Deutsche Post Ag S/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the DHL group conference call. Please note that this call will be recorded. You can find the privacy notice on dhl.com. Throughout today's presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you've dialed in, please select star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Instructions will also follow at the time of the Q&A. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Martin Ziegenborg, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and a very good morning from my end to everyone participating in this call. Thank you for your interest. As the title says, I have with me here our Group CEO, Tobias Meyer, and our Group CFO, Melanie Kreis. We will start with the presentation, starting by Tobias and following with the Q&A. With that, over to you, Tobias.

Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for Your interest in DHL 2025 turned out to be a bit different from the macro assumptions than many had told us, but despite that, we delivered on guidance, particularly through effective cost and yield management in all of our divisions, so that for the full year, EBIT increased to $6.2 billion, and we have an 8% year-on-year growth in the earnings per share. We continue to generate good cash flow. You will have seen that cash flow, free cash flow, net M&A increased to 3.2 billion and execute our policies, our finance policy to provide good shareholder returns. As it relates to the outlook, I think 2025 really made us in many aspects a better company, and we have a more solid base to tackle the opportunities that our industry offers. That's what we will stay focused on, on the one side resilience in a volatile world, and we expect 2026 to remain volatile but execute on our growth initiatives. With that, on the next page, you see some key numbers that you will already have absorbed on EBIT, ROIC up 20 basis points, free cash flow I mentioned. We also delivered on the non-financial growths that we set ourselves with employee engagement of 82, realized decarbonization facts of 2.1 million tons. That's slightly above our target as well. And the cybersecurity rating at really top of the range, top of our peer group with 785. We do remain committed to attract the shareholder returns. On page four of the presentation, you see our historical dividend increase. We thought that after waiting through the period of post-COVID normalization, it's now the right time to get back into a gradual increase of the dividend and stay on top of the corridor that we set ourselves in terms of the payout ratio. We also stay committed to our share buyback programs. We have 1.5 billion euros remaining to be spent, so also continuity on that side. As it relates to the development of the operating environment, page 5 gives an indication of what we dealt with in the year of 2025, the example of the Deirdre Express, the weight per day development on the destination U.S. lanes. It stands at minus 26 for the entire year. You obviously see the significant drop after the changes in U.S. tariff policy, the so-called Liberation Day, and the impact that that had. But it's also important to note that the rest of the world has been very resilient. So we do see growth out of several origins in Asia. We're very engaged to also increase our competitiveness on inter-European trade. So that worked out well. But it is a world that is quite heterogeneous as it relates to growth trends and the resulting actions we have to take as it relates to capacity management. We do believe that Strategy 2030 on the next page is still a very fitting answer to the challenges that the world poses to us. Our top-line growth accelerators remain extremely relevant from an industry focus, but also from a geographical focus. Our GEO Tailwind 20 set of countries are really those where things are happening in a positive sense, so we remain very committed to that program. But also the profitability accelerators obviously had to be a big focus in 2025 as it relates to the adjustment of capacity, but also our structurally orientated Fit for Growth program really delivered very, very well. They're very happy with that. And also the group set up, the alignment of the legal structure is very well under way. To deep dive a little bit into some of those profitability accelerators on the following page seven, you see a fit for growth execution. We were faster, also needed to be faster on some measures, aviation, air freight, particularly significant structural reset in Europe and the US through network redesigns, air to truck, but also structural levers in the optimization of our fleet and aviation setup, which partners we operate with that all made us more efficient. The fleet renewal obviously being the part that many of you are familiar with. On the ground side, ground operations, warehouse sorting and handling, similarly and more broadly as it relates to the divisional relevance, we executed that very well. P&P in the first half, significant adjustments also given the flexibility of the new postal law that were executed very swiftly and I think overall very well. There's the longer-term trend of standardization, automation, and robotics, which remains very relevant for us across the divisions and will deliver additional benefits. Support functions, a lot, and I deep dive on that a little bit on AI. The digitalization we have been driving for many years provides an excellent basis for that. We continue to be frugal as it relates to discretionary spend and especially overhead. We do this in a very continuous way to really create lasting, sustainable impact. For us, this is not a short-term exercise. We want to create a better company, and I think that's what we did in 2025. Again, this will continue into this year with some additional benefits to be seen. As it relates to the deployment of technology, AI is also very relevant for us. I think we are very excited by this technology, but we don't get carried away by that excitement, but have, I think, a very clear focus on where we deploy own resources, where we have in-house engineering. These are particularly areas that are bespoke to us or have high opportunity for deeper integration of AI functionality. So we're working on agentic multimodal models. I think the entire industry is excited about the deployment in customs. That is definitely the case for us as well, customer service as well. What's important to us is efficiency is great, but the opportunity is way beyond that, that we get in customs better compliance, better documentation, a better value proposition for our customers. In recruiting, similarly, great efficiency gains by helping the process, but what we're really looking forward to is hiring more fitting people for the respective roles. In vehicle maintenance and repair, this is an area where we will have double-digit million impact in Germany alone by just having AI know the condition of the vehicle, know what we can bundle when we do repairs with maintenance and execute that in a much more stringent way with the repair shops. So, these are those areas which are not so often talked about but really have significant impact. What is a big program for us into 2026 is the delivery body. to bring AI onto the hand scanner of the courier and thereby provide better guidance about specific locations, share the experience that we've collectively built up in the organization about the specifics of a premise of a location of a city. That's something that will make our service not only more efficient, but also truly better. And that's the part where we deploy own resources to really deeply re-engineer the process and integrate AI into our platform. Under number two, we are more opportunistic deploying what is offered to us. We have great partners. Not all partners in this space deliver great value, but we found some, and that's developing very well. And then we also spend a lot of time on people and culture to ensure we have great engineers, we have great managers that know how to make use of this technology, and we have a workforce that is ready to adopt it. We want to have our own value add in this space. This is why we're ramping up resources. as it relates to AI practitioners on use case implementation, as it relates to AI-trained experts in our IT services, shared service functions, with also deep technical expertise that can help us to make this part of our journey. So that's what we're looking forward to, integrate AI deeply on an industrial scale into our processes, and this is why we're looking forward really to a decade of AI-driven improvements across multiple processes where we are very focused from a group perspective on some projects that are of broader relevance for our divisions across. In terms of top line accelerators on the following page, update on the programs that most of you will be familiar with, e-commerce, our focus areas remain the same, which means for Express, the top end of the spectrum in terms of value, in terms of urgency. whereas P&P and e-comm play in the standard parcel space, which is scale-driven. We have changes in the year 2025 in our European footprint. We continue to drive that. We want to be part of the consolidation play in Europe and offer a really great pan-European service. There are few that span that entire spectrum. Geographic tailwinds I talked about. It's 20% of group revenue, and there are some countries where we really want to further broaden our footprint. Life science and healthcare, great progress in terms of the setup. You will see significant investments in equipment and infrastructure. This will take time to execute. This is an industry that is rather conservative due to quality reasons, but this also makes this a sticky business once it's converted. So that's something that we remain very excited about. but also know it takes time to build this unique offering that we are shooting for. Data center and new energy, more opportunistic in the sense that we have a lot of those capabilities that are needed. Significant growth with hyperscalers in 2025 and also with new energy. particularly in those specific areas like battery transportation, also battery storage solutions, which have high requirements when it comes to safety and compliance. Those are areas we particularly grew also in wind energy, which is more an industrial projects type of engagement. That's an area that developed very, very positively in 2025. This is also why we are confident, despite the geopolitical turmoil, that 2026 will be a good year for us. On page 10, you see the guidance for this year. We are shooting for EBIT for the group in excess of $6.2 billion. You see the sliver for DHL, P&P, and group functions. Free cash flow in excess and around the $3 billion mark with gross capex between 3 and 3.3 and the tax rate, as per usual, around 30%, and also our midterm outlook unchanged. So overall, a year behind us that surely had its volatility and changes in the macro environment. I think we can say that we adjusted well to that and enter 2026 with a platform and business base that gives us confidence to execute along our strategic priorities. And with that, over to Melanie for some more details on the divisional performance and the financials.

