Quadient Sa

Good evening and welcome to Quadient Full Year 2022 results presentation. I am Catherine Hubert-Dorel, Quadient's Head of Investor Relations. Today's presentation will be hosted by Geoffrey Godet, Quadient CEO, and Laurent Dupassage, Quadient CFO. The agenda for today is on slide three. We will go through the usual format with one additional section on the simplification of our reporting. As usual, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. You can submit your question in writing through the web or ask questions live by dialing into the conference call. Thank you very much. And with that, over to you, Geoffrey.

Thank you, Catherine. Good evening to everybody. I'm pleased to present you a positive summary of our full year 2022 figures, which are in line with the revised guidance sets in December. Revenue for the full year is €1,081,000,000, up 1.4% organically, in line with our guidance of over 1% of organic growth. Organic revenue growth for the last quarter of the year was 3.1%, making the last quarter of the year the strongest, with all three solutions and geographies reporting organic growth. Also, our subscription model continues to deliver a strong performance with a 3.1% organic increase for the period and now representing up to 69% of our total revenue. At the EBIT level, organic decline was contained to 4.8% again, in line with the guidance set in December. As previously discussed and as expected, a remarkable increase in profitability in the second semester versus the first one, with H2 EBIT margin reaching a very solid 16.1%, excluding the negative AFRIC impact. Overall, our full-year EBIT margin is stable year-on-year at 14.3% when we exclude the new AFRIC accounting standard. We will review in details the reason behind this marked improvement with law. So, an overall positive performance for the year and a very encouraging trend set for 2023. Turning to slide 6 for other important highlights of the year. Net income for the year is €13 million. This includes around 70 million euros on one-off non-cash items that are linked to goodwill impairment and real estate write-off. Most importantly, we will propose to our next shareholder meeting a 60 cents euro per share dividend, representing a 9% increase on last year's level, showing the confidence we have, but also in our capacity to generate future free cash flow. At €70 million, the free cash flow generation for the year is robust, despite the increased leasing financing level for the higher mail equipment orders that we had enjoyed this year. In line with our capital allocation policy, we have continued to deleverage the company. Our leverage ratio excluding leasing is down to 1.8 at the end of the year. And finally, As announced at the H1 reporting, we have completed our divestment program in June 2022. Therefore, with a simplified and focused organization on three core solutions, it was only logical to adapt our new reporting structure to these three solutions and to provide finally their respective current EBIT. Laurent will detail these changes in a moment. Moving to slide 7. But before, I would like to emphasize the work Quadient does in the corporate responsibility field. If we move to slide seven, you'll see how Quadient continues to make progress on its ESG ambitions. I will not present all of our achievements on this slide, but I am very pleased to report that we have already met or even exceeded our stated targets in a number of areas of focus in particular, such as the customer satisfaction level and our remanufacturing targets. For other ambitions, we have increased our targets to continue to align ourselves with the more challenging approaches, such as our new CO2 reduction targets for Scope 1 and Scope 2, as you know. And you remember, we had detailed these changes during our Q1 results. By continuously setting more challenging ambitions, I think we recognize there will be always more that we can do. We are also very humbled by the external recognition awarded to Quadient And they are a testimony, I think, of the importance that Quodian plays on ESG. And we are, I think, amongst others, extremely proud to be part of another year of the Global 100 ranking of the most sustainable companies in the world. I will now hand the microphone to Laurent.

Thank you, Geoffrey. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. I am Laurent Dupassage, Quodian's Chief Financial Officer. And I have the pleasure to walk you through our new segment, Reporting. Now moving to slide number nine, as mentioned by Geoffrey in the snapshot, the divestment of graphics activities in the Nordics, shipping solutions in France this year, as well as further organization change in H2 2022 have resulted in a refocus by solution and now a simplified reporting by solution, which I will further detail in this animated slide. Here's the reporting format we have had in the past. Now that divestment of all other solutions is over, remaining additional operations, which only consist of MRS and PLS, which are the number 1 and 2 on the slide, are being reintegrated into mail-related solutions and parcel locker segments, respectively. Reporting will include from now on current EBIT margin and current EBIT by solution, with the three adding up to the total group current EBIT before M&A related expenses. Solution profit margins are no longer provided. This reflects a key milestone of the group's evolution and the outcome of a deep transformation since 2019. This change reflects an internal reporting change throughout H2 2022 and is hence replicated as required by IFRS 8.0. Aggregates have been shared and reviewed by editors, including A-bit calculation by Solution. On slide 10, for 2022, we hence report a total group revenue of €1,081,000,000, as mentioned by Geoffrey, and a current EBIT before M&A relative expenses at €150,000,000, which is hence now broken down by solutions, both on revenue side and EBIT side. I will detail EBIT calculation methodology and how it is tied to earlier solution profit in the next slide. Important to note that we still report this year some revenue of the other solutions that have been divested this year, but that will consequently disappear moving forward. Moving to the next slide now. Here are the indicative steps moving from former solution profit to solution current EBIT. We obviously are providing the historical data, solution by solution. of solution current EBIT for years 2020, 2021 and both H1 and H2 2022 that I will share with you in the solution review section. Compared to the solution profit that we used to provide within the major operations segment, we added the G&A allocation by solution as per their relative local and central weight based on solution revenue except for the leasing G&A which is dedicated to our MRS solution. We also included the dilutive remaining additional operations to each solution. And finally, from H2 2022 onwards, we have the impact of IFRIC for cloud computing norm application, resulting in more OPEX for close to 5 million euros in 2022. This calculation again has been extensively shared and reviewed with the details. And I suggest we now move to the full year 2022 solution reporting based on this new segment reporting over to you, Geoffrey.

