Bpost Aktie

Ladies and gentlemen, hello and welcome to the Bnode First Quarter 2026 Analyst Conference Call. On today's call, we have Mr. Philippe Dartienne, CFO. Please note this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to your host, Philippe Dartienne, CFO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to present you our first quarter result as CFO of Bnode. With me, I have Alexandra and Antoine from Investor Relations. We posted the materials to our website this morning and I will walk you through the presentation and will then take your question. As usual, 2 question each, which ensure everyone gets a chance to be addressed in the upcoming hour. I will start with our quarterly financial results, then provide an update on the progresses on our key strategic initiatives during the quarter before concluding with our financial outlook.

As you can see on the highlights on Page 3, our group operating income for the first quarter amounted to EUR 1.063 billion representing a year-on-year decrease of EUR 56 million or 5%. This performance reflects a combination of factors. First, as expected, we saw the impact of contract termination at Radial U.S., which were announced in the course of last year and already incorporated in our outlook we presented earlier this year. This termination resulted in a 11% year-on-year revenue decline or EUR 38 million and together with temporary top line pressure at Staci Americas largely offset by the 4% top line growth achieved at Paxon Europe.

Second, in Belgium in addition to the revenue decline following the termination of the 679 contract, domestic mail volumes declined by 14.3%. This was only partially offset by a parcel volume growth of 9.1%. In our cross-border activities, we also recorded higher inbound volume from Asia, which supports overall parcel flows. Overall, and as expected, the accelerated decline in mail volumes and the termination of the 679 activities weighed on the EBIT on the bpost segment despite the positive contribution from our ongoing reorganization measures.

That said, at Paxon despite a sharp contraction in top line, we were able to deliver EBIT growth reflecting a strong cost discipline in North America and solid operational execution in Europe. As a result, group adjusted EBIT reached EUR 33 million, down EUR 8 million compared to last year and broadly in line with our expectations. Before turning to the financial performance of our business units, let me highlight as shown on Slide 4, that beyond the evolution of EBIT, our adjusted net profit reflects a EUR 12 million improvement in financial results. This improvement was mainly driven by favorable noncash FX effects and higher net income from our treasury investment partially offset by higher interest expense related to the bonds issued in June last year.

Let me now move to detailed performance of the 3 segments. I am now on Slide 5 covering the bpost segment. Revenues for the segment declined by EUR 21 million to EUR 524 million year-on-year. Domestic mail revenue decreased by EUR 21 million or 7.2%. Mail and Press volumes contracted by 14.3% in the quarter compared with minus 7.5% last year and in line with mid-teens volume decline guidance we provided earlier this year. This accelerated decline mainly reflects lower transaction mail volumes following the introduction of mandatory B2B e-invoicing as of the beginning of the year as well as the termination of several advertising contracts.

Overall, the decline in mail volumes had a negative revenue impact of around EUR 40 million, which was partially offset by roughly half by positive price and mix effect of plus 7.1% or EUR 19 million. Parcels revenue increased by EUR 7 million or 5.8% year-on-year driven by volume growth of 9.1% partially offset by a negative price/mix effect of 3.3% during the quarter. On the volume side, the reported 9% growth corresponds to an underlying growth of around 5% after adjusting for the estimated volume loss linked to the strike in February last year when parcel volume declined by 12% in that month and over 2% in the full quarter.

As observed in recent quarters, growth continued to be driven by strong performance of marketplaces. This dynamic weighs on product and customer mix and explains negative price and mix evolution of minus 3.3% despite underlying price increases. Finally, revenues from other activities including retail value-added services and personnel logistics declined by EUR 7 million year-over-year. This mainly reflects our revenue following the termination of the 679 activities at the beginning of the year as well as lower revenue from Fines solution partially offset by higher revenue at DynaGroup.

Let's move to the P&L of bpost on Page 6. Including higher intersegment revenues from inbound cross-border volume processed through the domestic network, total operating income declined by 3.1% or EUR 17 million year-on-year. On the cost side, OpEx including D&A decreased by 1.2% or EUR 6 million mainly driven by 2 opposing effects. First, we recorded a reduction of approximately 1,260 lower FTEs and interim staff representing a decrease of more than 5% reflecting the benefits from the ongoing reorganization of our distribution rounds and retail offices.

And second, this was partially offset by higher salary costs per FTE, up 2% year-on-year following the March '25 and '26 salary indexations. Despite last year EBIT impact of around EUR 6 million for the 2-week strike, EBIT declined by EUR 11 million year-on-year. This evolution was mainly driven by the anticipated acceleration of the structural mail decline and the termination of the 679 contract, only partially mitigated by parcel growth and the benefit of our reorganization measures.

Moving on to Paxon on Slide 7. Broadly in line with the trend we observed in the fourth quarter, 2 main effects came into play during the quarter. At Paxon Europe, revenues remained broadly stable year-over-year. We recorded around 4% growth across European businesses and geographies with some activities still achieving high single-digit growth. This positive momentum was, however, offset by a negative performance at Staci Americas which is reported within Paxon Europe, following a contract termination in the fourth quarter. This resulted in a significant revenue decline during the quarter compounded by an adverse FX impact of EUR 5 million.

At Paxon North America, revenues declined by EUR 39 million. At constant exchange rate, this corresponds to an 11% decrease driven by 3 factors: revenue churn from contract termination announced last year together with mid-single-digit negative same-store sales evolution partially offset by the in-year revenue contribution of around EUR 27 million from new customers, of which 40% are Radial Fast Track clients. Let's move to the P&L of Paxon on Slide 8. Against this backdrop, total operating income declined by 9.3% or minus EUR 40 million year-on-year. Operating expenses, including D&A, decreased at a faster pace down 10.4% or EUR 44 million.

This cost reduction was primarily achieved in North America driven by lower variable OpEx in line with the revenue evolution at Radial U.S. while maintaining a solid variable contribution margin. These effects were further reinforced by fixed costs and headcount actions. As a result, adjusted EBIT increased by EUR 4 million to EUR 11 million in the quarter with growth recorded in both Europe and North America. In Europe, this reflects top line growth combined with productivity gains. In North America, EBIT growth was driven by cost containment measures, which more than offset the ongoing top line pressure.

Turning now to Landmark Global on Slide 9. At Landmark Europe, revenues increased by EUR 8 million or plus 10% year-over-year. Once again this quarter growth was driven by strong increase in volume from Asia across all major destinations, most notably Belgium supported by large Chinese e-commerce platform as well as the United States. In addition, other European lanes continue to grow as well. At Landmark North America, excluding unfavorable FX effect, revenue was slightly up year-over-year. This reflects on one hand, soft volume growth in the context of a macroeconomic slowdown and on the other hand, a negative mix effect with higher share of domestic volumes and lower Canada to U.S. volumes.

Overall, Landmark Global operating income increased by EUR 5 million or plus 3.4% year-on-year. As shown on Page 10, OpEx and D&A increased by 7.7%. This was primarily driven by high transportation cost linked to volume growth including increased inbound volume with Belgium as [indiscernible] destination. In addition, the quarter was impacted by unfavorable phasing cost effects both in transport and payroll, which we expect to reverse over the coming quarters. As a result, adjusted EBIT decreased to just under EUR 15 million. This decline mainly reflects the temporary cost phasing effect, which offset the underlying profitable growth in Europe and to a lesser extent, in North America.

Moving on to Corporate segment on Slide 11. The adjusted EBIT improvement is driven primarily by cost development. Strengthened cost management and a 1% FTE more than absorbed the 2% salary indexation resulting in an improved adjusted EBIT of EUR 3 million to minus EUR 9 million. Let's now move to the cash flow on Slide 12. The net cash inflow for the quarter amounted to EUR 110 million compared with EUR 91 million last year. This improvement mainly reflects favorable working capital movements and continued CapEx discipline.

Overall, the key drivers were as follows. Cash flow from operating activities before changes in working cap amounted to EUR 114 million representing a EUR 17 million decrease year-on-year mainly driven by lower EBITDA. Change in working capital and provision contributed to EUR 74 million. The EUR 29 million positive variance year-on-year mainly reflects 2 effects. First, the settlement of a client balance; and second, the payment of a cash advance in the context of the 679 activities transferred to BNP Paribas Fortis. While a small part of these activities are still partially subcontracted to bpost, we received a working capital injection in return.

It's important to note that this movement is expected to reverse over the course of the year. Net cash outflow from investing activities amounted to EUR 21 million, driven by CapEx for parcels. lockers and capacity expansion investment in our domestic fleet and international e-commerce logistics. This element largely explains the evolution of our free cash flow for the quarter. Finally, the net cash outflow from financing activities totaled EUR 57 million, broadly in line with last year and primarily reflecting payments related to lease liabilities.

Let me now briefly turn to our strategy and transformation update. I'm on Page 13. Two months ago we outlined our annual plan and key priorities for the year. Today, I will share a few updates and Chris will provide you a more comprehensive review when we present our half year results in August. Let me start with bpost with transformation efforts around 4 priorities area. First, the shift in our operating model. We are making progress on the key tracks of our future operating model notably through the rollout of dense and nondense distribution rounds as well as optimized correct model, which correspond to 2 complementary round types and a further centralization and automation of mail preparation.

These are designed to deliver operational efficiencies with FTE savings and space consolidation and optimization. As planned, this model was implemented during the first quarter in 5 distribution offices out of a national network of a bit less than 160 offices. We are progressing with the phased rollout over the coming quarters with a clear acceleration from Q3 onwards targeting around 50 distribution offices by year-end. In parallel, we continue to execute the reorganization of distribution offices and their delivery rounds together with the delivery of associated FTE savings.

On the full year plan, around 140 organization leading to approximately 1,150 lower FTEs. We delivered close to 40 reorganizations in the first quarter, fully in line with our planning. Importantly, the April strike has not impacted this transformation stream and execution remains on track. For perspective, we completed 138 reorganization last year, which are now clearly delivering results and contributed as observed in this quarter of a reduction of around 5% or approximately 1,260 FTEs within the bpost business unit.

Second, scaling out our out-of-home network. Building on the strong acceleration achieved last year where rollout already significantly increased, we continue to make solid progress on scaling out-of-home with the installation of 155 parcels, lockers or bbox, again fully in line with the annual plan and we also secured over 200 locations for future installations. As a reminder, our objective is to grow the APM network by 35% by year-end, which will bring us almost 1 year ahead of the ambition presented at the Capital Market Day. To date, we have a total of more than 2,700 lockers installed compared to around 1,250 at the end of '24 and around 2,550 at the end of '25.

As a result, during this first quarter we doubled the number of parcels delivered through the bbox network compared to last year. In parallel, bpost continued to improve customer convenience by scaling same-day locker delivery notably when home delivery is unsuccessful, which translate into higher NPS and improved profitability compared with next-day availability at post offices. Third, asset utilization optimization. We are actively exploring opportunities to improve the utilization of our assets and in particular our transport fleet, which is today primarily used during night hours.

As part of this effort, we launched a pilot transport of the future aimed at testing the creation of a stand-alone transport activity serving both internal and external customers. The pilot was initially designed around 20 trucks and 40 volunteer drivers, but interest has significantly exceeded expectation demonstrating strong engagement from the field and validating the relevance of the concept. The objective is to generate additional revenues, improve utilization of the fleet and drivers and progressively expand our service offering.

Finally, strengthening our B2B offering. As previously communicated, we recently launched an Innight delivery solution for our B2B customers initially based on the bbox, parcel, locker model. This quarter we have upgraded the offering by expanding it through 2 additional logistics subsidiaries within the Bnode Group turning it to a multi-model solution, including options such as car boot delivery and on-site deliveries. Overall, this initiative reflects our continued progress in reshaping the bpost operating model, improving capital and asset efficiency and reinforcing our value proposition to boost consumer and business customers.

Moving on to Paxon North America. At this stage, top line expansion in Paxon North America is progressing in a more challenging demand environment with same-store sales softer than initially anticipated while new customers contribution are progressively building up. In response and in order to remain on track to deliver our EBIT objective, we are implementing additional cost actions. These measures are not only designed to offset the near-term top line pressure, but also to further strengthen Paxon North America competitiveness in the market.

We have already made significant progress on variable cost where discipline remains very strong and where we continue to maintain a record high variable contribution margin. Building on this, the focus is now on fixed cost. The additional actions include optimizing our real estate footprint, reducing discretionary spending and rightsizing nonoperational fixed overhead to better align our organization with our volume. Following the actions already taken on both variable and fixed operation FTEs, we are now focusing on the nonoperational fixed cost base.

Let me now shift to Paxon Europe. The launch of our Forward plan marks the next steps in accelerating top line growth building on the now fully integrated and consolidated commercial platform that brings together Staci, Active Ants and Radial Europe led by Staci's commercial know-how. The plan is designed to amplify existing customers' momentum while expanding across products, geographies and customer relationship supported by more structured and disciplined sales execution.

In practice, this includes improved account coordination and closer executive level engagement ensuring we continue to deepen relationship with our core customers and capture the full value of those partnerships. At the same time, we are strengthening lead generation, leveraging our rebranding and continuing to invest in the development of our sales team to support incremental and sustainable growth.

Finally, I will conclude this section with Landmark Global where our focus in the first quarter remained twofold: expanding volume through new cross-border lanes while strengthening transport cost management. On the growth side, by leveraging agility and rapid opportunities capture in a challenging macroeconomic environment, we saw a strong acceleration of volumes towards the U.S. notably fueled by continued momentum on the China to U.S. lane. U.S. is, therefore, increasingly becoming a key destination alongside Belgium and Canada. And in Europe, we also see a solid pipeline of new lanes originating from Spain and the Netherlands.

This leads me to the outlook update for '26 on Slide 14. As a reminder, 2 months ago we introduced our '26 adjusted EBIT guidance in the range of EUR 165 million to EUR 195 million. Based on our first quarter performance, group results are broadly in line with our internal plan and our expectation at this stage of the year. Since then, however, we have been impacted by industrial action at bpost in April. As a result, while we are maintaining the adjusted EBIT guidance that we introduced 2 months ago, we are today more exposed to the lower end of the range. This reflects an estimated direct EBIT impact from the strike of around EUR 15 million.

Beyond this, fuel price development are currently not considered as a material risk for the group as we are largely insulated through a combination of pricing mechanism, contractual pass-throughs or internal cost hedging measures depending on the entity. That said, continued vigilance remains of course required as the current outlook does not reflect potential indirect and long-term commercial impact resulting from the April strike nor does it factor potential effects relating to the current geopolitical situation in Iran.

This could include industrial disruption linked to fuel shortages, higher energy cost as well as a broader impact on inflation, consumer confidence, disposable income and spending and therefore, on the top line development. Overall, while we remain within our community guidance range, the April strike put significant pressure on the guidance. And although this has been widely and intensively covered by Belgium media, for those less familiar with the situation beyond our own market, let me briefly summarize what happened and the impact identified to date.

In April, bpost experienced a 5-week nationwide strike in Belgium, which significantly disrupted our sorting and delivery operations. The impact was most pronounced in Wallonia and in the Brussels region. As a result, we accumulated a backlog of more than 16 million letters and 0.7 million parcels. In addition, we estimated a loss of approximately 3.2 million parcels volume mainly due to customers diverting shipments to competitors. The strike was triggered by employee opposition to certain elements of the ongoing transformation plan, in particular proposed adjustment to starting hours, which shifts up to 2 hours later in the morning.

These changes are aimed at enabling later parcel cut-off times and better aligning our operation with customer requirements in an increasingly competitive parcels market. From a financial perspective, our current assessment is that the direct EBIT impact of the strike is estimated around EUR 15 million expected to materialize in the Q2 result. This estimate excludes any potential future indirect impact and mainly reflects 3 direct elements: revenue losses in both Mail and Parcels including quality-related penalties, incremental costs linked to contingency measures and the cost associated with clearing the accumulated backlog.

Our operational and commercial teams are currently fully mobilized to clear the backlog as quickly as possible while actively working to rebuild customer confidence and address the reputational impact resulting from the strikes. As mentioned, while we consider this estimate to be robust for the direct impact, it does not capture potential longer-term and indirect impact. which is why we continue to closely monitor the situation.

With this, I'm now ready to take your questions. As usual, 2 questions each. Operator, please open the line.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities.

I have 2, please. The first one is on the strikes in Belgium. I appreciate the direct impact of EUR 15 million. But is there a bit more color that you can give on those quality penalties and these contingent measures? How we should look at that when these costs will be booked? Will that also be Q2 or I think it will also be a bit later in the year for the quality penalties? That's 1 angle of course. Secondly, you also have the commercial impact. You had strikes last year.

The lasting impact remains a bit more limited I would assume looking at the volumes in the remainder of 2025. But now second year on a row and a bit of a bigger strike, let's just say. What has been your feedback here from customers? You say that you estimate to have lost 3.2 million parcels to competitors this quarter, which I assume is 3% to 4%. Will they be coming back or how have your discussions with these customers been? So that would be my first question.

And then secondly, we have seen in the news that Amazon is also opening its supply chain logistics network. I'm just wondering if you look a bit at the Amazon offering today in the U.S., how does this overlap with your existing activities at Radial and Landmark and how you are looking at this given that the same-store sales at Radial are already down mid-single digits in the recent quarters. So any comment on that would be useful.

Okay. Thank you, Michiel, for your question. So strike direct impact, they will mostly be booked in the second quarter. The top line impact is in the month of April. Pure technically there were 2 days of strike in the month of March, but it's really immaterial. Most of it is in the month of April so the loss of revenue will materialize definitely in the second quarter. The contingency cost that we had to support was some storage cost. I'm sure you have read in the newspaper that we had some of our customers ask us to store the parcels in a location because their own warehouse were totally full.

So there are some costs associated with that. Sometimes we have redirected some parcels to some of our subsidiaries to deliver the parcels. These are extra cost that we have supported. And there will be also a bit of the cost linked with the decrease of the backlog where we are injecting roughly 200 temporary workers on top of the usual one to decrease the backlog as soon as possible. So this is a bit what it entails in terms of direct cost and contingency costs. When it comes to the commercial aspect of it, I will be as transparent as I used to be.

Our customers were not delighted to say the least, especially in the context that you rightly mentioned. We already had a strike last week like last year once again and customers have indeed diverted their volumes. Now it's really up to us to demonstrate that from an ongoing basis, we are capable of coming back to a high level quality service as we used to do when we are not on strike. And I think it will be a discussion customer by customer and a decision customer by customer at the speed at which they will reinject volume into the network. They are already reinjecting volume into the network, no discussion, but some customers have not returned back.

And as I said, it will be a more one-on-one discussion with each of them. So the commercial impact will be seen on one hand in the second quarter by the speed at which the customer come back and at which level and potentially more longer effect as some customers have definitely opted for a dual-carrier strategy while some of them were only mono-carrier with us prior to this strike. So it's up to us and it's really the willingness of the management and the people on the ground to deliver as much qualitative service as possible and as soon as possible. As we speak right now, we could say that we are back in full operation. There is no strikers anymore since roughly a week so we are in full operational mode.

Your question on Amazon, yes, but it's not the first time that a major player is developing this kind of activities. It will be 1 more competitor than we had in the past. We had some big retailer chain not so long ago who decided to do the same. So fundamentally, I don't think it will have a direct impact on us. Indeed, you pointed out the same-store sales evolution, the negative one. Indeed, it was in the first quarter more than what we had anticipated. And you will be reminded that same-store sales evolution has been negative for multiple quarters in a row. We told that Q3, Q4 last year we had reached the bottom, but it seems that it's not the case and we had, as you mentioned it, a mid-single-digit decrease again in the first quarter of '25. I hope this answers your question.

If I can ask a small follow-up on the strikes. I know commercial impact you won't see or have visibility on that in the short term or maybe a bit of course. But on the indirect costs for the storage and the quality penalties, is it fair to assume that we will get a number on that during the second quarter results?

It's already partially included. Frankly, in the impact, the biggest part is relating to the lost volume and the related EBIT and not so much about those contingency costs because those measures that have been put in place are rather limited if you look at the total operation cost.

The next question comes from Frank Claassen from Degroof Petercam.

My first question is on Paxon on the financial performance. If I look at Q1, minus 9% on top line and 2.8% on EBIT margin yet if I recall well, one of the building blocks of your full year guidance was Paxon to reach low to mid-single-digit growth for the full year with a 6% to 8% EBIT margin. So I'm struggling to see how we can get there in the rest of the years because that's quite a gap. So could you elaborate how you think you can bridge this gap? That's my first question. And then secondly, on the automatic wage inflation in Belgium, you just made a step of 2%. When do you expect to see the next step and what is, let's say, baked into your current guidance on that one?

Let me start with the second one and I will come back with the first one. So indeed, we learned late afternoon yesterday that there will be an additional 2% step increase. We had anticipated to have 1 in 2026. We had anticipated that to happen a bit later in the year. We had 1 month we have -- this step-up comes 1 month ahead of what we had in our forecast. Coming to Paxon, your point is absolutely right and we will not be able to catch up. We will not be able to catch up. Different reason to that one if you allow me to elaborate a bit.

If we look at Radial U.S. or Paxon U.S., if you want; as I said, we are facing same-store sales which are significantly higher than anticipated. It depends if it's a negative, it goes up. Antoine will try to correct me, but I repeat to make sure that the message is clear. There is a decrease and the decrease is bigger than what we anticipated and it's across the board on all customers. The second point is that we were anticipating a pickup of the contribution of new customers especially in the second half of the year. We don't see it coming to the expected level. So we will be worse than one anticipated. This being said, there is a top line discussion.

And there is a second one when it comes to EBIT contribution and cash contribution and there we believe that with all the measures that have already been taken and the ones that are in the pipe as we speak, we could be able to offset that negative evolution in terms of top line. What kind of measures are we talking about? Some of them we already mentioned them and now we are implementing them, Optimization of real estate footprint including sublease of underutilized facilities, divesting some noncore assets, reduction of discretionary spending travel and entertainment and also rightsizing fixed cost and headcount aligned to lower volume.

Again there is nothing new on that one except the fixed cost one, as I said, that was not the primary focus over the last quarters, now it has become. So all in all, I do believe that those measures will be able to offset largely the decline or lower the development -- the top line development at a lower than anticipated -- the lower top line development. That was for Radial. Staci Americas, indeed we are low in the top line evolution. We lost a major customer at the end of 2025, which is materializing in the Q1 result. So 2 elements on that one and I don't want to oppose them, but I want to make the comparison.

As much as I said that at Radial, we see a lower revenue contribution from the pipeline development, it's not the case in Staci Americas. The pipeline of Staci Americas is very strong and we believe that it will be able to offset part of the losses of the volume related to the departure of 1 customer combined with fixed cost measures to protect the top line evolution to a lesser extent than Radial, but it will contribute as well. So to summarize, we have to recognize that, yes, we are a bit behind.

This being said, element that I really want to point out is that all over the place within the Paxon world, the profitability is and remain very high. Variable contribution at Radial, you might tell me, Philippe, you tell us that. Since I will be close to 4 years in bpost, I'm telling you that every quarter, but it's reality and it's still there. So this is an achievement. And also despite a lower top line development, when you look at the Paxon Europe environment, we see still significant or very strong gross margin in the existing business, which is very reassuring. It's very, very robust.

And we also see thanks to the fact that in Europe, the 3 former brands are now being operated together so Staci, Active Ants and Radial. We see a pickup on the performance in Central Europe mainly by operating all these 3 brands on the same territory altogether. So it's a bit of mixed bag, but there is still very good and reassuring positive element.

The next question comes from Henk Slotboom from the IDEA!.

I've got 1 clarification question and 1 other question. The clarification question relates to what you just talked about, the impact on margins and the mitigation impact on margins. We are talking about margins in the U.S. and not about the absolute EBIT I assume.

On one, it's yes and no, Henk. So we maintained the margin. But if we compare to the guidance that we had that expected a development of the top line, since there will be less top line, it will be additional EBIT contribution to offset that one. So it's a bit yes to both in fact.

Okay. That's clear. Then on Landmark and that's basically 2 questions folded into 1. The higher transportation costs, Philippe. I thought that the organization was structured in a way that there are back-to-back agreements. So you know on forehand roughly what you're going to pay, what you have to ask your clients based on your estimated costs. The transportation cost impact, didn't you use a fuel surcharge for example or something like it? You're an asset-light player in that field or is this reflecting the disadvantage of an asset-light model that when capacity is scarce, we saw a lot of disruption in sea transport, in air freight and that sort of things that you end up paying a higher cost price anyhow no matter what to get the stuff from for example China to Europe. That's the first question.

And connected to it, is it fair to assume that Landmark had a bit of tailwind in Europe because the French have introduced the EUR 2 levy per product line already in January whereas the rest of the EU is doing that as of 1st July. So I've been hearing a lot of stories about Chinese taking their goods to Schipol Airport, Amsterdam and Liege in Brussels instead to avoid this hassle of the EUR 2 and to avoid the EUR 2 as a whole. Perhaps you can highlight that.

Sure. I will start with the second one. Indeed, you are well informed. We see in Liege, I was just right before this call with our guy in charge of the inbound volume in Belgium, we see an increase of activity in Liege. But what we are seeing is that the planes are coming, that they are offloaded, but the containers are directly loaded to trucks to go either to France, go to the Netherlands or to Germany. So we might have a small ripple effect in our last mile activities in Belgium because we only do that in Belgium. But I would not say that it's significant, but it's a fact.

This being said, it's also something we are contemplating since we are the operator. We are the incumbent in Belgium, can our activity and the transport one could play a role into capturing part of those volumes. But most of them, as you rightly pointed out, are not directed to the Belgium market. They are mostly directed to the non-Belgium market. So that's for the EUR 2 taxes. When it comes to Landmark and transport cost, I would like to broaden a bit the debate and also emphasize the fact that Landmark is managing the transport for all the group for Bnode.

Of course transport for Belgium last mile is limited because we do the last mile activities. But for all the fulfillment activities within the Paxon world, it's managed through Landmark and the one who are benefiting -- everyone is benefiting from the good condition that we could get. So it's important to notice that that activity is not only limited to Landmark business unit. Now your question about transportation cost and the fact that they are evolving upwards due to different elements, it's really a pass-through for us and we do not see an EBIT impact from that.

The next question comes from Marc Zeck from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Really on, let's say, consumer sentiment or the impact of higher energy prices on the consumer. Could you elaborate a bit what you currently see both for the U.S. and Europe in your business? You talk about, let's say, lower same-store sales in the U.S. for Radial. Do you feel like this is related to the energy price increases and therefore drain on consumer finances and therefore mostly concentrated in March and looking forward maybe in April or have you seen lower same-store sales for the entirety of Q1 that obviously includes then January and February as well?

And what you can see in your European business not only Paxon, but maybe also Landmark Global and the parcel business in Belgium. How did March compare to January and February? Was there any impact from higher fuel prices on the consumer and what do you see currently for April? That would be the first question. Second question, if you could elaborate a bit on why you don't see a material impact from Amazon in the U.S. I guess from what we can get from Amazon's press release, it's at least to me not entirely clear where they are actually really competing.

Do you feel like they are opening up really contract logistics proper 3PL services in the U.S. or it's more like warehousing with not too much direct management of inventory there. So I could guess that if it's just warehousing, there wouldn't probably be much of an impact. But if they do proper 3PL contract logistics as well, I can imagine that maybe that is a bit higher. So it would be great to hear your thoughts on what you believe Amazon is actually doing in the future.

Okay. It's going to become an habit. I will start with the second and we'll continue with the first one. So I'm not in the shoes of Amazon. So I recommend you to direct your question to them on that one because I don't want to speculate on what they are doing. What I'm telling you is that we do not see impact from that at least so far. They have always operated their warehouse sometimes themselves, sometimes outsourcing to contract logistic players. They have been active in transport. They are permanently starting testing or going with new activities around the 3PL. That's true. But so far, we don't see any impact from that and again I cannot speak for Amazon.