Thank you very much, Tobias, and good morning and a very warm welcome to all of you dialing in also from my side. I will start my part with a quick recap of the last quarter, Q4 2025, where we have seen the expected seasonal acceleration. When you look at our biggest EBIT contributing division, DHL Express, we have now seen the sixth consecutive quarter of EBIT growth adjusted for non-recurring items. So that's a very encouraging development. And for me, that shows the effectiveness of the yield cost and capacity measures executed by the DHL Express team. Post-Empire for Germany and DHL E-Commerce have also achieved another successful peak season, blocking in the highest operating contribution of the year in the fourth quarter. So for these three network divisions, the strong Q4 performance hence reflects the usual seasonal volume increases, but also continued cost focus and our targeted peak season surcharge mechanisms. For DHL forwarding freight, the market circumstances, especially in ocean freight, are well known. Beyond that, we clearly see independent of cyclical swings, further structural improvement potential for this division with a similar scope for accelerated digitalization as Oscar de Bocq has successfully implemented at DHL Supply Chain. Speaking of which, DHL Supply Chain has delivered top and bottom line growth in the quarter and for the full year, showing the intact structural tailwinds in the business. both from the demand side with another year of strong new contract signings, as well as from automation and digitalization benefits on the cost side. This has also contributed to the 7% operating EBIT increase for the full year 25, as shown on page 12. As you know, and as we have disclosed transparently, we had a series of non-recurring items this year, mainly cost of change related to our successful fit for growth program, but also net effects from M&A and some other topics. Stripping these items out, we managed to increase group operating profit by 7.1% year over year to 6.2 billion euros, And that has also set the minimum level of EBIT we want to achieve in 2026, as Tobias has just shown on our guidance page. 2025 EBIT was, however, up also year on year on a reported basis at 3.7%, as you can see on page 13. The operating profit increase together with the benefits of our ongoing share buyback program has driven an 8% increase in reported earnings per share for the full year 2025, so that is only slightly below our 10-year CAGR of 9% for earnings per share growth. Group ROIC increased 20 basis points year-over-year in 2025, also reflecting the ongoing investments in our growth initiatives that Tobias explained earlier. And this is also nicely visible in our cash flow summary on page 14. We again spent close to 3 billion euro on net capex and close to 1 billion euro on net M&A as we invest in those topics that will drive our accelerated growth going forward. At the same time, strong CapEx discipline on any capacity-related investments is one of the main drivers for our once again strong cash generation. Free cash flow, excluding M&A, came in ahead of target at 3.2 billion euros and had allowed us to also return significant amount of capital back to our shareholders in the form of our regular dividend and our share buyback. Also here, the factual 10-year view speaks for itself, as you see that we achieved a structural step up in our cash flow conversion. And I would really like to reiterate that point quite honestly also because we still see a lot of valuation models looking back at 10 or even 12 year average valuation multiples. So you see on the left side of page 15 our 10 year step up on EBIT and pre-cash flow. What I think is however at least as important as the absolute increase in these numbers is the structural transformation that our group has accomplished in the last decade. For me, that means that DHI shareholders do not only invest in a company with higher e-bill margin and cash flow. Our shareholders are owners of a structurally improved company in terms of business mix, earnings, and cash flow resilience, and what is not to be underestimated, an agile, adaptable, and international culture that has allowed us to successfully navigate through all external volatility over the last years. Before I finish, a quick reminder regarding the process on one of the last technical steps of this historic group transformation. Our planned alignment of legal structures is progressing fully on schedule, subject to the AGM vote on May 5th. We will hence this year also officially rename the listed group entity into DHLAG, with UNP Germany operations legally becoming the Deutsche Post AG subsidiary, similar to the status of the other divisions. So, all on track here and in line with our plans and intentions as previously explained. That already brings me to three quick conclusions from my side on page 17. We expect further profit growth in 2026, while the dynamic circumstances require continued close bearing of costs, yields and KFs. This will allow us to keep a good balance between attractive shareholder returns and continued targeted investments into growth. Because in the end, you can't shrink to greatness. We are therefore fully focused on leveraging growth opportunities in those countries, trade lanes and sectors where our logistics expertise will allow us to drive sustainable, accelerated growth as outlined in our strategy 2030. And with that, we are looking forward to your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our Q&A session. If you have a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you've dialed in, please select star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. When you see a pop up on your Zoom screen, please accept. Once your name has been announced, please unmute and ask your question. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please lower your hand using the raise hand function. Thank you. And a moment for the first question, please. We'll take our first question from Alexia Dogani with JP Morgan. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Yes, good morning, Melanie and Tobias. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll ask three if that's okay. Just firstly on Express, clearly your efforts this year have been focused on improving cost competitiveness to regain market share from air freight. Can you give us a little bit of progress in which verticals you're already managing to do that? Or is this something that we have to look forward to in 2026? Secondly, on your fit for growth achievements this year, I believe the structural cost out was around 600 million euros. That's ahead of what had been indicated before of basically slightly ahead the cost of change charges. Can you discuss what went better and you were able to achieve this savings earlier? And then thirdly, could you give us some comments on the current situation in the Middle East, perhaps kind of the first derivative effects of the market being closed, but also potentially if the duration of that market being closed for longer, what are the implications for air freight capacity globally, translation to express, and any kind of other relevant comments there? Thank you.