Thank you, Laurent. Turning to slide 13 for the highlights of our software solution. When I started, as some of you know, we made a strategic decision to invest in our digital offering to build the future of Quadient. To do this, we decided to invest in adapting our software platform from an on-premise technology to the cloud. And also, importantly, to scale the platform and use cases to respond to the needs of large enterprises and most importantly to mid-sized companies. So I'm proud to report that 2022 has been a record year for our software business. We have signed five subscription deals worth over more than 1 million euros each of subscription per year. I believe these wins also prove the attractivity of our product offering, each product recognized as a leader by multiple third-party industries analysts in 2022. 80% of our customers and our SaaS customers compared to 56% in 2019. With now more than 12,000 SMBs using our solution, small and mid-sized and enterprise, we have demonstrated our successful execution to scale our platform from large and also SMBs alike. These important customers' wins validate our strategic choice made towards our cloud-based offers. And these wins would not have been possible without the active cross-selling we have implemented between our mail and our software businesses. 2022 was another record year for cross-sell thanks to our mailing teams. We have now successfully penetrated around 10% of our addressable base of mailing customers with our software solutions. We continue to have therefore a large pool of male customers untapped to fuel our future software growth and such more efficiently. So let me share with you just one example of this powerful link between the two solutions. In January 2023, we announced the signature of a very large 12 million euro two-year contract extension with a large health insurance company. This company was originally a long-standing mail customer, which our mailing sales team had cross-sold the customer communication software management solution. Looking, if we take another example, at our account receivable solution, we sold our account receivable module to Chroniagen, another healthcare company. Before using our automation solution, Chroniagen was using a manual process, which was expensive and risky. The benefits of using our SaaS account receivable solutions were immediate. Quadion's platform integrated seamlessly with the Croningen ERP system, offering a rapid automation of processes and centralizing the data all the way down to the digital payments. The results are quite simple. Billing efficiency increased by 85%. DSOs reduced by 50% and a sharp improvement in both cornea gen but also the customer satisfaction in terms of ease of payments. In terms of our approach for our software business, upselling is also an important way to leverage our customer relationship thanks to the comprehensive suite of modules we have integrated together. We expect the contribution from upselling to continue to grow in the coming years. So taking a step back, I'm really pleased with the 2022 development of our customer successes, which translate into a total ARR for the year, reaching €187 million, which is up 22% organically. Smith stressed that, up 22% organically. This is an acceleration following the already very attractive 18% organic increase recorded last year. And this sets us up on a positive track to deliver subscription-related revenue growth above 20% in 2023. I will let Laurent detail the financial aspect.

Thank you, Geoffrey. So ICA now represents 227 million euros of software revenue for Quadent. It's up by 6.3% organically and 12.8% reported for the full year 2022. This has been possible thanks to the huge progression of our subscription-related revenue from 15.7% in Q1 to 22.1% in Q4, as you can see on the bottom right chart, and consequently to the ARR increase mentioned by Geoffrey, which is more than offsetting the decline of the perpetual license component down by 38% year-over-year. This transition is close to completion, as perpetual licenses now only account for 8% of ICA revenue, and while revenue of subscription is keeping a very strong momentum and keeps increasing quarter after quarter, as you can see on the bottom left chart. The growth in usage of the platform remains strong, plus 23%, and APAR applications continue to lead the growth at more than 50% increase year over year. Professional services decline continues to be correlated to the change of infrastructure and customer mix. Moving now to slide 15 and looking at current EBIT side for ICA, we are very pleased to report a strong improvement over H2 by close to 11 points compared to H1, as expected, from minus 9.7% to plus 1.1%, excluding the EFREC impact. When looking at the historical 2020 to 2022 trajectory, we can see the impact of the investment in product development and marketing compound with a fast-growing contribution from recent acquisitions with lower profitability profile as well as change in business model. The dark blue portion now accounts for 75% of revenue where it was 59% back in 2020. Indeed, early in the plan, we took the strategic decision to focus on B2B software offering and decided to position our cloud offering as a comprehensive suite of modules, enabling small and medium businesses to have a one-stop shop for all their business communications and customer relation needs. To achieve this suite, we invested both in our business transition from licensed sales to SaaS, but we also acquired two FinTech leaders in account receivable and account payables automation to complete our product range. and we have recently launched these new models in our selected European countries. These effects, detrimental to EBIT in the short term, have peaked in H1 2022 and more specifically in Q1 2022, as in parallel, salary inflation and normalisation of travelling, as well as marketing spend, have affected our beginning of year. We are now on track, progressing gradually towards best-in-class growth and profitability metrics, as shown by H1 to H2 progression, thanks to incremental margin of higher subscription revenue, transformation of license to SaaS, failing out, and also scalability of our software platform. We can now focus on further scaling this business, thanks to our efficient and mature go-to-market that will continue turning positively in our ICA current EBIT.

Over to you, Geoffrey, on MRS. So let's now turn to our mail-related solution. 2022 has been another strong year for our mail business. When I took over the position of CEO of Quadient, the future of our mail business was one of the key strategic questions I had to answer. Today, I am very proud to have decided to continue investing in that activity and to present you another year of solid performance. I'm also very proud of the team that delivered this performance. We continue to enrich the hardware offering through new upgraded machine offering and new connected services. 60%, if we take an example, of supply cells and are self-serve thanks to these innovations. These new machines enable us to continue upgrading our existing install bays, but also sign new customers. The share of upgraded install bays is almost double in 2022 to reach close to 20%. But we never sit still, and we are really proud with the development of the new offers, such as the Switch online mailing services, which we have launched in the US. We already have 20,000 customers signed for this fully online mailing service. This capacity to innovate and also to offer combined and integrated services with our other solution is really what sets us apart from competition. 2022 has been a record year for cross-selling. And cross-selling is not just selling a software to a male customer, it also with our personal local business, particularly the corporate and residential verticals. Laurent will now present to you how these successes are reflected into the financial results. Laurent.

