Nexi Spa Azioni Ordinarie

Good afternoon, this is the Coruscall Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the NEXE First Half 2022 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paolo Bertoluzzo, CEO of Nexi. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning to everyone and welcome to our call for the first Alpha 22 results. As always, I'm here with Bernardo Mingrone, our CFO, and Stefania Mantegazza, who is leading investor relations at Nexi, plus a few other colleagues that may help us in case of need on specific questions. As usual, I will start with the key messages for today. I will give you a quick update on volume dynamics and a few business updates on what we see happening and our progress in merchant services in particular. I will then hand over to Bernardo, who will cover more in detail the financial results. And obviously, as usual, we will have then time for your questions. Let me start from page three, summarizing the key messages for today. First message, we continue to see strong volume growth in the second quarter across all our geographies. All our geographies are now growing double digit, both compared to last year and compared to pre-COVID to 2019. That is something that we continue to track with a lot of attention, because at the end of the day, gives you the real picture of what is happening. I will give you more details in a moment. Let me just underline here the impressive growth that we've seen in the SME segment, which is very much the segment where we apply a lot of focus, probably most of the focus, where we've seen in the first half of the year a 38% growth of volumes compared to last year. Second key message, in the quarter and more broadly in the first half, we've seen strong financial performance. Let me start from EBITDA that did grow in the second quarter of the year by 20% and 19% for the first half. with a four percentage point margin expansion was supported also by the early delivery of the synergies of the back of the acquisitions we have done in the recent past. This growth of EBITDA 20% has been well supported by revenue growing about 10% in the quarter and 9% in the first half. And this revenue growth has been supported by a very fast growth in merchant services, plus 16% in the quarter and 14% in the first half. Obviously, the strong EBITDA growth at plus 20% has been clearly enabled by a strong cost control. Bernardo will show you our cost growth versus last year, about 1% to 2%, so strong cost control there as well. Third message, we continue to progress on our journey of creating the European Paytech leader. As I've anticipated, we are progressing the delivery of our synergies. 100 million euro is the target for this year and we confirm that we are moving exactly in line with that target. Second point, we had a particularly active second quarter in terms of M&A both in and out and I think this is something that I really want to underline. We signed the acquisition of the Bipper Merchant Book in Italy. We did sign the acquisition of the Intesa Merchant Book in Croatia. We did close the Alfa Bank joint venture and launched actually the activities and we closed the acquisition of Artebird. But also we have announced the sale of the capital market business in Italy. We have announced the sale and also closed the sale of Edigar that is a nice digital invoice business in the Nordics. And we've also closed the sale of the non-SEPA clearing business in Italy. And I think this map gives you really the sense of how we see our future progressing with nice, even if small in many cases, both an acquisition in merchant services to strengthen our our portfolio, but at the same time also refocusing continuously our portfolio on the core of the business, on the core of our future. Let me now move, sorry, in this context, we are confirming our ambition for 2022 that as a reminder is a revenue growth of 7% to 9% for the year and maybe the growth of 13% to 16% for the full year. Let me now move to volumes, page four. Here you see the lines representing the comparison versus last year. I always feel these lines would be a little bit complex to be understood because they very much depend on what happened last year that was still very much affected by ups and downs with COVID. Nevertheless, you see across all markets double digit growth, both when compared with last year and when compared with 2019 as well. In the appendix to this document, you find our usual charts giving you the month by month dynamic versus 2019 and that's where probably you can appreciate better the fact that the trend of volume recovery and volume increase is actually continuously also in the second quarter throughout the quarter in a very positive way across all geographies something that you may be losing when you look at these comparisons versus last year but said that Italy, we're now growing in June 18% versus last year, 27% compared to pre-COVID. Actually, it was supported not only by the business consumption, but also by the high-impact consumption that is now growing 37%. On the right, you see the usual split in between Italian cards and international cards, and you see that international cards are now above 100% more versus last year, but they're already actually 16% higher than pre-COVID. I think this is very important because it's the first quarter actually in which we finally see a stable and substantial recovery of international travelers in our geography. In the Nordics as well, we see throughout the quarter a 20% to 30% increase versus last year and a nice 18% versus pre-COVID, well supported by a 57% growth in the basic consumption sectors. That is the effect of obviously our focus in our commercial wins, but also a continuous shift from cash to digital also in the Nordics. Last but not least, DAC. We have a double-digit growth compared to last year. You've seen, depending on the comparison with the specific month from last year, growing 37-53%. If you adjust, if you clean up this volume dynamic from some discontinuities that we had as we did the risk-led portfolio, especially in travel with a lower value contracts that were presenting actually high volumes. Actually, the growth versus last year in Germany would be a nice 25%, already up 11% versus pre-COVID. Also in Germany, I want to underline the fact that in the basic sector, we are running more than 50% higher than pre-COVID levels. All in, it's also important to underline that if you look at the travel sector, which is really focused on airline, transportation, hotels, these type of things, so it's net of restaurants and more local type of high-impact sectors. Finally, travel is back to above 2019 and materially above 2019 level for the group all together. Let me now move to page five to give you a bit of a deep dive into our merchant services space. It's a pretty rich page, I understand, and on the right you also have examples of recent customer wins and losses. very strategic, also new partnerships in the software and platform space. But let me focus on a few key messages here, starting with SMEs that represent more than half of the business. As I said, SMEs grew volume 38% in the first half of the year. Let me just underline two or three messages. Number one, we've seen strong and accelerated sales performance across all geographies, I would say especially Back in Poland, if I need to name two, our installed base of terminals did grow more than 150,000 terminals in the first half of this year, clearly signaling also strong growth in terms of customer base. The second thing I would like to underline is that we launched our soft-post proposition, tap-on-phone proposition in Greece as well, after the Nordics and Hungary, and we're now preparing for the Italian launch. We believe soft-post is a nice add-on proposition of both for new-to-card merchants, but also as an additional device for mobility or backup for more traditional merchants, already well-developed merchants as well. Third, that I want to underline, we continue to make progress in partnering with software vendors, both market leaders horizontally, that cover the market horizontally across sectors, but also vertical specialists across all our geographies. Moving to e-commerce, we continue to see a strong performance of our easy collecting PSP proposition in the Nordics and we are now ramping up that same proposition in Germany and we started that basically this year. The second point that I want to underline is the progress we are making on enhancing the capabilities of our proposition in the e-commerce space with two easy examples here. We've implemented the transaction risk analysis capabilities in Italy with very visible results for our merchants in terms of conversion rate improvements. At the same time, in Poland, we launched something that is quite noted, which is the one-click checkout also for APMs not just for cards. Last but not least, let me stress something that we did announce this morning. We've signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft. These partnerships is actually covering four areas. We will become one of their main payment providers with main payment partners for their e-commerce, acquiring e-commerce acceptance in Europe. We will invest together in go-to markets for SMEs in particular, where you know that Microsoft is particularly strong and is particularly focused. We will work together in integrating our proposition payments and software across the board. And last but not least, we will also partner to enable an acceleration for Nexi of our platform evolution, our platform transformation in the cloud. Let me close with larger merchants. In larger merchants, we've seen a growth versus last year, about 17%, despite the risking of volumes that I mentioned before. Now here, let me underline three things again. strong progress in Italy in particular, I would say on the back of the combination we see an integrated collection and business-to-business payments capabilities with a specific focus on public administration, transport and utilities. Second point, let me stress not the extension of our Omnicom capabilities, both in the Nordics, we are now integrating also the acceptance of local wallets via QR code and DAC in Germany in particular, where we implemented a very innovative digital direct debit feature that allows merchants to accept direct debit payments in a much simpler way, fully digitalized in their shops. And last but not least, also for larger merchants, We are continuing to develop the integrations with the key enabling platforms, both CRMs, ERPs, property management systems for hospitality. And we have signed here new partnerships, such as, for example, with Global Blue in hospitality and retail, Ozuora for digital subscriptions management. Let me now hand over to Bernardo, who will cover the financial results.

