number and we see this high increase week over week. Secondly, thanks to that, we see that some group of customers, they are much more active than in the past. For example, using assistant to be advised, to be inspired or, for example, to compare some products. So, we see impact on some selected categories or products, and we see that conversion can be, in some cases, significantly higher.
So it looks also very promising. As we mentioned before today, we have several partnerships with global industry leaders, starting with OpenAI, Google, but we just added, as a partner, ElevenLabs, also to use some AI voice assistants as a new capability available on the platform. Not only, because you should know that we also implemented some AI functionalities to our APMs, which is very innovative approach, and this is something, in some cases, positively surprising our customers.
So we do believe that AI will be one of the key drivers, and will be improving our conversions on the marketplace, also in the application, but also in some cases, outside marketplace. So we stay more than optimistic and we really see the positive impact of AI. Of course, firstly, we are focused on growth, but of course, we use also AI as a tool or as tools to boost productivity in the company.
Thank you, Marcin. This answer concludes our presentation for today. We are looking forward to seeing you during our upcoming investor events. The Q3 results are just less than two months away. Thank you very much for attending our call.