Thank you, Geoffrey. This year, mail-related solution performance is outstanding. It's the second year in a row of growth. It's plus 0.1% organically. It's plus 6.7% reported compared to last year. After a year which was setting a post-COVID high comparison basis, Q4 finished with close to 1% organic growth with backlog reduced, and that despite further supply chain issues. And this is also thanks to a very resilient subscription-related revenue evolution throughout the year. notably in North America. Price indexation are also benefiting to our top line, while higher product placements have been very, very strong. Over the full year, the hardware placement is remarkable, and when looking at the comparison basis, Q4 is up by 9.1% organically on the hardware piece, and that's thanks to the strong penetration of our new products, noting also a strong double-digit growth from main European countries. The overall performance in North America 2022 is outstanding, Moving now to slide 18, we'll have a look to the current EBIT margin for this solution. You can see below the graphic the evolution of the current EBIT, which is as well remarkable, with even an increase when you look at the current EBIT margin over the period. And this is despite all we know about freight, inflation cost, and the impact it has on this activity. This has been possible thanks to the proactive cost management, the cost sharing from active cross-selling, but also cost synergies from shared supply chain and G&A. And finally, of course, the solid revenue generation that we saw in the previous slide. Our current EBIT for this business notably compares very favorably to industry levels. And when we're looking specifically at 2022, the current EBIT margin stands at 25%, excluding the infrequent impact, thanks to the acceleration of the cross-selling, but also the remanufacturing that we have and the outsourcing benefits. And still despite the high on average freight cost that we've seen this year. Over to you now, Geoffrey, for parcel lockers.

Turning to slide 20, the expansion of the locker install base continued throughout the year, as we know, as we now have more than 18,000 lockers installed globally. The demand that we experience for lockers remains solid, and our innovative and carry agnostic approach enables us to continue to expand in all verticals. Our uniquely designed lockers range meets all market needs today, whether it's the size of the lockers, with wall-long lockers to meet, for example, the requirements of universities, designs also to fit with the environment, the brand of the company, and the speed of deployment. We also continue to invest to improve our integrated software and hardware solutions. We have recently announced the launch of two major offerings. The first one, the Dropbox, which is meant to automate the returns. And that's a unique differentiation for us, for carriers, to accelerate the management and the efficiency of these returns, which is a huge problem to solve for all stakeholders in our industry. And we also develop, that's the second one, the innovative oversized lockers for larger goods, which service both retail shops, but also B2B retail and for other trades. Earlier this year, we announced a new major initiative, which was also the launch of our open network in the UK. This is an open network, owned by Quadient, and it is open to all, based on volume and subscription consumptions. Four major international carriers have already signed up to use this network. DPD, DHL, and Avery, the former Hermès, have been officially announcing that they will use the network for the delivery of their volumes. The target is to have 5,000 lockers on the ground in a few years. Looking at our pipeline, we have said in December that some deals, mostly in the retail segment in the US and the UK, has been delayed into 2023, as customers are cautious in terms of investment. We did not lose any big deals and we continue to make progress in some key opportunities as we recently announced a deal with Ferguson in North America. So yes, these deals do take time, but demand is strong across our key verticals and geographies. Back to you, Laurent, for the financial performance of PLS.