Thanks, Paul, and good afternoon to everyone who is connected to this call. Starting on slide number seven, we have a brief summary of revenues in EBITDA. In the quarter, we have double-digit revenue growth at 10.2%. I would like to highlight how margin expansion is as high as it's been, at least as seen since I've been at NEXI with 400 basis points of expansion, both in the quarter and for the full year, with EBITDA, as Paul has mentioned, growing north of 20%. I think it's just worth calling out that this quarter, and I think this holds true for most payments players in Europe, we've had an increase in scheme fees, which I think needs to be called out in terms of understanding top-line performance. We report revenues like most payment players, net of scheme fees. But if we were to normalize and gross up revenues for scheme fees, which have had a strong growth due to the fact that as... we mentioned earlier, extra EA travel and general travel has picked up, bringing higher scheme fees than in 2021 when travel was subdued. This normalization would lead our growth in the quarter to jump from 10.2% to 14% and in the year to be 12%. Obviously, this has no effect on EBITDA. It increases costs just like it increases revenues, and EBITDA is therefore, I think, the truest and best measure to to evaluate quality of performance, and that I think we did particularly well with this 20.5% growth, which I think is one of the highest we've recorded in the recent past. Moving on to slide number eight, we have performance at the Merchant Services Business Unit. Again, we have acceleration in the second quarter. Revenues were growing 16% for the quarter. Strong volume growth. I would like to call out the fact that we have an installed base which is growing very handsomely with over 150,000 POS terminals installed in the first half of this year. I think a very positive note coming from the growth in SME volumes, which stands at 38%, much higher than the average growth in volumes. And a couple of interesting points. that I think are worth noting as well with regards to the fact that we still see stronger growth in the physical channel than e-commerce. And this has been a trend we've been observing throughout 2022. And the other one, which is that value of managed transactions is actually growing faster than the number of transactions. And this is probably due to a couple of effects. One, a mixed effect travel coming back and that being higher than average ticket and probably the inflation rate or the first impacts of inflation on customer spend. Going back to the point I made earlier with regards to scheme fees, if we grossed up revenues for scheme fees on merchant services, the 15.8% growth in the quarter would actually be 22.3%, and for the first half, it would be 19.6%. We actually have a table. We've included a table for your reference in the appendix. so that you can have a look at those numbers if you please. I mean, we'll obviously continue to report on a net of scheme fee basis. We believe that's the right way of doing it, but as a reference, I think it's useful. Slide number nine, I think the messages are similar in cards and digital payments. We also have strong volume growth feeding into top-line growth of approximately 5% for the first half, 6% in the quarter. If we look at Italy, where we have... a slightly different business model with co-issuing. We have a very strong performance, I'd say, with high single digits, 7%, and the rest of Europe, where we're more of a payment processor on the issuing front, slightly lower. I'd like to also call out how, during the first half of this year, we've seen strong acceleration of the international debit proposition in Italy in particular, which is an initiative, a very important initiative we've been highlighting since we went public as a key driver of growth in this market. Moving on to digital banking and corporate solutions, the first half results as we discussed a couple months ago in May when we discussed first quarter were impacted on a year-on-year basis from the fact that we had some project-related revenues last year from the acquisition of an Italian bank by Intesa. That project-related revenue is no longer present in the first half of 2022. The comp is therefore rather flat for the year. For the first half, if you look at the quarter, we have a slight growth driven primarily from the net side in some project-related work on the EID business we run in Denmark. Slide 11 paints a picture across the various geographies in terms of revenue growth, where mostly double-digit growth with the exception of ITI, which would be double-digit, obviously, if we grossed up for scheme fees, as we're saying. But I would say, in general, healthy growth throughout Europe, coming from the structural shift of card-to-cash and the reopening we've witnessed in the first half of the year throughout Europe. Slide number 12 points to costs. As has been highlighted, I think, through our continued review of our cost base and attention to it, stopping or trying to cut costs as much as possible, wherever possible. We've been able to contain cost growth to just under 2% in the quarter, just over 1% in the first half. This has clearly been helped by the synergies. Even if we were to factor in synergies, cost growth for the first half would be below 4%, notwithstanding the strong volume growth we've witnessed. Obviously, the flip side of the coin of grossing up revenues for scheme fees is that you would have to gross up costs for scheme fees as well, and that cost base would be growing 8%, so against that 12 plus percent revenue growth in the quarter growth for scheme fees, we'd have 8% cost growth. Slide number 13 takes a look at CAPEX. We have a year-on-year increase in CAPEX of approximately 15 million euros. This is primarily driven by the gray box on the right, so that transformation CAPEX, where we continue to invest in both transformations, so the completion of standalone projects at Nexi and NETS, including, for instance, completion of our group authorization platform, UNI, the rollout of the core acquiring platform at NETS, but also integration CAPEX coming from the integration of SIA and NETS. For instance, we are starting our mainframe and data center consolidation. This will bring us down to around 14 data centers from the 40 which we have currently or had at the time of... of the merger. We also continue to invest in our ordinary CapEx that, as you know, hovers between 8% and 10% of revenues and includes all ordinary business development. And we have some examples here, for instance, the evolution of RPoS ecosystems and the developments of data analytics and the likes. But again, CapEx in slight growth driven by the transformation CapEx. But as you can see on slide 14, We're expecting to reach more or less a peak of this transformation spend in 2022. Overall, we said during the course of our full year presentation and back in February, we had approximately 300 million euros, an envelope of approximately 300 million euros to be spent between now or between then and 2025 in order to complete the transformation of individual companies and integrations of that 300 million euros is now reduced to 215 and will continue to further reduce over time until it's completed by 2025, at which point our spend will be reduced to a normal ordinary capex level of between 8% to 10% of revenues. Site 15 updates you on performance or actually the rate of achievement of the synergies. As you know, last year we generated approximately 18 million euros of synergies during 2021. This year we're targeting just north of 100 million euros of synergies, both EBITDA or P&L synergies and CAPEX synergies. Around about 21 million euros were delivered in the first half of the year, mostly OPEX cost synergies. We also had 17 million of recurring CAPEX synergies, so the total for the first half is 37 million euros. We'd obviously already achieved the target of achieving the 65 million one-off CapEx savings at the beginning of this year, and that was done pretty soon after the Nets and SEA deals closed because it was about cost avoidance rather than cutting ongoing spend. So I would say that we are fully on track to deliver the synergy targets that we expect for the year, and in general to confirm our ambition, our expectation rather, to do better than what we'd originally expected. planned in terms of the 320 million total recurring cash synergies over time. Slide 16 updates you on progress with regards to OPEX transformation integration costs. As you know, last year we spent more than 500 million euros on transformation costs, including M&A fees, et cetera. This year we're targeting spend less than half that. And you see how if we just limit to integration transformation costs, We're at 76.2 million euros, which is roughly 50% of what it was in the first half of last year. And then we have the usual other non-cash costs on the right of the table, or costs borne by the sponsors as part of the IPO process, which take us to 106 million euros of non-recurring items for the first half of this year. Slide 17, I think what I would like to call out here is how we are introducing for the first time our EPS, a cash EPS. Finally, we have a stable share count having completed the SIA merger, so we think it makes sense to start commenting on that, and presumably when we come out with our Capital Markets Day at the end of September, we'll provide guidance not only on the top line and EBITDA level, but also on the bottom line level. So you can see that our normalized cash EPS, normalized excluding one-off costs on a cash basis is $0.34 per share. And this is a 23% year-on-year increase at the bottom line level. Slide 18 confirms our strong cash conversion capabilities. Again, this is on a normalized basis, so excluding those 300-odd million euros that we had of CapEx and P&L transformation spent. So on a normalized basis, we expect to convert approximately 80% of our EBITDA in terms of operating cash flow. And on slide 19, we summarize our indebtedness, which is reduced to below three times at the end of June if you include run rate synergies in our EBITDA. I think it's also interesting to note how we were recently upgraded by Moody's. S&P confirmed their positive outlook, so our journey towards improving our rating towards investment grade continues. I think it's also interesting to note how, as part of our ordinary course, refinancing or financing activities, for instance, in order to fund M&A to the extent that we don't use on balance sheet cash are being carried out at rates which are the same levels as the ones we were obtaining from banks and from the street before rates rise. The expectation of rate rises was embedded into the performance of our publicly traded bonds, for instance, sort of pre-rate increase levels. And this is obviously a very strong message in terms of the strong appetite for the NEXE credit. Finally, on slide number 20, before I hand the floor back over to Paolo for concluding remarks, just a few words on M&A in the first half, which was pretty busy, particularly in the second quarter. We completed or signed a number of acquisitions. They're highlighted here on the left. From BIPA, we bought the merchant services book. Transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. We signed this and we're just waiting for BIPA to complete the integration of Katija before we migrate that book. It will happen at some point in December. We paid approximately 10 times EBITDA for this. The transaction with Intesa was also announced during the course of May, if I remember correctly, where we bought the merchant acquiring business in Croatia for Intesa. Again, this is the third deal we do with Intesa. The transaction structure is the one we've done in the past. Again, multiple is around 10.5 times EBITDA. We also agreed with Alfa Bank to increase our stake from the level at which it was at signing of 51% to approximately 90%, and this was done basically in agreement with Alfa at their request. And we were more than happy to do so. We would have bought 100% from the start if we could have. And we increased our stake in Orderbird to 100% from the 40% we had before. For the first time, we can now speak also of disposals. We actually completed the disposal of EdiGuard, a Norwegian business, which basically digitized documentation. The sale of that was to private equity. and we sold 14 times EBITDA. We also signed an agreement with Euronext to sell CS Capital Market Business to Euronext during the course of the second half of the year. We expect closing again. This was a transaction carried out at approximately 12 times enterprise value to EBITDA, multiple. Non-separate clearing is a very, very small transaction. So, Paolo, I'll hand the floor back to you.