When it comes to the consumer sentiment, I don't have the figures for the U.S., but I think the same-store sales is a good proxy for measuring what is happening there. As I said, 7 quarters in a row, then the same-store sales is going down and it even accelerated in the first quarter of this year. I don't know what the next -- the further part of the year will bring us. As I said, we already thought that at the end of Q3, Q4 we had reached the bottom. We have been proven wrong on that one. So it's difficult to speculate on that.

When it comes to Europe, I have the consumer sentiment numbers in front of me. And if we ended up the last quarter of last year something which is, I would say, breakeven; slightly positive in November, very slightly positive in December. The beginning of the year was -- Jan and Feb were more positive, but we saw a total flip of that consumer confidence in the month of March and even more so in the month of April. So again in terms of trend, it's difficult to speculate. But currently, we see a downwards trend.

The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays.

I've got couple of follow-ups on your strikes in Belgium. So first question will be I mean what sort of confidence have you got in terms of the strikes to be totally over or do you see a risk of the strikes coming back? And to what sense negotiations and discussions are sort of stopping you to go through your transformational change, operational changes you wanted to make. So what is, let's say, also the negative impact from implementing your operational changes slower than what you had thought maybe at the start of the year?

And the second question is on your volume growth in April. I appreciate you quantifying the hard numbers. But if you could give us a bit of color of what has been the volume growth or the volume decline in April for parcel volumes in Belgium? And have you seen, let's say, the growth rate picking up in May post end of strikes?

Again I will start with the second one. Thank you for your questions, Marco. Volumes decline that we have seen in the month of April is around 25% and it's still too early to comment on what is happening in May. When it comes to the strike and the risk associated with them so I just want to remind that several elements. So there is in the mind and I don't want to speak for them. But based on what my colleagues are telling me while discussing with our social partners is that there is a clear understanding of the need to change the business model. They clearly understand the fact that the mail is no longer bringing growth. It's declining at high pace and it will not come back.

They totally acknowledge it as well as that the change in the demand from the customer, they totally acknowledge it. What is very difficult for them from a human standpoint for all the affiliates and all our colleagues. If we look back 3 to 4 years back when we still had the press concession, we had colleagues who were waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning coming back at the office to be able to have delivered all the press and the magazine prior to 7:30 in the morning. Those volumes are gone because the press concession ended up and we are no more except in Wallonia still for until the end of this year. We are no more distributing those volumes.

So that was already a first shock for them, which is impacting their life because we have that concept which is very usual in the mail business, which is when your job is finished, you can go. So those guys have since years not to say decades used to have a life organized about you start early, but you also finish early and if you want to have some activities after your hours or potentially if you decide to go for a second job, you had plenty of time to do it because most of these people, especially the one distributing the press; around 11, 12 in the day, they were done and they could do revert to other activities either professional or leisure or going and pick up the kids at school.

Then there has been a second element to that one is with declining mail volumes, the number of people that we need in our distribution network is decreasing. I mentioned the fact that last year we have been able to reorganize the offices. It has always been done over the last 15 years the reduction, the adjustment of the FTEs in the distribution network, but it accelerated I think over the last 2 years. Last year we reduced the headcount by more than 1,000 employees. We will continue doing the same in 2026 and people understand that. It's a mechanical consequence of the evolution of the business, but it's not easy to take it on board.

Also, the way we reorganize the offices with the combination of some routes, we have some dense and non-dense routes. We also want to extract more efficiency on that part. So it's an additional pressure on these people who sometimes in some offices when we adjust the headcount, it could lead to reduction of 15% to 16% of headcount in 1 particular distribution office. So it's tough on people, we have to recognize that. But there is a very clear understanding and no discussion on the need for change and the society is changing.

Again the fact that we want for some of our colleagues to delay the start of their day to be able to deliver the parcels -- to accept parcels, the cutoff time in the sorting center a bit later. Again it's a disruption into their private life. We have to recognize it. I do believe that it will take maybe a bit of time, but people will adjust to that one. I think I would be more worried if there would be a strong opposition on the need for change than, I would say, the short-term impact of the direct impact on their private life if I could say so.

So can we guarantee that strikes are over? No. Also, what I see is that our colleagues have at heart the willingness to serve the customer in a qualitative way and I don't think it has changed during the course of the strike. That gives a bit of time for people to swallow, digest, adjust and I'm very confident for the future.

Can I sneak another question, please? So you have kept today the guidance despite a EUR 15 million EBIT negative from the strikes plus wage increased 1 month before, let's say, your business plan, which from memory I think is about low single-digit million higher OpEx per month. So rough numbers, you now have got EUR 20 million EBIT headwinds compared to your original guidance, but you're still holding on the old guidance. Does this mean that beyond -- I mean you think you are sort of tracking or you were tracking at the upper end of the guidance and therefore minus this EUR 20 million, now you are at the low end of the guidance or how do you justify you keeping the guidance?

Thank you for your question. Indeed, we maintain the guidance; but as we said, we are more exposed to the low end of it. I think during the presentation and with the question of your colleagues, I had the opportunity to emphasize on the reaction on the cost side that we are putting in place everywhere. Good example again in Belgium, the reorganization has not stopped in the first quarter. They have not even stopped during the strike meaning that all this positive evolution in the cost development mean being more efficient. We are still planning and confident that we could execute them.

For all the other entities especially on Paxon, those guys are really committed to compensate the temporary shortfall or the slower development of the top line by cost measures and we have levers. It's not just a task that we put in an excel spreadsheet. We have detailed plans at various entity level, which lead us to believe that it could materialize. And hence, we have concluded that at this stage based on the direct impact, we still maintain our guidance though guiding more to the low end of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. So I will hand it back to Philippe to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

We would like to thank you, everybody, in the call for having taken the time to be with us and for your very pertinent questions. As a reminder, bpost NV will hold its AGM next Wednesday and our second quarter results will be released on August 7. In the meantime, we look forward to staying in touch. And thank you very much and have a great day.

Thanks for participating to the call. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the Bnode Fourth Quarter 2025 Analyst Conference Call. On today's call, we have Mr. Chris Peeters, CEO; and Mr. Philippe Dartienne, CFO. Please note, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to your host, Mr. Chris Peeters, CEO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining us. Today, I will be presenting our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results as CEO of Bnode. With me, I have Philippe Dartienne, our CFO; as well as Antoine Lebecq from Investor Relations.

We posted the materials on our website this morning. We will walk you through the presentation, and we'll then take your questions. As always, two questions each, would ensure everyone gets the chance to be addressed in the upcoming hour.

Let's get to the highlights of the full year results, and Philippe will then walk you through our fourth quarter '25 results.

On Page 3, you can see that Bnode, as we are now called, and I will come back to this in a few minutes, delivered results at the upper end of the EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million EBIT, guidance range that we set at the same time last year and progressively derisked quarter-after-quarter.

Despite pressure on top line development, we delivered an EBIT of EUR 179.7 million, while at the same time, remaining fully committed to the transformation of our business. At bpost as anticipated, top line decreased by around EUR 90 million. Mail and Press revenues declined by approximately EUR 100 million, reflecting both the accelerating structural volume erosion and the base effect as 2024 still included 6 months of the Press concession.

On the Parcel side, revenue increased slightly by around EUR 10 million as our volume growth was limited to 2%, notably impacted by the strikes actions we faced during the year. In response to these challenges, we progressed on important cost measures, particularly through operational reorganizations and a reduction of around 4% in FTEs. The full impact of these actions were mainly visible in the last 2 quarters of the year.

EBIT came in at EUR 67 million, down 50% year-on-year. The decline was primarily concentrated in the first half, reflecting the scope impact of the Press concession, while performance roughly stabilized in the second half of the year.

At Paxon, top line growth was primarily driven by the continued expansion of our European activities and even more significantly by the consolidation of Staci. This positive momentum was, however, largely offset by a 21% revenue decline at North America. As announced last year, Radial faced the departure of several major clients. Since then, we have been actively addressing this through a progressive reshaping of the customer portfolio towards the midsized segment.

At the same time, we maintained a strong focus on productivity with Radial, once again, delivering substantial cost savings. Supported by the contribution from Staci, EBIT increased slightly by EUR 7 million year-on-year, reaching just under EUR 59 million.

At Landmark Global, our U.S. business was as expected, impacted by tariff measures. Nevertheless, top line posted slight growth overall. This was supported by sustained activity in Canada and most importantly strong momentum in Asian volumes across all key destinations, including, of course, Belgium, which is particularly accretive from an EBIT standpoint. Combined with continued productivity gains, notably true or Transport Center of Excellence, this enabled us to increase EBIT to EUR 85 million.

Let me make one final remark on our financial highlights. As you can see, on a reported basis, the group recorded a net loss of EUR 39 million, in line with the dividend policy reaffirmed at our Capital Markets Day in June. And with no change to that framework, the Board of Directors will recommend to the general meeting in May, not to distribute a dividend this year. This reported net loss is primarily explained by one-off costs recognized at Radial North America, Philippe will elaborate on this in a moment.

But before handing over, I would like to briefly reflect on our key strategic priorities in 2025 and how they continue to shape our transformation journey. In 2025, our transformation gathered significant momentum across Bnode, delivering tangible results and reaffirming the strength of our strategic direction.

We restructured and strengthened the Bnode Executive Committee with a new CEO for Paxon North America and Paxon Europe as well as the people's management committee, including Group CEO and four members of the Group Executive Committee to accelerate strategy execution and better address emerging challenges.

We simplified the group brand architecture, moving from 31 brands to a clear 4-brand structure, bringing consistency and focus fully aligned with the group strategic repositioning.

At bpost, we made the operating model shift accelerated the transformation of our Belgian operating model across multiple tracks, including bulk rounds, now fully operational in all sorting centers, centralized preparation of Mail rounds and the reorganization of 138 distribution offices to adapt the cost base to new volumes, among others, due to lower Press volumes.

We also developed Out-of-Home at scale, expanded the locker network at record pace, reaching 2,500 bbox installations driving a 50% growth in locker volume in 2025. We also successfully launched Night Bbox Delivery, enabling time-critical deliveries before 7:00 a.m. with early phase pilots underway in the omnichannel segment.

At the retail network, we strengthened the strategic relevance and commercial contribution of our retail network by expanding multiple partnerships in among others, telco, utilities and banking, while reinforcing our societal inclusion role.

For Paxon, we continue to transition to mid-market client portfolio driven by the successful launch of Fast Track offering rapid and seamless integration with existing systems with 22 Fast Track clients onboarded, representing EUR 38 million of in-year revenue.

We also successfully integrated Staci into our new Paxon organization. We established an integrated country structure across Staci, Radial Europe and Active Ants, paving the way for accelerated commercial development and we exceeded the initial cost synergies target with the 2026 target already secured.

And for Landmark Global, we achieved strong progress in leveraging group-wide capabilities, notably through the introduction of a Transport Center of Excellence, realizing EUR 50 million of group-wide savings in 2025. Staci transport synergies, Last Mile group contracts, et cetera, are included in this.

And in terms of market resilience, we demonstrated the ability to navigate an increasingly complex trade environment including rapidly involving trade tariffs, while maintaining operational stability and commercial momentum.

I will now hand over to Philippe for the quarterly results, and I will then take the floor to share with you our strategic priorities for 2026 and the financial outlook.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning to all. As you can see on the highlights on Page 5, our group operating income for the fourth quarter came at EUR 1.242 billion, a decrease of EUR 93 million or 7% year-on-year.

This performance reflects a combination of factors. As expected, we saw the impact of contract terminations at Radial U.S., which we already flagged earlier this year. This termination materialized through the quarter and drove a 20% revenue decline year-on-year on EUR 82 million, largely offsetting the 4% top line growth at Paxon Europe.

In parallel, the 9.2% decline -- 9.2% decline in domestic Mail volume, excluding Press which was only partially compensated by close to 3% Parcel growth volume in Belgium. Note that Parcel volumes were impacted by several national strikes in October and November.

In terms of cross-border activities, we also recorded higher Asian inbound volumes, which supported overall Parcel growth. Overall, while our top line remained under pressure, we continue to adapt our cost base effectively, sorry. As a result, group adjusted EBIT reached EUR 83 million, broadly in line with last year. This outcome reflects the positive effect of our reorganization measures and improve peak efficiency at bpost as well as margin actions at Paxon U.S.

Before turning to the financial performance of our business units, let me highlight, as shown on Slide 6, that our group reported EBIT stands at EUR 10 million. Beyond the usual PPA adjustment, this mainly reflects the EUR 55 million one-off charges related to the real estate portfolio rationalization and technology stack simplification at Radial U.S., in line with maximize the core initiative presented to you at the Capital Market Day in June.

Let's move now to the details of our three segments. I'm on Page 7. With the bpost segment previously Last Mile. We see that the revenue declined by EUR 70 million to EUR 574 million. Domestic Mail recorded around EUR 17 million decline in revenue, of which EUR 11 million stemmed from transactional and advertising mails and EUR 5 million from Press.

Excluding Press, Mail volumes contracted by 9.2% in the quarter compared to 8.1% same quarter last year. The decline in Mail volumes had a negative revenue impact of around EUR 21 million and was partially offset only by half, through positive price and mix effect of plus 4.2% or roughly EUR 10 million. As a result, the Domestic Mail revenue were down 4.9% or EUR 11 million year-over-year.

Note that on a full year basis, this Mail volume declined by 9.8% at the upper end of our guidance and was mitigated by a price/mix impact of plus 4.3%.

Our Parcels revenue increased by EUR 3 million or plus 1.7% year-over-year, driven by volume growth of close to 3% and a slightly negative price/mix effect of 1.2% in the quarter. On the volume side, the reported 9.2% actually correspond to an average daily growth of plus 1.3% and include a shortfall of just under 1% due to national strike that took place in Belgium in October and November.

Over the past months, and particularly during the peak, growth was mainly supported by strong performance of marketplaces, which also contribute to our negative price/mix impact of about 1.2%.

For the full year, our average daily volume grew by 2.4% despite the negative impact of the fourth quarter strike and more importantly, the bpost strike in February during which a significant share of volume shifted temporarily to competitors. These disruptions resulted in our overall volume shortfall of a bit more than 1% for the year. Excluding this impact, our volume would have landed at the low end of our annual volume guidance.

Revenue from our other activities, including Retail, Value Added Services and Personalize Logistics decreased by 3% year-over-year, notably with lower revenue from fine solutions partially offset by higher revenues at DynaGroup.

Let's move to the P&L of bpost on Page 8. Including the higher intersegment revenue from inbound cross-border volumes handled in the domestic network, our total operating income was down by 2.3% or EUR 14 million.

On the cost side, OpEx and D&A decreased by 2.7% or EUR 16 million, mainly driven by two effects: lower staffing with FTEs and interims down 5%, reflecting improved peak efficiency and lower volumes. The benefit from the ongoing reorganization of our distribution rounds and retail offices implemented over the previous quarters and which ultimately concluded in line with annual plan target despite delays accumulated until June due to strikes.

And on the other hand, higher salary cost per FTE up plus 2% following March '25 salary indexation. In contrast with the first half of the year, when EBIT had contracted sharply by almost EUR 64 million year-on-year, mainly due to the end of the Press concession in June '24, we see now that despite the structural Mail decline, Parcel growth and the benefits of our organization are helping to mitigate EBIT erosion. EBIT decline was limited to EUR 3 million in the second half of the year and even showed a slight improvement in this fourth quarter.

I would like to highlight that our peak efficiency improved not only versus last year, but for the first time ever also versus the full year run rate.

Moving on to Paxon, previously, 3PL, on Page 9. In terms of Paxon revenues, two effects came into play. First one, at Paxon Europe, revenue remained broadly stable year-over-year, while we recorded around 4% growth this quarter across European businesses and geographies, with some activities even achieving high single-digit growth. We also felt the negative impact at Staci Americas, which is reported on the Paxon Europe, where a contract termination led to a significant revenue decline during the quarter.

At Paxon North America, revenues decreased by EUR 82 million. At constant exchange rate, this represents a 20% decline, driven by revenue churn from contract termination announced in '24 and '25. Mid-single-digit negative same-store sale and partially offset by the in-year contribution of a bit less than EUR 30 million from new customers of which 60% relating to Radial, Fast-Track clients. As expected, despite seeing positive and encouraging seniors on that front, we continue to feel the impact of the churn announced in '24 and '25.

We remain focused on executing our plans and we are confident that the ongoing stretch to core actions presented at the Capital Markets Day, expanding into, as Chris said it, new industries, client size and channel and strengthening our portfolio will deliver the intended benefits.

Let's move to the P&L of Paxon on Slide 10. With this total operating income decreased by 14.4% or EUR 82 million, while operating expense and D&A decreased by 13.2% or EUR 69 million. The reduction was primarily in North America, driven by lower variable OpEx in line with revenue evolution at Radial U.S. and sustained variable contribution margin. As a result, adjusted EBIT decreased by EUR 13 million to EUR 33 million in the quarter. This was mainly due to the outgoing top line pressure at Radial U.S. and to some extent, at Staci Americas to temporary productivity issues and an IT incident.

Note that Radial U.S. reached another record high margin during the peak season. And on a full year basis, Radial U.S. continued focus on productivity improvement delivered a 2% increase in variable contribution margin, equivalent to our cumulative benefits of EUR 16 million.

Looking at our reported EBIT of minus EUR 35 million, this reflects the EUR 55 million one-off charge related to the real estate portfolio rationalization and the technology stack simplification, at Radial U.S. I've mentioned earlier in the call, this is being totally in line with "Maximize the Core" initiative presented at our Capital Markets Day in June.

Moving on to Landmark Global, previously Cross-Border, on Page 11. Landmark Europe revenues increased by EUR 4 million or 4% year-over-year. This growth was driven by a solid volume increase from China across all major destinations, notably Belgium fueled by large Chinese platforms and U.S. Other European lanes continue to grow well with the exception of U.K. where adverse market conditions remain.

At Landmark North America, we continue to face volume headwinds, while the broader tariff environment is weighing on existing business and delaying new opportunities. However, this was offset by strong domestic volume growth in Canada and a strong peak period resulting at North America level in a high single-digit percentage growth in revenue, equivalent to 0.5% increase or EUR 0.4 million increase in euro, when including the negative FX impact development. Overall, our Landmark Global operating income increased by roughly EUR 7 million or 3.9%.

As shown on Page 12, OpEx and D&A increased at the same time by 3.1%, mainly reflecting higher transportation costs, driven by volume growth partially offset by lower rates on the new transport contracts. This links back to the Transport Center of Excellence that we presented at the Capital Markets Day. And from which we are now seeing tangible benefits across our various business units.

Adjusted EBIT increased slightly to just under EUR 26 million. And the productivity gains across the board resulted in margin improvement compared to last year.

Moving on to the Corporate segment on Page 13. Adjusted EBIT continued to improve as cost control measures on third-party and expand services as well as facility management initiatives helped offset higher payroll costs driven by additional FTEs in the March '25 salary indexation. This quarter also benefited from a one-off favorable impact from operational taxes. And as a result, our adjusted EBIT improved by EUR 7 million to minus EUR 2 million.

Let's now move to the cash flow on Slide 14. The net cash inflow from the quarter amounted to EUR 35 million compared with EUR 118 million last year, mainly reflecting the variation in working capital and higher coupons on the bonds. Overall, the main items to highlight are the following: cash flow from operating activities before changing working capital stood at EUR 149 million, a decrease of EUR 11 million versus last year, mainly driven by lower EBITDA and lower corporate tax payment.

Change in working capital and provisions amounted to EUR 57 million, the negative EUR 39 million variance year-on-year reflect the termination of the Press concession in June last year as well as some lower suppliers balances.

The net cash outflow from investing activities totaled EUR 61 million, driven by CapEx for parcels, lockers and capacity expansion, our domestic fleet and international e-commerce logistics. Note that on a full year basis, CapEx amounted to EUR 147 million, below our initial guidance of EUR 180 million, reflecting disciplined spending behavior. This constitutes the main variation in our free cash flow and the net cash outflow from financing activities amounted to EUR 110 million, mainly reflecting higher lease liabilities payment and higher bond coupons linked to the EUR 1 billion bond issuance in November 2024.

Chris, this brings us now to the strategic priorities of '26 and our financial outlook.

Thank you, Philippe. As we move in 2026, the focus shifts from piloting to scaling. Accelerating what works, executing with discipline and embedding successes structurally. For bpost, that means that the operating model will further shift to accelerate the transition towards a 24/7 logistics company. This includes the structural embedding of efficiencies and flexibilization levers. For example, the dual density rounds or the delayed curve that we will do.

At the Out-of-Home, we will further scale, expand the network coverage of 3,400 Bboxes installed and doubling the parcels delivered via lockers. We will continue to pilot and scale promising B2B services in omnichannels and for technicians. And also, we will negotiate an agreement for the Retail network with the Belgian state and entering into force as of January 2027.

For Paxon in North America, we will leverage and scale the proven Fast Track solution to deepen our presence in the mid-market segment. And for Europe, we will capitalize on the integrated country structure to accelerate up and cross-selling, improving asset utilization and driving commercial growth.

For Landmark Global, we will drive the full utilization of the Transport Center of Excellence, ensuring group-wide efficiencies and boosting profitable growth in a scale-driven market. And for the market, we will leverage our ability to navigate trade complexity to better support clients in managing cross-border complexity and evolving tariff dynamics. These strategic priorities lead me to our outlook for 2026.

I'm on Page 16 now. We are engaged in a profound transformation of our group and the strategic shift we have initiated is a multi-year journey. 2026 will be another important step in that transition. At a high level, the continued acceleration of our international logistics activity is expected to be the main driver of EBIT growth at group level.

At the same time, in our historical Belgian operation, we will remain focused on mitigating the structural mail decline, while further advancing our operational shift toward a more parcel-centric model. Overall, at group level, we are targeting an adjusted EBIT in the range of EUR 165 million to EUR 195 million for 2026.

For Paxon, we expect total operating income to grow in the low to mid-single-digit range in 2026. While in Europe, we anticipate mid- to high single-digit growth, supported by continued commercial momentum and further leveraging of our integrated logistics capabilities. In North America, the ongoing portfolio shift towards the midsize segment, notably through our Fast Track initiatives should offset the impact of customer share. On profitability, we expect an EBIT margin increase from 3.5% in 2025 to between 6% and 8% in 2026. This uplift will be driven by the combined strength of our new regional setup, realization of cost synergies and continued real estate optimization.

Then we turn to Landmark Global, where we are targeting a mid-single-digit top line growth for 2026. In Eurasia, momentum remained strong in our commercial activities, particularly driven by Asian volumes, while Postal volumes are expected to remain resilient.

In North America, growth should be more moderate. Market overcapacity continues to intensify competition and the uncertainty surrounding tariff measures is creating limited visibility and implied pressures on flows to and from the U.S. across most lanes.

In terms of profitability, the evolving business mix with a lower contribution from Postal and a higher share of commercial volumes is likely to weigh on margins leading to an expected EBIT margin in the range of 10% to 12%.

Finally, regarding bpost, we anticipate a low single-digit decline in revenue in 2026. This mainly reflects three factors: first, Mail volumes are expected to decline in the mid-teens range, while this will be partly mitigated by a favorable price/mix effect of around 5%, 6%, structural volume erosion remained significant.

As you observed in 2025, decline already accelerated, reaching around 10% at the upper end of our 8% to 10% guidance range. In 2026, we will also face the full impact of mandatory B2B e-invoicing in Belgium as well as the loss of certain advertising contracts.

Second, on the Parcel side, volumes should grow in the mid- to high single-digit range, primarily driven by large customers. As a result, despite the usual price adjustments, the overall price/mix is expected to remain broadly stable. In addition, as discussed during our Capital Markets Day, we will see the full year revenue impact from the loss of the 679 banking contract which was retendered and transferred to BNP Paribas Fortis as of January 1.

From a profitability perspective, this marks another year of revenue contraction, which will inevitably put pressure on margins. That said, we remain fully focused on aligning our cost base notably true, intensified distribution around reorganizations and further productivity gains. Altogether, this should translate into an EBIT margin of around 1% in 2026.

We are now ready to take your questions. Again, two questions each, please, so that everyone gets the chance to be addressed during the session. Operator, please open the lines.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities.

I had some questions on the 3PL or the Paxon business. First on profitability, a bit lower than what you guided for, for the start of the year. I was just wondering, can you give a bit more color on the temporary productivity issues and the IT incident at Staci in the Americas? And maybe quantify this and maybe also looking at the margins of Staci, are we still in the 10% to 12% range there? That would be a bit my first question.

Then secondly, would also be on the 3PL Europe, you guide for mid- to high single-digit growth in 2026. Looking at the fourth quarter, it was flat, you had, of course, a customer loss and some headwinds at Staci Americas. But I would expect this also to somewhat continue in 2027. So I'm just wondering where will this step up from a flat growth in the EU in Q4 to mid- to high single digits in '26 come from? Can you -- do you see some reassuring trends there? Or just a bit more color on that, please?

Do you take the first?

Yes. I'll take the first one. Thank you, Michiel, for the question. Very, very, very interesting question indeed. When it comes to Paxon profitability as a whole, we are impacted by -- mostly impacted by the loss of customers that we faced at -- from Radial, as we mentioned it. Despite the fact that they have been able to maintain the variable contribution margin, even a slight improvement year-over-year. Nevertheless, in absolute value, indeed, it weighed on the EBIT generation.

When it comes to Paxon Europe, so the -- what I would say is that we have a profitability at the level of Paxon Europe so mostly from -- resulting from the acquisition of Staci. We always guided in the range of 10% to 12%. And in '25, we nearly reached the bottom end of the range.

Why do I say nearly very close to, which is mainly explained by the fact that we had an IT incident in the U.S. that weighted on the profitability.

And on the second question, so if you look at the Staci growth, you see indeed that there was a bit of a slowdown due to a combination of economic circumstances, mainly in France and the U.K. last year and also probably a focus, which was on the integration and the setup of the new structure.

Now we have a team fully dedicated to developing the top line. And what we see there is that we have, especially around cross-sell and up-sell on these clients. And when we talk about cross-sell, it's both geographical, but also in other product ranges. And up-sell where we see that we expand our services within the same service line with those same clients, we see that we have an attractive pipeline on which we feel comfortable that, that growth is a feasible figure.

Okay. Clear. Maybe a quick follow-up, if I may. If I then plug in the guidance for the growth in the EU also for Paxon business, is it then fair to assume that growth in the U.S. or in North America, Radial North America will be flat? And if so, can you maybe give a bit more color on the phasing there?

Yes. Indeed, growth in the U.S. will be flat. It's the effect of the historic client losses that we see to have a full impact. And obviously, if you see, although we see a ramp-up at the Fast Track side. These are substantially smaller clients, meaning that you need a lot of more onboarding to compensate for the loss of a large client. And so that effect of clients that were shared -- was already announced for the non-renewal of contracts that we will have the impact from gets compensated by new mid-market clients, but the one is balancing out the other.

If you allow me to add one element, Chris, also what we are seeing in terms of evolution of same-store sales, so on existing customers, we are still believing that we will be in negative territories in '26 compared to '25.

Which is again an effect of that historic portfolio of, let's say, older brands that are more in decline than the overall market.

The next question comes from Frank Claassen from Degroof Petercam.

Two questions, please. First of all, on the transfer of the 679 banking contract, could you help us how much revenue would that roughly be? That's my first question.

And then second, on the corporate cost line, you indicate that it will go up some -- or will have the negative EUR 35 million delta in '26. That's quite a step-up. Could you elaborate what kind of investments or costs you're going to make on that corporate cost line?

So on 679 -- thanks for the question, Frank. We'll -- we don't use to disclose individual contracts, neither the profitability. So we will not do it for the 679. But this being said, you know that the contribution of this contract was solid, very solid. So it's weighing on the profitability.

When it comes to corporate, it's -- in fact, we are adding some resources very limited compared to the '25 situation. And those resources are geared towards supporting the transformation initiative. They are hosted at the level of corporate, but they benefit to the integrity of the group. So they are, in fact, also the natural evolution of the cost base, which -- because those corporate costs are mostly people-related costs. And we expect also to have, as we mentioned for BeNe Last Mile, we also expect to have a one step of inflation of 2% and that helps explaining the evolution of the corporate cost.