Thank you, Geoffrey. Parcel lockers now account for more than €90 million of revenue. Sales are slightly up organically, plus 0.4%, and up by 5.6% reported. We finished with a solid Q4 performance, with 7.5% organic revenue growth. The subscription-related revenue part, which consists in both rentals and maintenance, accounts for close to 60% of total revenue and has grown by 10% thanks to deployment of recently signed contracts, mostly with retailers in France. This subscription-related revenue has accelerated in Q4 to 13.3% thanks to both new contracts and initial contributions from the UK Open Network. The muted overall top line results is due to the hardware sales decline impacted by Q1 comparison basis, but also the delays in retail and residential segments in the US and notably in H2. Despite these delays, underlying drivers of this business remain intact with a strong traction, notably in an inflationary environment where the need to rationalize the last mile remains critical. Let's move now to next slide on current EBIT for parcel lockers. Like for other solutions, we have provided historical revenue and EBIT data on the left-hand chart. Parcel-located EBIT level continues to be impacted by a high level of investment of a business which is still maturing. However, where we perceive a strong longer-term value when we further roll out networks, secure key partnerships and locations with our differentiated technology. 2020 to 2022 EBIT trajectory reflects those investments to scale the business compound with higher freight costs in 2021 and 2022, but also a large hardware sales retail project back in 2020 and Q1 2021. Specifically in 2022, the current EBIT stands at minus €25 million, impacted by new investment into product offering that was shown by Geoffrey, but also go-to-market efforts in the UK and the recent impacts from the delays in retail and residential projects in the US. We remain positive as the estimated current EBIT margin of the install base is now reaching 12.5% in 2022, where it was 11.3% a year before, And the attrition remains exceptionally low across the board. Now moving to slide 22 at group level, our reported revenue stands at 1,081,000,000. It's up 1.4% organically, 5.6% reported. It has ended with a strong Q4 at 3.1% organic growth. 70% of this revenue is subscription-related, which allows us a very strong predictability. So that's the dark blue side. This portion has been very dynamic and growing by 3.1% year-on-year organically. If you look now at the geographical level on the bottom left chart, North America accounts for 55% of group revenue. It's growing by 3% organically, notably because we have record performances both on ICA and MRS. Many European countries posted a small decline, minus 1.4%, due to the lower contribution from MRS in some countries, and despite the solid growth from parcel-local solutions, plus 50% organically, thanks to the deployment of the signed contract that we mentioned in the past slide. Internationally delivered solid 3.6% organic growth, driven mainly by ICA and PLS. Now moving to slide 23, the group organic EBIT changed trajectory over 2022-2022, has been impacted by the change of business model, minus 30 million of licensed revenue, the strong build-up of the parcel locker business, of course COVID impact on mail hardware and supply sales, 60 million of unrecovered revenue from 2020, and the impact of the progressive divestment of the non-core activities. This has impacted our top line by about €200 million less revenues since 2018. We also invested into the launch of several products into new geographies these past few years. We have also been impacted by much higher shipping costs in 2021 and 2022. As already shared in H1, H1 2022 current EBIT was impacted by salary inflation, the shipping costs, the normalised marketing and travel costs post-COVID, and increased investment for European product launches. If we now exclude the impact from the change accounting rule, we can still see that Quadient delivered a strong H2 performance, reaching €90 million, or 16.1% of current EBIT margin. As a result, we finished the year excluding IFRIC with a stable year-over-year EBIT margin at 14.3%, and such despite increased investment and inflation impact. Let's now move to slide 24 so that we can do the detailed financial review. On slide 25, we see the reported growth. It stands at 5.6% as on top of organic growth of 1.4% that you can see in the center. Quotient significantly benefits from dollar strength against euro with more than half of revenue in dollar, which brings 64 million euro of favorable forex impact. All solutions are growing organically in 2022. Scope effect is mostly tied to the packaging solution business divestment back in 2021. The more recent divestment of graphics in Nordics and the shipping software businesses. Net of pinworks acquisition back in 2021. Now moving to slide 26, when looking at the fiscal year 2022 EBIT bridge, we see that we are moving from 147 million euros last year to 150 million euros this year, hence a reported increase of 2.2%. If we focus on the organic picture in the center, we see that compared to last year, current EBIT level is impacted by phasing of inflation versus contribution from business development and price increase, which has significantly improved over H2. notably thanks to the faster growth and the strong activity level in Q4. We also had the full benefits from indexation price increase and the continuous focus on cost control and cross-selling synergies. The overall new IFRIC account standards impact reporting will be changed by three points of growth. No meaningful impact on our side is to be mentioned on energy cost. On slide 27, now moving to the net attributable income, it stands at €13 million versus €88 million last year due to non-cash one-off items, including goodwill impairment for €48 million within the UK and Darhid region. It's linked to both work increase in both regions, but also to a lower extent to tax rate increase in the UK, as well as the restructuring of €16 million of right of uses of real estate. If you compare to last year, you also had last year an increase in value of exchange and part-tech funds of 20 million, positive impact, that obviously sets an unfavorable comparison basis. If you look at slide 28 now, the free cash flow after CAPEX stands at 70 million euros. It's a robust level when you consider the high level of financing of least-made equipment and the necessary stock to deliver the strong hardware momentum that has negatively impacted the working capital. At equivalent financing need compared to last year, Quadriod would have generated free cash flow in line with last year at about 100 million euros. On slide 29, a focus on the CAPEX, it's stable versus 21 overall. For rent equipment, we have a solid activity level of MRS, which is particularly noticeable. To be noted also that the level of maintenance capex would have been 9 million euros higher without application of the if-link accounting standard for cloud computing. On slide 30, you can see that the net financial debt continues to decrease year over year. It now stands at 722 million euros, despite the net 100 million euros of acquisition we did since 2019. I remind you that most of the 722 million euros is directly linked to our financing activities, which has committed future cash flow, that's the green bar, 595 million euros as of end of fiscal year 2022 and low default rate. Hence, we monitor our leverage ratio, excluding leasing, which currently stands at 1.8 times. Group is well on track to achieve the below 1.75 times leverage target, excluding leasing, by the end of 2023. Moving to the next slide, with refinancing anticipated, Quadient enjoys a strong position with no major refinancing before 2025. Liquidity remains very strong at the end of fiscal year 2022 with €172 million of cash and €400 million of undrawn credit facility. On slide 32, the capital allocation mentioned during capital market day two years ago is being carefully executed. The debt management and the leverage topics remain key, especially in an environment with increasing rates. When it comes to portfolio management, reshaping of additional operations has been completed in 2022. Level of capex has remained below the envelope so far. On maintenance capex, it is reflecting both the impact but also the reduction in the real estate footprint. On the rented equipment capex, an acceleration is obviously expected for 2023, notably on the parcel locker side. Finally, we propose a higher dividend at $0.60 for fiscal year 2022, which is higher than the dividend per share floor of $0.50, and we continue to consider the share buyback opportunity, and notably if leverage falls below expectations. On slide 33, here you can see the historical dividend per share with the proposal of 60 cents for fiscal year 2022 to be paid in cash in one installment on 7 August of this year, which will be submitted, obviously, for the vote of the annual shareholder meeting scheduled on June 16, 2023. Now back to you, Geoffrey, for the outlook.