Thank you Bernardo. Let me jump to page 22 simply to confirm our ambition for the full year. We are having a strong first alpha that is pretty much in line with our plans and we will have a second alpha that is obviously consistent with the full year guidance which is also influenced by more difficult comparisons with last year but if you compare With the pre-COVID levels, with more normal years, we expect to continue to see underlying growth throughout and acceleration throughout. Coming, therefore, to our ambition for the year, 7% to 9% net revenue growth with double-digit growth in the merchant services space, 13% to 16% EBITDA growth with a 2% point EBITDA margin expansion, CapEx 8 to 10, ordinary CapEx, no recurring items, rapid decrease as you have just seen with Bernardo, and a total of 300 million Euro transformation integration CapEx by 2024-2025. Bernardo has shown you already how we are progressing on that as well. And finally, on leverage, continuing organic leverage with target of net debt of 2.5 times EBITDA, including running synergies, we are performing this number two or three times EBITDA considering all the recent M&A transactions that we expect to close by the end of the year. Let me just conclude reinforcing and reiterating our key messages for the day on page 23. strong volume growth and acceleration across all geographies very visible especially if you look at the trends compared with pre-covered levels and let me underline again this super strong growth in smes of 38 for the group second key message strong financial performance and again here let me underline the EBITDA growth of 20% for the quarter and 19% for the first half of the year, and the four percentage points EBITDA margin expansions, and last but not least, continued progress, both in terms of delivering our synergies and reshaping the perimeter, the profile of our company through M&A as Bernardo has just mentioned. On this basis, as I just said, we confirm our guidance for the full year. Before opening for Q&A, let me just remind to all of you that we plan to have our capital market day on the 27th of September here in Milan. And obviously, that will be a fantastic opportunity to deep dive more in the business and obviously our plans in our longer term projections. Let me stop there. And we see already a good number of questions, so I think we can go into it.