Thank you, Alexa, for those three questions. On the first one, indeed, steps to cost competitiveness in Express are very favorable. We would look at the task at hand, so to say, differently. It's not about regaining from air freight. The way and what we're trying to do is more, if you look at the for the trend of the integrated industry. The integrated industry has taken a share from the general African market. We started as document companies, then went into different verticals over time, kind of an S-curve transformation, not entirely dissimilar from what happened in e-commerce. And since COVID, the integrated industry is not back on that trend. And that's what we are trying to do with smart industrial growth. to focus particularly on B2B verticals, to hone the business model of Express with additional features, but also the attention to industry verticals. That has now been initiated, and that should lead over the quarters to a gradual increase in the weight per shipment. And some of those elements will definitely take effect this year. Some will take later as it relates to cold chain transport, for instance, in express. This is something that is yet to come from its effects. As it relates to fit for growth, absolutely, we are ahead of the original plan, particularly in Europe for Express, but also for P&P. Those adjustments went quicker than we had originally maybe slightly conservatively foreseen. So that's particularly the area. Also in the United States, the adjustments needed were executed very swiftly. And also on the technology side, some of the programs that we have been driving are went indeed very well from an executional point of view. So it's fully in swing, especially as it relates to those more tech-dependent programs. That's what's going to support the progress in 2026 and provide us with a very healthy base also for further growth, which obviously is what we intend to do in Express and beyond in 2026. against a still volatile environment, which then also brings me to your third question on the Middle East. Now, how those things develop is not easy to see. Definitely the current situation is heavily constraining air activity in some countries, but also obviously ocean-going vessels through the Straits of Hormuz are constrained. What happens now operationally is we had some partial opening of airspace and airports to move planes out. Obviously, Saudi is largely open or open. We have, and that helps us a lot on the express side, a very well-established road network in the Middle East, which enables us to bring cargo to those airports that are open. That's very vital at present to keep the region connected. And I would expect that to continue and further expand if constraints in some countries like Bahrain and Kuwait, UAE, those constraints would remain for longer. On the ocean side, that will have... consequences, especially if cargo is offloaded to enable vessels to move on loops that do not include the ports of the Gulf region. Some carriers have started such offload processes. This creates some chaos that needs to be dealt with. As you know, that's also sometimes an opportunity because it creates urgencies for certain cargoes, but it's too early to see how this unfolds. If the constraints would stay longer, there's definitely a lot of work to be done.