Thank you, Laurent. So let's go to slide 35. Let me take a step back and reflect on the evolution of Quadion business model. Where are we now since 2019? We have built a Quadion platform we envisioned, and we have done it leveraging our existing strengths and assets, employee expertise, innovative technology, global footprint, and a rich, diverse customer base. Today, Quadient is an innovative B2B subscription platform that powers billions of day-to-day critical business transactions, such as payments, invoices, bills, statements, medical results, packages, mail, insurance policies, contracts. The Quadient platform serves an impressive customer base of over 400,000 customers, ranging from large enterprises to small and mid-sized businesses, and such on a global basis across a diverse set of industries. We have invested to adapt our platform of solutions. Early on, as you know, as Laurent mentioned, we have augmented our platform through three targeted acquisitions. In addition, and thanks to our own organic R&D efforts, we have proven to successfully adapt our offering to address the needs of large enterprise and small and mid-sized business for a cloud platform. Our ParcelOQ platform now addresses all type of carriers' agnostic flows, delivery and returns, from small to large packages. So we're also unique in the sense that we have an integrated suite approach combining both software and smart hardware, giving customers an end-to-end solution for powering their omnichannel businesses' transactions. The Quadium platform is also truly global. in the sense that our products have successfully been commercialized and deployed in more than 28 countries for tens of thousands of customers of our new offers, Parcell Local Business and the software business, and already more than 400,000 of our mailing and document solution customers. Quadion has developed a repeatable sales machine that is global in nature, And we're capable today to take to market efficiently any solution in geographies or industry that we decide to go to. Finally, focusing on a land and expense strategy is a key differentiating factor and a true driver of commercial success for us today. It is always easy to claim that our products are the best in the market. But I would like to stress that our products are recognized as leaders by independent industry analysts and by customers' testimonials on third-party review sites. Quadient is a leader in all of our core geographies and segments that we do decide to compete in. A few data points. 70% of the new software customers come from our existing main business. This means we have roughly penetrated 10% of our addressable, large and mid-sized customers. We have still so much untapped potential for cross-selling in the future. The integrated platform model is delivering high synergy levels, both at the top line, but also on costs with estimated synergies of around €30 million per year. So I want to thank and take the opportunity to thank our dedicated employees, our loyal customers and trusted partners for helping us achieving these results. So two years into the second phase of our strategic plan, we made the right investments at the right time and we're confident that 2023 will further strengthen our course and notably in terms of growth and more importantly in terms of profitability and industry leadership. So moving to slide 36 and turning to our outlook for the next year. At group level, we expect both revenue and profitability to improve significantly. At revenue level, we start 2023 with a strong backlog across solutions and with 69% of recurring revenue in 2022, which makes mechanically a part of our expected growth for 2023 next year. Logically, we do expect an accelerated growth for subscriptions. We also expect the solid demand for our automation solution to continue and as such, especially with a more challenging economic background as our solution at their heart, save time and cost to our customers by digitizing their business processes. We are also expecting to continue to benefit from price increases as our install base is large indexed, as you know, but the timing of the price revision is naturally phased throughout the year. Moving to the EBIT level, this is the year of EBIT improvement, and such despite inflation headwinds. After two years of increased costs, much lower freight costs should finally materialize. While on the other hand, marketing and travel costs, which had increased significantly in 2022 due to the return of the post-COVID activity, should normalize themselves. We expect some continued pressure from similar salary inflation, as Laurent mentioned, as well as additional impact from the IFRIC accounting standard for the cloud computing IT project that we have. Moving on to the cash flow side, CAPEX is expected to increase at least by €20 million, driven by the strong rental placement we expect from our mail-related solution business, in particular driven by the US geographies. And on the other hand, also the acceleration of the installation of the UK for our open network of parcel lockers. Finally, we also expect placement of the mail equipment to remain strong, leading likely to a high level of leasing financing. So moving to slide 37 now, turning to the solution outlook. And if we start with our software solution, as previously discussed, we expect the strong ARR level of 2022 to translate into an acceleration of the subscription-related revenue into 2023. The correlation between the two is quite clear, I think now, and recent contract wins makes us confident that the high growth level is set to continue. We also continue to benefit from cross-selling into Quadion's diverse customer base. On the profitability side, the current EBIT is expected to continue to increase significantly, driven by the scaling effect of the install pays and the subscription revenue growth. Turning to a mail-related solution. We expect the solid dynamic and hardware placement to continue with a solid outlook for the North American market. However, I think it's important that we stress that we are obviously set against quite a high comparison basis as we're coming out of two consecutive years of organic growth. Focus on the EBIT level is to maintain the existing high level of profitability. And last but not least, ParcelLocker solutions. we expect stronger growth in revenue compared with 2022. Recently, once contract deployments, the acceleration of the deployment of the UK open network and also an expected catch up in the US residential project, more likely in the H2 timeframe, are all expected to contribute to a more robust organic growth in 2023. However, we do continue to see some retail project being delayed given the macro outlook for this segment. Lastly, current EBIT is expected to improve, driven, as we mentioned, both from the scaling effect of the install base, better gross margin, thanks to the lower shipping costs that we see nowadays, and lower go-to-market expenses. If we move to slide 38, and moving on to 2003, is the last year of our 2021-23 plan. We have good confidence in the 2023 outlook, which allows us to confirm our three-year plan trajectory. At the revenue level alone, we expect organic growth in 2003 to be around 3%. And at the current EBIT level, we anticipate a marked improvement, as discussed, of around 10% on an organic basis. With these levels, naturally, of growth expected for the full year 2023, the outlook for the 2021-23 strategic plan is confirmed. We expect revenue to deliver a CAGR of at least 3% and a mid-single-digit current EBIT CAGR over the period. With this, we are at the end of this presentation, and I thank you for your attention. And with Laurent and Catherine, we are now ready to take your questions for the Q&A.

Thank you. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, simply press the star key followed by the digit one on your telephone keypad. Also, if you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Once again, press star one at this time. We'll pause for a moment. We'll first hear from Murad of BMP.

Yes, hello, thank you for taking my questions. This is Murad from Exxon BNP Paribas. I wanted to ask about your EBIT growth guidance. What base should we think about in terms of 2022? Is it €150 million that we should use to... to get to your guidance, which would mean any bit at all has been equal around 165 in 2023. Am I right?

Laurent, would you want to take this question? With pleasure. Hello, Mourad. Absolutely. So the 150 million euro we reported is the starting point because the only scope effect you would have would be the small divestment we've made both in Nordics and in France, which were not contributing to the EBIT or close to zero. So 150 million is indeed the right starting point for the current EBIT for the guidance. That's correct.

Okay, and how should we think about the pace of investment at ICA and PLS? Should we see those loss-making numbers start to reduce, or is it too soon to expect that?

It's a good question, Mohad. I think on IC, you could see the performance, obviously, on H2, which is already positive for the second semester. It's really a little bit more, a little bit more than 1%. And we do expect the continuation of the improvement on the profitability for all the reasons we have explained, which is that we expect mechanically, obviously, some additional growth on the subscription, which will be a contributive factor. So we do expect the full year of 2023 to continue to improve on the profitability, and we do expect that to continue gradually. We've seen that in 2022, Q2 was better than Q1 in profitability, Q3 was better than Q2, Q4 was better than Q3, hence the more than 10-point improvement on ICA in H2 versus H1. We do have always some seasonality for ICA. So H1 is always lower than H2. So we'll have to take that into account. But we do expect some improvement and likely to hopefully be a positive territory naturally for the full year. On the parcel locus side, Laurent?

I think on the Parcel Locker side, you have, as mentioned by Geoffrey earlier, we are in a market that is structuring. We still have a range of CapEx to be deployed to increase the install base that will obviously continue to wait in the future. in the mid-term on the EBIT current margin for Parcelocure. That being said, we will have also some room regarding the freight costs that are expected to lower and that did have impact significantly on 21 and 22 numbers. And second, as mentioned by Geoffrey, we have the opportunities of the top line and the strong pipeline that should also fuel additional growth margin to the activity.

And I think in conclusion, I would say that we expect even a much more significant improvement on the profitability of the parcel local business next year.

Okay, very clear. Thank you very much.

And as a reminder, it is star one to ask a question or make a comment. We'll hear from Patrick Jusnouian of SG. Thank you.

Good evening, Geoffrey and Laurent. Can you hear me?

Yes. Yes.