Excuse me, this is the Chorus Call Conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Mohamed Moawalla with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Hi, Paolo. Hi, Bernardo. I just had two quick ones from my end, if I may. Firstly, as you look through the sort of second half of the year into next year, just curious to get your sense. I mean, you have obviously a sizable SMB business. What are the sort of things you're seeing in terms of business resiliency? You talked about strong volume growth. but what are your kind of planning assumptions in terms of potential risks around through SMBs, you know, with the macro slowdown potentially impending, as well as, you know, the opportunities, you know, for growth that you see within that in a kind of post-pandemic period. And then the second question is just on the sort of margin evolution. We've seen that, you know, EBITDA was sort of growing ahead of plans You also talked about sort of investments back in the business in the second half. So how critical are they versus how discretionary are they? And just curious to understand the margin flexibility you have in the event of kind of revenue slowdown next year. Thank you.

Hi, Mo, and thank you for your questions. I let Bernardo take the second. Let me try to cover Bernardo. the first one. As I've anticipated, we see a second half of the year that compared to a normal year, we'll continue to see acceleration, but in nominal terms compared to last year, we'll obviously see a deceleration. You understand that clearly when you compare our first half of the year with the full year guidance. But again, I really want to underline it. If you compare it to a normal year, we would see acceleration throughout the year. our planning assumptions. Listen, for now, we're not seeing any material signal of... change in terms of economic environment and SMBs in particular. You are rightly focusing on SMBs that for us are a very strategic segment and also an important source of both financial performance and growth. For now, we don't see any disruption or any critical element there. For the second half, I think it's good to remain a bit cautious because we'll see the environment out there For the moment, we are assuming that more or less the combination of the macro environment and the increasing inflation that, as you know, in the short term has a positive effect on us will more or less rebalance one each other. Again, we have a strong expectation in terms of future growth, and we'll talk about it much more later. in September with a dedicated session on SMBs. We really believe that's an important source of future growth for our company in the future, I would say across all geographies. Let me now hand over to Bernardo.