The next question comes from Henk Slotboom from the IDEA!

Chris, Antoine and Philippe. A few questions about the bpost division. I'm a bit surprised about the Parcel growth you indicate for the current year. Last year, it was 2.9%. There was a 0.7% negative impact of the strikes you experienced. Now you're aiming for mid- to high single-digit growth. I assume you must have had a good start of the year. But at the same time, there are some things happening in the Middle East which could spur inflation again and weigh on consumer confidence. How do you look at that, Chris?

So on the Parcel growth, I think the fact that you see in the terms of growth of last year, main mainly the effect of a little bit lower growth fix has to do with the strike impact of which we have two major events, one in the early part of the year with a quite significant impact. As you know, we had a couple of days of non-operation and a blocking of our sorting center that had quite an important impact in number of parcels.

And while we could mitigate last minute to a large extent, the national strike against the government in the end period. Some of our clients took at that moment of time, whether it was late at already the batches to have some of those volumes deviated. And so there, you see two elements where you have some volume leakage as a result of the strike.

That being said, if we look at the start of the year, well, as always, at the start of the year is a -- is not the most relevant period. But if we see in terms of client development and contract conversion, we are on a positive flow. And so we expect, in that perspective, a good year.

If we look at the impact of what we see in Middle East. I think, there's very little, let's say, direct flow from us from that side with some Postal flows, but they're quite limited. 12 countries are blocked in terms of Postal flow, but that's a financially a very minor impact on our total volume.

We don't see today a reduction on the Chinese flows. Obviously, I agree with you. If there is an impact on consumer behavior likely you will see some impact on the overall spend. Still, what we've seen in the last times when that was happening was that there was a further shift towards the products which are available within the e-commerce space. And so that is something where we don't expect that there will be a massive impact on the year.

Then on the Mail volume, Chris, we have a shock-wise decrease this year, partly because of the loss of some advertising clients and the introduction of e-invoicing in Belgium, especially the latter impact. Do you think that this will mitigate the decrease in Mail volumes as of 2027 when this has been absorbed?

I don't understand the question, to be honest. Can you repeat the question?

Well, if this year was the introduction of e-invoicing, if I'm correct, in Belgium. So that means that you have a shock-wise decrease in volumes, paper invoices being replaced by electronic invoices. Normally, I assume that will lead to a lower contraction of transaction Mail volumes in the year thereafter, because there's less left.

Yes. I mean, I can understand what you say. But overall, we don't count on that. I think that you've clearly seen that our strategy is now to move as fast as possible towards a parcel-centric operator, and so we want to become a logistical company. You see that, that Mail decline also if we look at comparable countries that were ahead of the curve have mostly had the Nordic countries are ahead of the curve. The Baltic states are also ahead of the curve in that perspective.

You see that, that decline continues to be fairly steep also in the end phase of Mail. If you look at the Denmark case still until the last year, you saw a continued steep decline in the Mail business. We see the same happening in the other Nordic countries, which actually are already at a further progressed decline in Mail that we are. And so in our plans, we don't count on that difference anymore. We actually have -- are preparing ourselves for a continued accelerated decline in Mail. And obviously, what we will do as a consequence of that, start to prepare ourselves for the usual discussion, which will be -- we will have a new user as of the 1st of January '28. And so that preparation of discussion is happening now to ensure that our operating model can follow the reality of the volumes that we have to treat.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. So I will hand it back to Chris to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

We would like to thank everybody in the call for having taken the time to be with us and for your interesting questions. Please note that we will release our annual report 2025 on April 2nd. We look forward to staying in touch and Philippe will present you our first quarter results on May 6. Thank you very much and have a great day.

Thanks for participating to the call. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the bpost Group Third Quarter 2025 Analyst Conference Call. On today's call, we have Mr. Philippe Dartienne, CFO. Please note, this call is being recorded.

I will now hand over to your host, Mr. Philippe Dartienne, CFO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to present to you our third quarter results as CFO for the bpost Group. Chris, our CEO, could not make it today, and I have with me Antoine Lebecq from Investor Relations.

We posted the materials on our website this morning. We will walk you through the presentation, and then we'll take your questions. As always, 2 questions each will ensure everyone gets a chance to be addressed in the upcoming hour. I'll start with the quarterly financials, then move on our financial outlook and provide an update on our key transformation initiative for 2025.

As you can see on the highlights on Page 3, our group operating income for the third quarter amount to EUR 1.030 billion, remaining broadly stable year-on-year and almost at constant scope as Staci has already contributed for 2 months in the same period last year. As usual, the summer quarters show some seasonal softness, but beyond this, we saw a mix of different factors.

At Radial U.S., we continue to see the expected impact for the 2024 contract termination, but even more this time, the materialization effect of those announced earlier this year. As a reminder, these are the same ones that led us to take an impairment at the beginning of the year. Altogether, those elements more than offset the extra month of Staci contribution in the quarter.

At the same time, we continue to see good volume growth in Asian cross-border activities. While in Belgium, the domestic mail volumes declined, this was partially compensated by a decent volume growth in Parcels. Our group adjusted EBIT came at minus EUR 3 million, representing a year-on-year decrease of EUR 16.3 million, mainly driven by Radial U.S., where despite sustained margin action, the revenue shortfall due to the anticipated churn and seasonal softness did not allow full absorption of fixed costs in the quarter. More broadly, at bpost Group level, the results we are presenting today are in line with our expectations, and we reconfirm our EBIT outlook at around EUR 180 million for the year 2025.

On Slide 4, you will note that the EUR 14 million decline in net profit mirrors the EBIT evolution as in the same period last year, the acquisition of -- the acquisition debt was already on balance sheet and the financial results remain broadly stable.

Let's move now to the details of our 3 segments. I'm on Page 5 with BeNe Last Mile segment. We see that the revenue declined by EUR 9 million, amounting to EUR 512 million. Domestic Mail recorded around EUR 16 million decline in revenue, of which EUR 10 million stemmed from transactional and advertising mail and EUR 6 million from press.

Excluding press, mail volume contracted by 9.4% in the quarter compared to only 6.7% last year, which had benefited from the election uplift in September 2024. The decline in mail volume had a negative revenue impact of around EUR 20 million, of which was partially compensated by half through a positive price and mix effect of EUR 4.7 million or roughly EUR 10 million. As a result, domestic mail revenue were down by 4.6% or minus 10% year-over-year.

On Parcels, revenue increased by EUR 4 million or 3.2% year-on-year, reflecting a volume growth of 2.8% and a slightly positive price/mix effect of 0.5% in this quarter. On the volume side, the reported 2.8% actually corresponds to an average growth of 4.4% per working day. Over the past months, this momentum has been mainly supported by the outperformance of marketplace, notably boosted by sales events and continued strength in the apparel segment.

Let's move to the P&L of Last Mile on Page 6. Including some higher intersegment revenues from inbound cross-border volumes handled in the domestic network, our total operating income was slightly down by 1.4% or minus EUR 8 million. At the same time, on the cost side, our OpEx, including D&A, remained broadly stable and mainly reflects 2 effects: lower FTEs resulting from lower volume and efficiency gain, notably from the reorganization of our distribution rounds and retail offices, which are progressing in line with plan, and on the other hand, higher salary cost per FTE around up to 2% year-over-year following the March '25 salary indexation.

In contrast with the first half of the year, when EBIT had contracted sharply by almost EUR 64 million year-on-year, mainly due to the end of the press concession in June '24, we see that despite structural mail decline, parcel growth and initial projects of -- sorry, and initial effects of our reorganization are helping to attenuate EBIT erosion.

Moving on to 3PL on Page 7. 3PL revenues were broadly stable overall as 2 offsetting events affecting -- came into play. First, effect. 3PL Europe, where revenue increased by EUR 62 million, we benefited from 1 additional month of Staci revenue in the quarter, along with continued commercial expansion of Radial and Active Ants in Europe. That said, sales from existing customers or the famous same-store sale remained soft and even negative in certain geographies during the quarter.

As a side note, since we are 1 year after the acquisition of Staci, there will be no further consolidation impact going forward. As we are now advancing in the integration of Staci, Radial Europe and Active Ants, we are really starting to operate as one single business unit as explained at our Capital Market Day in June. Our P&L is being increasingly managed together, this means that from now on, we will only report on 3PL Europe as one single business and gradually phase out stand-alone reporting from individual entities.

Second effect, in 3PL North America, revenue decreased by EUR 58 million. At constant exchange rate, this corresponds to a decrease of 24%, mainly driven by revenue churn from contract announced in 2024 and even more so from those announced early '25, partially offset by in-year contribution of new customers, around 60% of which are Radial Fast Track customers as we presented to you at our Capital Market Day.

While we are seeing positive and encouraging signs on that front, and I'll come back to that on a moment, we are still feeling the impact as expected of the churn. We continue to execute our sales development plan, and we are confident that these efforts will pay off, but it needs a bit of patience.

Let's move on to the P&L of 3PL on Slide 8. With this, the total operating income slightly increased by 1.1%, while our operating expense and D&A increased by 4.8%, primarily driven by in Europe, Staci consolidation impact and one-off reorganization costs, including site closures and relocation of customers to further accelerate 3PL Europe integration and cost structure optimization. In North America, lower variable OpEx in line with the revenue development at Radial U.S., and sustained variable contribution margin close to record high level.

The EBIT evolution at Radial U.S. is certainly one of the key highlights of this quarter performance and also the main reason for the gap versus market expectation. Despite 1 additional month of Staci contribution, the minus EUR 30 million EBIT decline in 3PL from plus EUR 1.7 million last year, indeed clearly reflects the situation at Radial U.S. After 3 consecutive years of contraction, revenues are now about 45% below their peak level in Q3 2022.

In this quarter, the combined effect of churn and seasonal softness limited our ability to fully absorb fixed costs despite strong VCM discipline and tight cost control. Ironically, we are now at a point where revenue have reached their lowest level ever, and yet our VCM margin stands at all-time high. Looking ahead, the solution lies in top line recovery, and on that front, we are executing our plan and making good progress.

Moving on to cross-border on Page 9. Cross-border Europe revenue increased by EUR 11 million or plus 14% year-over-year. This growth was driven by strong volume increase from Asia across all major destinations, notably Belgium, fueled by large Chinese platform and U.S. Across-border North America, Landmark Global continues to face the broader tariff environment that is weighing on existing business and delaying new opportunities. However, this was offset by strong domestic volume in Canada, resulting in an overall plus 1.4% revenue increase for North America, including a 6% negative FX impact. Overall, our cross-border operating income increased by roughly $12 million or 8.7%.

As shown on Page 10, our OpEx and D&A increased at the same time by 9.6%, mainly reflecting higher transportation costs linked to the volume growth I just mentioned. EBIT slightly increased to above EUR 17 million with a margin of 11.5%, reflecting a slight dilution from commercial products.

Moving on to Corporate segment on Page 11. Adjusted EBIT improved by EUR 1 million to minus EUR 9 million as cost containment measures across spend categories helped offset higher payroll driven by more FTEs and March '25 salary indexation.

Then we move to the cash flow on Slide 12. The net cash outflow for the quarter amounts to minus EUR 16 million, representing an improvement of EUR 275 million year-on-year, mainly reflecting the acquisition of Staci last year, which was partially funded in cash for a bit less than EUR 300 million. Besides that, the remaining items to flag are the following:

Cash flow from operating activities before change in working cap stood at EUR 71 million and decreased by EUR 7 million year-over-year, mainly reflecting higher corporate tax payment. Change in working capital and provision amounted to EUR 17 million. The plus EUR 16 million variance is primarily explained by the settlement of some terminal dues and some client balances. The net cash outflow from investing activities totaled EUR 28 million, driven by our CapEx for international e-commerce logistics, parcel lockers and capacity expansion. Also, our domestic fleet was considered into this EUR 28 million.

This item constitute the main variation in our free cash flow. The net cash outflow for financing activities amounted to minus EUR 776 million and mainly consisted of lease liabilities outflows, while we had on top of the acquisition debt last year. This brings us now to the outlook and our strategic priorities of 2025.

Outlook 2025. We presented our group EBIT outlook of the range EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million back in February, and during the Q2 results in August, we indicated that we were targeting the upper end of the range. With a year-to-date EBIT of EUR 97 million, the results we're presenting today are broadly in line with our plan, now allowing us to confirm our full-year outlook at around EUR 180 million.

This implies achieving an EBIT of around EUR 80 million to EUR 85 million in Q4 compared with EUR 80 million in the same quarter last year -- sorry, compared to EUR 84 million last year, which we are cautiously optimistic about. Based on current assumption and expectation, we believe this is achievable, particularly thanks to our preparation and readiness for an efficient peak execution across the group.

In North America, we validated client volume capacity plan. We have secured to hiring over 4,100 seasonal workers to ensure full site coverage and put peak incentive plans in place. In BeNe Last Mile, beyond the usual measures, we have implemented additional productivity initiatives, including tracking performance at each distribution offices and site and setting up a national tool to further optimize interim and reinforcement of the planning. Of course, we remain vigilant amid challenging market conditions, notably as volume development and the phasing out of end of year peak volumes in Belgium and internationally remain uncertain and partially beyond our control.

To wrap up on our outlook, we are also updating our CapEx guidance with a downward revision from EUR 180 million to EUR 140 million. This reflects our disciplined approach to spending in Belgium and in the U.S. and a strategic phasing towards 2026. Overall, we remain focused on prioritization and value creation, ensuring that every euro invested is where it has the highest impact in the group.

Finally, as we usually do, I take a few minutes to walk you through the progress we've made on our transformation plan over the last months as part of our Reshape2029 journey we presented to you at the Capital Market Day. When it comes to the update on the strategic initiative, bpost continues to accelerate its transformation, shifting firmly towards becoming an international logistics and parcel operator.

Let me walk you through the tangible progress we've made across our segment. I'll start with BeNe Last Mile. Following 2 successful pilot phases, we launched our 9 delivery service on October 15. As new B2B service consisting in a 9-time delivery solution targeted at technician and field workers that helps eliminate detours from central depots and save up to 1.5 hours per day for these technician and field workers.

In practice, parcels are collected by bpots until 6:00 p.m. on working days, sorted overnight and then delivered before 7:00 a.m. to selected parcel lockers of our network across Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. The service is exclusively available for B2B shipment, internal deliveries or business-to-business exchanges requiring high level of reliability.

Meanwhile, still in Belgium, our bbox network of parcel lockers continue to expand strongly. We have now around 2,000 active units with 800 more contracted, most of them located in prime location and high-traffic venues like supermarkets. As announced recently with Lidl, we target to have 240 lockers by the end of this year, which represents nearly 10% of the targeted APM capacity.

We currently install up to 12 new lockers per day, and by the end of this year, we intend to have 2,500 lockers installed in Belgium. On our future operating model, one of the pillar is bulk rounds, consisting in dedicated parcels round in bulk, serving pickup and drop-off points, including lockers. Here as well, after a successful pilot phase, this model is now fully operational across all sorting centers, servicing 26 distribution offices and handling over 12,000 parcels a day. Before end 2025, we will extend to 29 offices with a capacity close to 21,000 parcels a day. This bulk model is set to become a cornerstone of our 2026 peak strategy capable of managing nearly half of the out-of-home volumes.

Let's shift to 3PL Europe. We are entering into a new chapter in leadership with Rainer Kiefer taking over as CFO of 3PL Europe and Staci Americas as of January 2026, succeeding Thomas Mortier, who announced earlier this year its intention to step down at the end of the year and will move into a part-time advisory role starting January 2026.

Rainer brings extensive experience from DSV and DB Schenker with a strong track record in transformation and scaling across Europe. This appointment reflects our ambition to accelerate the transformation of the 3PL business, strengthen our European footprint and drive value creation across the full spectrum of contract logistics, fulfillment and omnichannel solutions. With Thomas supporting this transition and Rainer taking a help, we are confident that the business is well positioned to execute the next phase of our growth strategy.

In parallel, the integration of Staci remains firmly on track. As cost synergies start to materialize in the second half of the year, we expect to overdeliver on our 2025 synergy targets. The 2026 targets are already secured, fully in line with what we presented to you at the Capital Market Day. In 3PL U.S., our Radial Fast Track rollout is ahead of our plan. 16 customers are already live and 2 more are set to launch in the fourth quarter 2025, each contributing an average ACV between EUR 4 million and EUR 5 million. The in-year revenue from Fast Track is already exceeding internal targets, providing strong momentum in U.S. and validating the scalable potential of the model.

As Chris mentioned it last time, there's still a lot of work ahead of us, and the first results are not always immediately visible in the P&L. This is notably the case this quarter in the U.S. That said, we are confident that we are on the right track and focused on doing the right things to deliver sustainable results.

We are now ready to take your questions. Again, questions each will allow every one of you to be addressed in the upcoming hour. Operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Frank Claassen from Degroof Petercam.

My 2 questions. First of all, on Radial, minus 25% organically in Q3. Could you split the minus 25% between, let's say, the negative same-store sales and the impact of the churn? Is this, let's say, and what can we expect going forward? Is this the bottom? Or do you expect an improving trend in the coming quarters? That's my first question.

My second question on Staci. I understand that you don't break down the EBIT anymore or give the separate EBIT. Could you elaborate on how the profitability is developing? Is it according to plan? I recall that you had a sort of guidance or, let's say, target of 10% to 12% EBIT for Staci. Is that still valid? Could you elaborate on that?

Okay. Thank you for your 2 questions. Let's start with Radial. Indeed, we observed a severe decrease in the current quarter, which is mostly explained by the churn. Again, the churn coming that was announced in 2024 that has a full-year impact in 2025 and some churn that were announced at the beginning of the year, and then they're only materializing now.

I have one very specific example in mind where the customer said, we're going to stop 1 of the 2 warehouses in the first -- sorry, in the third quarter, so meaning now. This is part of the explanation and this is the bulk of it. Same-store sales evolution is not positive, but nowhere near what we observed in the recent quarters. If you recall, we had a terrible sequence of -- if it's in 2024, minus 4 at the beginning of the year, we peaked, wrong word, but it's a high amount, even it's a negative one, around 9% in the fourth quarter 2024.

The beginning of the year was also in negative territories, lower than the minus 9%. Now we are slightly negative, but it's not what it mainly explains the different impact on the EBIT. Simply why? Because the basis at which it applies is also by far lower. This being said, very important to notice that the variable contribution margin has been extremely high, again, sustained quarters-after-quarters, which is a positive sign. That's for Radial.

Sorry, and there was a subset in your question about what is the trend. The trend for us is twofold. We have launched in the first quarter of this year, our new product offering or service offering, which is Radial Fast Track that aims at offering solutions which are more flexible, standardized, easy to onboard type of solution, also very asset-light in terms of CapEx and automation, and it's picking up. It's picking up. We have signed 16 customers. We will onboard another 2 between now and the end of the year.

Also, important to note is that we will be onboarding customers nearly close to the peak, which is -- which shows how flexible this solution is to onboard new customers. Historically, it was taking roughly 12 months to onboard new customers at Radial because of the high level of customization in the processes and also in the IT systems. In terms of trends, we are optimistic about the product that we have launched because we see it's picking up. There is traction on the market.

On the other hand, we need to be realistic. When we are losing customers average size between EUR 50 million and EUR 70 million, while the ACV of the Fast Track typical customers is around 5. You can do the math as well as me. It takes time to be able to compensate this churn. We are also not aware of any new customers who have announced their departure in the near future. That's for Radial.

For Staci, it's going according to plan. Yes, it's going according to plan. The EBIT margin is a bit on the low end of the range this quarter, which is mostly explained by the fact that, as I said it, and again, we already announced that there is no news in that one that we want to operate on a geographical platform as one entity, one go-to-market. We have several territories, like Belgium, the Netherlands, U.K., Germany, Italy, where we're really operating as one. The local managers there, they look at their portfolio of customers, what is their needs, what is the solution, the operational solution available to serve those customers and also the footprint.

Some movement has been already initiated to relocate customers where they better fit with the requirement of the customer and also optimizing the footprint. It's also the case in the U.S. where one warehouse has been shut down and customers have been transferred to a new site.

In Germany, the former site of Staci Germany in Boston has been shut down and customers has been transferred to a former Radial site in Halle. In the Netherlands, in the Active Ants portfolio, we have decided to close 1 of the 2 warehousing in Nieuwegein and those customers have been transferred to Roosendaal. This cost -- these transfers demonstrate that we really want to operate at a local level as one, but it has, unfortunately, on the short term, some cost. There is cost attached to shutting down warehouses and to move customers. It's all for the better. It's to serve the customer in the best possible way and the most efficient way on those territories.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Henk Slotboom from The Idea.

One question from my side. We've been hearing a lot about levies on Chinese goods. The French want to do it unilaterally. The Dutch have already said, they might follow the French maybe already as soon as the 1st of January of next year. Now personally, I don't think that EUR 2 per parcel will stop the avalanche of parcels to Europe. It will simply be relocated. What does the situation look like in Belgium? I don't know, if they have similar ideas to do things unilaterally. Well, could it be the case that you benefit from it if stuff is not flown at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, but at Liège or Brussels instead provided, of course, there are no drugs over there.

Thank you for your question, Henk. Indeed, the situation in Belgium is that the government is thinking of putting EUR 2 per parcel levy. Now it leads to a lot of questions. There is also who's going to collect this EUR 2, which is a very practical problem, and there is no answer to that. Of course, we are not -- we are there to carry the parcels. We are not there to collect this kind of surcharge or taxes levies, whatever you name it. There will definitely be a question of implementation.

Interestingly enough, we had a discussion yesterday with one of our Board members who is coming from the Nordic, who faced a bit the same situation, and it took more than 12 months to find a technical solution to implement it. It's still an intent at this stage. There is no implementation date decided. Indeed, it will be difficult to implement.

Your comment about, of course, if other countries are deciding for the levies, let's say, in the Netherlands, France, Germany, it could lead to additional volumes in Belgium, but anyway, it would only be a temporary solution. At this stage, it's a very good question, but it's a big question mark when it comes to the implementation date and also the practicalities behind it.

Can I ask an add-on to that, Philippe?

Sure.

If I look at, for example, Austria Post or Polish Post and that sort of things, they've been entering alliances with, for example, Temu and Shein, who want to move part of their logistics and then I'm talking about warehousing and that sort of things to Europe. You have a fantastic network of fulfillment centers with Radial Europe, with Active Ants, with Staci. Is anything there being discussed with the large Chinese platforms?

Again, a very good question from Henk, as usual. There are movements indeed, we see the Chinese are coming closer to Europe. They are also thinking of implementing themselves in Turkey, which is also close to Europe. Indeed, it's a movement that we see in the market, but I will not comment any further at this stage.

The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays.

I've got 2 follow-up questions. One is on Radial U.S. Do we have to think about Q4 as the last quarter of year-over-year decline in revenues, and therefore, we should expect growth from next year? It’s the first question.

Second question, on Staci Europe, I mean, if I look at the Q3 numbers, it feels like that most of the decline year-over-year is coming from Radial U.S. At the same time, you've got 1 month more of Radial Europe in the base now. We basically have got 3PL Europe being flat despite growth and despite an additional month. On top of that, you are also talking about synergies being ahead. Just the math doesn't work for me why year-over-year, things are flat despite tailwinds from synergies and an additional month. If you can clarify.

Good. I'll start with Radial. No, in 2026, there still might be some decline in top line because there will be the full-year impact of the customer churn that we observed in 2025. Of course, the one announced in '24 will be over in '25, but there are some of them that will have an impact in 2026. This being said, what is really important for us to look at is the profitability and the cash generation profile and the quality of the portfolio.

I really want to remind what we said at the Capital Market Day, not only we want to go for the mid-market, not to have big customers dependent on 2 big customers are requiring huge investment in terms of customization of system, high automation. We want to move out of that one, and they will be gradually phased out. We want to reinforce ourselves our presence in other type of customers. ACV of Radial Fast Track is in the range of 5 million, so totally different, but also and equally important in my eyes is also the portfolio itself in terms of the number of verticals where we want to operate in.

In the past, it was focused on only 2. We really want to broaden that one, and we see first signs of result -- positive result going into that direction. Again, as I said, and again, I'm also repeating what we said at the time of the Capital Market Day, it's a long journey. It's not a 1- or 2-quarter journey. It's a long journey to move from big anchor customer focused or very capital intensive and focused on 2 verticals to something which is more nimble and flexible going forward.

Again, the math plays against us when it comes in terms of timing. There will be a delay between the moment we could see growth again to be totally honest, transparent, but also totally aligned with what our forecasts are. There is nothing -- no news on that one. There is no change of strategy. There is no acceleration or degradation of the situation. It's happening as we had planned to do it.

Can I just follow up on this one? Is there a risk that more or other large customers are going to, let's say, leave Radial U.S. in the future because you are moving type of strategy and type of service?

The risk is always there, Marco. This being said, interestingly enough, very interestingly, in our Radial Fast Track customers, we have 16 of them that we have new ones, but there is also 2 of them that were former old solution type of customers moved to Radial Fast Track. This also demonstrates that we have now with this solution, capabilities to address their demand.

Europe or 3PL Europe?

Yes, I didn't forget. Don't worry. On Staci, the math add up, but there were maybe -- we need to remind all the elements of the equations. First one and is the vast majority, it's all about the costs relating to the optimization of the operations in different geographies in the U.S., in the Netherlands, in Germany, that explains the chunk of the fact that indeed, when you do the math, you don't see a growth when you come to Staci. There is also, but to a lesser extent, some softness in certain territories, and I'm mostly thinking about France, where the same-store sales has been negative in the quarter.

On the other hand, as a positive note, in France, we are not seeing the departure of any customers.

The next question comes from Marc Zwartsenburg from ING.

I also have a bit of a follow-up on Radial U,S., because I think you mentioned you will also see a significant decline still in Q4, and that fits also with the story with the mentioning of the churn of the larger accounts. I think originally, there was a sort of a guidance of minus 10% to 20% a bit on the full-year top line, which would indicate still, say, mid-single-digit double digit, let's say, 15% maximum year-on-year decline if you plug in, say, minus 20%. Is that still an applicable guidance that we're looking at still a double-digit decline of around 15% for Q4? Just to get a bit of more feel on the movement of Radial because it's quite big numbers we're talking. That's my first question.

You want me to take it immediately. It's more in the range of 15% to 20%.

Q4, we're talking about?

Yes.

Then on the parcel volumes, so the working day adjusted number is plus 4.4%. That's a slight improvement from Q2, but how do you -- was that stable through the quarter? How are you looking to the big season? Do you already have a bit of an indication on the big events for Q4, what you expect there? Because I think also here, the guidance was more like a mid-single-digit to high single-digit growth. It looks now more like on the low end of the mid-single digits. What are your thoughts there? What kind of trends do you see?

In fact, there is one very important element. It's not that it's totally new this year, but we see -- and typically in Belgium, we see more-and-more before the peak was very -- excuse me, very focused on 1 or 2 days. By the way, in Belgium, we have the peak, but with also Christmas and Sinterklaas. In fact, it's the month end of November and the month of December, which are, in fact, higher months. Unlike what we see in the U.S., when you see the peak, it's a couple of days. It's more spread all over that period, combined with the fact that we see more-and-more our customers, the one selling directly to the customers or through platform, offering throughout the year, promotion, discount and this kind of stuff. It's very difficult to predict how it will look like. But for sure, we see it's become that higher activity is spread over more days or weeks than it was in the past.

Do you see September, October trending higher than the 4.4%?

In that range.

It's rather stable. That's currently the trend.

Yes.

Then lastly, I know you're not disclosing it, but could you give a bit of an indication of the EBIT contribution of Staci, because it's still important to model that properly also through the quarters because we saw quite a miss on the consensus on particularly the 3PL division and whether that's Staci or whether that's Radial U.S. or whether that's the extra cost, it would be helpful to have a bit more granularity. Can you help us there?