Okay, perfect. First question, on slide 49, you provide some current EBIT margin per division. So is it still something which is in line with around 15% EBIT margin that you expect for 2023, if you do correctly the math? based on the 165 million euro EBIT that you have just mentioned. So, in other words, is the margin per division that you put on slide 49 still valid or not? Second, could you give us some words about the current trading? And third question, When you look at the three divisions, would you still consider the three of them as strategic ones, or would you consider maybe PLS a bit less strategic than the two others?

Hi, Patrick. Some very good questions. I'll try to respond to them shortly with Laurent. So, yes, we did share in our mid-term ambitions some level of indication of ambition by solutions, right? So you have that both on the top line and on the EBIT now because we have obviously translated what were solution profit indication by solution into those EBIT mechanically with the same methodology that Laurent described earlier. so that they were there for your reference, and you could compare them, obviously, with where we were at the end of 2022 and where we're intended to go. On the EBIT side, from a pure technical perspective, on those guidance, they are meant to be on a full year basis at the end of the plan. So it's really the performance that would be at the end of 2023, so January 2024, which is basically on a full year basis, which means it's the running rate of 2024. And that's for each of the three solutions, obviously, for both mail-related solutions, parcel locker and ICA. After that, we have obviously given formally the guidance at group level, both on the top line and as well on the EBITs. On the solution side, there were more indications or aspirations in terms of where we're going. So we knew naturally that the three solution mix would be naturally different every year and by the end of the plan as well. So there's some flexibility among them. All that being said, it is our ambition to go after the improvement of profitability for ICA and to reach at some point the 13% or be around the 13% of EBIT profitability. And the same thing for MRS is to make sure we could stay within the 22% to 24% now range, which we're already operating at a higher level. So it's really about, you know, can we sustain above that or around that 24% rather than the 22% And then for the parcel-local solution, it's really about the installed base EBIT profitability. We are, I believe, in 2022 at 12.5% on the estimated EBIT profitability for the base. We expect obviously a strong, as I responded to Mohad, a strong acceleration on the numbers of installation on the local side for 2023. So we did 2,000 this year. We could estimate we'll probably do a lot more next year because we obviously have anticipated some additional capex. And as a result, with an increase in store bays, a significant increase, there's many mechanical improvements as well on the profitability of the store bays. So we do also intend to achieve those targets as soon as we can. Thank you.

And I think there were two other parts of the question, which were the current trading, I think.

Thanks for hearing from Jean, Fran, Jean, and Adel.

Yeah, I think we just need to finish the questions of Patrick. I think the second part of the question, Patrick, was the current trading, I think. And the last question was asking if the three of the solutions we have are still considered strategic for the three. Maybe I can take the current trading. So basically, and we raised our confidence in shooting for a strong increase, which is around 3% in top line for 2023 and around 10% of increase on the current EBIT. I think this is seeing what the H2 was made of and that gives us significant confidence in our ability to recover EBIT as well, but also to capture the traction on each of our businesses. Obviously on Locker we also had in Q4 7.5% growth as I reminded earlier. The underlying driver, all the solutions are intact. We, I think, repeated that we're also very pleased with the MRS second year in a row growth. So that brings us, yes, confidence and that, you know, we are still relatively early in the year, but that's what we see up to now being the result, I think, of the transformation and the good fit of our products to the market.

We don't have the March result yet at all, but we have seen the February and the February result were clearly in line with our expectation. And we could see some of those mechanical effects, for example, the acceleration of the subscription growth rate on the ACA side, but also the good performance on MLS and some acceleration now also on the local side. So on the other question, yes, those solutions are obviously strategic, Patrick, in the sense that we have a clear policy and I think we have expressed that we have no sacred cows. So there's always the possibility for us to look at each of those solutions independently and look at the value that they could bring to us. But as a result of our strategy today, we're pushing those three solutions because we have as much energies on the software side than we have in the process locker. We're definitely now at a stage where we're proving the profitability on the ASEA side and getting now at the scale that we have on the software side, both the top line growth, but also the profitability improvement that we were expecting. So we're happy to see the maturity of those investments and the return that is now coming to us. On the Parcel Local side, it's a solution that we have also envisioned to be able to bring growth to our model and synergies. We obviously are sharing A lot of the synergies both on cost but also in the revenue. On the other hand, the solution is less mature, not at scale. And I always mention to you that we want it to be at least above 100 million for each of the three solutions. So the goal for us is to bring the solution as closely as possible to that above that 100 million mark so that we can have the scale effect. And with that scale effect, we'll also have the profitability. So you really need to look at the three solutions as three different maturities. with obviously a much more mature at scale, stable, slightly declining for the mail-related solution business. We have the scale on the software side now, and we're now also going to start benefiting from the improvement on profitability being breakeven. And obviously we have the less mature, but it's an unpenetrated market on the parcel locker, not at scale yet, and that's also something we're working on. So it's the same install-based model for the three, just a different level of maturity of where they are in their life cycle.

Thank you. Jean-Francois, out of BHM.

Jean-Francois, you can ask your question.

Yes, good evening, Jean-François. I'm speaking from OdoBHF2. Question, please, the first one. Could you come back on the depreciation, the write-off you made? Yes. I don't quite understand. Can you explain why you integrate such a huge level of depreciation? And are there any risks for other depreciation in the coming weeks? Yes. And the second question concerns the PLS business. You seem pretty confident for the business for the PLS. How do you explain that to the fact that there was a disappointment last year, mainly coming from the U.S. business for the PLS development? So could you explain to us why you are more confident for this business for this year, 2023? Thank you.

Do you want to take the first one or the second one? I will take the first one. So you're right, Jean-Francois, we have two significant amounts that are one-offs and obviously non-cash that we mentioned when we detailed the P&L to net income. The first one is a goodwill impairment for a value of 48 million euros. So to be very clear, Jean-Francois, it's regarding two regions, UK UK, Ireland and Germany, Switzerland, Italy for us. It is the resultant of an increase in WACC. So, in other words, you have WACC competition that is basically actualizing your flows and it has mechanically lowered the net present value of these assets at a lower level than the assets that were recorded on the balance sheet. Why now? Obviously because the WAC have been increasing by around 200 base points or more compared to last year. Why these regions? Because you see it's where we had probably the smallest headroom and hence it is the resulting application of that that resulted in impairment. Two comments I would make about that. First one is that We feel relatively confident moving on those regions into the next year, as now we have a relatively high level of work already, and we expect those regions to be relatively dynamic with the UK open network and with the ICA moving up in those regions. The second point is that on other regions, France, Benelux and North America, where we have The bulk of our goodwill, and I remind you that we had about a bit more than 1 billion euros of goodwill, and we still have post this impairment. The vast majority of that goodwill, probably close to 75%, is in France and North America, and benefits from a very large and very strong headroom where we don't see risk moving forward. And second part for you, Geoffrey?