Actually, just to add to what Paolo was saying, I think also some other players in the sector commented on this and how our exposure to SMEs is probably not to those SMEs which would be most impacted by the recession. So I think... I think our customer base also benefits from the fact that the ultimate clients have a significant amount of savings, which were built up over the COVID period, which are kind of helping to support consumer spend and its other sectors, which are probably being worst hit by the slowdown and might be worst hit by the slowdown going forward. With regards to margin evolution, I think we've demonstrated in the past, if you look back to the first COVID year when we – We did our best to try and protect and shelter our P&L and our cash flow from the slowdown coming from the closures by moving expenditure from one year to the next or slowing it down and basically ultimately delivering a growth in EBITDA in a year in which the economy contracted 8%. And I think we retained that kind of flexibility even now that we are planning to spend in the second half of the year to basically secure longer-term revenue growth. So that is still the plan, but should things... And I think we guided to that back when we gave the first indication of 2022 forecasts back in February that we'd be spending part of the synergies to reinvest in our platform to secure future growth. That is still the plan. We started to do that in the first quarter. Most of it will be coming in the second quarter – sorry, in the second half. But, you know, as you were suggesting, should things look – different to what they're currently looking like, then we would retain flexibility to spread that over time and time it such that we could protect our performance.

Great, thank you.

The next question is from Alastair Nolan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great, thank you. Just two for me. The first would be around those inflation impacts you mentioned, which I think you flagged as being kind of net positive thus far. Can you just remind us exactly what percentage of your business is a pure kind of take rate on volumes and kind of where you're seeing the benefits and potentially headwinds at the same time? And then secondly, it's on the Microsoft deal, which sounds like a really interesting deal. Can you maybe provide a little bit more detail around kind of what the strategy is there, exactly how Microsoft are going to help on the platform transformation. And then if at all possible, to quantify what you think this deal could mean in terms of either revenues or maybe potentially the size of the investment. I think you mentioned the co-investment. So anything you can add to that would be really helpful. Thank you.

Let me just take the first one. Inflation impact, we are exposed and therefore benefiting from immediate positive inflation impact on about 40% to 50% of our total revenues across the company, more in merchant services, as you can imagine. But if you take the top line of the company, that's the direct simple impact. On the Microsoft Zilla, let me just try to provide a bit more clarity, even if I will not be able to provide you any detail on the financials. Well, as I said, there are basically four components. And let me start from the last one, that is the one that you mentioned. Microsoft will be our key partner, not the only one, but our key partner in transforming basically our infrastructure moving more into the public cloud with Azure, especially starting from the digital front end and the digital services more broadly. Second, we will become one of their key partners for the acquiring and the acceptance of digital payments for their e-commerce activities in Europe. Third, we will work together on product co-development. I think this is a chapter to be written, to be very, very clear, but we are really excited about the idea of sitting down with Microsoft that has such a worldwide visibility and capability. And last but not least, something that is very practical, as I said before, Again, focusing on the small and medium merchant space. As you know, Microsoft is one of the most extensive go-to-market network of partners, and we work with them and their partners to embed our payment products into this distribution channel.

That's great. Thank you very much.

The next question is from James Goodman with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you. I'll go for two as well, please. So firstly, just on the volume development and the near-term outlook, pretty favorable development through the quarter. But I don't think you provided the usual post-period end volume data that you have in the past. I just wondered if you could give us a little bit more specific insight into July and how that's gone. And particularly just given, I think we've discussed it before, but the much tougher comparator base that you have in Q3, given the sequential step up in growth that you saw last year with a pretty favorable summer. You talk about, understandably, the nominal impact in H2 on growth. I'm just wondering if that's more Q3 than Q4. And the second question is around adjusted net income. The EBITDA was very strong for the quarter, but the adjusted net income missed my expectation quite materially, and that was entirely due to the DNA, which was up, I think, 15% sequentially on the second half of last year, 20% year-on-year, and up at about 15% of sales. So why is it that DNA has suddenly picked up, and can you comment on the outlook for DNA, given CapEx, at least this year, is continuing to climb? Thank you.

Thank you, James. Bernard, do you want to take these questions? All of them? Yes.

So I think the first question was with regards to volumes and their development post-quarter end, so in July. I think what I would say is that compared to June, volumes in July continue to grow year on year. And also compared to 2019, there's a slight deceleration, I would say, there was a slight deceleration at the beginning of July, slight improvement on that in the second quarter. part of July. But overall, if you look at 2019, which I think is the right reference here to take, we have continued growth throughout the year and expect this to be the case for the second half, throughout the second half. I think it's with regards to if I benchmark that volume growth that we are referencing through in July compared to our forecast, we are tracking pretty much in line with what we were forecasting last when we did our analysis to confirm our full year numbers. So I would say, as you know, comp worsened during the course of the second half because closures were worse in the first half of 2021. So we had an easier comp in the first six months. In the second six months. But if we normalize for this, we just have steady increase throughout the year when we look at, for instance, at 2019. The second part of the question was, I think, with regards to just in general performance in the second half, and I think volumes we've spoken of, I think it's worth noting the comment on costs. Throughout the year, compared to 2021, aside from the dynamics that we have on costs coming from volumes, coming from the fact that last year we had a comp a comp effect in nets, which lowered staff costs in nets, which this year is no longer the case. The same effect we had had in NEXI last year compared to 2020. So these are driving, let's say, costs upwards. We have the benefit of synergies. And then in the second half, as I was mentioning, when Mo asked this question, we will be seeking to, or we are seeking to invest part of the savings in growing our competences in e-commerce and product development and so on and so forth. and this will start to pick up in the third quarter this year, so we'll see some of that feeding through in the third quarter of this year, which obviously impacts us in terms of the overall outlook. So we confirm our guidance for EBITDA between 13% and 16%, and we closed the first half at 19%, so obviously in the second half we'll have some upward cost pressure coming from this. With regard to your miss on DNA, frankly speaking, I don't know how you model your DNA assumptions. I suggest we take that offline with Stefania and just compare notes as to what your assumptions are. Clearly, the amortization period of investments depends on the nature of investments, and ours is a detailed calculation, and yours is probably an approximation outside in. So I think we're happy to provide you the detail that you need in order to reconcile that.