I can help you in repeating what I told you is that the big chunk of the fact that it doesn't grow is linked to this optimization, cost optimization, operational optimization, which is the majority of the variance and the rest coming from same sourcing. You could count on.

Staci have no growth on the revenue side and a bit of impact from the fine-tuning of the optimization of the warehouses. Is that how we should see it?

Yes.

How long will that take that optimization of the warehouses till when should we pencil that in that the margins may be a bit more at the low end?

I would say -- in fact, the more the people will start working together and depending on the customer need, it might lead to additional ones. This one were the obvious one. I would say, in the next 2 quarters, I'm not expecting any site closures or major site closures now, but It's an ongoing process.

For 2 quarters -- yes, exactly. We will see a little bit of double running costs in the meantime. Then after that, we should see the efficiencies coming through.

I hope it will come faster, but it's not to be excluded that we might decide here or there to restructure on another warehouse. There is one that was already planned in the U.S. By the way, it was a journey, nearly 3 years journey at the time of the acquisition of Amware by Staci, they looked at the portfolio, and we were totally aware of that because it was an element that was shared with us at the time of the acquisition. They knew that they had a plan to restructure 3 warehouses. They have done 1 in '24. There is a second one in '25, and there will be the third one in '26.

Then thinking about '26, we should see a higher EBIT than what we probably will see in 2025. Is that?

Yes.

The path towards your long-term outlook to see a higher EBITDA?

Don't drag me into a budget discussion and a guidance for '26. We will come to you on that one when we publish the Q4, but I give you some element. I have the impression of painting an impressionist painting with dots of colors, some quantities. I'm doing some quantities on the U.S., but don't drag me where I don't want to be dragged.

It's the time of the year budget.

The next question comes from Marc Zeck from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Two, if I may. First one on -- again, Radial U.S. Could you give us a bit of more color or feeling about, let's say, the top 5 customers at Radial U.S., how much of sales is that broadly speaking? For these customers, is there kind of a contract renegotiation period upcoming end of '25 or early in '26? Or is these contracts mostly locked in for a longer period of time? That would be my first question.

Second question also on, let's say, the broader U.S. business. I believe we've seen quite a bit of pull forward buying into the U.S. imports for the first 9 months of the year were pretty good, I believe, into the U.S., but we see container imports or container arrivals at U.S. ports dropping quite sharply now in Q4. Is your business in the U.S. mostly related to ocean freight? Should we expect a bit of a negative business development on same-store sales as well for Radial U.S.? Or are you kind of air freight exposed from a product category where we still see quite good numbers, I would say, in the overall market? That's my 2 questions.

Okay. Let me start with the second one. It's a bit of both. Of course, all your comments are valid. We are exposed to air freight and ocean freight. I give you a very practical example. In one of the customers that we have onboarded with Radial Fast Track is a fashion brand coming from Australia, who wanted to be implemented in the U.S. They wanted to have fulfillment there. We are hearing from customers, some other customers that they want to be in the U.S. rather than systematically air freighting stuff.

By the way, it's no different than what we are seeing with the Chinese platform now. Let's refer to the comment or the question earlier on the Chinese who want to be implemented -- to implement themselves in Europe to avoid tariffs is the same that we are seeing in U.S. We have a very practical example, as I said, of one who really has decided to come physically in the U.S., and there, we have definitely a role to play and a good service offering.

When it comes to Radial, I also want to -- do we have big renewal in the pipe for the coming quarters? The answer is no. We already have renewed some of them in the course of 2025. There, I want to reiterate something which is extremely, extremely important. In the past, what we saw at Radial, especially with the big customers, the situation was the following.

They were asking for a lot of customization, a lot of automation that typically are passed on to the customer over a period of 6 to 8 years, while we were having contracts of roughly 4 years. At the same time, we had also our warehouses locked for a period of 7 to 8 years. In many instances, what we saw is the customer left or didn't renew the contract, and we were there even if there was some provision in the contract with unamortized portion of own developments and the liability linked with these warehouses.

Since the last 18 months, all renewal or all new contracts signed are [indiscernible] with the lease of the warehouses. It's also important to look at what could be the impact of the customers. In fact, the Radial situation we are in right now is absolutely not the same as the one we saw years ago.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. I will hand it back to Philippe to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you very much, guys, for your intense question session. Antoine is always there to do the follow-up with you in the coming days and weeks. Let's stay in touch. Next time, we'll see, we'll be able to demonstrate that we have executed the peak in a qualitative and efficient way. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and welcome to the bpost Group Second Quarter 2025 Analyst Conference Call. On today's call, we have Mr. Chris Peeters, CEO; and Mr. Philippe Dartienne, CFO. Please note, this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand over to your host, Mr. Chris Peeters, CEO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to all of you, and thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to present our second quarter results as CEO of bpost Group. With me, I have Philippe Dartienne, our CFO; as well as Antoine Lebecq from Investor Relations.

We posted the materials on our website this morning. We will walk you through the presentation, and we'll then take your questions. As always, two questions each would ensure everyone gets the chance to be addressed in the upcoming hour.

Philippe, over to you for the financials. I'll then come back with the financial outlook and to follow up on some of our strategic priorities for 2025.

Thank you very much, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. As you can see on the highlight on Page 3, our group operating income for Q2 stood at EUR 1.092 billion, an increase year-over-year by 10.5%. At constant perimeter, excluding the EUR 195 million consolidation impact of Staci, our operating income decreased by 9% or EUR 91 million, mainly driven by the following factors: persistent headwinds in North America following contract termination announced in '24 and in the earlier part of this year. Lower Press revenue driven by the new press contract that came into effect in July last year, combined with a decline in domestic mail against high comps in 2024.

Our group adjusted EBIT came at EUR 58.3 million with a margin of 5.3% or EUR 37.7 million, excluding the EUR 20.6 million EBIT contribution from Staci. On a like-for-like basis, this reflects a year-on-year decline of EUR 20.1 million. On constant perimeter, with the exception of our BeNe Last mile segment, where EBIT is down, primarily driven by Press as lower revenue have a significant impact on profitability, all our other segments are growing, notably supported by continued margin actions at Radial U.S., where we managed to absorb the revenue decline and maintain a stable EBIT. More broadly, at bpost Group level, the results we are presenting today are in line with our expectations.

Before diving into the financial performance of our business units, you will note on Slide 4 that below EBIT, our financial result decreased by EUR 44 million. This is mainly due to four factors, most of them being noncash. Within the cash item, we note that high interest expense, reflecting the increase in the debt following our bond issuance in October last year and mid-June this year and lower interest income driven by lower money market rates and a lower cash balance following the acquisition of Staci in August last year. Together, these factors account for roughly between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million.

As a reminder, following our Capital Market Day, we successfully issued a EUR 750 million bond in mid-June in anticipation of the EUR 650 million bond maturing in less than 12 months. Through a cash tender offer, we have already repurchased just under 30% of this bond. The remaining amount will be repaid next year using the proceeds temporarily placed in money market instruments, securing a positive net carry compared to the coupon of the maturing bond. Most of the variation in the financial result is linked to noncash items, including unrealized FX impact, mainly on our USD intercompany loans and the absence of last year higher IAS 19 results.

Let's move now to the details of our three segments. I'm on Page 5 with the Last Mile segment. We see that revenue declined by EUR 40 million to EUR 536 million. Domestic mail recorded around EUR 42 million decline in revenue, of which EUR 22 million comes from the press, mainly due to new contracts with the editors following the end of the press concession in June last year.

Excluding press, Mail recorded a sharp revenue and volume contraction this quarter, mainly due to a base effect as last year performance was uplifted by notably the European federal and regional elections. Mail recorded an underlying volume decline of minus 12.4% for the quarter compared to only minus 3% last year. The decline in mail volume led to a revenue impact of EUR 30 million overall, though this was partially offset by a positive price and mix impact of plus 4.1%, equating to EUR 10 million. As a result, the domestic mail revenue decreased by 8% or roughly EUR 20 million year-over-year.

On Parcels, our revenue increased by EUR 4 million or plus 3.1% year-on-year, reflecting a volume growth of 4.1% and a negative price/mix effect of minus 1% this quarter. On the volume side, the reported 4.1% actually corresponds to an underlying growth of 1.6% when adjusting last year for the volume loss called of the April strikes in 2024. Over the past months, this growth has been mainly driven by the outperformance of marketplace and strong momentum in apparel, supported by favorable weather condition in June this year.

As for price/mix, it stood at minus 1% this quarter. When adjusted for commercial one-offs, it's in the low single-digit range, consistent with our full year guidance.

Revenue from our other activities, including retail, value-added services and personalized logistics declined by EUR 2 million year-over-year, mainly due to the repricing of state services, while DynaGroup revenue remained nearly stable.

Let's move to the P&L on Last Mile on Page 6. Our total operating income decreased by EUR 37 million or minus 6.2%. And on the cost side, our OpEx including D&A slightly declined by 0.7% or EUR 4 million. This mainly reflects lower FTE resulting from lower mail and press volume and efficiency gains, notably with the resumption of the strikes of the organization in our distribution routes and in retail offices. But on the other hand, some other higher salary costs per FTE with a plus 3.4% year-on-year increase driven by salary indexation in June '24 and March '25.

Starting next quarter, our performance will be assessed on a like-for-like basis following the end of the press concession in June. This quarter, however, the minus EUR 33 million decrease in adjusted EBIT is mainly attributable to the drop in press revenue and to a lesser extent, to lower mail revenue against a strong comp prior year.

Moving on to 3PL on Page 7. 3PL revenues increased by EUR 143 million overall, but declined by EUR 54 million or minus 20% when excluding the EUR 197 million contribution from Staci consolidation in the quarter. In 3PL Europe, Staci's revenue remains broadly in line versus last year. Radial and Active Ants sales were up 13% year-over-year, continuing the trend of previous quarters, fueled by customers onboarding as part of our international expansion efforts and upscaling activities targeting existing customers.

In 3PL North America, revenue decreased by EUR 59 million. At constant exchange rate, this corresponds to a decrease of 23%, resulting from revenue churn from contract termination announced in '24 and early '25 and lower sales from existing customers, our so-called same-store sales, which offset the contribution from new customer launches, mostly coming from the Radial Fast Track initiative.

Let's move to the P&L on the 3PL on Slide 8. Excluding Staci, while the total operating income decreased by 20%, our operating and D&A were down by 22%, primarily driven by lower variable OpEx in line with Radial U.S. revenue trend and a continued and stronger improvement in Radial U.S. variable contribution margin rate. VCM increased by approximately 6% year-over-year, reaching its highest level to date and delivering a gain of EUR 10 million this quarter compared to the same quarter the year before. At constant perimeter, our adjusted EBIT improved by EUR 6 million year-over-year from minus EUR 5.5 million to just breakeven in Q2, mainly reflecting Radial's effective margin action despite a 23% top line drop. Regarding Staci, the EBIT contribution came at EUR 21 million with a margin of 10.6%.

Moving on to cross-border on Page 9. Cross-border Europe revenue increased by EUR 3 million or plus 3.4%. This growth was supported by solid volume increases from China across all key destinations, including Belgium, which helped offset adverse market condition in the U.K. As in previous quarters, our top line in North America remains under pressure. Cross-border North America revenue declined by EUR 4 million or minus 7% as Landmark Global continues to face volume headwind, while the broader tariff environment is slowing down existing business and delaying new business opportunities. Overall, our cross-border operating income slightly increased by roughly 1%.

As shown on Page 10, our OpEx and D&A decreased at the same time by 2.7%, driven by lower volume-driven transportation costs, reflecting lower North American and U.K. volumes alongside improved transport rates. This quarter, we also benefited to a lesser extent from a favorable cost phasing, which is expected to reverse in the third quarter. Coupled with the productivity gains in North America, this resulted in a EUR 5 million decrease in EBIT.

Moving on to Corporate segment on Page 11. Adjusted EBIT improved by EUR 3 million to minus EUR 8 million as lower consulting costs helped offset higher payroll costs driven by more FTEs and inflationary pressure from salary indexation.

Then we move to the cash flow on Slide 12. The net cash inflow in the quarter amounts to EUR 482.5 million, mainly reflecting the bond issuance and the cash tender executed in June this year. Besides that, the main items to flag are the following: cash flow from operating activities before change in working capital stood at EUR 134 million and decreased by EUR 30 million versus last year, mainly reflecting higher EBITDA and lower corporate tax payments. Change in working capital and provision amounted to minus EUR 125 million. The plus EUR 4 million variance is primarily explained by the termination of the price concession in June last year. As a reminder, under the former price concession, compensation was typically prepaid whereas the revenue under the new price contract are now invoiced according to the standard billing cycles. This quarter also includes the impact of the settlement of some terminal dues.

The net cash outflow from investing activities totaled EUR 27.5 million, driven by our CapEx for international e-commerce logistics, parcel lockers in Belgium and capacity expansion and our domestic fleet. This item constitute the main variation in our free cash flow. And in the net cash outflow from financing activities amounted to EUR 500 million, mainly reflecting the issuance of the -- and the cash tender on the maturing bonds as well as the absence of dividend payment this year.

Hence, this now bring us to the outlook and our strategic priorities of 2025.

Thank you, Philippe. And we can happily announce an improved outlook. As you remember, in February this year, with the results of '24, we had an initial guidance of EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million of group EBIT. In May, at the Q1 results, we had an unchanged outlook, but with a reduced exposure to the low end of the range. If we look today, and we can announce an EBIT of around EUR 100 million for the first half of the year, which is largely in line with the results -- with the plan that we had. It allows us now to reaffirm our guidance, but even also to say that we target now the higher end of the range.

Several elements will support in the second half of the year, this result. Let's zoom in maybe first in Radial U.S. Radial U.S., we see that we continue to reach productivity gains with an improved variable contribution margin. Secondly, we have increased our lease exposure there. So we have a better occupation rate that will kick in as of July going forward. And also in Belgium, there is some good news. So the reorganizations have been at full speed over the last quarter and we'll continue to do so, which makes sure that we have our cost under control for the BeNe Last Mile activity. So obviously, we are living in an uncertain world, but we are confident that we can actually target now the higher end of the range.

If we then zoom in on our strategic initiatives, at the Capital Markets Day, we already said that we were making speed that many of the pilots were in good shape. I'm not going to elaborate fully in this quarterly update, but at least give you some highlights on the progress that we've made. If we zoom in on 3PL Europe, meanwhile, the new organization structure has been installed, and we continue to deliver synergies. As an example, you see that Staci has already onboarded meanwhile, one of its clients in the Polish market, so that moved from France to Poland as well. So we're serving them now in multiple markets. And also Active Ants has now a client that they onboarded for the French market recently. So that is actually also an element of cross-selling that we do today, thanks to the bigger geographical reach that we have.

In the U.S. Fast Track is really starting to create momentum. There are already six clients that we are actively serving, while the product was only launched in March, and we have six other ones in the pipeline that will be onboarded soon and will also contribute to our revenue growth, obviously, in a market where same-store sales is a challenge, but we see that the new product is really compensating for what we see happening there in the U.S.

If you look in Belgium, we have launched already a year ago the renewal of our products. Most of them become more hybrid and more quality products. In the [ funeral notices ], we see that the quality that we needed to achieve is achieved, meanwhile. So high-quality product to me with little complaints in it anymore.

We also launched a new product for the license plates. The government has decided that the emulation of a license plate in a postal office is abandoned as a public service, we launched a commercial product on that side. And also, if you look at the side of the B boxes or locker product, we are soon reaching 2,000 lockers, and we still aim to have 2,500 of these B boxes installed by the end of the year. So we're fully in momentum over there, and that's quite important to better serve our clients, both at the sender side as at the receiver side. And as I said before, many of the B2B pilots are in good shape. We're ready now to scale them up.

If you look at cross-border, we have been focusing on two new lanes, the reverse lane in North America from Canada to the U.S. seven new clients have signed up for that new lane. And also in Spain, we have a first large e-commerce player that has been onboarded as we speak and will start to deliver as of Q3 of this year. And obviously, given the fact that the group is further expanding, we also realize more and more synergies at the transportation side.

So as you can see, we are building up momentum. We're preparing there where we can to scale up and to speed up. But obviously, this is all in an environment with some challenges, but we have an optimistic outlook going forward.

And therefore, we are now ready to take any questions that you would have. Again, two questions each, please, so that everyone gets the chance to be addressed during the session. Operator, please open the lines.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities.

I have two. The first one is on Radial. Can you give a bit more color on the fast track and what to expect in the second half and the phasing of it because it was still down more than 20% this quarter, but that should improve in the second half and then especially going into the start of '26. So a bit more color on that. And maybe more important, you were able to keep your profitability in the second quarter at Radial U.S. quite decent, even improving versus last year. What should we expect for the second half year, especially that you have some real estate management and some benefits from the leasing coming into effect into the second half? Should we maybe even expect an improvement in the profitability in the second half for Radial U.S. So that would be my first question.

And the second one is on the volumes, the parcel volumes in Belgium, of course, a bit of a tailwind compared to the strikes from last year. However, underlying, it's still 1.6%. You guided at the start of the year, mid- to high single digits. Later, you came back and said it was maybe more around the mid-single-digit range. But evidently still a bit of a catch-up in the second half, which is more of a good comparable. How do you expect to achieve this? Or what should accelerate this trend? Those would be my questions, please.

Okay. Thank you. Maybe on fast track, as said, we onboarded six clients meanwhile with an ACV, which is in the higher EUR 40 million. I'm checking with Philippe...

Yes, yes, yes.

That's correct. And we have another six that signed, but we still have to onboard. I think what is important is that you see that the time between signature and onboarding has become much shorter than what we had in the past. So there, we actually have a relatively optimistic view. Second thing is as well, we have in that new verticals portfolio, we have less cyclical clients, means, of course, that we have less of an effect of a peak season in yen, but also that we continue to onboard clients throughout the peak season in this specific product.

If you look at the profitability, yes, indeed, the teams have done a really decent job in controlling the cost in the light of some client losses that we have announced earlier this year. And so I have to congratulate our teams over there for the good performance they had over there.

However, I would say like I would now not expect additional profitability coming in from that side anymore because they rightsized the organization. They have managed the lease exposure. We don't have in the pipeline at this point of time. any further improvement coming from that side. So you will still have a little bit of Fast Track effect, but the profitability improvement, we captured it fast. We could turn around it fast, but we don't expect additional things coming in, in the second half for Radial.

If you look at the volumes in Belgium, indeed, what you see is we could win back some of the client volumes. However, we still are, say, impacted by some of those clients that went dual carrier as a consequence of the strike. So still working on capturing a higher share of wallet within those clients. It's a little bit, let's say, difficult to have a precise view of that. For sure, it will not be at the higher single digit. It will be closer to somewhere in between where we were now and the middle single digit as announced. Our teams are working every day to win back those clients. But as you know, sometimes it takes a little bit of time before we win back the full confidence of that. So those volume forecast, I would be at the cautious side as we speak.

The next question comes from Marc Zwartsenburg from ING.

One quick follow-up on Michiel's question. You mentioned the onboarding of the six new clients at Radial with a EUR 40 million annual run rate. Is that correct for each?

No, no. The ACV is on the already onboarded clients in which, as you might have seen in some of the communication we've done there is one large client which is actually above the typical fast track size, which means that we actually have a higher EUR 40 million ACV of the already onboarded clients, but the size of the clients that we have in the pipeline are typically the size of the client that we expect, which is, let's say, in the range between EUR 2.5 million and EUR 5 million. That is a typical, let's say, client in the fast track range.

And so the six ones will not add the additional volume that you would have seen in the first one because there was a, let's say, an outsized client in that portfolio of the first six.

So one is -- just from my understanding, one is EUR 40 million and the rest is EUR 1 million to EUR 2 million. So...

No, no, no. We are typically in the range of EUR 2.5 million to EUR 5 million per client, but you have one which is substantially above in the first six.

What is then the EUR 40 million?

The sum the six together of the first six onboarded.

Exactly Okay. And are there -- is there already some revenue in Q2? Or is everything coming in, in the second half?

No, there is some revenue in Q2, but it's rather limited so far.

So we started shipping in May, I think.

Yes.

For shipping in May, we had a full fast track.

And then on your outlook, you made almost EUR 100 million in the first half adjusted EBIT and your outlook says at the higher end. So that's suggesting that there's a maximum of EUR 80 million to come. But last year, you made almost EUR 100 million in the second half. Well, you have some extra tailwinds coming, onboarding of new clients, still some lower lease costs, potentially no impact from strikes, et cetera, et cetera. Let's hope so. So you have a few positives as well. You have one month extra from Staci. How would it be that the result for the second half, which your guidance is so much lower than last year? Is that logical?

So I start -- yes. So in fact, the situation is different business unit by business unit. Typically, if I start with cross-border, mostly H1 equates to H2 or the other way around, it's more or less the same. They are not so much impacted by peak.

When it comes to Radial in the U.S. H2 is by far higher than H1 because it's very much peak sensitive driven. It has always been the case. There is no change in the pattern on that one.

When it comes to 3PL in Europe, we will see a higher Q2 -- H2 than H1 because the synergies will start kicking in, in the second half. They already start kicking in, but mostly in the third and the fourth quarter. So that would lead to having H2 that would be significantly higher than H1 based on what I've explained.

But in Belgium, it's the opposite. We always have seen that H1 was significantly higher than H2. Again, it's not '24, it was '23, '22 and before. The highest quarter is typically the first quarter. The second one is the second in rank. Due to the low volume in the summertime, the third quarter is close to zero in terms of EBIT. And then there is the impact of the year-end peak, which has always demonstrated to have higher top line, but from a percentage margin contribution, it's lower than the first half. So if you mix all together, that explains why we are guiding on those numbers.

But then that would be quite a significantly marked down on average Last Mile versus last year as well.

But you have a combination of postal impact and an increase in parcel volume, but also compensated by higher cost to handle because it's based on flexibilities that we have to bring into the system. And so we don't make a substantial better EBIT. So there is a higher revenue in the fourth quarter, but, let's say, a stable or slightly increase of EBIT. But the third quarter actually is the one that is, let's say, the least attractive quarter for us. And there, you see that the impact of the sum of the two makes the total result combined with mail, in BeNe Last Mile, so the Belgium business, the postal business combined with the parcel business will be lower than in H1. Which is fully in line with what we've seen in the past with the announcement we've made around that. So there's no surprise in that. It's just what we have always said.

Yes, true. But if you look back, also the second half is not that much weaker than the first half. We have a few extra tailwinds and some headwinds you have now in the first half and the strikes and stuff. So that would mitigate a bit the difference between first half and second half. And that's why I'm feeling that there's a bit of caution building.

It's really the fact that to deliver these higher volumes, we really need to add a lot of additional resources and it comes at a cost. That's really what Chris explained. And this is something that we have observed since many years. Of course, when you were comparing face value of it, you had in those numbers in the past the press that was extremely stable quarter-over-quarter. So it was diluting a bit that impact or having a bit that seasonality impact. Now it's really come at full light.

Yes. Okay. Maybe one quick follow-up on the price mix on the parcel side was a negative. I think initially, you always guided for a positive full year impact. Is that because of the client mix changing? And is that continuing that we should also expect maybe a negative price mix in the second half?

That's still an impact of the strike where we see that the large clients, which typically have a lower margin have come faster back in terms of the volume than the ones that we see on the smaller clients. As you can imagine, of course, our sales force is full out to capture back those clients. you start obviously with there where the biggest volumes are. And then you have to go one by one with the other clients, which takes more time.

And so there, we're still in the process of winning them back. And so that gave this negative impact of product mix. So the compensation that we have seen in the volume loss due to the stride, the win back was faster on the larger clients than on the midsized and smaller clients.

The next question comes from Marco Limite from Barclays.

I've got two. The first one is on your financial expenses this quarter at EUR 42 million. I mean you disclosed that there are some other elements in that number. But just wondering what could be, let's say, a normal run rate for financial expenses for Q3, Q4 and also what we should expect directionally in 2026 on -- again, on the financial expenses number?

And then the second question is on Staci. So if I look at your slide on Page 7, you're basically showing that all of the 3PL Europe revenue increase is coming from the consolidation of Staci. At the same time, you have got Radial Europe and Active Ants growing 13%. Am I right in thinking that Staci revenues are actually down year-over-year? And if overall Staci revenues and business performance is developing in line with your expectations?

Let me start with the financial expenses. So thanks for your question. So what we said that in the financial results, there is some cash and noncash element. If I come on the cash element, which the variation equates for variation between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million, which is just the situation that before prior to the Staci acquisition, we had cash that was invested at higher interest rates. And now we have a lower level of cash. And by the way, interest rates went also down. And we have additional debt coming from the acquisition of Staci.

So basically, based on what we shared with the market, the issuance of the bond that we did last year and this year, you have a pretty fair view of what it's going to be going forward. Now this is for the cash part.

The noncash part, which is, as I said, if the cash part is between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million, the noncash, you could do the math compared to what I said, is highly volatile and depending on the evolution of the U.S. euro exchange rate since we have intercompany loans, so between bpost NV to the U.S. market. And since the U.S. dollar weakened, of course, we had to do a mark-to-market of this revaluation, if you want, at the end of the quarter since it's a balance sheet item, then explain most of the variance. If we would be making the close of the book as we speak, we would have already regained 1/4 of the shortfall that we are seeing due to the exchange rate evaluation.

So to guide you, I think you should take the rates that we have seen on the issuance of the bond. This is what is the best proxy for future interest expenses on a cash item. On a noncash item, I cannot predict the evolution of the U.S. dollar-euro rates.

On Staci, I start and you continue, Chris. So on Staci 3PL Europe, indeed, you're absolutely right, we continue to see significant growth on retail and active since we were enjoying that one since many quarters. And Staci itself delivered a good profitability because we -- as we said, 10.4% EBIT percentage to sales, which is a very reasonable one.

It's fair to say that the top line development on the portfolio of Staci was a bit less strong than we could have expected, while having different situation, we have U.S. really growing very well. U.K. being a bit difficult -- by the way, this is what we have mentioned also on other parts of the business. We see that the U.S. -- sorry, the U.K. market in terms of volume development is difficult. Our colleagues of cross-border also experienced that one. And in France, the activity was equal to the year before. But profitability was in line with expectation.

Okay. If I can follow up on that topic. I think you are still looking for management role for 3PL Europe. Is that right? How the process is going?

Well, the process is on track. It's not yet in the phase that we can communicate, and so we will communicate at the moment that this process is coming to a conclusion.

The next question comes from [ Mark Zack ] from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Two, if I may. I'm afraid I need to come back or follow-up on the H2 profit that is implied by the guidance. I guess I understand what you said on BeNe Last Mile H1 versus H2 expectations. But still, I believe your guidance implies then that BeNe Last Mile H2 this year versus H2 last year, there will be quite a step down in profitability. And if you can help me understand how that happens?

And then the second question, more like a macro question on Radial U.S. And if you could elaborate the -- if you expect any impact on Radial U.S. from the abolishment of the U.S. de minimis regulation that end of August will basically now affect all countries in addition to China, Hong Kong. Will this have any impact on Radial for Q3, Q4 or for 2026? Or is Radial not all exposed to any e-commerce business that was coming into DS under the de minimis regulation?

You take the first one.

So H2, really, I want to emphasize on the fact that -- the peak execution come at a higher cost than the normal operation. Also in terms of absolute EBIT, it's -- the EBIT contribution will be dependent of the volumes itself, the top line. We see that the consumer confidence in Europe is not at its highest to the contrary. So if we combine the two, we believe that it's the best forecast that we could make at this stage. This being said, we will continue to improve on an operational standpoint. So we will not take a potential lower growth rate on top line as a fact and not doing something.

I think operational measures are taken has already started in the first quarter, the second one and some additional will come to be able to compensate for that. But we do not believe that it will make the fourth quarter as a very high in terms of EBIT, unlike we can see in the first and second quarter, where it's more base loaded where we have the best operational efficiency.

At the de minimis change, what we see is quite some activity around discussions on local fulfillment, but not yet leading to specific contracts. So what we see that is realized in the pipeline was already, let's say, in a discussion before that discussion of de minimis, but we could expect when it comes through that there is an increase of local fulfillment, which is positive for the business of Radial.