Thank you, Tobias. And when you say offloaded cargo, I mean, that cargo, how will it find its way to the region? Is it just a move to potentially air or road to clear the inventory?

Well, that might require different cargo to replace that because those offloads would then happen in a port that is typically not in the region or might be in the region, and then you could obviously use road transport. Offloads more on the Asian side, on the Indian subcontinent, would then require ultimately to load it on a vessel that has a string into the Gulf, but that would mean significant delays. So that's what we start to see now. I think it's really too early to tell whether that is a phenomenon that takes a broader hold. So far, people have more taken a wait-and-see mode, but this can last for another couple of days, not a couple of more weeks.

Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Muneeba Kayani with Bank of America. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Good morning, Melanie and Tobias. Thanks for taking my questions. So first question around the moving parts on the guidance, please. So the Fit for Growth had kind of over 600 million benefit last year. So is it right to think that your guidance assumes a kind of a 400 million benefit from Fit for Growth in 2026? And then related to that, what have you assumed in terms of your cost of change assumption in 2026 compared to the 245 that you had last year on reported EBIT? So that's the first question. And then secondly, if I could follow up in terms of the Middle East specifically, we'd heard earlier this week that 18% of global capacity in Edgardo was impacted. We've heard that come down to something like 80% yesterday. Would you agree with that in terms of market impact? And then specifically for DHL, is your capacity impacted? Like do you have planes in the Middle East? And how do you see the fuel spike impact on the express business, please? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much, Muneeba. Let me start with the guidance question and the moving parts there. Yeah, I mean, of course, there are numerous external factors, the whole macro situation. There are some known topics, like the fact that in P&P we have a year without a price increase. So many moving parts with regard to the fit for growth questions. Yes, I can follow your math that if you say we finished kind of like the 600 million in 2025, there should be something like 400 million left for 2026. We also have to be conscious of the fact that particularly in the first half of the year, we will still see the annualization of some of the headwinds from 25 on the currency side, the tariffs, the de minimis abolishment. So like in 25, we will also need fit-for-growth benefits to help us compensate for those. With regard to cost of change, yeah, so if you come up with new good ideas for further improvements and there is some cost of change attached to it, we will of course do it. However, I would expect that to be an order of magnitude which will not warrant a separate flagging the way we did it in 25. So more of a return to this being included in our normal reported figures.

Yeah, and on the Middle East, I've seen those numbers as well. We will not engage in that discussion because it changes day by day, hour by hour. We had planes in places that were closed. You know, that's then a discussion whether you can move the plane out empty or whether that location reopens. Again, that's very dynamic. It's clearly not yet over, so some impact is going to be there. I think what's more relevant is the question of spillover of the ocean freight and what happens on the ocean freight side, because some of those countries are highly dependent on essentials. The region is not, you know, self-sufficient on food, for instance. So that is something that will be significant if the ocean freight situation does not change over the coming days. Air cargo operations, as I said, for us, we have flexibility, we have a broad footprint in the region, and what happens in each location can change hour by hour.