The second part was on the... The disappointment of... Yes, on the confidence level on the pipeline, I think it's... So if you think when you look at 2023 for Parcel Locker, just as a reminder, in Q1 2022, we still suffered and therefore for part of the year for 2022 of the comparison basis, which is no longer the case. So we're going to have a full year without the impact of that big project before. Two, the confidence is also coming from, naturally, the ongoing activities and the pipeline that we see in our residential sector, but also in the U.S., in the different regions, right, in Japan, in the U.K., in France. So there have been signed projects that we have been able – that we didn't recognize in Q3, as you know, that was delayed – on retail projects. Ferguson was one example in the US. We had others in Europe. So mechanically, we know we're going to be able to deploy some of those projects in 2023. On the backlog, on the residential, because it's a large part of our business, obviously in the U.S., representing less than 50% of the total, the residential segment is overall continuing to work well for us. The booking placements are steady overall, and we are making also the switch from new constructions to existing buildings to ensure that we'll have less impact on potential delays from the new construction as we get into 2023. But we could see the demand being still pretty strong in that segment. After that, we could see a higher demand from the carriers, probably for the good reason that they could see the automation and the savings that the lockers could provide them. So part of the growth will also be coming from the contribution from the open network from the UK. But we also have other initiatives, both in Japan and the U.S., that we're counting on. So all in all, we do expect now an acceleration of the growth. And we do have big projects, whether it's on the retail or others, that may come sooner or later. But even without some of those big projects, we should be able to see some acceleration of the growth anyway in 2023 for the parcel-local business, hence our confidence level.

And I think there's no further question on the call, so we can start.

Thank you very much. You're welcome, Jean-François.

Thank you, Jean-François. So we can start the questions on the web. We'll start with the first question on accounting. So probably for you, Laurent. Can you detail the full impact of the new IFRIC accounting rule?

So first thing, you will have a detailed impact of IFRIC when we report our URD end of April. The net impact on the P&L for this year which has been taken fully on H2 2022 is a 4.7 million euro of impact. This is in fact made of two parameters. One parameter which is basically all the former what you put in capex for the customization of software but here that are on the cloud so you consider that it's It's not your ownership, so you put that now fully in OPEX. That's about $6 million. And you have another, I would say, it's partially offset by $1.2 million, about $1.2 million of lower amortization of former... project that were capitalized and had been moved on the balance sheet. The impact on the capex, as I mentioned, was about 9 million euros. So basically, if you want to restate, if we were to capitalize this cost, you would have 9 million euros more. I would say six billion would be moving on the penal side and you have about three million moving on the working capital side basically and that is moving to prepaid because to some extent you can also move to prepaid only when a third party that is certified or is the vendor of the software is delivering the service.

Next question, still on accounting. What are the segments impacted by the goodwill depreciation?

So, and the question is very relevant because as you saw, as we discussed and we shared with Geoffrey, we made a segment reporting change. So from, I would say, only region group depreciation of CGU that we were testing, we are now testing a further level down where we are testing both region but also solution, so MRS, PLS and ICA. Here, as we were starting from a regional side, the practice is to first test at the regional level and that is that regional level that induced the impairment and close to the full totality of the 48 million is due to the same methodology that we used to do last year, which is basically first testing at the regional level, and that resulted in more than 40 million of this 48 million of impairment. It is just a regional level. And then we have retested at the solution level, and you have an additional technical impact on the MRS for the height, for an additional 8 million. So the first answer is really at the regional level, not specifically for MRS. And all the regions.

It was mostly the vast majority with the UK with a small impact on Germany. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Next question. Can you detail the 16 million euros office restructuring?

Yes.

Have you moved your offices? Is it linked to lease extension? No.

No, it's not linked to lease extension, it's just adapting our footprint to the new way of working and we've been sharing extensively that we've been moving to a flexible work and home office largely across the globe. Here the 16 million we are talking about are mostly coming from France and the US. In France we have remaining commitments both in the Paris area basically until 2025 and we basically closed half of this available space that corresponds to about two-thirds of the 16 million, and the rest is on the North American side, mostly in the US, where we've been also closing some offices fully, but mostly reducing the space of some offices, and hence writing off this right of use associated.

You can tell me if I'm wrong, it represents roughly 40 offices we closed in 2022?

We closed about 42 offices, that's correct.

So after some accounting questions, let's go back to the solutions. Question on ICA. Has ICA a traditional seasonality between H2 and H1? And does the H2 2002 benefiting from a catch-up from delayed H1 revenues?

So, yes, we do have some seasonality into the ICA business. Actually, we do also have that into MRS. But for ICA specifically, for the question, usually Q2 and Q4 are our highest or biggest quarter, and Q1 and Q3 always being lower, and we have actually had a chance to comment on that a few times. We also have some seasonality on the volume base. So the first comment, sorry, was really on the booking, naturally, of the new orders. We also have some seasonality on the volume and the usage of the solution that are usually a bit stronger on the Q1 or Q2, where we see actually the impact on the ARR, a little bit boosted on H1 for the usage and being lower on H2. Now, all that being said, those aspects, I think, will likely remain. But it is true that the more we move to subscription, the less those differences are relevant, as it's really becoming slowly a quarter of a quarter impact and less over one period versus the other. But H2 is usually a slightly bigger semester compared to H1. The second part of the question was for any catch-up, Laurent?

Yes, whether there's any catch-up in H2 versus the level, the revenue, the delayed revenue in H1.