Obviously, it also has the whole tariff discussion in the U.S. has quite an impact on what is happening in our cross-border business. And there you see shifts in lanes. Luckily, our teams have been able to go with the shift in lanes. And so we see that they are managing it fairly well so far. It's a very complex environment where we see that, for instance, the U.S.-Canada lane is under pressure. It is compensated to some extent with the Asia-Canada lane, where we have now higher volumes coming in. You see as well that we're developing new lanes, the reverse lane from Canada to the U.S., the lane in Spain that we're developing. So teams are working well and are still delivering on the plans. But what you see is quite some important shifts in the flows within the business that we see today.

But on the side of the fulfillment, I think that you have two effects that we can expect. One is likely more possibility in the fulfillment space to grow the business. On the other hand, probably pressure on same-store sales in the longer run, given then the decreased purchasing power as a consequence of the tariff war that you see, which is expected to leak at some point of time in less, say, consumer confidence in the U.S., not today as we see, of course, but something in the long run. So we see those two parameters that will weigh on each other.

Hard to predict fully in detail which one will win in that dynamic. But I think the good news is we have a very active sales team today really hunting on the opportunity side, both in the cross-border and in the Radial business. So we're confident that we try to get the best out of these changes in the market.

And something we have not seen that could have potentially seen is in anticipation of these changes, higher volumes, we have not really seen it.

Yes. So we looked as well in the lease optimization if there was an opportunity for earlier inbound into the U.S., which we have not seen.

The next question comes from Henk Slotboom from The IDEA!.

Well, looking at today's figures, I guess you can say the first blow is half the battle. I've got two questions. One is a follow-up on the previous question with regard to cross-border. Chris, you said you were seeing higher activities on the China-Canada lane. And at the same time, we see you've been adding clients in cross-border on the Canada-U.S. route. Is that a structural thing? The de minimis rule is now affecting all countries in the world. And yes, we all know that the relationship between the U.S. and Canada is not at its best shape ever.

And the second question I had is on the parcels, and that's on the negative impacts of the price/mix effect. Is that more like a mix effect? Or is it something like you had a strike in the first quarter. Is it a sort of piece offering to the clients, to keep the clients in? And have you seen any material damage to your client base on the back of the strikes we've seen in the first half -- sorry, in the first quarter of this year?

Yes. Okay. Let me take them one by one. On cross-border, it's, of course, hard to predict because what we saw already in the Canadian situation was even before de minimis change and even before tariff impact on Canada, we saw already a changing buying behavior of Canadians. So there was a lower volume on the U.S.-Canada lane and an increased volume on the Asia-Canada lane. And so it's not only driven by tariffs, it's also driven by a sentiment. And of course, predicting the sentiment with the current situation in North America is a little bit hard for us to say. I think that the good news for us is, of course, that we are present on both lanes. And so whatever will shift in those lanes, we're also looking at other lanes towards Canada where we can reinforce our presence. So we try to make sure that we continue to be a very strong player on that Canadian market there.

What you see is new, which is that before the flow of Canada to the U.S. was fairly lower, and we have actually seen an increase of activity also pushed by extensive sales efforts for our team, but we see now that we are reinforcing our position in the reverse flow that we see from Canada to the U.S. And so that is probably something that we think will be a structural trend.

Also to be admit as well today, it's not that material that we should make it a big point, but it's important that we see that there's a new dynamic starting there and at least we're part of that new dynamic.

Price/mix effect is really a volume mix effects that you see today. So that is that as an effect of the strike, we have a number of clients that deviated, they were already dual carrier that deviated to the other carriers, some of that volume, and it took us time to bring it back. But overall, actually, these are typically the large accounts who were, let's say, really good in rebuilding that confidence with them and ensuring that they would come back.

What you see is, of course, in the, let's say, the clients that bring lower volumes, it takes more time for us because it's more sales effort linked to that, and that's typically volumes that come at a slightly better price mix than the ones that you have in the larger side. So it's today not a we discount to win clients back. We spend time to get the right volumes back, but we have a little bit of a negative mix effect on the speed in which volume comes back to our facilities.

And we the temporary discount?

No, we have not done that. No, no temporary discount. It's really building on that. Obviously, I'm not going to reveal the details of that, but there's a lot of commercial discussion on that, which are more to do about reliability, ensuring to have better plans and all these kind of elements to ensure that we can deliver high quality to our clients in any circumstance, which we have spent quite some time on, but it has not been about commercial discounts to keep volumes.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying there's no structural damage in the client base as a result of the strikes. And as far as the negative mix effect is concerned, with a bit of luck, we might see it turning positively again if the smaller clients come back again.

I'm happy to see your confidence. We're a little bit more cautious than you are in the sense that, of course, we have to talk to these clients every day. And I think that there has been some confidence issues with some of those clients. I don't think we're back to normal level yet. But we see that we're on the right track to build it up again. And obviously, if we're able to build it up again and build that confidence, that obviously is a very good base for future growth of our activity. But it's a little bit early to already cry victory on this one.

We'll not cry victory on the war, but the battery maybe because in the quarter, the second quarter, the price mix effect was slightly positive.

Okay. And would you allow me a small follow-up on the first answer you gave. Is it fair to assume that the growth in clients on the Canada-U.S. lane could be a prelude to clients opting for local fulfillment as well?

Yes, it's clearly linked the one to the other. That's a good observation, I would say.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. So I will hand it back to Chris to conclude today's conference. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you then, everybody, in the call for having taken the time to be with us and for your interesting questions.

As a reminder, our third quarter results will be published in early November, exceptionally this time on a Wednesday, November 5, instead of the usual Friday. Until then, we look forward to staying in touch. And for those who haven't taken their holidays yet, I wish you a great break. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.

Hello. Hello, everyone, and a very good morning to all of you. On behalf of the bpostgroup Group Executive Committee, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to this Capital Markets Day. Welcome to those joining us here live in our headquarters in Brussels and as well as those joining us online. My name is Steve De Loor. I am Head of Communications for Belgium, and I will be your host this morning.

Today is all about how bpostgroup is rethinking the possible and reshaping the future. What that means you will discover later this morning. But let's first have a look at today's agenda. We will start with an overview of the bpostgroup strategy, and then, we will zoom in on the different BUs within the group. We will take a focus on the ESG policies, and of course, the financial outlook before wrapping it up with a closing Q&A.

So a lot of exciting topics on the agenda this morning. Fortunately, we have the seasoned and experienced professionals of the bpostgroup leadership to take us through today's key messages.

And I would also like to present to you our community host, Antoine Lebecq. Antoine, welcome.

Hello, Steve. Good morning, all. And I see some familiar faces. So welcome to all of you, and thank you very much for joining us today.

Well, I think we're all very excited to be here. Can you introduce yourself? And what is your role today?

Yes. So I'm Antoine, in charge of Investor Relations. And today, I will play the role of the so-called community manager. So that means that I will relay your questions and also the questions of the online viewers. So in practice, we encourage you to send your questions with the slido add-on the webcast page and send your questions. I will compile these questions, and we'll come at the end of the presentation during the general Q&A session to answer all these questions with the panelists.

That's right.

I think that for the in-room questions, we also have some...

Yes. So after each presentation, we will take the time for 1 or 2 questions depending on how much time is left, but of course, at the end of this session, we will take all questions that we receive.

Good. Then I wish you...

Thank you, and we'll see you later, Antoine. Now there's one more person that I need to introduce, that is, Rafike Yilmaz, Chief Communications and Brand Officer at bpostgroup. Rafike, welcome as well.

Thank you, Steve. Hello.

So you will take the lead for interviews today.

Yes. Exactly. So we have our CEOs today with us to explain the strategy for the coming years and how we basically reshape the future of this company.

Indeed. And how will this practically work?

It will be a mix of interviews, but also CEOs pitching their strategy to us.

Okay. Well, looking forward to that. So I think it's about time that we get started. So bpostgroup has gone through a lot of major changes recently, but let's first have a look at this video on what bpostgroup looks like in 2025.

[Presentation]

Reshaping the future is indeed what it is all about today. And with that, please let me introduce to you the CEO of bpostgroup, Mr. Chris Peeters.

Welcome, Chris. Are you ready?

Of course.

Okay. Well, last year, we launched a new company strategy. We have announced a significant shift from postal to parcel, but what do we exactly mean by this?

Well, if you look at bpostgroup until, let's say, recently, it was really a postal company. It was organized around postal services. It had over time, acquired a number of activities in the parcel business, but it had never integrated that. If you look at the acquisition that we've done over time, you saw it already in the video. So we've done Landmark acquisition in 2013, important for us because that allows us to have both postal services across the border, but also parcel services across the border.

We did the acquisition of Radial in the U.S., partly in Europe as well, in 2017, very important activity in terms of parcel fulfillment for the B2C sector. And we have last year done the acquisition of Staci. And Staci was the acquisition where we also entered into the B2B space, so fulfillment capabilities into the B2B.

That being said, the company so far was really structured around postal plus parcels, meaning that we were handing over to our postal carriers, the parcel service and organized all the routes all the way how we were organized around that. And that is what is this strategy is about. This strategy is really leaving that part.

We basically embrace parcel as the core product that we are delivering going forward, meaning as well that we basically say we see -- we look around in the world, and we see that actually the postal service is going down, continue to go down. A successful company needs to have growth. Growth is in parcels. We fully embrace that, and we'll organize ourselves to be successful in that space.

Okay. But what exactly is different from the previous strategy?

There are many things that have changed actually. The first and probably most important one, especially for investors, is that our focus will shift from volume to value. There's a lot behind that word, of course. But in the past, a lot in the different business that we had, in Radial, in bpost in Belgium, was focused on having enough volume to keep enough activity to keep our assets running to keep our people busy. That was really the focus that we had. And that means as well that we were actually present in quite commoditized services.

And so we want to shift that to have much more value-added services, also have more diversified portfolios because the dependency that we have as a midsized company in the logistics sector from large accounts was too big. And so we want to diversify this towards, say, more midsized companies. We also want to go into much more growth segments. So far, it was really focused in the parcel business on B2C business.

That is something we will enlarge in higher growth areas. B2B is parcelizing as we speak, and so, there's a lot of need in the B2B segment. So we enter into that space much more than we did before. And also what we see is in the consumer segment, the C2C segment, is a highly growth segment today, where you see that reuse of things, secondhand markets are growing very fast today. And so having services that are adequate to this sector is also something that we will enter into with this new strategy.

Okay. That's very clear. Value over volume, new products, new market segments. But most recently, we have been confronted with some strikes as well.

Yes, indeed. As you know, the social climate overall in Belgium is today what it is. There is quite some resistance against the government that has to cuts in cost and is, therefore, looking for the ways how they get their budgets under control, and that has created some social unrest. And in that light, of course, bpost, as a former state-owned monopoly player, is also seen by the social partners often as a way to show to the government that things are not going well.

Second thing, of course, when you announce a transformation, it creates a certain level of unrest. And so the combination of those 2 has led to a number of moments, where we really had strikes, and we have also in the quarterly results announced that this had a quite big impact on our activity recently.

We have heavily invested meanwhile in that social dialogue, not yet to an end. Let's be also very, let's say, honest about that. We were evolving towards having a more intense dialogue, also explaining much more to our people why it's so important that we enter into new growth markets and that sticking to this postal market is actually not the way forward and also actually is a risk for the job security that they have. And that in contrast, this strategy also will create much more job security than the one that we had before, and we see that this dialogue really is going into the right direction now.

Okay. Thank you. So with this strategy, we want to change the course of this company. And with this, we want to reshape its future by becoming a digital and regional expert in parcel-sized logistics. Can you explain us how we will do this?

Well, I mean, as you say, it is very important that you see that a lot of the activity that we have become pure commercial activity. If you look in the structure that the company had before, it was postal services, which are still a very regulated under the USO regulation business that we were working on, but it's a declining business.

Second thing is we had quite some important government contracts and the Press concession. These things, we are actually fading out in the next coming months. And so we really will be focused on becoming a successful commercial company. Good news is that we already have initial signs that this is really working. We have a lot of client traction today, but it's quite important that we start to work on that. That means as well, of course, that you put the needs of your client in the center of everything what you do, which is not typically what the monopolist does in the past. They basically offer a service, and then, you can choose if you want to service, yes or no. But they don't have to adjust themselves.

We have become much more commercial, helped, of course, by the fact that many of the entities that we have acquired over time were already very commercial, and so, they were used to operate in this kind of market. And so combining these forces together brings us into this new space and will help us to be delivering those parcel size services to clients and deliver them solutions in a way.

And obviously, you mentioned the word digital. Digital will be very important because combining those different capabilities, fulfillment to some extent last mile delivery, different types of delivery moments that we have, Big Box. We will talk about that later. So those elements, bringing it all together, digital will play an important role because in this world, of course, information is key to organize yourself in an efficient way.

That means that we will have all assets sweat a lot more, but that's still at the client side. You have diversified services that are really focused on the typical client needs that you would have there.

Yes. Thank you. You've also told me once that we need to install a change in culture.

Obviously, coming from an environment where you basically were a market leader by definition as a monopolist, coming into the place where you have to prove every day that you are the market leader, that demands an other level of flexibility. That demands the way how we think about delivery very differently. There were 2 things that were blocking us. On the one hand, this focus on postal service, where we basically say, if we want to get organized around postal service, it's a day plus 1 organization that you have and you want to make it as efficient as possible with postman running around in 1 cycle, also maybe sometimes in 2 cycles when they do newspapers as well.

If you want to change that into a parcel that is oriented to the client, they might want it in the morning, in the -- at noon, at night, so you need to find different rounds, different way of working, different sorting schemes that you need to have. So all these changes need to be implemented that we adjust ourselves. And, of course, the culture of that flexibility that you need, where you will see that our mailmen will have to operate sometimes in the evening, sometimes in the morning. So this flexibility will be an important part of this transfer.

Okay. Chris, we have also launched 22 transformation tracks, 7 of these we consider must wins. Can you explain them to us?

Yes. So 22 elements in the transformation program, and you can read in the documentation that we have all the details on those. I think we want to highlight 7 of them because with those 7, we will make the most important element of that transformation. If we go business by business, first of all, let's maybe start with the business that is typically least talked about, which is the cross-border business that we have.

In cross-border business, we have a really strong capability, as you also saw on the video in terms of having on the one hand, transport excellence combined with custom capabilities that we have on those specific lanes. And so what we will do there is use that and leverage that capability to be successful in a changing market. That will mean that we will open new lanes. We just opened a new lane to Spain or also that we adjust ourselves to shifting lanes.

If you look at an important lane for us was U.S.-Canada with a president that changes his mind 3 times a day in terms of tariffs, you see as well that those flows are changing. So the emphasis on the China-Canada lane has increased and the U.S.-Canada lane itself has decreased, and so adjusting ourselves to that new reality is something that we focus on to have that agility in a changing market.

If we then go to the 3PL business, 3PL business is really the growth engine of this company. In that 3PL business, if you look at the U.S., U.S. was vulnerable because of a number of large accounts that we had in the past. As you know that we did an impairment on that recently that was a that was overvalued in our books because of the fact that those vulnerabilities were not taken into account.

That is something that we have fully taken into account. But also, we have launched already a year ago a strategy of entering into the mid-market with a new product, a product that we will discuss later. Tom will talk about that, fast-track product that we have, very successful already these days in the market. So after -- a few months after launch, we see several clients already onboarded in this new product, where we have actually multiple clients on the same site in a new technology stack, delivering services to them in a very efficient way. So that is what we focus on in the U.S.

The turnaround of Radial, making that portfolio much more resilient to the future and also much more profitable given the fact that we focus on a different type of client, midsized, more verticals, that is what's happening there.

If you look at the European side of 3PL, the Staci acquisition is, of course, the centerpiece of what we do there. So it helps us to enter into the B2B space. But on top of that, we integrate the capabilities that we have from Active Ants and Radial Europe to ensure that we have a full portfolio to those clients and that we can actually do cross-selling.

So what you see is Staci coming in with non-merchant goods, POS capabilities, and we combine that with merchant goods that are sitting actually in Active Ants and Radial Europe, and that is leveraging to the full extent the capabilities that we have over there.

And then, of course, everybody knows Belgium, and a lot of people sitting here in the room are from Belgium. So if you look at the BeNe Last Mile business line, first of all, building that B2B capability. We'll talk about that when we talk about that business line. We're piloting in different verticals new type of offering where we combine sometimes fulfillment with last mile capabilities, really adjusted to the client needs.

We also are working on the renegotiation, of course, of the retail network that we have with the government. As you know, we have a contract that runs until 1st of January '27. So we are in the middle of the renegotiation on how that retail network needs to evolve. I will talk about that when we talk about the business line. Center piece here is the full redesign of the operational model. The way how we sort, the way how we transport, the way how we distribute will completely change. So we will have a combination of different type of rounds.

Today, we're very strong in the traditional milk run of the postman. We add to that bulk runs for volumes in parcels. We will add to that time-based runs. So really ensuring that we can deliver the client demands on that level. And then finally, as well, we will -- we already have a very capable network in Belgium with postal bonds with -- or postal network with a number of lockers. But now the launch of Big Box at scale, where we're installing 6 to 8 lockers every day, will ensure that we have full capillarity on this market.

Okay. And you've also strengthened your management?

Yes, of course. If you want to succeed, you need to have a good team. And so we have reinforced the team with different capabilities that were critical for the success of this strategy. On the one hand, you have to work digital. This company had many digital applications, but they were never integrated in a way that in a transversal way we can develop services. And so we have a Chief Digital Officer that is responsible for that digital transformation to ensure that we can combine different capabilities and bring them in that way to our client.

For the people in the street, this would mean, of course, that the app will give them much more flexibility in the delivery of their parcel, but of course, in the B2B space, many more things need to happen in terms of reporting in terms of acceptance. All these things will be integrated at the digital side.

Second thing is B2B is a fairly new space for us, focusing on midsized clients is fairly new to us as well. So we have reinforced at the commercial side with a Chief Commercial Officer at group level. And then finally, in the U.S., we have onboarded recently, and he will present his strategy after me, so the U.S. CEO that is driving now this new strategy towards growth of the company, so in the middle of that transformation, Tom. You will see him soon.

Well, thank you for this introduction, Chris. I think we're at the end of this part. We will continue now with our CEOs, and we will see each other again with BeNe Last Mile part.

Thank you, indeed, Chris. I think we can all agree that there's a lot of exciting things happening at bpostgroup, as you will discover even more later this morning. Now I do remind you that if you have questions for Chris on this first part, we will take them at the end of the session. So please write them down or keep them in mind, and we will tackle them later on.

It's now time to take a closer look at the strategy and the vision of the different business units. And I propose we start with our BU 3PL Europe comprising of Staci, Active Ants and Radial Europe. For that, we have the CEO, Thomas Mortier, with us. Thomas, please join us on the stage.

Hello, Thomas. Welcome.

Hello, Rafike. Thank you.

As Chris called you the centerpiece, Mr. Centerpiece -- he has called you within Staci, yes. But Staci joined the group in August last year, and now you are a part of 3PL business unit. Can you please introduce yourself to our audience.

Yes. Good morning, everyone. So I am Thomas Mortier. As you will hear with my accent, I'm French. I'm based in Paris. I'm the CEO of Staci since 14 years, working in the company since 30 years now. And I'm jointly the CEO of the 3PL business unit, including Radial, Active Ants and Staci for the European part of the logistics of the bpostgroup.

Okay. Thank you, Thomas. Let's start with a short overview of the 3PL European operations, and I will give you the floor.

Thank you very much, Rafike. Thank you. So perhaps a few words, a few figures to start about the 3PL business unit. So we have a revenue of EUR 995 million in '24, including EUR 770 million for Staci. We have 91 warehouses for around 1 million square meter working in 10 countries: France, U.K., Italy, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, U.S. and a small business in China, started last year with Staci.

Our offer to the market is a fulfillment solution. So, for our clients, we manage their goods. We store the goods. We pick and pack. And we distribute their goods in the Last Mile distribution, so we always include the distribution part of the service.

We work for 2 activities, B2B and B2C. So B2C, first, is the specialization of Radial Europe and Active Ants with fully automated warehouses. And we add to B2C, a B2B business with Staci. Staci is specialized in multichannel distribution. I will come back on this one.

Perhaps you know better Active Ants and Radial, which has been with the group for a longer time. So I will zoom a bit on the Staci culture and know-how. So we have an entrepreneur mindset culture, really flexible solution, sales oriented, and we think global like local. This is our offer to our clients. A team with a long-term engagement, a low churn and a lot of internal promotion.

The MD for France joined us 20 years ago as a temps and became a site director and then the MD for France. We have our own IT. So it's called WMS, Warehouse Management System, has been internally developed, is owned by the company. And we invest a lot in innovation since the beginning of the company. We have web shops, 500 web shops, web agency integrated. We invest recently in drones for inventory for our clients in AI solution to control the pick and pack quality, API connection and so on and so on.

The one asset of Staci is this capacity to work for multi-verticals. So we are really sales-oriented, and we work for a lot of different verticals, like FMCG, fast-moving goods companies; industrial retailers; pharma; telecom; health and beauty; home equipment; fashion; toys and baby goods and so on. So it's unlimited kind of segment.

We have 2,000 clients in Staci, more or less, and some of those, like 120 clients, we operate for them in more than 2 countries. We have 75 clients in more than 3 countries, 50 in more than 5. And it's increasing each year, I mean, existing clients ask us for new geographies, and it's part of the growth of the company -- of the organic growth of the company.

The company has always been margin oriented. So we look for profitable growth. We don't look for high volumes with low margin. The strategy is really to go for profitable growth with long-term engagement with the clients, and we have really a client with a very long contract.

Perhaps a few words now on the market request, what the client ask us and what we answer to the client now at the 3PL business unit level. First, the client asked for outsourcing, its attendance. It's Staci attendance, and we still have a lot of opportunities in outsourcing in some countries like the south of Europe, and we offer to the client variable cost.

Our warehouses are mutualized. I will come back on it. So mutualized warehouses. We offer flexible and variable cost to the client. It's a business model. So they like to outsource to us, and they pay what they use. Their invoice follows the flows and their volumes. We offer them a multichannel logistics solution. This is the request of the client, serving with 1 stock, B2B, B2C and marketplace like Amazon.

So they like the capacity to operate differently in terms of process of pick and pack to deliver any kind of final point of delivery. Historically, in Staci, it was shops, petroleum stations and so on. So also, we proposed a multi-geography solution. So, again, our offer is in global at local, and the request of the client is to have 1 contract, 1 KPI, 1 reporting, same invoice, 1 IT connection, and this is our offer, and we operate locally for them.

Our global offer includes the last mile delivery. We have 500 carriers connected with our TMS, Transport Management System, including for sure now the bpost capabilities, BeNe Last Mile, Landmark Global for cross border. And so we offer a global offer to our clients.

And last but not least, they ask also -- our clients or the market is asking for automation and innovation. And we have a lot of offers in mechanization with auto stores, again, drones, AI solutions and so on.

What is the strategy now? A few words about the strategy of this business unit, the 3PL business unit. We want to become a market leader. We are already a market leader with close to EUR 1 billion revenue, but we want to continue this growth being a market leader in multichannel offer solutions.

The market is asking for this offer of multichannel solutions. The combination of strength of Staci, Active Ants and Radial is really a chance. I mean, those 3 companies have strengths. They have some weaknesses, but not so many. But the strengths are strong. And when we combine the strengths, we are quite unique in this 3PL market.

The market is more specialized. You have some competitors, which are more specialized in some kind of activities. We are able to cover all the requests from the market with mechanization with our 6 WMS, and we have 6 warehouse management systems in this 3PL entity, the strong know-how in organizing transportation. We have no trucks in the 3PL business unit. We outsource -- fully outsource the transportation.

We have a flex client onboarding. We are able to onboard the client in less than a week with just a setup of the IT. It's not the development. The IT has been developed in those 3 entities just to be set up. So in the 3 entities, we are able to onboard the clients very quickly with low CapEx. So this is also the business model.

We leverage synergies with those 3 entities. We have a lot of synergies, as you can imagine. And so for that, we are ongoing to organize the business unit with a new organization chart by countries. By the past, previously, Active Ants and Radial was organized centrally. It was a centralized management structure across countries.

Staci was organized by country, so a different organization. So now we are moving to this new organization by countries, like we combine the new organization chart, okay? I will continue. So this gives us a lot of opportunities.

So first, each country have its own CEO, COO, CCO, CFO and sales team, HR team, finance team, project team, transport team. So if I take the example of U.K., in the U.K., we had previously 1 entity for Active Ants, 1 entity for Radial and 1 entity for Staci. Now they are combined below 1 central overhead organization. So we will have savings due to this new organization chart.

We will have savings in overhead. We will be -- and we are more efficient in monitoring profitability because we are closest to the business and to the operations. So we also answer better to the client request. We are closest to the client, and we offer them so many requests in terms of mechanization, IT and so on.

So we share the capabilities in the like warehouses also, where we have space in 1 entity. We can absolutely implement clients in an existing facility. So this will increase the profitability in the near future.

Also, in terms of procurement, strong synergies in procurement. We consolidate the spend in transportation for the 3 entities, the spend in packaging, energy, IT, temp labor and so on. So we have a better buying power in each country now to leverage also better cost.

We push also the cross-selling. Cross-selling is a know-how in Staci that now we push in the 3PL business unit entity. This is quite simple. We are able to offer to the Active Ants client the Staci know-how and to the Active Ants know-how the Staci know-how, so on. So we share those experience.

And so we are able to offer to the market the management of any kind of products. POS, as Chris said, the marketing and POS, non-core business product, which was a historic business of Staci, historical business of Staci, able to manage core product and spare parts.

We have a subsidiary called Base Logistics, which is specialized in spare parts also. We are able to extend the segment. So as I said just before, we are working for a lot of different segments. A recent example, we won 4 clients in a charging station, a booming market. So we manage the charging stations, the spare parts and so on for any kind of deliveries, B2B and B2C. So this -- the segments are a lot of opportunities, give us a lot of opportunities with mobile phones companies, medical device. We are also booming in medical device.

And we start -- in June, we start 6 clients in this business unit, 4 in France and 2 in the U.S. We offer this multi-country solution. It's an accelerator. I give you a quick example. With the combination of the 3 entities, we were able to start Staci in Poland in less than 3 months, thanks to the Radial facilities in Poland. So we implement the know-how of Staci, and we won 3 clients, including Bacardi, which is a historical client for Staci in 3 countries, now a client in Poland, and we have 2 others.

So this, let's say, cover of Europe is really an asset for us. And we are close to start the business of Active Ants in France. So we also share the best practice on the other way, meaning in Staci to develop the e-commerce part of Staci.

We leverage also the know-how of Staci to hunt new clients to prospect. It's a know-how in Staci, really, to go to the market, to hunt new clients, to catch market shares, okay, to grow organically. It's a strong know-how that we have in all countries with a dedicated team for sales.

You have the team for key accounts, but sales is dedicated team with a central transverse organization, strong CRM and reporting. So we do the same now for Active Ants and Radial, pushing the team to go to the market to catch the business. This is exactly what Chris said a few minutes ago about this way to go for commercial now.

Okay, about financials, I will not give any details because Philippe will do in a few minutes. Perhaps as a summary or conclusion, we are in a growing market. We offer flex solutions. We have a long-term strategy and business plan. Thanks to a strong portfolio, okay, first, we have very nice clients, blue-chip clients that we can replicate in other countries, and as I said, in other kind of deliveries.

We replicate the Staci success. So Staci success, cross-selling, fast duplication business model, sales oriented and expand in new verticals. Again, high margin business. So we focus on high-margin business instead of high volume. It's a different way to approach the market.

And we have these operational efficiencies, footprint and overhead optimization. So we will improve and optimize the footprint and optimize the overhead for sure. And we have a lot of saving in that way. We leverage the strengths of the 3 entities also with this new organization chart, as I said a few minutes ago, and also a lot of cost synergies, particularly in transport, warehousing and procurement. That's the plan for the near future.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. Well within time. Thank you for that as well.