And I think on the fuel surcharge, as you asked for that specifically, I mean, we have a well-established mechanism, so there are then some time elements in a period of a rising fuel price, but by and large, we have well-established mechanisms in place to deal with that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you. We'll do the next call, please.

The next question comes from Jacob Lux with Wolf Research. Please leave your line and ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for your time. So your slideshow US TDI import trends remained week through December. Has there been any improvement since the start of the year, just given the ruling against IEFA tariffs and some better readings in the macro indicators, or has the step down in tariff rates not really been enough to incentivize new demand? And then to follow up, one of your competitors last month discussed the goal to mix more towards cross-border freight in Europe over the next few years. Have you seen any change in the competitive parcel environment in the European TDI market? Thanks.

Okay, I think on the impact of the Supreme Court ruling, that's too early to see a real impact. I think everybody is now working through the implications. So in terms of what we saw going into the year, it was more of a continuation of what we had already seen in the fourth quarter. With regard to the European competitive situation, we haven't seen a change on the ground. So we also saw these announcements in terms of material impact on our daily business. We haven't seen it.

I think particularly in the B2B market, it's a very healthy setup in Europe. As Melanie said, no significant changes. I think we have an excellent offering. If you look also at our presence in secondary markets, the connections via LATIC are matched by any competitor. So the service aspect of that, I think, gives us some confidence on the TDI side. And TDI overall, as it has in recent years, has outgrown the cross-border element, has outgrown domestic markets. That's the case in B2B, but also in B2C, and we see those segments very positively also into this year.

Thanks for your time. Thanks, Jacob. And the next caller, please.

Our next question comes from Marco Limita with Barclays. Please unmute your line by pressing star six and ask your question.

Marco, can't hear you yet.

Marco, please unmute your line by pressing star six and ask your question.

Hello? Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, just.

Okay, thank you. I have a follow-up question on Iran. So, actually a few questions on Iran. First of all, whether you can disclose what percentage of your group revenues or EBIT is exposed to the Middle East is the first question. Second question, when we think about disruption, clearly volumes into the Middle East are going to be disrupted and are going to change. To what extent the Middle East tensions also affect other trade lanes? For example, I don't know, Europe to China, for instance. Is there any, let's say, transit and offloading, reloading of cargo in these regions and so on? So, does that affect also Europe to other Asian countries' operations? And then, when we think, I mean, thinking about the potential disruption coming from the Middle East, again, What's your sense about the potential positives coming from better pricing versus headwinds coming from demand? Do you think you are going to be more exposed to the positive from disruption or to the negative coming from demand? And just a final question very quick on cost savings. Clearly 600 million is above the previous guidance. Just curious whether the step up versus the previous guidance has to be let's say attributed only to Q4, or you have been running on a higher rate since Q2? And what is the rate in Q4, the context of the 1 billion? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for your questions. So our presence in the Middle East varies by division. We have, you know, relative to the GDP size of the region, it's slightly higher in express, it's lower in supply chain, to name the two extremes. As tragic as these conflicts are, and as regrettable, given what we do, and the segments we are in, we typically benefit from this term oil more than we have exposure to the downside. I think this is just a learning from past situations. The main reason, and I think you already heard that in the answering of previous questions, is that those disruptions spill into the air freight from ocean or land transport, surface transport into air and express. And people tend to rely on providers like us. And with our significant footprint in the region, we are often the go-to party. That has been the case with recent floodings in Morocco, which have driven volume massively. Now, you're not going to see that in our numbers because Morocco overall is too small. But it's just to make the point that around the, in principle, the effect this has on supply chains and the need for our services. For ocean especially, the tying up of vessels is reducing supply. There has been some concerns about the supply-demand balance with the Red Sea, the Suez Route reopen. I think that's off now, or at least further postponed. you know, shifted into the future, that such vessel routings would be accessible for the great majority of ocean liners, so that it has an impact on Europe to China as it relates to lead times and the competitiveness of ocean freight lead times for the air freight lead times, but also on the supply-demand balance in the container, the cellular vessel space. So, so far on the Middle East, any follow-up questions on this are welcome. On our Fit for Growth program, indeed, we have been executing this very well across the year of 2025. Now, the measurement of those things is not on a daily basis for all of those initiatives. It is now with the year end that we have taken stock and we see that we are significantly ahead of what we have originally planned. And we see this again, very positively. It's speed, but it's also the impact that we have in some areas is ahead of what we originally thought, but that has been an outcome of the work throughout the year of 2025.