Do you think it will pick up further in the second half, or are we at a run right now in terms of DNA?

I think we will have a slight pickup because we continue to invest, and the growth of CapEx in the second half is expected to be higher than the first half. So we'll have a slight pickup in the second half on DNA. Okay.

Thank you.

The next question is from Sebastian Zappovitz with Kepler Chevrolet. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. On the Italian market, the growth is a little bit slower, at least slower than what I was expecting. Is there any specific reason that explains the slower growth in Italy? And secondly, on the disposal strategy or red pay strategy, What is happening there? Have you progressed in your reflection with the rate pay within your perimeter? And lastly, on the e-commerce business, you provide the numbers for H1. I have not seen in the past release the number for Q2 in terms of organic growth. And if you can provide a little bit of data for the organic growth of the e-commerce business in Q2 globally and excluding rate pay to see a little bit the dynamics there, it would be very helpful. Thank you.

Hi, Sebastian, this is Paolo. Let me take the first two, and then I will hand over to Bernardo for the third one. On Italy, I understand, is the market that you are referring to. The performance, and actually we are pretty happy with the performance on Italy. Again, it really depends on, I mean, as you remember, we said it last time, the comparison with last year is affected by the fact that we had some material project work in the first half of last year, and in particular in the first quarter of last year. This is not affecting in a material way the second, so you should adjust for that, but you already know it. I think the 8.8% growth is quite strong. Don't forget that. the comparison in Italy was already in the second quarter a bit more difficult than what it was for the other markets because reopenings were already happening there. Again, if you compare it with other players, never forget that these scheme fee increases and volume increases are having a particularly strong impact On Italy, if you take the gross revenues, instead of being 8.8%, for the quarter would be more than 14%. So that's the point on Italy. When it comes to rate pay, As you can imagine, this is not an environment where we feel that we should proceed or accelerate with a process around the right pay. As we always said, we're happy owners of this business, and therefore, the team is really focused on developing the business, growing the pipeline in an environment that, from the commercial standpoint, in terms of volumes, as you know, is less favorable than last year for, by now, pay later services and e-commerce more broadly. Clearly, as you see from also our numbers, people are going back to shops. I would say in particular the smaller ones, which is nice and positive for us, and a bit less shopping online and using binomial operator services. But again, as I said, no process there focused on growing the business, and then we will reconsider as the market environment evolves. Bernardo?

On e-commerce growth, I think you asked for trying to give you some of the parts, let's say, excluding rate pay. So if you look at it, the entity was growing in the first half close to 30%. Nordics were around 20%, and the rest of the business was much lower, and there we have, I'd say, In Germany, three negative effects, I would say, are rate pay, which has slowed down due to the overall market for BNPL slowing down, and, let's say, specific issues or specific factors relating to rate pay and its emancipation from the relationship with its former parent company, Auto Group, which have impacted its top line. But also, as you know, and we've discussed this in the past when looking at volumes in Germany, We've built to exit certain areas of business where the risk-return profile wasn't in line with our targets, which has impacted us in the first half. But if you look at Nordics and Italy, which are the biggest markets, they're growing handsomely at around between 20% and 30%.

Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Josh Levin with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Josh, I don't know if you're speaking, but we cannot hear you.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, perfect.

Okay, sorry. Two questions. So one, given the macro environment, particularly the drop in everybody's stock prices, how does the level or intensity of M&A discussions in Europe today compare with a year ago? And then the second question is earlier this week on its call, Worldline said that it's materially growing its market share in Germany and Italy. How do you see the competitive dynamics evolving in those two markets?

So, hi Josh. First of all, listen, intensity of M&A, it's difficult to give you a precise answer because honestly, we don't see a major change there. I think maybe buyers are a bit more cautious than in the past, which I think is completely normal. we don't see major processes being put on hold or major changes of plans. So, for now, we don't see a material change in terms of processes or in terms of those dynamics. Clearly, instead, in terms of multiples, in terms of prices, we expect to see some material changes. In terms of market share, honestly, I don't know where they've been winning market share. This is actually for them to explain. What we're seeing from our side is that we're actually winning market share as well in Germany. You've seen that we've been growing our customer base by 150,000 terminals from the beginning of the year, which by definition underlines an important growth also probably in terms of share and it has been as I said quite focused in Germany, Switzerland, Poland as well. As far as Italy is concerned we don't see us losing market share to specifically world line. I would say for us growing market share in Italy at the same time is quite difficult given our starting position that is very, very, very high. That's the way I would summarize it. But more broadly, our dynamic is quite clear. Defending our market share and increasing value on the customers in Italy and in the Nordics and winning market share in Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, if I need to focus on the key markets, and this is exactly what is happening now.

I think if I can add to that part, I think we are co-issuers and see data on our cards, and this is it. Obviously, I don't see market share increase by world line, but... Thank you very much. We have 80% of the market, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. But maybe just to add a data point that may be helpful, our volumes in SMEs in Germany are actually up... Almost 100% year-on-year in Germany. Revenue is actually half of that. That's helpful. Thank you.