Logistics is a business. We are always in time.

Exactly, very right. Which also leaves time for questions.

So we will take questions from the audience in this room right now for Thomas. Please wait for the microphone if you have -- if you want to ask your question. Any questions for Thomas? Yes, please, 1 question here in the front.

Thomas, thank you for the presentation. Thomas, I heard you talking about the new organizational structure country-wise. And then I heard you mentioning a lot of roles, CCO, CEO, whatever. It sounds like a lot more overhead and you're claiming exactly the opposite. Can you explain that?

Yes, sure. Sure. We -- this organization chart was or is existing already in Staci, in all countries except Poland that we were not where Radial is. So we combine the 3 entities. And clearly, we more or less maintain or combine with the Staci existing team. So we will have savings in other overheads, okay, globally. So the saving -- normally, I shouldn't give figures. So I am prudent. We just give one, but I think we are close to probably EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million of savings in overheads. So combining the entities, you don't need double team in all areas. So it's really a strong opportunity.

Other questions? Yes.

On your point on being able to share volumes between the warehouses, are there risks to the strategy? And does that -- would that mean that in the future you could maybe remove some of the fixed asset base if they're close together if you're able to share volumes and increase utilization?

Yes, sure, absolutely. Yes. It's -- I can give you this example of Active Ants. We will implement Active Ants in Staci in France in an existing warehouse. So the business model of Staci is mutualized warehouses. So we have in our facilities between 10 to 60 clients. So we never close the facility when we have -- if we lose a client, we replace the client by a new one. So the sites have their own P&L, and they are independent, let's say, independent. So each site has a site leader, has a local customer service team, ops team and so on, and we are absolutely able to integrate new clients, any kind of activities in an existing site.

So this is the way that we can leverage -- increase the profitability of the site. And what we do? It's a strong know-how also. We put in the site inverse seasonality client. So when the client has a period -- a peak period like, I don't know, Heineken before summer, in this warehouse. After the peak period of Heineken, we have a client in toys industry. So we have the peak in toys, which is before Christmas. So we always have full warehouses really to use the capabilities and increase the profitability. So it's a know-how.

It's a know-how that we replicate now in Active Ants and Radial, which has the same mutualized warehouses. But again, the example of U.K., but we can say -- we can have the same example in Germany, for instance, we integrate now Staci's client in existing warehouses of Active Ants and Radial because the Staci sites sometimes are full. And so instead of opening a new site, we take the benefit of the existing capacities of the site of Active Ants and Radial. So in any case, the profitability of Active Ants and Radial will increase.

Okay. One last question. Just here in the front.

I heard a lot about the geographical expansion as well, Active Ants opening in France, also new openings in Poland. I mean this is clearly something very important for your customers having a good coverage, but can you elaborate a bit more on what the strategy here is or the base of the strategy in terms of opening new centers? I see today, you're mainly in France, Western Europe. There's still a lot of room in Eastern Europe as well. Is there something more specific that you can tell on the pace there? And we haven't covered it yet, but there's a EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million CapEx budget for the bpostgroup. Is it fair to assume that most of it will go towards the 3PL segment or business?

It's a very good question. We have 1 hour. It's okay.

I'm afraid we don't have an hour.

Just in a few words. Thank you for the question. Clearly, it depends on the level of maturity of the market, okay? So we are flexible and adapt our strategy of growth depending on the level of maturity of the market. When I say level of the maturity, I take the example of, again, U.K., and I will go to the south for sure, but just 2 minutes. In U.K., e-com is more mature than the rest of Europe. In England, the e-commerce is more mature.

So we have the capacity to continue the growth with e-com, which is still growing in U.K., but is a lot in advance compared to other countries in the south of Europe, for instance, Spain and Italy. And we have in Spain and Italy, a less mature market in terms of outsourcing. Recently, we won some big clients like [ Koch ], [ Ferrero ] in Italy and others, and Air Liquide in Spain due to this outsourcing decision.

So the market of outsourcing is still a huge opportunity in Spain and Italy. So I trust that we open warehouse when we have the business. So it's that way, not the opposite way. We do not open a warehouse to get the business. So it's slightly a different way to approach the growth. And so in the -- I trust that in the near future, we will open more warehouses in the south of Europe, Italy and Spain, which are huge opportunities.

In Germany, where we are still small, where -- and the market is quite regional, but we are regional. So thanks to the implementation of Staci, Radial and Active Ants, we are regional. So it gives us also a better cover of the German market. So it's also a really interesting opportunity for us, combining those 3 entities. And it was a lack in Staci of know-how in e-commerce. We had -- Staci has a bit less than 30% of these activities in e-commerce. So due to now the combination of those 3 entities, it gives to Staci a better visibility on e-commerce and a strong offer to the market. So, well, I need more time because I now have to...

I think that there is more time either at the end of the session or during lunch, of course, if you want to go into this more...

With pleasure. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Thomas.

Thank you very much.

And we will see you again at the end for the final Q&A. Thank you.

Okay. Now time to dive deeper into the next business unit, which is 3PL North America. For that, we have the CEO of 3PL North America with us, Tom Schmitt, who flew in from the U.S. to be here with us today. Tom.

Hello, Tom.

Good to be here.

You're quite rookie in the group. How are you?

I'm excited and pumped up to be here.

But you're not really a rookie, are you?

Well -- so it's 3 months not even into my position with bpostgroup and Radial. So I guess, technically, I am a rookie. Now while I've been here for 3 months, I've been 3 decades in the industry of transportation, logistics, supply chain, perhaps relevantly leading DB Schenker contract logistics globally, which has a huge e-commerce fulfillment part. And in the U.S., FedEx supply chain, a similar space as Radial. So 3 months in the group, very pumped up about that and 3 decades in the industry.

Thank you. Well, exactly, you've started a few months ago, but you haven't wasted any time. So I know you're very eager to talk about the Radial North American strategy, I'll leave you to it.

Thank you. Thanks, Rafike. So it is a new dawn for Radial North America. And the company actually has gone through some struggles over last few years. I'm going to talk about that. It's a new dawn. We're going to go back to a journey of profitable growth, value over volume. But before we go into the how to and the 3-year destination, 2027, let me just take you back a little bit.

The company had several origins. The most relevant one was in 1995, a young tech entrepreneur called Michael Rubin knocked at the door of world's leading consumer brands in North America and said, "Hey, I can build you a web store". Most companies, probably in 1995, said, okay. And what exactly is that? And, well, your customers can click on demand in that web store and our skirt or our perfume shows up at your customer's home. And I will do the warehousing, the transportation, facilitate the payment and you have an additional business stream.

That's what happened 30 years ago. 30 years later, we still do that. We still fulfill those customers' demands and deliver goods to their customers' homes for some of the world's leading consumer brands, mostly in apparel and health and beauty. We do this today in North America with 21 locations, 1.3 million square meters, 14 million square feet. And at peak, we actually have 10,000 teammates delivering those goods on time, as Thomas said, and with super high accuracy levels to our customers' homes.

Now, as I said before, the last few years have not been without struggles. Into the COVID years, 2020, '21, we invested heavily into new leases, new facilities and also into new automation inside these facilities, bigger footprint, and that was great for perhaps a very short amount of time. In the following years, '22, '23, '24, some of that consumer bubble during COVID waned, some of our customers had business decline challenges themselves.

And also, some of our customers decided to in-source and called warehousing their core competency. Altogether, that meant at the low point, just a few months ago, we were actually sitting at capacity utilization in the low 60% range, almost 40% of our capacity empty. The standard in the industry is somewhere between 85% and 90% fill rate. And we're going to get there over the next couple of years. We're going to go from today's 66%. We etched our way up a little bit to 88% in the next couple of years. So the struggle has been real.

Now the one thing that's very, very important, even during those challenging years, '22, '23, '24, we maintained profitability. How did we do that? Rigorous cost management. In '24-'25 alone, we actually had a cost reduction initiative that yielded $116 million on an annualized basis. It's a new dawn though, we are going back to profitable growth with value over volume. How are we doing that? 2 prongs. The first one is getting the maximum performance out of our existing customer base. This is where the margin focus comes in. The second is stretching beyond the current core in meaningful ways, allowing us to tap into more customers and more industries for value creation and value capture.

Let's double-click on each 1 of those 2 prongs. Let's talk about maximizing the performance of our current core business. There's 3 dimensions that are the most relevant. The first one has to do, you heard this earlier from Chris, customer centricity. We are absolutely relentless about focus on our customer, on our customer scorecards. When we measure success, we do it in the eyes of our customers' scorecards, not ours.

Over the last 2.5 months, as I said, I've been 3 months here, a little bit less than that, I've talked to 25 of our top customers. And we are getting close to them. I do believe we are in a position where churn is going to be more at a normalized level going forward, and we're going to get out of the surprise business of being surprised about customers leaving us because we're not being close enough to them. That's no longer the case. That's changed.

Account management for us means managing the account in the scorecard eyes of our customers. That's what we're going to be doing. We're going to stay very close to them. When I leave from here, I'm going to see the decision-makers that are based in Europe for 2 of our largest customers that decide actually on our American business.

So if and when a customer is not happy with us, and by the way, our current accuracy rates are 99.8%. And our current on-time performance is 98.5%. But when we fall short, I tell these customers to their faces, the expectation I have is only one. When we don't meet your expectations, that instance, you pick up the phone and you call me. And then we have runway to get us back together on track. So customer centricity is first and foremost.

Secondly, I talked about real estate utilization being at the low point at -- in the low 60s, today it's 66%. What we're doing going forward is rigorous management of our space, 3 things. One is if a lease expires and the building is half empty, let's relocate the exiting business, let that lease expire and go to facilities close by.

Secondly, let's do something smart. When we have a big anchor customer -- not the only customer, but an anchor customer in the building, that customer contract and a contract of that lease facilities timing needs to be co-timed, i.e., we can't have a lease for a building for 10 years and the customer contract for 3.

And obviously, we also are subleasing. We just subleased our building Romeoville when we have to. And the most important, and frankly, the most exciting part is selling new business into those facilities. We're going to talk about selling new business here in a moment.

The third piece, in addition to customer centricity, real estate focus, the third piece of maximizing the performance of the current core is around technology. Technology consolidation of legacy technology. As an example, we have 13 warehouse management systems. There's no really good reasons to have 13. We're going to go down to a couple, 2. We also have data centers, and we're going to go to the cloud. That's consolidating the legacy technology. And then, in addition to that, we're also upgrading and refreshing the technology overall to make us more flexible. That's going to be the core of the second piece, which is stretching our existing customer base into more and more spaces.

Let me get to that. So we're going to maximize the performance of what we have today, and we're stretching into different spaces. Today in North America, the so-called TAM, total addressable market, is about EUR 4 billion for us in the apparel, fashion and in the health and beauty space. Through the stretches we are making right now, we're going to stretch that TAM of EUR 4 billion to EUR 46 billion. Last time I checked, that's 11.5 times X and rounded up in a good finance matter, that's at 12x. It's going to a much different spaces.

3 parts of that stretch, the first one is we are going to go into different industries. A near stretch there is going into sporting equipment, going into cookware, household goods. A little bit of a further stretch is going into automotive spare parts, works very well for [indiscernible] in Europe and also going into industrial goods. We just recently signed a company in the solar panel distribution space. So those stretches into different industries, into different verticals is the first dimension.

The next dimension is we are going into different channels. We are and have been heavily a B2C space. Now we're going more into B2B also. We also are selling through marketplaces. So different platforms, different channels in addition to the traditional business-to-consumer space, where Michael Rubin started in 1995.

The third dimension of the stretch beyond different industries and different platforms and channels is going into a different size customer. And we talked about that earlier as well, going more into the SMB space, small or medium size businesses. The companies that we attracted 3 decades ago were mostly large enterprise accounts. We're going to still delight those customers in those larger enterprise accounts, maintaining, maximizing the core. And we're going to small and medium-sized businesses.

So all 3 of those stretches together, further amplified by continued e-commerce growth, is getting us from about EUR 4 billion in total addressable market to EUR 46 billion, much larger fish to pond -- pond to fish in, giving us the opportunity to form -- to get more value creation and value capture because we can be more selective who we go after. This is stretching the core.

Now this sounds great. And when you fish in a much larger pond, how do you go about doing that? It's one thing to say we're going to fish in larger pond, but how are you going to be successful? We came up with a new operating model. We call it Fast Track. I sometimes call it Radial Made Easy. So from a menu approach, where whether it's the web store, the warehousing, the transportation facilitation, the payment, the fraud protection behind the payment, the returns where necessary. When you buy shoes, there's quite a returns.

So every single one of those pieces, we have modules, a menu. It's almost like when -- I'm not sure how many McDonald's fans there are here, but you go to a McDonald's and you can pick all sorts of main courses and desserts and salads, but it's this one, that one and that one, any subset of those or any combination thereof, but that's it. Fast Track is that way, plug and play.

You can have any subset of our capabilities in a certain standardized way. No one-offs. One-offs are not replicable. One-offs are hard to upgrade and refresh. Standardized is very easy to upgrade and refresh. So new menu, standardized, plug-and-play, simple commercial process, the one and only aspiration that we had when we built Fast Track, and I'm so super grateful for my predecessors and the whole team that's still there because I walked into this and Fast Track was almost ready to go.

The only aspiration that we had every single thing we offer there has to be the opportunity to go from contract to going live within 1 week. Let me say that again, going from contract to go live within 1 week. And so that's quite a lofty aspiration. We got quite a good reaction when we launched Fast Track officially on March 22 this year in Las Vegas. So we're talking literally 2.5 months ago. And we're active, we're up and running with 5 customers. And I think this would be a great time to check out, open the doors and look at the implementation of one of those 5. Let's roll.

[Presentation]

So if you look at this video, first of all, before some of you are in the math business are telling me, I said within 1 week, and you heard here 22 days. Yes, we were waiting for the customer's inventory for about 2 weeks. We were ready. And it's a high-quality problem when we wait for our customer, not the other way around.

The second thing is this is a great example. So this is an Australian brand. And something like Fast Track, when there's still a small emerging modern company in the U.S. is ideal to get a foothold in North America. So it's not the only one that's making its way from outside the U.S., inside the U.S. using the Fast Track methodology to get from small to large fairly quickly.

And then, just when I say this is cool, you could sense the excitement in the voices of our own teammates. It's really difference making when you listen to a customer, did you see this guy's eyes and hear that guy's voice, I mean, that's the excitement level that we're looking for. That's the customer centricity we want to live every single day.

So this is not the only example. So in the first 2 months, we got 5 Fast Track customers to go live. We have the next 8 slotted for the next 8 weeks. And then when you step a little bit further back, our pipeline is about 16% bigger at the same quality level than it was a few months ago. And also, when you look at where we're fishing here, a year ago of our entire pipeline 8% of the opportunities were outside the health and beauty and the apparel fashion space.

Today, if you take a snapshot, 41% of our opportunities are beyond the apparel and health and beauty space. There's nothing wrong about apparel and health and beauty. That's our core customer base. We love them. We're going to maximize the performance together with them, and it's very right to also fish in other high-value creation value opportunity areas that goes back to the value over volume principle.

So now it's 41% non-healthcare beauty and apparel versus 8% a year ago. All up in the first 5 months this year. We achieved of our internal target, the plan, more than 53% of our plan in Fast Track in the first 5 months. Again, for those of you who are math inclined, that gives us a pretty good chance to beat -- to make or beat the plan for the year. And again, we just want to make sure we get this done the right way.

Adding this all up and looking ahead by 3 years to 2027. Let's take a quick look where this takes us, so we are saying on the revenue side, between 2024 and 2027, we're going to be flat to slightly declining. That doesn't sound like profitable growth. But remember, in '25, we're still churning through the consequences of the larger companies that because of our heaviness of making it hard to do business with them left us over the last 12 months, the most recent one is just the last couple of months.

So we have some churn that we have to work through in 2025 before we make it back up towards profitable growth, which leads to a combined '24 to '27 flat look, flat to slightly declining. More interestingly, again, we're going for value, not for empty calories. When you look at the margin side, we are a 2.7% EBIT business in 2024. Again, we are working through it 2025. That's challenging, still positive, but challenging, making our way back up, fishing in that larger pond to profitability levels on the EBIT side in the mid-single digits, 4% to 6% by 2027.

Stepping back, overall, as I said, I'm a 3-month rookie here at bpostgroup and Radial North America. I'm actually pumped up about the momentum that my teammates have been creating. There is momentum that's building, and I'm absolutely certain we're far from being done. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Tom, and it does sound very cool indeed.

Now for time's sake, we only have 1 question at this time. So who would like to ask a question? Right here, the gentleman in the front?

Yes. This is Frank Claassen, Degroof Petercam. I've got a question on, let's say, your margin target, almost doubling by 2027, while your revenues are flat at best. So that sounds pretty ambitious, indeed. So what are the main building blocks? Is it indeed the utilization rate, which goes up? Or are the new customers more profitable? What are the -- yes, the building blocks here?

Yes. It's a combination of those things. So if you go back to the margin, the value part of the value over volume piece is really noticeable in the current base business of those 3 dimensions that I mentioned, customer centricity. And secondly, real estate management. And third, technology consolidation and refresh. The latter 2 are directly margin driving. So when we -- every time we get from -- a little bit further from 66% to 88%, again, subleasing, selling into that space, making in some cases sure if their lease expires, we can actually get rid of that building. That helps with margins tremendously. The 88% versus 66% is a ton of a difference.

The last piece, the technology consolidation, the amount of FTEs, resources, energy, time that you spend maintaining and upgrading 13 WMS's, Warehouse Management Systems, is much different, i.e., higher than doing the same for 2 WMS's. So those 2 helps tremendously. Customer centricity, by the way, also has a financial consequence that's positive. If we get the churn back down to normalized levels, where we're absolutely manically focused on delighting our customers and churn becomes an exception, not something that pops up all the time. That obviously also helps us. The most profitable customers are the ones that stay with you because moving customers out and in is expensive.

Okay. Thank you, Tom, for this short answer. We'll see you again at the end for the final Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we've been to Europe. We've been to North America. I think now it's time to come a bit closer to the historic home soil of the bpostgroup with BeNe Last Mile business unit. And for that, I would like to reinvite Chris Peeters to the stage, as he is also the CEO of this business unit. Chris and Rafike, floor is yours.

Hello, again, Chris.

Hello, again.

Yes. Well, now we're going to zoom in on the strategy for BeNe Last Mile. Can you -- can we start by explaining us what we do today?

Well, today, I think many people see bpost as mainly that part, so it's well known by many people. So it's a last-mile service that has actually its origins in 200 years of mail business. So bpost originally was founded around -- at the same moment that Belgium was founded. And so was in that time, the one that was for the full geography covering any mail product that was there. So that includes commercial mail, that includes registered mail, that includes the -- but in that time, of course, there were payment services linked to that. So you could have the post check. You could have all these kind of activities around a traditional postal operator.

And if you look actually at the performance of bpost in this space, bpost is actually great in this space. Yes, yes. Many people forget sometimes about that. We were many times badly in the news. But actually, if you look in terms of performance that we have in terms of quality, in terms of delivery as compared to other postal operators, we are compared every -- I think, every month with 265 other ones, we're always top 15 in postal services.

If you look in the parcel service that we have integrated meanwhile, we're also, NPS score wise, the best in the country today. So we actually have a very, very strong business. Unfortunately, it's not only about a strong business with very, very good mailmen and mailwomen that we have today, but also, of course, a business which is very much challenged because the traditional postal business is already since many years in a decline of 8% to 10% a year.

Let's continue with that because bpost Belgium is obviously well known in the country. But as you say, we are facing some challenges.

Yes. So first of all, the core product that we had so far, the mail product, is declining at 8% to 10% a year. And let's be very clear, for maybe some in the past, we were not very clear about that, but for today, for bpost, it's very clear, this product will come to an end at some day. We don't know yet the date. Denmark will stop as of 1st of January, the first country in Europe that will stop with the use of mail product going forward. We're not naive. This will happen to everybody at some point of time depending on digitalization and very simple because for quite a substantial amount of the volume of the mail products, the digital product is just better. Yes.

If you look at invoicing, why would you like to have a paper invoice with all the complexity to integrate that in a digital flow afterwards. It's a product that's basically not a product anymore of the modern times. And we should recognize that and not try to survive in this kind of mode and stimulate a product, which actually is less performing than other products. So we take into account that reality mail products will be out.

That being said, not all mail products are out. Some of those mail products will evolve to track and trace products like parcels. You would have high-value mail products. Registered mail is a high-value mail product. Many people think it will be digitalized. I can tell you most of the centers like the product. They like to officialize the fact that you have to state something to somebody you haven't paid your invoices, and so I like to make that official and I want to make sure that in court I can prove that I made that official to you. That's a high-value product that will continue to exist in its paper form.

Invitations for many kind of forms. People like to have official invitations. Not only your grandmother would like to have the card of your wedding, but also other people like to have this official invitation, commercial mail. Many of the retailers still see that the effect of the paper product is much stronger than what they can do on digital platforms. So on those products, we will continue to invest to innovate these products and to make them more modern products.

To give you an example, in registered mail, we will make the product a hybrid product that ensures as well that you can have a signal the day before that you will get it and you can reroute it in the way you want it. Do I want to have it tomorrow? Do I want it the day after tomorrow? Do I know the sender, and therefore, the mailmen can drop it in my box while I'm not at home? I can give a proxy to somebody else. I can ask to do it in a Big Box. I have those flexibilities so that it becomes a modern product and so that people say, actually, it's not a pleasant product, registered mail, we all know that, but still, it becomes a convenient product to deliver. And that's what we will do for those high-end products that we see in mail going forward because they are challenged on that side, but we're not naive the rest of those products will phase out.

Next to that, bpost, of course, was as well very much dependent on government agreements. We had the Press concession, which was phased out in the end of the last government. And this is something that we will -- to the extent that we see it happening now today, we will bring it to our affiliates where we are still in that business, but it will be out of the core region of bpost, so that bpost has the freedom to fully transform into this parcel logistic player. And then, of course, we had other agreements with the government. We think that those need to be clarified into normal margin products. So we don't want to depend on any government contracts going forward, and we want to become a pure commercial operator over there.

Okay. That's clear. But what do these changes mean for the Belgium business unit exactly?

Well, they mean a lot. So they would mean actually that we have to completely revisit the way how we are organized. Today, if you look at the way how we're organized, it is a very impressive activity that is actually, really focused on sorting at night and distributing during the early days -- or early moments of the day. That's basically what the activity is about, both in press products as in traditional mail products combined and with the parcel business that we're in.

We want to make sure that our assets sweat more. We want to make sure that we also deliver services towards our clients. That means that we will have multiple sorting cycles over the day depending on the client needs that we have and so that we make our assets in that perspective sweat more. And second thing is we will also have multiple type of rounds. We're testing them as we speak. We have bulk rounds today.

So we will ensure that those bulk rounds, time-based rounds over the day, during the night, actually can deliver the kind of service that is linked to the client so that we also allow ourselves with those capability to enter into new spaces like the B2B space, like the C2C space to spaces where we're not that present today because the current model actually is not competitive in those markets. B2B side because we don't deliver the right level of quality, meaning time windows in which we have to deliver. C2C space because actually, we have an over delivery in terms of quality. We deliver an overnight product for something where the question is not overnight and you could actually use cheaper sorting capacity during the day if you would organize differently around that product.

So I hear you say we evolve our operational organization. We have prepared a video, so I suggest we have a look at that, and then, we can come back to our conversation.

[Presentation]

So this means flexibility in organization and adaptability to new products.

Yes. And on top of that, of course, you need digitalization because you have to make sure that you can match those pieces. And so we will introduce a product capability model, where we basically make those waves something that you can combine in a specific client product. It means that if you would say the example of C2C, you can actually say, I want to have a day sorting, which is the one where we have most capacity today, so that will be lower cost combined with a certain transport combined with a certain distribution level.

That distribution level in the case of the C2C product will be limited in that case from bbox to bbox to keep it as cheap as possible that you only use billed rounds and not the door-to-door rounds, which are more expensive. Then you go to the technicians once. There you say, actually, it's a last-minute product, somebody -- some technician needs to have additional material. Otherwise, he cannot do his job. Somewhere during the end of his job in the afternoon, he does an order in the system that we deliver -- in the network that we deliver.

We do the fulfillment. We inject that into our network, and it gets delivered into those specific bboxes before they arrive at 7:00 in the morning, which is, of course, a product which is of higher value of more and where we can also charge, of course, a different price as well because it saves a lot of friction cost for the user of that product.

And we see that we have a lot of interest in those products today because a lot of those people say, technicians, as you know, is -- they are in demand. There is a lack of technicians today. If they have to do themselves those logistical jobs, going to the warehouse, looking for pieces, et cetera, it's a huge friction cost in that industry. And so we actually reorganize those sectors in a way that they become more efficient and they can use their time much more efficient.

A lot of the clients today tell me actually you're creating for me the opportunity with the same amount of people to hire my topline growth because actually, I'm bound by the bottleneck of the number of technicians that are actually doing the job, and the more they're spending in a van is not a cost discussion, it's a revenue discussion for me because the more they can spend on the real work, the better it is for me. So if I can have an efficient, reliable service doing that for me, I'm really a fan of this. And that's what we see today in the pilots as well. They are fairly successful in that space.

Okay. It's also clear that the bbox is an important cornerstone of your strategy. Let's have a quick look at our video.

[Presentation]

Do you want to elaborate, Chris?

Yes. Maybe first of all, this is something that we add to our last mile strategy. It was there, but we expand it massively over the next coming years. So let's be very clear. The door delivery with the, let's say, very popular mailman that we have today will stay, will continue to be there because we don't say that there is a whole market move from the one to the other. We just say the market has become much more diversified. In the past, people were -- only knew the system of having home delivery, and they found ways out of that, the social structure was different. And so that was an environment where this was something, which was acceptable.

Now you see that you have more diversified family setting, single-parent families. You have people that are busy lives, and they don't necessarily are at home or don't want to be disturbed even when they are at home at the moment of this delivery. And so bbox can allow to have a broader service with the client and in control of what they want. And that's what makes bpost at the customer the B2C segment very specific because we see other players doing 1 of the 2 models. Actually, we give the possibility to the customer to decide at the moment of time where they actually want to receive their parcel or where they want to send their parcel from in this full [indiscernible] network from door delivery, bboxes, postal points and postal offices. So that's a combination that we deliver.

Now, why is bbox so important? And why are we putting so much emphasis on our growth plan? And Philippe will as well explain that part of the CapEx, not only going to the 3PL, but is also going to these bboxes that we're installing. We're installing as we speak 6 to 8 of those bboxes every day, 100 doors, so 600 to 800 additional doors are installed every day in Belgium because what we see is, on the one hand, especially in the environment of urban areas, young urban public, is really interested to use it.

We see that at the moment we install them, within a few months, they are in full capacity use, and people ask us to install even more because it's something where it's really addressing a need in the B2C space. On top of that, in the B2B space, it is really something that reduces a friction cost that you have in a professional environment because the delivery doesn't need to be momentaneous with the receiving, which, in many instances, if you look at building construction site, if you look at technicians, which is actually a high friction cost where you need to do these things.

And, of course, all digital tools also ensure that the delivery note, the acceptance note, all this thing is organized, thanks to the fact that people use their identification when they open the door. And so the whole administration flow as well is optimized through those bboxes, which increases then, of course, the facility to our clients. And that's why we really believe this is important.

Today, we are aiming to have -- be by the end of the year with 2,500 of those bboxes, and we continue to grow over the next coming years towards 4,500 of those bboxes. And obviously, if we see the market space would be bigger for that, we continue to grow afterwards as well.

Thank you, Chris. And this brings us seamlessly to 1 of our 7 must wins, building a B2B service in the Belgium business unit. Can you explain a little bit more on that aspect?