And we had already flagged in Q3 in November that we were ahead of schedule. But, of course, also the importance, given the importance of Q4 at the peak season, we then really saw that those structural cost improvements also held during the peak season. And that, of course, then also drove up the overall performance towards the end of the year.

Okay, Michael.

Sorry. And yeah, just on the run rate of cost savings, because I think there is a bit of confusion this morning out there, whether the 600 million is the run rate versus the 1 billion or the 600 million is the achieved cost savings and the 4. Let's say in the bridge to 26, we just need, we need to plug 400 million more. If you could clarify whether 600 million is the run rate in Q4 or the achieved number in Q5.

Yeah, so the 600 is what we achieved gross in 2025, excluding the cost of change. And so in a very simple calculation, that should leave around 400 to come now for 26.

And obviously, if it's a little bit more, we won't stop the measures just because we said it's a billion. Thank you very much.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature. Alternatively, if you've dialed in, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. When your name is announced, please unmute your line and ask your question. We'll take our next question from Suda Ekling with Morgan Stanley. Please unmute your line by pressing star six and ask your question.

Thanks very much. Hi, everyone. I've just got a question on if you could reflect on the volume performance in the express business, particularly in the context of volume growth in broader air freight cargo. I understand the points around sort of weight per shipment rather than just shipment count, but this sort of persistent trend of lower express trains or flat at base, and general air freight cargo growing continues to sort of play out quarter over quarter. And I'd just like to sort of hear how you are perceiving the relative trends in those two categories and how we should think about that over 26 and possibly a bit further out. I think sort of the debate around is expressed structurally impaired relative to history remains quite alive in the market. And with the volume positions that we've had, I wonder if you've got a view on how to sort of debate that question or respond to that question. Thank you.

Yeah, so I think fair question. Given the market developments that you characterized, I do not think that the Agile Express has a share versus our traditional competitors in the Express space. If you look historically, these waves a little bit between Airfreight and Express have happened before. It's particularly now kind of post-COVID, the e-commerce normalization that has impacted us, but also the broader industry, which is why the broader integrated industry, I think, is the key driver of why we have lost a share or a point of market share or so in the broader market. And it is absolutely our objective to get back onto a track to outgrow the broader air freight market as we have done as an industry for the last 40 years. We target that through specific verticals, but also a broader engagement more on the B2B side. That has not shown effects yet in the fourth quarter, so that's something which we would only see now in 2026 as that program gets implemented. We had good discussions with the management team, with the broader management team around that. I think EHL Express is very, in its usual way, very structured set up to address that. But it will only unfold as we go through the year. And some of the verticals, and we said that also with Strategy 2030 and its execution, some of those verticals, particularly life science and healthcare and cold chain express, will take some more time until that infrastructure and equipment is ready. So that will not happen this year. This is more for the years to come.

And maybe just to add very briefly to my side, we have this page five in the deck. We have talked about it before. I mean, you can see that actually rate per day, rest of world was already just flat in 2025. And obviously our clear focus is to now get rate per day back into growth territory. And we think that rate per day will be the more relevant KPI to look at for Express and A, between us, it drives a lot of the economics of the division in terms of associated revenue per shipment, in terms of weight load factor on the aviation side, and so on. But it will then also give a good comparison to the relative performance vis-à-vis the air freight market. And that is what we will focus on in 26. Understood.

Thank you so much. Very helpful.

Thank you, Sita. And we've got another caller waiting.

Our next question comes from Alex Irving with Bernstein. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Good morning. Two from me, please. First of all, you've heard from some of your peers about how they're deploying AI in their business and why they in particular stand to benefit. They own platforms, data quality, and so on. You spoke earlier on about some of your aims during the presentation, but what factors give you the right to win from AI? And what are the main actions you're currently taking here? What's the impact you expect those to have, gross and net, after any sharing of gains with customers? Second question, you're nearing the end of the simplification project and subject to AGM approval, the carve-down of P&P. How committed are you to the ongoing ownership of all five divisions? What conditions must these divisions satisfy to remain owned by DHL? Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for these questions, starting with AI. I think for us what's important is We don't have the approach to think that putting AI sauce over everything creates great benefit. This is a task that ultimately is technical. This is a major transformation as the induction of the PC into our business world and will have similar sized, if not larger, benefits. Now, why we think we have the right to win and we'll have a net benefit, this is a technology where scale will matter to a greater extent. And we have some applications I mentioned what we intend to do and are implementing on the hand scanners, where also across the divisions we can deploy similar technology and reap those benefits. So we see AI as a driver of technology. scale benefit, increasing scale benefits, but also it will benefit companies more that have a well-setup, well-structured IT landscape, and we very much believe we have that, especially in Express, in global forwarding, and in P&P. but also in supply chain where, you know, Oscar in his previous role has driven the standardization of warehouse management systems and so forth for many years. We have a great record as it relates to use of data. We've become a much more data-driven company. So that is a foundation that we can now build on. Now, we know that others also claim that. So, yeah. Here, I think as often it's in the execution that will prove who can really make benefits from that. Again, I think we know very well what we're doing, and we are striving to use this technology at industrial scale for efficiency, but also effectiveness reasons. And that's what we're very much focused on. This will take time to implement for companies. This is always harder than for consumers to adapt to new technology. But we're absolutely sure that we will stand to benefit. This relates to the commitment to owning the different divisions. We, I think, have addressed this multiple times across the portfolio. We do think that the portfolio does make sense, but we also have – clear success criteria for the different divisions that we operate in. You asked specifically for P&P, where, again, we think we are the right owner for that business. We need to have the right regulatory conditions that enable us to self-fund the division, to self-fund the transformation from a letter-centric to a parcel-centric company where we have progressed much, much further than many others with our great offering on the parcel side and significant market share that we do have in Germany. So that success factor for us is currently clearly fulfilled. And in the other divisions, we're obviously closely monitoring our performance versus peers. In some areas, we are top of the list, and in other areas, we have more work to do, but with a clear plan to close that gap. So we are committed to the portfolio that we currently own.