The next question is from Justin Forsythe with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Two questions from me as well. So the first one is Visa and MasterCard Europe both seem like they're reporting an increasing delta between transaction value growth and transaction volume growth. It was nearing about 30%, indicating ticket size increases. Perhaps there are some mixed differences between you and them, but it looks like that delta for Nexi Merchant is pretty much flat. And so I was wondering if you could help parse through the potential differences there and if there's anything that we should be looking out for, because it looks like the transaction growth actually came in about 17%-ish, whatever your transaction growth was above the flat transaction growth for the network's And then I wanted to hone in on, Shopify announced Shopify POS launching in Italy. Given Nexi is a clear leader for processing for SMEs in Italy, but has had a limited online presence, perhaps historically, how do you evaluate the threat of Shopify cross-selling into the in-store channel via POS, even though they have historically had less presence there, but there's such a high share of SMEs in the market in Italy? Thank you.

Hi, Justin. Aled Bernardo, covering your first question. On the second one, honestly, it's very early to say we don't see them active at the moment. Our historical experience is that SMEs buy e-commerce services and in-store payment services very much separately, also because very often SMEs the choice of moving into an e-commerce platform like Shopify is not necessarily done by the merchant directly, but it's more done by their software and developers and advisors and so on and so forth. So let's see. I very well understand why Shopify is trying to do something like that. For the moment, this is not something that we are seeing or we expect having a material impact. On the first one,

The first one, I think, if we move back to slide, I think it was slide number eight, we show how, as you were suggesting, we have an increase of value of managed transaction, which is larger than the growth in number of transactions. So, same directions of Visa MasterCard. In absolute terms, you're saying their gap was much larger. I think, unfortunately, I can't reconcile the two. I think we are seeing the same phenomenon. And as I said, I think that points to the average ticket size is therefore increasing or stabilizing rather than decreasing, which is the historic trend we've seen so far. And I attribute that to two factors. One of them I mentioned is probably inflation creeping in. And the second one is a mixed factor with bigger tickets coming in as travel resumes. Now Visa MasterCard probably have a much larger proportion of their business exposed to travel and therefore they would have a bigger impact in terms of the average ticket size compared to us. I add to that that we are exiting some sectors, as I was saying, in Germany, which are, in particular, those sectors we're exiting have larger than average volumes as well. That might impact this as well. So it's hard to reconcile the two, but I think the trends are the same, and the mix of business is different, and I suggest that's the reason why the gap is different.

Thank you so much. Appreciate the color. Cheers.

The next question is from Aditi Abudavarapu with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just one from my side. I mean, you spoke about the growth in basic discretionary consumption across Italy. Can you just remind us what the mix is for you guys in terms of high-impact basic and discretionary both in Italy but also in some of your other markets.

Hi, this is Paolo.

Thank you for the question. We may come back to you with more details on a more geographical basis, but to cut a story short, the basic services sector is normally the most relevant one. If my memory is correct, in Italy, for example, it represents almost 40% of the volumes. I would assume a bit probably less in Germany and the Nordics because of an important presence of the travel sector where, however, take rates and merchant fees are much lower and therefore It really depends if you talk about volume or value. I think value-wise, the basic services sector is clearly the most relevant one across the group. But we'll come back to you with some more details.

Okay, that's clear. And maybe just one follow-up from my side. How are you thinking about the scope for maybe, I don't know, pruning the portfolio a bit more? Is there anything else that stands out for you? You mentioned you exited a few contracts or a few areas in Germany. Is there any other areas like that where you might need to look at exiting as well?

Well, I think it's good practice to continuously revisit the portfolio. This is exactly what we have done in the past in the last several years and this is what we are doing very actively now and I think that what we've executed over the last quarter in terms of M&A gives you a direct sense of it. The short answer to your question is yes, we'll continue to revisit and we will over time identify and communicate most importantly areas of potential exit for the company. This is a good topic for our conversations in the Capital Market Day in September. I think what Bernardo was mentioning was not really related with more specific contracts and customer relationships that we felt were not worth the risk, but it's a slightly different story.

Okay, understood. Thank you.

The next question is from Gianmarco Bonaccina with Equita. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon. A couple of questions for me. The first one is on your ambition for this year, considering you mentioned that you expect clearly tailwinds from inflation in the second half to offset maybe some lower real consumption. How confident you are to reach the midpoint of this ambition, given that We've seen that consensus is now at the low end of this range. Then regarding next year, given that clearly we can't exclude that there will be a recession, if you can remind us how the company has performed in past recession. We clearly know the performance in 2020, but that was an extreme year. Maybe just looking at the past in more normal mild recession where the GDP was down, maybe real GDP a single digit drop. what kind of performance you think you can post in terms of revenue and also considering probably next year you could still have some tailwind on inflation.

Thank you. Gianmarco, hi. First of all, thank you for your two questions. Let me try to take them down if Bernardo wants to add anything on midpoint of the guidance, consensus and so on and so forth. Listen, we are confirming the guidance in its full range. I think that... The environment and the outlook remains a bit unclear, and therefore, we really don't want to guide more than that. Listen, consensus, I think today we are delivering ahead of consensus and better than consensus. Hopefully, we'll be able to surprise our investors in the market in the same way for the full year, but let's see. On next year, this is really, really too early to talk about it. Clearly, we'll talk about it in September. But I think the way you're looking at it in terms of past dynamics is obviously the right one. Historically, COVID cannot be considered a recession. COVID has been an event forever. completely different from whatever has happened in the past because shops were closed and people could not walk out of their houses and so on and so forth. So that has been a very unique situation. Historically, if you look at more traditional, if I can say, recessions or in any case, ups and downs of GDP and consumptions, normally our business has proven to be quite resilient. Then, unfortunately, I think every recession has its own dynamics, its own history. It depends which measures are put in place and so on and so forth and what direction it takes. But that's basically what the recent five, ten years, the last five, ten years would suggest in terms of evolution.