So if we look today at many of our clients, we were in the typical business where we basically said, this is the offering that you have, you can deliver a parcel typically at a postal office or we can collect it at your place and we will deliver it on the next day. That's the product. You like it or you don't like it. This is what it is. We fully changed that approach into a B2B approach, where we basically look at logistical problem of the client and then try to see how parcels can be a solution into that.

What we have seen here around technicians is a typical example of that. Today, actually, you replace a service that actually is not even accounted for in the logistical market because it is a technician that actually is sitting himself in a van and you reduce that time and you reengineer actually the supply chain over there.

The same we see for a number of retailers, many retailers that have to fight against fast fashion are distributing their stock among their brick-and-mortar stores. And so you enter into a store, and then, you -- basically, when you buy something, it could be that the size or the color or whatever is not in the same store and you would like to have it. Currently, for them, that's a big reason of client loss.

If I look at my personal situation, not me, my wife, she would walk out and say, "I think about it", which means the sales is not going to happen. If you actually could deliver a service where you say, tomorrow, it is at a place that you like, a lot of those sales can happen, and that's what also those retailers recognize in the pilots that we do today that they see that they have a much higher sales volume while they actually can reduce their working capital because they have less stock needed, also less stock to be sold in the sales period. So you actually deliver a service, which adds much more value than the pure logistical value or the cost of moving a box from A to B. You actually reengineer the whole supply chain for them in a way that is much more productive.

Well. And with this, let's zoom in on our recent collaboration with Colruyt.

[Presentation]

They seem happy.

Well, it's very exciting. As you can see, on the one hand, you recognize the strength of bpost, its capability to be very close to the market with extreme distribution capacity, sorting capacity, collect capacity that we have. On the other side, you see that we're really adjusting ourselves to the client. And that is what excites me as much as Tom was excited about his example. But what you see here is a client that starts to see the potential. And actually, each time when we talk with them, they see more opportunities to do work in this way.

And that's what we say we will actually reinvent and reshape supply chains with this. And so a lot of the capability that we've seen in Staci really specialized in certain verticals like in telecom where you have digi boxes that need to be replaced. If we combine them with the capabilities that we have in or last mile distribution, we even get a kind of a unique offering nobody else can offer, where you have a high capillarity, very convenient product for end consumers or for B2B clients in a way that nobody can do. And meanwhile, we make our assets sweat which is, of course, the strategy that makes the profitability higher than it is today.

Okay. We have also announced the development of a C2C offering with even a pack and label-free solution. Why is this so interesting?

Well, I can tell you one thing. When we launched it, many of our competitors were on the phone and were asking, how are you doing that? How is that actually on earth possible that you have something without a package, without a label to be sent between 2 customers? They were very interested in the way how we did it. And interestingly, this is really some of the innovation that we brought. This is the first in the world that we do, but it's attractive because on the one hand, it combines convenience to the C2C clients. So somebody selling some clothing and says like, "I don't have a box at home. How do I get it done"?

They just can go on the app. They select the bbox where they want to send it. They put the package of clothes in the bbox. At that moment of time, they give the sender address, bbox at the sender side. Sender can just choose the bbox where it needs to be delivered or the receiver can choose where it needs to be delivered. And so what we do actually is we have reusable package that is labeled, and so, we package it at the moment that we take it out of the bbox and then get through the normal process and get it out of that reusable package.

And that, of course, is in terms of ESG as well, a big step ahead because the reusable package, one of the challenges everybody knows is how do you manage the flow of the reusable packaging itself, and we have created a full internal flow of reusable packaging, allowing us to have the reuse really happening and not having tons of reusable packaging somewhere in the corner of a warehouse standing and waiting there for something. We really have this internalized in a way. And so we create a very convenient, no-nonsense product for the client, combined with a very, let's say, low footprint in terms of packaging and a low footprint in terms of CO2.

Okay. Thank you. So this shift from postal to parcel, you've explained that. You've also explained that the postal products will not disappear, just adapt, modernize, serve the clients in a better way.

Yes. Let me give you a couple of examples over there. We launched recently the arbitraries track and trace products. So one of the problems that we had on that product was that it's, let's say, a high-quality product that needs to be delivered in a very short period of time. The ceremony between the moment that people print the things they want to send around is very short, and they want to be sure that it is arriving at every place.

In the past, bpost had many times, we even had some of the journalists here in the room, had a job in putting us in the press and explaining that the cards arrived after the ceremony and people were sitting there and didn't see -- had a good ceremony. Now we have developed, thanks to digitalization, a track and trace product that allows that we know for sure, day plus one, everything has been delivered. And if not, what the reason was. Sometimes wrong address, some uncle that changed address or something, so we can really precisely help the client with that product. And that is what we do with all those high value products and high sensitive products to ensure that we upgrade the quality in a way that the customer really feels that this product is taken care of. I really can trust bpost that they do it in the right way.

We are running short in time, but can you just quickly...

That's your fault.

Yes. Exactly. Can you just quickly touch upon the topic of retail office network?

Yes.

Because they are evolving towards a multi-service center type of service offering.

Yes. So the retail offices is about the only retainer that we have where we need an agreement with the government. It has to do with proximity, the level of service that the government wants to give to citizens for certain base banking services, base postal services and some other services. This government has announced that they want to renegotiate the next contract towards a contract with a lower cost ticket than the one that we have here. And so we have to adjust ourselves to that new reality.

What we do for that is that we fully retain the model that we have. On the one hand, we will make it a model where you have a combination of self-service integration with the app, integration with our call center, making sure that we have actually maximum service to the need of the client combined with a service level that we have with multiple flows coming to the office for the human service that we have over there.

We look at mutualities, we look at municipalities themselves for the issuing of passports, identity cards and other documents. So all these things we will combine so to maximize the flows over there. And of course, obviously, then the discussion will happen with the government in the way that we manage that within the normal profitability margin that we have. It's a European approved budget that we will have.

And so we have today 656 offices. And depending, of course, on the combination that we have of new flows together with the budget that the government will foresee, we will then see where we will end up in terms of those things. But importantly, they will be the center point of proximity in all the communities where they'll be present.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. And to wrap it up, can you briefly walk us through the financial outlook for BeNe Last Mile?

Yes. Maybe a bit similar to what Tom has said with that difference, of course, that we have still a line that is continuous in decline. So the mail line continues to be at a decline of 8% to 10% each year, combined with the fact, of course, that you see the effects between '24 and '27 of the exit of a number of government contracts, Press concession, the 679 accounts that BNP Paribas has won -- has last won. So those ones are going away in the short term. But what you see is that we will reconnect to growth over time and so that the compensation that we will see coming in from the B2B, from the C2C space going forward will compensate for the loss that we see on the mail business in the horizon of '29. And Philippe will give you more details.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Now, as Rafike talked way too much, we're running a little bit out of time here, but we do have time for 1 short question, and an even shorter answer, Chris.

Yes. Here we go, in the front.

I'll keep it short. But, Chris, you already mentioned on the outlook that it includes the loss of the Press concession evidently in the 679 accounts. There are, of course, some other things that are up for negotiations as well, including the traffic fines and licensing plates. Is that included in the outlook?

Yes. Yes. So what we have included now is -- as you know, we are in the middle of -- or at the start of a new tender around, for instance, the license plates. License plate scope tender already was reduced compared to the former, so there is less services asked by the government to the winner of the tender. So that is one thing that we take into account.

Second thing that we take into account, of course, is you know that in these files we did the internal audits and we had some excessive charging. So the excessive charging has been taken out as well for the future offering that we do. So we have a combination of a smaller scope of these contracts combined with a, let's say, normalized margin that are actually in the plans as you see them and as Philippe will present them to you.

Thank you. Thank you for the short answer, indeed, Chris.

Now there's one business unit we haven't discussed yet, which is the global cross-border business unit. And for that, we have the CEO, James Edge, with us today. Well, actually, James is joining us live from across the globe. It's called Global Cross-border for a reason, obviously. James, where are you now?

Steve, I am in La Mirada. One of the flagship facilities of Landmark Global. And yes, spiritual home or the place where we were founded in 2004. So yes, that's where I am today.

Nice. And what time is it over there, probably somewhere in the middle of the night, I suppose?

I think if I stare off into the distance there, it tells me it's 2:45 in the morning. But it's a borrower phrase from our Radial teammate, the team here and I are well-caffeinated. So we're ready to go.

Excellent. Okay. Excellent. Can you introduce us to the cross-border business, please?

Yes, with pleasure. So from those early beginnings in Southern California in 2004 and including the acquisition by bpost in 2013, which Chris already mentioned, we're now a EUR 600 million business. We've got 25 locations across 4 continents. And, again, relating to where that revenue sits, it's now 80% in the commercial stream and 20% related to postal. So we'll come back on those 2 elements later on in the presentation.

In cross-border, we're clearly in a fast-growing market. There's opportunity there, as our listeners will be well aware, as cross-border and global e-commerce grows. We're particularly strong in certain lanes, which I will address in more detail as we go on. But yes, U.S. to Canada is where the business began. We've got a very strong market from China, as some of the large Chinese platforms as well as some of the mid-market players, into Belgium and increasingly into other parts of Europe. And we've got a strong regional presence in Northwest Europe, particularly France, Netherlands and U.K.

We're an asset-light business. We are focused on transportation. You've listened to my colleagues in 3PL talk about more of the fulfillment business, which we will touch on, but we're asset-light. We're focused on transport, 1,500 FTEs spread across those locations, goes up a little bit during peak and low CapEx. So again, when my colleagues in the room are fighting for Philippe's CapEx budget, then usually, I keep my voice a bit lower.

But I'll take a step back and try and describe in a little bit more detail the problem that Landmark Global was solving, the opportunity they were addressing, all the way back to 2004 because it's just as relevant today, whether the customer is ordering from Canada, as was the case for Landmark in 2004 or whether it's a Belgium consumer ordering from China or from somewhere else in the world today. Customers shop cross-border for 2 primary reasons. One is they're looking for a product or a brand that they can't access in the home market. And the second one is they're looking for value. They could save some money perhaps from shopping in the U.S. or shopping in China.

The problem in 2004 -- well, problems are not problems. You could get an item tomorrow with FedEx, fantastic service, track door to door, in an express business model. The problem was it would cost you a lot. So that value would diminish, and it turned people -- a lot of people away in the checkout. The other route at the time was postal, absolutely nothing wrong with postal, but it tends to be a slower experience. And many of you in the room might have had the kind of surprising and unpleasant part at the end, where you get a little piece of paper through the door asking you to pay your GTs and taxes and a service fee on top.

So at Landmark Global, we set out to solve those problems. And again, that's the essence of our cross-border business. So back in the day, it became a 5- to 7-day service, from U.S. to Canada, so not overnight and not, say, 10 to 14 days like postal. But the key piece was that we incorporated technology and tracking events. So the visibility of that parcel was clear from the start of the journey to the very end. Just as you would expect in a domestic e-commerce experience. And then the final bit that was solved basically was the customs in GT piece. And so there were no surprises at the end of that journey. And in a nutshell, that's what cross-border is.

If I go to today, I kind of think about it as 6 key USPs for us. One is that we are close to our customer base. So whether that be close to our U.S. customers or close to our Chinese customers, we have sales teams located in our key markets. Really delivered recently, we had a trip out to China. We sat down with one of our largest clients with our Belgian team and our international team. And we basically developed a new product that clearly solve customer need and creates more volume, of course, for us. So just a great example of what happens when you have local teams really, really tied in with the customers that they're serving.

Linking all together has always been a strong technology. So we have an in-house platform called Mercury, which we often talk about, probably mentioned it once or twice in this presentation. And that's the platform that ensures this end-to-end tracking and the full visibility wherever you are in the world ordering and receiving. The third piece and the fourth piece surround transport. So final mile is key in the cross-border experience. And clearly, we have that in abundance in Belgium, but we also have a final mile service in Canada that's in-house, Apple Express, an acquisition we made a few years ago and developed into a B2C powerhouse in Canada.

In other markets, we use partners. We offer the same visibility, the same experience. But I would say it's those strong last mile positions that make Belgium and Canada our 2 strongest markets. With the combined, I guess, power, the combined scale of the group, we're offering increasingly more competitive and flexible transportation solutions. So before you get to final mile, the trucks, the planes that are delivering the goods around Europe and North America and other places in the world, and we'll come on to that a little bit more later.

And then that in-house customs expertise. So a lot of people claim to have it. For us, it's very much in-house. We own our customs brokerage that serves Canada. We own our customers' brokerage that serves Belgium. And we have a network of partners that service the other places in the world where we're strong.

And then the final piece, and I never wish to confuse anyone between what cross-border does and what 3PL does, but this is the link, the link is fulfillment. Once we have a client who's been successful delivering single parcels by the thousands to a market, whether that be Canada, whether it be Europe or whether Australia or wherever, they will come to us. They'll come to Landmark, they'll come to the group, and they will ask for an in-country fulfillment solution. And we have that.

We obviously have that through our brands Radial and the other 3PL brands. And we can serve those customers in different ways. If they want to stay on our Mercury system, if they want to want to remain, call it, a Landmark Global client as possible, and we also have situations where those clients become local clients of, say, Radial Europe, so fulfillment is a key piece, and it's obviously a key group capability.

We've got some -- we've got an interesting market environment, right? Chris already alluded to the tariffs at the beginning. And what I will say about them is it's the uncertainty is the kind of killer or the slowdown for global trade. We could go through on what happened last week or how perhaps Canada retaliated or where we are in the core system, but it's that uncertainty that makes life difficult, but it's where in relation to our competitors. Again, I'm very happy that we have our in-house customs brokerage. We're able to provide advisory services to our clients. There's many looking at sourcing goods, let's say, from Southeast Asia instead of from China, and we're able to help them with that. And of course, being able to offer that in-country fulfillment in Canada or anywhere else in the world is a huge part of how you answer the tariff question.

The second one is the rise of platforms, particularly the Chinese platforms. We had many years' experience in North America with platform businesses. But the fast growth of those Chinese platforms is really transforming the market. And related to the tariffs, and again, Chris, you mentioned this, but it's providing us business opportunities. So if because of tariffs, Canadians are less likely to order from the U.S., you can be sure they're more likely to order from China. And so it's that diversity of offering that we have and our kind of embeddedness with those platforms that's a key kind of power of the growth that we have now and we're expecting in the future.

Anyone following the U.K. market, I know many in the room will be, we will be seeing the market consolidation in our space. That can provide scale and opportunity. So when we're looking for final-mile solutions in the U.K., what's been happening with DHL, with Yodel, with the others with the consolidation happening there can be an opportunity. For us, when I talk about the French market, we made an acquisition within cross-border a few years ago of IMX that really strengthened our solution out of France and our solution in Northwest Europe. So market consolidation offers a number of interesting opportunities, let's say.

And then just as we talk about generally with bpost and with post offices everywhere, we do have a profitable mail business in cross-border, and that business is in decline, right? Letters are going down. But again, that's why we're focusing on the fast-growing commercial side of the business, which is already 80% of the revenue within cross-border. So to answer that kind of market environment, we've got 4 main prongs to our strategy, and I'm going to cover 2 of them here, including the must-win that is trade lanes and key lanes. And the group-wide initiative that we're leading from cross-border is there's the group-wide transport experts, which is the transport center of excellence.

So first, the lane management and the key priorities there. It goes without saying that we need to defend what we have. We need to increase our digital capability, for example, in our U.S. to Canada business, so we can better interact with our clients through the platforms that they're using. In China to Belgium, we've got over 50% market share, but we face increasing competition. And so the development of those new products and new solutions is key as well as finding clients in the kind of mid-market space, a little bit like what Thomas was talking about earlier. But there's plenty of mid-market clients that we're approaching and that we're having success with in the Chinese market. And again, defending what we've recently been growing from China into Canada, it's been a big boost to our Canadian business in light of everything that's been happening. It's important that we continue to develop that cross-border piece.

And then the other 2 key defend markets are France and the U.K. France is growing in a very healthy way. The U.K. is not growing as much. It's a highly competitive market, but it's a really important market for us. It's an inbound, it's an outbound, it's a cross dock as well as being an origin of new business. And so alongside those lanes that we've had for a long time, we're also looking to boost lanes that are kind of -- that haven't perhaps been priorities or we haven't managed in the most effective way in the past. Good example is the Netherlands. So we've managed it very effectively as bpost Group selling into Belgium, but there's a ton of other opportunity, as you well know, out of the Netherlands with the e-commerce companies. And being able to offer our whole suite of cross-border products is a massive opportunity, and we're really focused on that in the last 6 months to a year, and we're beginning to see the dividends now.

Other key lanes that we could boost we're super strong U.S. to Canada. We could be stronger from U.S. to the rest of Europe, and we have the pieces in place. So that is more of a sales effort and sales focus in that direction. And then if I skip from defending and boosting to new lanes, you already heard mention earlier the -- from Chris that we've found new business out of Spain, which is kind of a cool story. So we combine the clients we have in different origins, in this example, China, with the capability that we've been able to piggyback on with thanks to Tom and his team of Staci in Spain. So we now have a cross dock. We have a home for our salespeople, and we now have an opportunity to launch a Spanish lane, which obviously is the trucks coming up through Europe, going through France and into Belgium and really boosting our presence in Southern Europe feeding into Northern Europe.

And then Canada is a funny one to see perhaps as a new lane. But all of our Canada focus really since I've been around for more than a decade has been inbound into Canada. There's opportunities out of Canada as well, and there's opportunities for us as a domestic provider in Canada. We have Apple Express, which is our final-mile company and capability. And there's more focus we can put on domestic, particularly in light of what's going on in the tariffs.

So in a quick tour, that's our lane management strategy and priorities. And then I'll close on strategy-wise with the transport center of excellence. So as a group, we spend almost 1 billion on third-party transport solutions on vendors. We've always managed it in silos. It links back to what Chris said at the beginning. We've operated very successfully in those silos, but we've never looked at the whole piece. In the last 6 months to a year, we've started doing that. We've already identified what you could call the low-hanging fruit, EUR 15 million of annualized savings just by doing simple things, going to the market as Staci plus Radial plus Landmark in North America, for example, looking at the U.K. and saying, "Hey, Active Ants, Radial, Landmark, Staci, you all have accounts with the same final-mile vendors. Let's approach them as one.

As we go forward, we need to turn the low-hanging fruit into a kind of industrialized solution. So over the next 6 to 12 months, we'll be looking at our operating model and we'll be looking at the data that we have, and we'll be working out how we can increase that savings, but more importantly, increase the efficiency and just operate better as a transportation group, if you will.

And so yes, like everyone else, I'll touch on the financial outlook, but leave the key numbers to Philippe. We're going to continue being a growth engine of bpost Group. North America will be steady. We'll get through the challenges we're facing at the moment with headwinds and tariffs, and we'll see a return to growth. We've got fantastic growth coming out of Asia and into Europe. And we're very excited about the new lanes that we're developing regionally, both in Northwest Europe, which we've talked about and also in North America. Now all of that's a great revenue story. EBIT-wise is a very good story, too. The postal decline does take that EBIT margin down, but the transport savings, the organic growth more than make -- well, more than make up for it, well make up for it. And we will continue to see EBIT margins between 10% and 12% in the years ahead. And with that, Steve and the room, I'll pause and take any questions.

Thank you, James. Indeed, we have time for 1 or 2 questions from our audience here in Brussels who would like to ask James a question. No specific questions for James at this point? Yes, 1 question here in the front.

Maybe on cross-border China and Belgium. I can imagine that with potential abolishment of the de minimis ruling in Europe until 2028 or earlier, there might be maybe less volume, maybe more tariff customs clearance that you can do. Can you maybe walk me through how you see potential threats from less de minimis in the future?

Yes, certainly. And we could be talking about Europe or other places in the world. So it's a great question. We've already seen that into Europe in years past as the de minimis has changed and as the data requirements have changed. And what realistically happens is volume does dip as everybody readjusts. We're confident that we'll manage that, and we'll work with our clients anywhere in the world to manage those movements in de minimis.

And yes, like I said, the history shows a little dip and then back it comes as everyone adjusts to the new rules. And what doesn't generally change is consumer behavior. So in the end, as we and our clients make de minimis changes more understandable, clients will go back to buy, and we'll see those volumes go up. So that's what I expect to happen again.

Thank you, James. I know it's late, but please don't go to bed just yet because we will need you for the general Q&A at the end of the session.

So that ends the deep dive of the different business units, but there's something that connects them all. That is our ambition to be a reference in social and environmental sustainability in the markets we operate in. And to elaborate a bit more on our ESG strategy. I would like to welcome our bpost Group CFO, Philippe Dartienne.

Thank you very much, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Very happy to be here with my colleague to share with you our strategy. So when it comes to ESG, I want to remind and reiterate the fact that we are committed and engaged in sustainable matters and projects. We have conducted like many companies, the double materiality assessment. And from that, 7 ESG priorities came out. The big ones being CO2 since we have the large fleet of vans and trucks, the emission have a direct impact on the Scope 3 of our customers. I will come back on that one. Waste and packaging, Thomas alluded to it in the 3PL activity generate packaging activities and also people, one of our core assets. We want to attract and retain the right talent in a group where they feel respected.

As in the case for many operators in the sector, reducing CO2 emission is a major objective for us. We have a clear road map to reach net zero emission, notably by investing in fleet, electrification, renewable energy and circular business model. By doing so, we aim at reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 55% at the horizon of 2030, in line with SBTi's target and to reduce Scope 3 emission by 14% over the same period, all leading us to the net zero by 2050. You will find in the deck some concrete action and targets about what I've spoken about. But before diving into the finance part, and you could open your Excel spreadsheet where I could provide with a lot of data, let's see a short video that illustrates some of the efforts when it comes to ESG.

[Presentation]

As we move forward in the day and my colleagues have shared and explained to you their respective strategy and transforming journey that would bring us to 2029, I would like to present you the financial trajectory as a 3-year milestone, so I will be covering the period 2024, 2027. bpost Group top line growth is now mostly driven by the logistics and the cross-border expansion as you have understood it, I hope. With a consolidated top line, which is expected to grow above and beyond EUR 5 billion, supporting a progressive EBIT recovery with the momentum expected to build from '26 onwards and leading to an EBIT of EUR 275 million in 2027. I will come back to it BU by BU, but the consolidated trajectory won't be linear since in the early years, we are still facing challenges and the result of the new development cannot immediately offset.

EBIT contribution profile is shifting from the legacy business to logistics with 3PL emerging as the main growth driver post transformation, global cross-border remaining solid, as James showed you, and BeNe Last Mile being progressively repositioned. In terms of CapEx, we expect to invest between EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million per annum, of which 50% will be allocated to growth, supporting the long-term profitability customer experience and sustainable value creation.

Our progressive and sustained dividend policy is aimed for distributing between 30% and 50% of IFRS net result with a clear focus on long-term value creation. We commit to maintain our investment-grade credit rating with a clear deleveraging path after the Staci acquisition, targeting a reduction of the leverage ratio to below 2.5x by 2027.

Let's move now to the BU view, starting with 3PL Europe. In 3PL Europe, the top line is expected to grow at a high single-digit pace, driven by the proven Staci growth model replicated across 3PL Europe, as Thomas explained you, with the combined country approach, enabling a fast rollout, cross-selling and geographical expansion. Also a robust customer pipeline with scalable solution across markets and multiple diversified client base across different industries. When it comes to profitability that we measure at EBIT, it's forecasted to grow from 5.1%, knowing that the 5.1%, which is starting in 2024 is the impact of the acquisition of Staci in the middle of the year and will gradually grow from -- to the high single-digit number.

The integration of Staci with the best-in-class margin profile in the logistics industry above 12% will help us further improving the profitability, including when it comes to Radial and Active Ants, thanks to operational efficiencies and synergies across 3PL Europe network. Speaking of synergies, despite the fact that the synergies were not the main driver for the Staci acquisition, they nevertheless are gradually building up to reach EUR 30 million in '27, of which 80% are cost-driven.

Let's now cross the ocean and have a look at Radial North America. We expect a flat to low single top line growth, resulting from a strong contraction as a result of the announced client churn in 2024 and 2025, a stabilization from 2026 with return to growth in 2027, supported by the new Radial Fast Track offering that Tom has presented to you and we have seen in the video and also market expansion into new verticals with a value-over-volume approach.

Same-store sales is also expected to grow at a low single-digit rate across a healthier, more diversified client base, providing increased resilience to market shifts. To put things into perspective, expected growth in annual contribution value, the ACV, in the early years is north to EUR 120 million, making it the first engine of growth for Radial North America. EBIT margin will gradually improve through 2027, following a low point in '25. Margin recovery is driven by 3 elements, and Tom already partially covered those ones with the question, a more active real estate portfolio management resulting in improved occupancy rate after a low level in 2025, a technology transformation with the simplification of the technology stack, cloud migration with real-time data and also a selective profitable top line expansion geared towards midsized customers and standardized service offering, I refer to the McDonald's menu as you refer it.

Let's see what it means now when we are combining these 2 regions. In fact, this is the -- going forward, I want to emphasize on the fact that despite the fact that we are explaining you in a lot of detail the 2 segments, which is Europe and U.S., in the future, we will be guiding on the entire 3PL segment. So when we are combining these 2, these regions, so U.S., North America, 3PL should expand its top line by low to mid-single digits and the EBIT margin should range between the 8% and the 10%.

Let's move to Global Cross-border. The Global Cross-border segment is expected to deliver a mid-single-digit top line growth that will be fueled by strong growth in cross-border Europe and Asia, driven by solid commercial expansion, offsetting structural volume decline in postal. Modest growth in North America near term, reflecting the overcapacity and increased competition, while tariff uncertainty is delaying business decision and commercial cycles.

Midterm, the EBIT should remain between the 10% and the 12% supported -- sorry, with a stable EBIT. The stable EBIT is -- will be delivered by top line growth, offsetting slight margin dilution from the mix effect from postal product to commercial product and growing transportation savings, starting with a EUR 15 million saving in 2025, as James just explained you.

Let's move now to our last business unit, BeNe Last Mile. When it comes to BeNe Last Mile, we see top line reconverging to the 2024 level by 2027, so not before, with a low point in '26, which is explained by factors acting in opposite direction. We'll first see a revenue drop in '26 with the end of state service like the management of the 679 contracts, the retendering of the European license plate contract on a smaller scope. We will also continue seeing a structural decline in mail, while the evolution of the volume, which is in the negative territory in the range of high single-digit percentage will be partially compensated by a positive price/mix effect on the low to single-digit percentage. This element take into account, which is also part of the question, the end of the price concession that happened in 2024.

Growth from the X2C parcels, where volume are expected to grow positive territory, mid-single-digit percentage, price/mix effect also positive in the range of the low to single-digit percentage, gradually supported, as Chris elaborated on, and we saw some examples on the video by new B2B revenues. Also growth in personalized logistics and domestic cross-border volume, mostly originating from Asia.

On profitability, we are targeting a landing between 2.5% to 3.5% EBIT range, which could be explained by margin pressure in '26, reflect the top line decline of state service contracts, underlying shift in product mix with the decrease of mail and press product. Nothing new for you, but it will continue again, as Chris explained it. This will be partially offset by significant operational efficiencies, including review of flows, distribution rounds, asset utilization, sweating the assets, which is very core to Chris and to our heart and workforce organization in all parts of the business. As you understood from Chris, the transformation journey of Belgium is profound, will require multiple years for turnaround, starting with a low point ever in 2026 as we are still facing challenges that cannot be fully compensated by new business and additional efficiencies.

With this, we end our detailed view of the different business units. Let's move to the bpost Group consolidated view. #Reshape2029 sets bpost on a path back to EBIT growth, driven by a successful execution of the 7 must-win battles we have seen at the beginning of this presentation, of which the value over volume strategy is an important one together with a more resilient customer portfolio. We see top line evolving at a recurrent low single-digit percentage growth, expected to deliver above EUR 5 million (sic) [ EUR 5 billion ] of top line in 2027, supporting a progressive EBIT recovery for momentum expected to build from '26 onwards and leading to an EBIT of EUR 275 million in 2027.