Thank you. Alex? Okay, very good. Thank you, Alex. I think we've got a follow-up from Alexia.

Yes, our next question comes from Alexia Tagani with J.P. Morgan. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Thank you for allowing some follow-ups. I actually have, again, three, two very quick ones. Just firstly on Express, can you let us know when you would consider putting an emergency surcharge or a war disruption surcharge, if that would be part of the consideration? Then secondly, would you give us some kind of short comments about Q1, kind of notwithstanding the normal seasonality of the business, should we kind of be looking out for anything specific? And then kind of my real follow-up question is, Melanie, you discussed a little bit about kind of historic performance, valuation. Obviously, you know, growth is very important for kind of the sector that you are in. I guess, would you consider any other means to accelerate growth? I mean, we've discussed your M&A strategy in the past, which is much more kind of would you consider something a little bit more transformational that you could basically put more capital at risk? Or do you see at the moment kind of the return of cash and kind of levering up the balance sheet slightly as the most prudent kind of capital allocation near term? Thanks.

So I start with the first two, then Melanie, being specifically addressed, will comment on the third question. So on the express, we do implement emergency surcharges, you know, depending on the local situation that is typically country-specific, and that's what's also happening in this context. We particularly use that to pass on higher cost, be that through insurance or other. So we will handle that also in this, and we're in the process of doing so in this situation that is unfolding in the Middle East. Overall, I think, and I try to express that, I think we exited 2025 with really good achievements and at a good momentum. I think also personally, I feel about 2026 quite positive, knowing that the term oil is often something that stands to benefit us. It's not always to describe why that is. but that has been historically the case. And that's why even though the macro situation, we're not so optimistic on that per se, the macro environment is gonna be very favorable. I'm quite optimistic about 2026 based on the achievements on the cost side, on the structural improvements, but also what the current environment means for our industry and specifically our portfolio of businesses. And that's how with a mindset that we enter and are engaged here in the year of 2026.

And to your third question, yes, as I showed in the presentation, we have significantly improved profitability and cash generation and also the composition of where earnings are coming from. Where we now want to double down on is how to accelerate also growth and, of course, profitable growth. The focus will remain on organic growth opportunities. We are convinced that there are ample opportunities out there also in the current environment. We are going to double down on those, and we will continue using M&A more as an add-on supplement. So no fundamental change in strategy.

Thank you.

Thanks, Alexia. We have Andy Chu joining the call.

Good morning. Just one question from me, please. I guess the market always worries, for DHL in particular, around any sort of crisis, and we seem to be lurching from one crisis to another. But I guess, historically, you've shown some really great flexibility, resilience, probably most recently COVID being the best example. So could you just give us a favour, maybe just using it as a Sorry, could you just give an example maybe using Express as to how quickly you can make adjustments to your network, just examples of flexibility, because it just strikes me that this business has a proven track record of tremendous resilience.

Thank you. Thank you for that question, which is more a comment that I would absolutely agree to. And especially in the Middle East, I mean, we have a very strong presence there. You know, we have colleagues there that, you know, were already in the region during the Second Gulf War. where we also still already had a significant presence due to historical reasons. We even had a monopoly in Saudi for some time. Obviously, that's not the case anymore, but our presence there is very strong. Express, with its setup also of different airlines, has flexibility that others do not have. location by location that requires work traffic rights you know aircraft change in registry all this doesn't happen um by itself but over the decades i think we have built that muscle that capability um and i think are somewhat unique in our industry in that setup and capability set and that's why indeed um i would actually echo the um you know The confidence that you also expressed in your comment, the confidence that as tragic as this military conflict is and the crisis that it triggers, it's not bad historically for our setup and does not harm in any way our confidence about 2026.