The next question is from Alexandre Faure with BNP Baribas Exxon. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for squeezing me in. I've got a couple of questions. Just going back on this partnership with Microsoft and just focusing a little bit on one aspect of it, which is you helping them as their merchant service provider in a number of countries in Europe. Could you help us understand a little bit what you're going to be doing for them exactly? Is it a full stack offer that you're going to provide them with? Is it purely acquiring, just getting a sense of where you'll be helping them as a partner? and whether you'd be their reference partner, you suppose, in those countries, or perhaps more of a fallback option. So that's my first and a little lengthy question, I realize. Second one, Bernardo, just a small clarification on the scheme fee situation, this inflation you're calling out. Is it purely a consequence from the mix with a bit more travel and more transactions being routed to Visa and MasterCard, or is it the case that Visa and MasterCard themselves have been hiking pricing over the course of H1?

Thank you. Hi, Alexandra. Let me take the first one and then hand over to Bernardo for the second one. Listen, on Microsoft, the reality is that, as I said, we'll be one of their key partners on acquiring. I think Microsoft, as most of these very large technology-saving companies, normally has some components of the stack managed directly by them, but we'll be one of their few partners for acquiring, and over time, their Q1 in certain geographies. Bernardo, you want to cover the second question?

Yeah, Marek, so the biggest effect we've had in the quarter for coming from scheme fees, which, as I said, is important to note because it affects top line growth if you include them or exclude them from your revenues, is due to the fact that we now have, as you were suggesting or as I was saying, an increased level of extra EA travel this has higher scheme fees than normal intra EA travel and therefore this is increased scheme fees very significantly this year compared to 2021 and therefore you have a very significant uplift to top-line growth if you exclude those scheme fees from revenues and include them then in costs we normally show net revenue so I think ultimately it's irrelevant from an EBITDA perspective which I think is is the right way to measure the quality of performance. But if you want to gross up, you should gross up for scheme fees and take note that this quarter is probably exceptional. This year is probably exceptional due to COVID and due to this effect. There are also minor impacts coming from increases in scheme fees, for instance, domestic, et cetera. Ultimately, I think the main explanation comes from extra AEA scheme fees coming back this year compared to last year.

Alexander, this is Paolo. If I may say, clearly this is a bit complex and a bit technical, but the only reason why we are relating it is because in this quarter it makes a 4 percentage point or more difference on the total and actually a 7, 6, 7 percentage points on net revenues for merchant services. So as you do comparisons, I think it's important that you don't forget about it. But ultimately, to keep things very, very simple and to the point, EBITDA is in this phase the measure to look at because EBITDA cleans up everything. So regardless how you report, EBITDA is EBITDA, and EBITDA, for the case of Nexi, is growing more than 20% in the quarter and more than 19% for the first half. That's it.

Very good. Thanks very much for the additional disclosure. It's most helpful. Thank you.

The next question is from Gregoire Herman with Alpha Value. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Could you please help us understanding your progress on your software? I mean, if we look at the slide five of the presentation and the wins you've had in terms of merchants, what are they really buying? Is it something from SIA, from NETS, or something really fully synergized between Nexi, NETS, and SIA? so we can better understand why are they choosing you rather than Comps. And the second question, if I may come back on M&A, there has been rumors of Nexus' interest for Sabadell's payment business. I assume you will not want to comment on that rumor specifically, but if you could provide your vision and ambitions of Nexus Group for the Spanish market, which I think is still very much within the hands of banks, Would you say that such opportunities are quite rare so far? Thank you.

Hi, Gregoire. This is Paolo. On your second question, as you rightly said, I cannot comment on the specific cases. Let me just say that merchant books are, for us in general, an important area of focus because normally we have proven that we can create a lot of value on top of this type of deals and geographically now that's a geography that is attractive for many reasons and there is also quite a bit of similarities with what Italy is or Italy was a few years ago so let me stop there on your first point around clients and what they buy from us, and where we win, where we lose. The names that you see on this page are just some examples of names that may be more telling than others, but I would say that more in general, the reason why customers choose us is basically normally a combination of two things. The proposition itself, our products and services, the SME, I don't know, SmartPay and SmartPass proposition or our e-commerce capability with Xpay in Italy or with Easy more broadly or similarly, I could say the same for larger merchants. But that is also, these capabilities, product and proposition capabilities are also combined with our ability to be very local So we add the scale that is needed to deliver modern propositions and advanced propositions, but at the same time, we also are very local and very entrenched in the markets, which means a lot in terms of customer support, delivery, entrenchment with the locally relevant platforms, entrenchment with the locally relevant softwares, which is incredibly important with the merchants. And normally, we win on the back of the combination of these two components. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Mr. Bertoluzzo, gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Well, I think then we can close the call here. Thank you for attending. I think we are at the end of July, so Maybe some of you are already on holiday and wish you great, fantastic holidays. Some of us hopefully will go in the coming days, so we wish all of you a great holiday as well. And actually see as many as possible of you at the end of September at our Capital Market Day. After the Capital Market Day, obviously, we're going to be, as usual, available for meeting calls, whatever you want, but I think we will also roadshow very probably in the UK, in the US at least. So enjoy the summer and talk to you soon. Bye-bye.