Our capital allocation is anchored in long-term value creation through the transformation. We intend to invest between EUR 160 million to EUR 180 million per annum to maintain our set, but also fuel our organic growth. We will also target ad-hoc bolt-on acquisition for further scale and strengthen our core in a selective and disciplined approach, both on the strategic and financial aspects. For the avoidance of doubt, current focus is on deleveraging after the Staci acquisition prior to engaging in large M&A, while maintaining an investment-grade debt profile while providing short-term returns to our shareholders. At the time of the Staci acquisition, so back in August 2024, we committed to maintain a prudent capital structure with the explicit objective of preserving the stand-alone investment-grade rating. Today, we confirm we have a clear deleveraging path post Staci acquisition, supported by underlying cash flow and robust operational performance.

Current credit rating with S&P confirmed on May 7 as A- with a 3-notch uplift as a government-related entity, meaning that we are on a stand-alone basis, BBB-. We commit to a financial discipline, enabling the company to withstand cyclical pressures, fund strategic priorities and remain agile in a fast-evolving market environment. We also want to continue building a future-ready company while ensuring capital strength through a commitment to returning to a target leverage ratio below 2.5x by 2027.

At bpost, we have a well-balanced debt maturity profile, avoiding refinancing cliffs. The debt is centralized at HQ. It amounts to EUR 1.650 billion, which is composed of 3 bonds in euro with no restrictive covenant. Ample liquidity resources, including a EUR 500 million commercial paper program and EUR 475 million in undrawn RCFs. All outstanding debts are at fixed rate with a current weighted average cost of debt of 2.6% and a maturity of 5 years. The refinancing of the EUR 650 million bond nearing maturity is currently under review.

Let's have a look now on how we are investing, we intend to invest our money. In terms of growth, we are focused on an organic growth strategy with growth investment accounting for roughly 50% of the CapEx, while ensuring the right level of maintenance of our asset. We also aim at reducing our capital intensity and maximizing their utilization. I would not say again, sweat the asset. Investments are anchored in e-logistics expansion, mostly in Europe, as Thomas explained with us, bbox in Belgium, as Chris mentioned it, finding the right balance for the right place and optimal size. We will also continue to invest in our network optimization and the technology stack.

Investments are made to deliver tangible results, enhancing customer experience, driving service efficiency, focusing on quality and expanding our value proposition. We will reinvest in the area that differentiate us competitively and generate long-term returns. Choice are made based on rigorous financial and strategic criteria, including post-investment reviews and defined payback periods.

Let's finish this section with our dividend policy. Our dividend policy is guided by discipline and long-term sustainability, striking the right balance between rewarding the shareholders on the short term and maintaining financial flexibility to fund the company transformation and expansion. Temporary dividend pause in recent years reflect a clear capital allocation hierarchy. We reinstate our dividend policy of distributing between 30% and 50% of IFRS net profit when conditions allow. Beyond dividends, shareholder value is created through disciplined reinvestment and capital efficiency. That's what I wanted to share with you this morning.

Thank you, Philippe. Now Philippe will take questions after the closing words during the final Q&A. But I would like to -- before we start answering those questions, I would like to invite Chris Peeters to join Philippe for the closing words. Philippe may come to my left.

We shift?

Yes, we shift. Yes, for the camera. So people at home can see us very well. Your final words, Chris, on this day.

Well, I think that you all can see that we are in the middle of reshaping this company and it was also very much needed. This company was under a lot of pressure. We had the declining mail business in which we were -- we had the government contracts under pressure. We had a press concession that was ending. And so there were many things -- and we had the client loss that we had in the U.S. There were many things where the company was in pressure.

Meanwhile, what we can see is that the transformation is in full motion as we speak. You see today already, as Tom said rightfully, you see already the lights in the eyes of our clients today. We see in the pilots that we need today that the transformation that we have engaged in is really starting to deliver results. Of course, as Philippe has said, what we see is '25, '26. Our transition rate is in that transformation before we see that new strategy will deliver sufficient growth to compensate for the drop that we will see from the things that I just mentioned.

But what you clearly see today is that the pilots that we have are successful, they have the potential to be expanded and to be scaled. And so that's what we will focus on in the coming weeks. We have the right team in place. You've seen that we have reinforced the team with really strong profiles to deliver on that growth, and we are ready to execute this plan. And I hope that we could convince you today that bpost will be reshaped, will be a very different company in the years to come. A lot you will recognize. It will be based on the capabilities that we have. It will be based on the assets that we have, but the way how we position ourselves in the market will be completely changing in the next coming few months.

Thank you very much, Chris, for those closing words. Now I think it's time for the Q&A. So get your questions ready. We're just going to put some high chairs on the stage. And in the meantime, I would like to invite our community host Antoine to join us on the stage as well, as well as the CEOs of the different business units. I think James is still with us, James, you're still awake, I hope.

Yes. I am still here.

Perfect.

Okay. Thank you. So we've had a number of questions from our online audience. And I propose that this time, we start with them, Antoine, the questions from our audience. First one.

Yes. And just to mention that you can continue sending your questions during this Q&A session on the line of course. So I think that Thomas and Philippe as well, the first question comes to the synergies at 3PL. You both mentioned this during your presentation, but perhaps to reclarify again, high level, what are the key highlights that you want us to keep in mind when it comes to synergies from a business perspective and then financially.

From a business perspective, it's mainly cross-selling. The synergies that we have is the cross-selling. And we have a few examples that we cannot name the client, but we have a few examples of clients that went from B2B to B2C. Additionally to the B2B, we now deliver the B2C. We went from a country to another country and other ones. So perhaps [indiscernible] now we started in France, then they ask us to go to operate in Italy, then in U.K., and we just won Germany. So it's an example, but we have a lot of those cross-selling effects between entities and also adding on the top the capacity to manage any kind of product. So for some -- a lot of clients, we manage the POS historically and then we go to core product on the opposite way from core product to POS.

So the cross-selling is really a huge opportunity for us as we deliver quality also. So it's -- we are recognized for the quality of our service, a flexible model with, again, the pay-as-you-use model compared to logistics market, which mainly wants to invoice to the clients fixed cost, which was also a model or is a model for a lot of our competitor. We propose for them a variable cost. So it's quite unique in the market. It's a know-how. A lot of competitors try to copy us in this business model. But if you do not have the know-how of mutualization with a strong IT, you cannot do it just in one day. So it's really a know-how. But now we share also with Radial U.S. And I trust it's also in Radial U.S. the real know-how that they have in a different kind of market. So that's the leverage for the cross-selling and synergies that we have, yes, in costs, for cost.

I would say on top of that, cherry on the cake, which is already very good on the top line, but we also have savings from a cost standpoint. As I said, I mentioned a number of EUR 30 million in 2027 that will be gradually built up, of which 80% is on cost only. The major contribution to cost savings are transportation savings. It has been mentioned by Thomas, it has been mentioned by James that by combining this purchasing power, we could get better rate. Of course, some of them we need to return back to the customers to keep competitive pricing, but we still hold the vast majority of it. So we have also a cost component to it.

Another one is in the example of the combination of the countries where 3PL operates is there could be some SG&A savings. There are also the fact that they could leverage on some central function at the level of bpost Group. It's another source of cost savings and more generally, procurement savings for all type of stuff. You also mentioned Thomas packaging, energy and so on and so forth and the usual suspects when it comes to procurement and putting things together.

I forget also the synergies with the other bpost entities. Staci was not so strong in cross-border. We didn't have in the past a strong offer in cross-border. Now we work a lot with James and his team with Landmark for it, and we offer to the Staci clients and Active Ants and Radial Europe this opportunity also to manage their goods of our borders, which is a real interesting offer, including for U.S., Canada and so on where we are. And James said a word about Spain. So we start some countries recently after less than a few months.

Thank you. Maybe another online question first?

Questions are still coming in. So I'll let you asking yours...

Okay. All right. Perfect. So audience here live in Brussels, questions. Yes, maybe start here in the corner and then to the left of us.

It's Marc Zwartsenburg, ING. A question for you, Philippe. Did you consider also taking out the dividend for a while? Because I hear you mentioned, it keeps us disciplined. It gives you a bit of a reward on the short term for investors. But on the other hand, with a leverage ratio of around 3, there's enough discipline on the balance sheet already. Did you consider why don't you cut it off completely for the coming year?

Thank you for your question. If you allow me to slightly adjust it. The fact that when we did the acquisition of Staci, we knew what kind of leverage we would be entering in. So we knew it from the beginning. So it's high. We knew it, but we have a very clear deleveraging path as I hope you have understood it with a different initiative on the top line growth and margin evolution. So I think there is a path to the deleveraging, and it's a prime target.

When it comes to the dividend policy, I repeat what we have said. We want to reinstate that dividend policy by distributing between 30% and 50% on IFRS net result when conditions allow. When I say that is referring to what happened in 2024. I never know what can happen. We have nothing in the forecast, but just want to be very cautious and transparent in terms of expectation. But yes, we think it's also to restate the credibility of the market vis-a-vis bpost, it's important to show that we try to strike the right balance between the long term and the short term. Hence why we have reinstated our dividend policy distribution.

That's clear. And can you maybe remind us on the bond that's due in 2026, what the current rate is and what, based on your credit rating, will be a new rate?

So the bond we are referring to is the EUR 650 million bond that was raised back then at the time of the acquisition of Radial in the U.S. So it's maturing next year. It's currently yielding 1.25% interest rate, fixed rate, and it will be replaced at higher rates since the rates are -- have evolved compared to the situation back then. Nevertheless, we will still enjoy a very satisfactory, strong credit rating as A- that would allow us to have an attractive all-in pricing for that bond.

Do you have any indication of a range of what we should be thinking about? Is it 4% to 5% and the replacement of the current market or can you not comment on that?

When we'll comment -- we'll come back to you when we'll market the transaction, and you will see the result. I say we are working on it. We will not wait to wait to the last day to issue the new bond, but it's a project ongoing for the moment.

Can I ask another question?

Maybe we'll come back to you later. Can we just maybe hand it over to the gentleman on the left.

Why you don't use the free cash flow to repay a part of the bond issue?

The strategy of bpost is to continue the growth and to fuel that growth and that transformation because both go together. We need also some money that will yield higher returns, not short term, but midterm. That's the reason why we want to continue investing in the transformation of the company, maintain our assets, fuel the growth, while at the same time, partially also rewarding the investors with the dividend policy.

Next question Yes, the gentleman in the back.

Obviously, great to see the early success of your SME strategy and with Fast Track. The conventional wisdom with SME is that is usually a higher-margin customer base because it's faster to breakeven, faster onboarding, as you pointed out. It's obviously a stickier customer base, there is more cross-selling. Can you talk a little bit about the relative margin profile maybe not precise numbers but on a relative sense the SME versus the enterprise customers and how is that spiked into your forecast?

Yes. So just to take you back to Chris, what you started focusing which is a theme running across all of our entities, which is this value over volume. And when you double-click inside Radial North America, you saw on the margin piece of it, the focus on making the current core business kind of into world-class game shape. That's where the real estate, the customer centricity and the tech consolidation comes in. Then the second piece was, this was stretching beyond the call where we really focus on opening up so much more SMB is a big deal.

Additional industries is a big deal too, if you move automotive spare parts compared to commodity apparel, the chances of value creation and value capture are just higher. So it's not only the fact that it's small, medium-sized business where yes, we do have a bit more of leverage, we can also bring more to the table. Philippe talked about -- and James, you also did about the power of transportation that we -- collectively, we spent $1 billion of it. We help each other out, Staci U.S. and Radial North America is working together there.

So -- but we are clearly fishing in industrial goods ponds and automotive spare parts ponds where both the size of the company, but also the industry that they're in, more value capture. So to put it into a headline, that single -- that low single-digit EBIT margin that you see in today's reality in North America, and that mid-single-digit reality or that aspiration that we show for 2027, that's a commitment that we have. You should see the SMB north of that single mid-digit and you see the legacy core south of that mid-single digit.

And then maybe to comment on the last mile. So if you look at the large B2C accounts, that is really very competitive market. So that's extremely low margin that you see over there. So that is -- that was more in the light of volume versus value strategy that you see that they are there. So we keep them because, of course, they make our assets sweat, but it's not that you make a high margin on those sides. And if you then move into the B2B space or into the SME space or the B2C space, you see that you move up to the lower single-digit kind of level of margin that you can make over there. And so if we shift the weight of the portfolio further towards those ones, you see what you see happening already. So it is a margin uplift compared to where we are today, where the current margin is still supported by the mail business. But of course, that one you see each year declining. And so we have to ramp up into the SME, B2C and into the B2B business to make sure that we get back to a traction of value-creating business going forward.

Next question? Yes, here in the front.

Henk Slotboom, The Idea. James, I appreciate you're still awake. So I would like to ask you a question. James, there's -- you said something about adding new lanes. And you mentioned Spain directly. In France, you have IMX, which helps you. But increasingly, we're also seeing your competitors talking about entering the cross-border arena. InPost is doing it. PostNL announced it a couple of months ago. What gives you the advantage? Is it a link with the fulfillment side of the business?

Fulfillment is definitely part of it. I think what gives us the advantage is that it's that combination of origin and destination. So it's where we can be most competitive, let's say, in final-mile, then we can bundle it with transport. So back to the Spain example that you referenced, if we can bundle with what Staci is doing there and what Staci is doing in France, that gives us a huge competitive advantage. And then the customs brokerage piece in other markets, right? It's not relevant necessarily intra-Europe, but it's a big deal from U.S. to Canada. I would say those are the key pieces. And yes, maybe the final bit is also to know perhaps where we're not ready to play, right? So there's regions of the world where our competitors are present and we're not present. And right now, that makes sense to us. It makes sense to focus in the regions where we're strongest.

Next question right here in the front.

Michiel Declercq, KBC Securities. I had another question for Tom, a bit of a follow-up on the SME customers at Radio U.S. I'm just trying to understand, of course, it's fast track, it's new, but what about the stickiness of the SMEs, like previously, you had some longer-term contracts, and you mentioned that you plan to -- that the leases of the warehouses corresponds to the term of the contract. I would assume that for SMEs, that's maybe a bit more difficult. They're quicker to onboard, but maybe there's also a bit more flexibility for them to leave. So I'm just trying to figure out how this would work. Now I think it's a bit more easy because you have some overcapacity. But going forward, how are you looking at this?

Yes. So a couple of points. I mean, one is, right now, we got the lower quality opportunity to sell into empty space. We will be getting in some markets into the higher quality problem that we need a second facility, possibly in Canada where we have one in Eastern Canada, Mississauga, we have one in Western Canada, Pitt Meadows outside Vancouver. We will, at some point in specific markets, get into a higher quality problem of selling into new space. But so your point about stickiness specifically, to be very blunt about it, if a customer, whether it's a large enterprise account or whether it's a small, medium-sized business, if they are dissatisfied with the service excellence or lack thereof that we deliver to them, they will find a way to walk. In some cases, they might even say to your face, like that piece of paper, that contract is not even worth the paper it's written on.

So what we have to do is whether you compare us to traditional 3PLs, which we were one of those in terms of nimbleness and agility and speed or -- and also customer intimacy or you compare us to like tech-driven 3PLs where we need to be just operationally better, we will win or lose not by the strength of the contract, we will win or lose and we will get customers to stay with us because of the excellence of service and the value that we deliver to them.

So you're absolutely correct, technically, some of those contracts for fast track are more flexible and on paper gives them the opportunity to walk and run faster. We have seen as a company when we fall short of the excellence that we strive towards. And right now, we are at a very, very good game that we're playing, and we are striving to get better. That's what's going to make the difference. Our retention is going to be based on the excellence of the service that we deliver, not that the contracts -- not on the contracts that we get to write with smaller or larger companies.

If you allow me to build on that one, Tom. So of course, what you say, I totally share it, but I just want to add another color. Also, as a key driver for I think the EBIT margin going up, there is also the profile of the midsized customers. You can define midsize in U.S. and in Europe, it's not the same, but okay, midsize anyway. The short-term real estate strategy when it comes to long-term customers is also -- and since Chris and I are in the office, we have not signed one single contract for customers who would be occupying one full warehouse where we don't have a back-to-back of those. We are not saying we're going to leave these customers. As long as they stay with us, they are welcome. And as long as we could build on qualitative services and yielding good results, they are very welcome with us.

While gradually and because you also pointed right that we are in overcapacity, and it will take time to reduce that gap overcapacity. But at the end of the journey will be more towards the model of what Thomas described when he said that he had between 6 -- 12 to 60 customers in a warehouse, where, in fact, when one is leaving, not a big deal. So we are not there yet, but the model is gradually shifting when it comes to this kind of SME type of customers. And also in terms of the churn, Thomas, also the churn that you are experiencing in your customer is extremely small -- extremely low.

Maybe your colleague next to you.

Frank Claassen, Degroof Petercam. A question on the leases versus fully owned warehouses. If I'm not mistaken, Staci's model is fully primarily based on leasing the warehouses, while you and the other subsidiaries also have fully owned warehouses. What is your view on going forward? And maybe sale or leaseback, is that also on your agenda?

So first, to be 100% correct, your statement is 95% correct. We own 2 warehouses in the U.S. that we have acquired 2 years ago, while...

One in U.K.

That's right, absolutely, Thomas, one in the U.K. because we considered that we had such a portfolio of customers at a place that was so well located, and we were there since many years that we said it's one point in time in a part of the portfolio, it might be useful also to have that one because it's, of course, yielding on the long-term better result. But it's not that we want to shift from one to another one. We do not exclude that sometime somewhere under certain circumstances, we might go for owning part of the real estate. But it's not a shift in the real estate strategy. The model of Staci is an asset-light, not only for warehouses, but for CapEx as well. Same goes for Radial in the U.S., but we do not exclude sometime when it makes sense.

Lady next to you, yes.

Emilie Fung from Barclays. What have been the main learnings from Staci, which is helping improving the profitability in the other 2 businesses? And as a company, how do you think you're better set up to harvest synergies versus back when you acquired Radial?

So I think the business model is quite different. And what you see happening now is that what we do in Radial is, to some extent, expanding ourselves in a model that is more reflecting the philosophy that you see within Staci while maintaining the profitability that we have on the large enterprise clients. So that is what we do there. Where you really see and some of the questions here were as well, it's also linked into the real estate strategy that we have. So we will go to multi-client sites to ensure that we can serve multiple -- more clients on the same side.

As a consequence of that, by definition, of course, those clients are also lower CapEx because the CapEx that we've seen in the past in Radial was many times very dedicated CapEx focused on a very specific problem of a very specific client that had the size to justify this kind of thing. And therefore, you saw as well longer-term contracts over there. But unfortunately, in the ID when our predecessors closed those contract was that they would roll over those contracts in a succession of that contract, and we see that, that is actually not happening. And so you do a CapEx investment. And at the end of your first contract term, they basically say we in-source it or we put it again into competition. As a consequence, you're sitting actually on a lease with inside CapEx investment that even would cost you to remove. And so that makes it very complex to make that transition happen. And so the Staci model is much more asset-light and then -- and is with multiple clients, so it creates a much more resilient portfolio.

Of course, the difference that you see today between Staci and Radial is that Staci is still in the middle of that model, meaning they actually can say to a client, no, thank you very much at this margin. We're not interested today. While, of course, the challenge that Tom has is we're sitting 66% you have today of occupancy is still too low to say no to clients even if that is not yet fully fitting into what we're trying to do. And so that is a little bit what we have to manage as we speak today.

Other thing that we see is the diversity of verticals that you see happening. So actually, the way how Staci looks at the market is to say, we look at a certain vertical, we really try to understand what the client problem is. And then actually, we try to sell to every single client in that vertical the same service. That's what they try to do. They're not necessarily then in the same warehouse, but we know how to serve them. We know what the specificity is.

If you look like the examples they have in telecom, both for the maintenance workers or for the DigiBoxx treatment that they do, this integration that they do with the client, with the admin process that they have, that's a fully developed solution. So it's much more than just the warehousing and some putting in boxes. There's a whole system behind it, the ECAP system that we have, where you have this internal e-shop that you generate for clients for their internal flows of goods that are really those competencies that they bring to play that really make the difference if you do that.

And that is what we are integrating into the way how Radial is developing going forward, obviously, while maintaining the business in which they have been to for time, and we have many happy clients also in the enterprise size clients. Tom has now visited most of them by now. Basically, what you see happening there is that they want to continue to service the ones that we're willing to churn and have churned. The other ones we basically see as a long-term partner, and we've built a more resilient business, Staci like next to that, which allows us to be at a higher margin point, but also at a higher resilience point in terms of portfolio.

Next question.

Yes. In the outlook for '27, the EUR 275 million EBIT, it includes, say, a smaller scope and slightly lower margin for the state services. But there's retendering in the end, you don't know what the outcome will be. So what is the risk there that you might not get the contract or that the state decides differently like with the newspaper contract? What is the risk there?

Well, I think it's a tender and the tender has always the risk that you don't win it. I think that if you look at the specificity that you have in the license plate tender that is the one that is now out, it's a real logistical service. Yes. In the end, it's a real logistical service. It's linked to some admin flows, but it's very similar to what we've always done. Very different to 679. 679 is a historical relic that we have, the postal services as a state-owned monopoly was doing that for the state, and is now actually competing with people that are in the full banking space, have developed IT, have the facilities to do that well.

We actually had to continue to maintain IT dedicated to that solution, which makes us, of course, something which where we are much less competitive in that space. If you look at the license plate, it is -- if you are from Belgium, we will know in the past, it was a DIV queue that you could make with a typical state service level of quality that you would have if the queue was not even finished by the end of the day, but they saw that it was 5:00 or 4:00, they closed the [indiscernible] and you could come back the next day, which is replaced by an overnight delivery of license plates, which is very much appreciated by leasing companies, by car sellers, dealerships, et cetera.

So that is a service where you see there is a real value in that physical delivery of that product there and where we really have developed the capability, which is combined, by the way, with one of our daughter companies, Speos, which has this capability of doing as well the documentation behind that. So the printing of the documents behind that, combined with the license-based combination, the secure setup that you have, which is in a fault that it's all needing to happen because of the risk that you will have, of course, that people cheat with those documents. So that kind of setting that we have there is very specifically and it is very much into the logistical space.

So we feel strong that we can win such a tender. We also are, of course, clear that this will be at a normal commercial margin of the logistical sector, which was not what we had in the former contract, of course, where it was a contract in which we had a margin which was far beyond the one that you see in the logistical market. And that's the way how we have included it. Will we win this tender? Not sure. Will we fight for it? For sure, yes, we will fight to win this tender as we do today with the pilots with other clients. We think we have a capability that really distinct us from their ones.

By the way, in this license plate environment, very interestingly, Staci coming into the play, they do add-on services to certain leasing companies where they say you need to have a safety kit, you need to have a triangle in the car. You need to have a number of additional elements that the leasing company wants to provide in the car. And they basically integrate the service in the way how we operate with certain leasing companies. And so that actually is enhancing further the service and making that service a very specific service.

The license business is quite safe, but the 679 seems more competitive.

It's done. It's not in the books anymore.

Next question, your neighbor.

[indiscernible] Two questions around your capital expenditure. Firstly, you invest in your digital assets. Could you more or less share how much you invest in that area? And you have discussed a number of new propositions. Maybe you can also share with what you expect on which area we have to look for new products and services in that space? And another angle, Philippe, you mentioned about payback periods. Could you share what kind of hurdle you use to grant investments?

So I'll start. You continue, Chris. So I just remind that out of the CapEx that we want to invest, 50% is still to maintain the asset, even if we want to go to a less capital-intensive way of doing business, we still need to maintain our assets because they have value, definitely. So 50% is dedicated to growth. A big chunk of it is dedicating to growing infrastructure in the 3PL. A big part as well is also dedicated to the BB box, so the lockers, automotive parcels machines where we tend to go -- we are roughly at the end by 2025 will be 2,500, going up to 4,500 market dependent. There will be a bit more, a bit less.

So that's a big chunk of it. And the rest is where you find the digital. But the digital, you don't do digital for digital you combine the stuff together. I mean, just like WMS or TMS of James, it's also assets. Sometimes it's less capital intensive, but in terms of value return on investment, it's absolutely huge. So size not always matter when it comes to this kind of stuff. So there is -- we don't have a budget for digital. So our Chief Digital Officer doesn't have a budget to spend. No, it has to come in a product capability model. We develop solutions. And in this solution, there is a physical aspect to it, and there is also a digital aspect to it.

So we don't look at it separately. So the question to -- your question on paybacks and other rates, I'm sorry, I'm going to answer you, it depends the type of asset, the type of market. If it's a synergetic investment, of course, we will expect to have a payback, which is very short. If we're investing in new solutions, of course, will allow us a bit more time to have a payback.

Thank you, Philippe. We also have a question from one of our online attendees.

And I think that Philippe, this question first goes to you. So it's about the financial policy and the share buyback program that we did not present and can you elaborate on that.

I think that was also one of the questions indirectly in the audience. We are in a transformation journey to create long-term value and to grow the company. To grow that company and to fund that transformation, we need CapEx. And we believe that they will be generating high returns in the mid- to long term. So since we have good, viable, realistic returns expected, we do not see why we would go -- we would enter into a share buyback program.

It's almost 1:00, which means that it's almost time for lunch. So it means we have time for one question and a short answer, please.

Let's see. Looking at the margin of BeNe last mile, so you have growth and very nice margin, 3PL, cross-border growth stories. And if you then look at the 2.5% to 3.5%, which includes the parcel business, which should make mid- to high single-digit EBIT margins, then it obviously comes back to the mail business again. It's there. But I'm just -- maybe one for Chris. How is that conversation...

You will get the short answer, not point to be.

That's why I said, let's see. So how is the conversation going with the government? Because the 51% shareholders still of bpost, while we have this business, which is basically not reaching ROCE levels. So how would you look at that? Can we think of a solution that we put it aside, carve it out, give it to the state, give them 100% shareholding and they reduce the stake in bpost have a growth story with high margins. Is that something you discuss where possible?

Yes. Of course, obviously, a company like this one that is mentioned in the government agreement should have talks with the government, not only for the retail office, but also as a shareholder, these discussions are happening. What we see today is that, that discussion is fairly early phase. So what you see is that they have made on the public owned companies a statement that they want to revisit their position on each of them. Out of the first discussions comes that and you've seen it in the press as well, we're not highest on the list in terms of priorities. And they first want to get a feel as well to what extent do we get now reaction to the transformation program that we have.

They have quite some, let's say, trust in the way how we approach now the transformation. And so that is where they basically say, let's now take the steps. Maybe it's not the best moment for us to make any decision outside of the plan that you have presented to us, which they support. And so that is what I think that will happen is like they will spend their time in the early days now in, first of all, as you know, there is a telecom operator that needs also to have some attention from their side. They have some people reinforcements that need to happen over there and a position taking as well that they need to do in the long run. And they have next to that, of course, a number of much more financially juicy topics that they have, which is the banks in which they participate in the way if they want to have a support to the public finance that are the first ones to look at. At the current stock price, I don't think we would be a large contributor to that extent.

And so I think what we will expect is that the discussion will come up likely in the course of next year. This year, I don't expect a lot of conversation with the government on that side, given the priority that they have and that we then will have a discussion about like for the other companies, what is the right state involvement at what level it which part of the business, how will that go further? And how do we make sure that we balance rightfully the shareholdership with, of course, the shareholder value creation that is, of course, the intention of the new strategy.

Okay. Thank you, Chris. It was indeed short enough as an answer. We've come to the end of this Capital Markets Day. I think a lot of people are getting really hungry by now. So I think it's clear at bpost, we are rethinking the possible, and we are reshaping the future.

A special thanks to our leadership team, Thomas, Tom, Chris, Philippe and of course, James. Also, I would like to thank Antoine and Rafike for hosting us today. For those that are staying for lunch, of course, first of all, I would like to thank you, people in as well here in the headquarters in Brussels as well as those that joined us online.

For those that are staying here for lunch, lunch is served. And of course, you will have the opportunity during lunch to continue your interactions and maybe ask questions in a less formal manner with our leadership team.

With this, I wish you all a very pleasant day, and I hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.