Maybe just two quick points to add from my side. I think one thing which is remarkable about our express aviation setup is that we have now shown over the last years the capability that we can flex up quite rapidly if that is required globally or on specific trade lanes, but that we can likewise also flex down. A key contributor, of course, also to the fact that we had six consecutive quarters of EBIT growth in express despite the top-line headwind. And the complementary element is also going back to Alexia's question. We have also shown that on the pricing side, we are able to smartly price given the circumstances with elevated risk surcharges if and where needed.

Thank you very much.

Andy, thanks for your call. We just passed the 60-minute mark, but we still got time for a follow-up question by Marko.

Marko, please unmute your line by pressing star six to ask your question.

Marko, we can't hear you.

I'm still working on it.

Marko, please go ahead. Hello. I think you can hear me now. Thank you. Just to go one more question, which is a bit more longer term. So if we look at your overall OPEX line of 75 billion, I mean, clearly that's a fairly big one. And my question to you is whether you see further opportunities in terms of cost savings on top of the 1 billion program you are running at the moment. And in the context of that, whether you think that there are cost synergies potential from maybe in the future better integrating divisions and therefore achieving extrapolating cost synergies across divisions as one of your big competitors is doing in the US. Thank you.

Yeah, so thank you for this question, which is obviously not easy to answer across all the spectrum of what we do. I would definitely say that our drive for efficiency will continue. That is basic frugality. We're a logistics company. We're not a bank, and we should look like a logistics company. We should not look like a bank. But more importantly, the obsession with efficiency continues. in processes and having great processes with an adequate amount of technology. That in supply chain, supply chain is going to be the first business that has a significant impact with robotics. We are already leading in the deployment of robots. It will change the business. It will add a different revenue stream, robotics as a service to what we do, similar to what we did with real estate solutions, which is a great contributor of the successful path that we've taken to supply chain. So those elements are very important next to AI. Not to forget that the physical part of AI being manifested in robotics is also very, very relevant for us. In Express, I think we're on a great path to make the best service in the industry more affordable, and that will give us a broader access to certain markets and companies and is underpinning our drive for industrial growth. also in Europe with the expansion of our road network and that related offering across the continent that's a driver of growth as well. As it relates to divisional synergies, yes, we will have those on the technology side. We'll be very careful with operational integration that harms our value proposition. Express has a different value proposition than the standard parcel business, and we will not ever damage that value proposition. You know, the spreadsheet might tell you something different, but experience tells us that that setup that we have, particularly with Express, is working very well for us, is working very well for our customers. Collaboration is what's going to happen, but this very cost and efficiency-minded synergy, we will remain very careful because we see with our own experience, but also what happens across the industry, that the detrimental effects on value proposition are often outweighing the benefits. So on the technology side, yes. On the collaboration side, absolutely yes. You also see this in Europe between e-commerce, P&P, and also increasingly e-commerce and Express. We often talked about the great collaboration we have on the aviation side between Express and global forwarding, the joint plans we have there in terms of life science and healthcare. You might have seen the health logistics plane that Express operates, which is also used for DGF, Global Forwarding Cargo. So we'll collaborate value proposition and efficiency, but we'll be very careful to integrate with the sole mind of cost synergies.

And what did you mean when you said making Express more affordable?

Well, I mean, we have undertaken significant steps to enhance productivity through technology, but also through streamlining processes, especially in Europe and the U.S., and we're also growing in the European road offering, DDI, significantly. So that is what I mean. It doesn't harm our value proposition as it relates to the time-definite offering, where we will always put quality first, but it gives us access to some segments that we haven't been serving to that extent in the past.

Makes sense. Thank you, Raj.

Great. Thanks, Marco, for that follow-up. And that concludes our Q&A round. We're looking forward to seeing you over the next couple of days and weeks on roadshows and conferences. And to close off the call, I hand over for his closing remarks to Tobias.

Thank you all for your interest. Again, 2025 was not an easy year as it relates to the macro. I think we've managed as well. And I feel this leads us really in a position where we enter 2026 and we operate in 2026 despite, again, a very volatile environment with great confidence that we will offer great service to our customers during the year of 2026 with the initiatives that we've put forward. And we get back on the track of growth. through the measures that we've described and talked about in this call, but also beyond the divisional strategies that we have presented. This is going to be the focus in 2026 to add the growth component through what I believe was a good bottom line management. That's what we are 100% focused to do and confident to achieve. Thank you.