Not really. I would say that H2 benefits from the strong booking of H1 in subscription that materializes, obviously, further down the road in H2. But that's the main impact. It's not a cutoff, notably because, basically, you have, obviously, more and more subscription and less and less perpetual license.

And it was also the reason why we felt confident, you know, when we told you at the end of H1, at the end of Q3, that we expected an acceleration and... In the subscription of the software business, it's because we knew we had book. Naturally, we had the AR, the bookings, right, six months earlier or three months earlier. So we knew we could expect the highest subscription revenue being recognized in the second part of the year.

Christian, on ICN PLS, what would be the estimated break-even turnover for those two solutions?

We don't communicate specifically on a breakeven point, but you can see we have already reached that level in H2 for ICA, actually more than that. So that could give you an idea that, you know, what revenue it could be. And for the PLS business and for ICA, generally speaking, I think you have to look at the business. It all depends for us. on how much level of effort and investment we want to put in the intensity of the acquisitions, right, on the new bookings. If that investment is steady, naturally the profitability comes much quicker, right? If you continue to increase the level of investment you're making in acquisitions, it could delay those breakeven points on this. Today, for both ICA and for both parcel locker, our existing base is already highly profitable. In the case of PLS, we've shared that we're at 12.5% now on the EBIT side. So really what makes the difference or the timing at which we could reach sooner the profitability for the break-even point for PLS will be really depending on the level of acquisition we have and installation or acquisition of new sites and new lockers. Obviously, I think we have given clearly the view that, you know, starting above 100 million of business, we would consider the business being at scale. And we will start to look from there at a more profitable growth rather than focusing just on scaling the business. On IC, it's different. We have passed that maturity point. And we are obviously looking now at a sustainable, profitable growth in the coming years.

So to stay with the lockers, what are your targets of locker installation for 2023 and 2024?

We're not specifically giving it a target on installation. I think we have given an indication on the ambition of the lockers to reach 25,000. That's our goal, and to be able to reach it as close, as rapidly as we can. If we can achieve it in 23, we'll be naturally happy. If it comes six months later or nine months later, that won't be a big deal. The goal for us is obviously to continue to add significant thousands of lockers every year to our base.

Turning to the outlook, can you give some colors regarding the mid-term outlook post-2023? So after the end of our plan, have you planned to announce a new strategic plan anytime soon?

So knowing that we are really focused on finishing 2023, right? We have an ambitious goal for 2023 in terms of acceleration of our top line, the increase of our profitability improvement in 2023. Operationally, that's really we're focusing on the execution. I'm sure by the time we get closer to the end of 2023, we will look at when we could do a potential new capital market day. And we'll communicate and share that with you as the time passes. And then at that time, we'll be happy to give you some more color on where we could aim for our next plan in terms of growth, naturally, but also in terms of profit improvement. That being said, I think the running rate of what we would all expect in 2023 will likely set, obviously, what we could do in 2024. We see now an acceleration coming on the top line and on the profitability, both on the subscription level and also across the solution for Parcel Open ICA. So that's probably an acceleration or continuation we will expect at the time.

Another question on the guidance and outlook. I don't understand the 2021-2023 EBIT guidance confirmation because you did an EBIT organic growth of 6% in 2021, minus 4.8% in 2022, and you're now planning for 10% in 2023. If we add up these numbers, it gives an organic EBIT CAGR 2021-23 of 3.5%, so below your guidance. Can you explain what is wrong in my reasoning?

I will take that part. So you're adding up the right number. So basically, we have 6% in 21, minus 4.8. So you have some decimal. We guided over the period to a mid-single-digit organic curantable growth, which is basically between 4 to 6. And the cutoff is probably around 11%. That's exactly why we are guiding circa 10%. That obviously includes that 11% mark.

Going back to PLS, on PLS you earned around 7 million current EBIT on the install base, so probably a calculation based on the 12.5%. So the loss on the rest was 32 million. With accelerating installation in 2023, the loss on the growth sales should also increase. So why are you so confident in increasing the current EBIT significantly in this segment?

I think naturally there's a few things. One is on the gross margin, just to start, aside of the volume, obviously, but on the gross margin, we do expect probably naturally some improvements with lesser impact from the higher shipping costs we have seen both in 2021 and 2022. And also benefit from the price increase, naturally, that we're putting also in place in this business like the other business. The second thing, too, is that we have also incurred in 2022 some investment, so in that other side of the number that you described, there are investments in R&D, there are investments also in the go-to markets, in sales and marketing, and we have also investment in setting up the open network in the UK. And some of those investments, as we launch efforts, you have all the costs, whether it's sales marketing or the deployment costs for the infrastructure for the open network in the UK, and you have no return on those investments or no top line associated with it. So that's why there is going to be a mechanical improvement in 2023, as we expect, naturally, return on those sales investment in the region we have invested certain capabilities. You know, we have developed the oversized locker or the dropbox, which we haven't sold fully in 2022. So we expect, obviously, to get some additional traction on those sales. And we will expect some contribution as well from the UK open network. Hence why there will be a significant improvement that we expect on the profitability of the parcel locker next year.

Thank you, Jeffrey. We have one last question regarding shareholder return. Why did you choose to increase dividend while your share price remains depressed and you guided an opportunistic share buyback possibility?

We do naturally retain the capability and the will to do some share buyback. Obviously, we need to look at our deleverage trajectory and achievement, which we're on good track at the end of 2022. We do have some additional increase in terms of the expectation we have for CapEx, for example, for next year. So we'll have to make sure that along the year we can achieve that. But we retain definitely the liberty to be able to do a share buyback at the end of the plan. as long as we are obviously achieving the debt leverage target. And for the dividend, I think it's a gesture of confidence, obviously, of the EBIT increase that we see next year. It's a 5% increase in the dividend from 55 to 60, which represents that 9% increase year-on-year. So I think it translates our strong confidence as we move into next year to make sure we have a steady evolution of our dividend trajectory.

Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you, Laurent. We have no further questions at this time, so I think we can close the call. Thank you very much for listening and for your questions. Our next call will be on the 31st of May for the Q1 sales. And in the meantime, we look forward to meeting some of you during our roadshow. Thank you and have a good evening.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your attention.