Oesterreichische Post Ag

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by.

Welcome to today's earnings call of Austrian Post for the results of the first half of 2026. I am Ingmar, your operator for today, and I would like to remind you that all participants will be in the listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session And if you would like to ask a question, you may click on the Raise Your Hand button. We are looking forward to the presentation. And with this, I hand over to the Head of Investor Relations, Harald Hagenauer.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call. Today, we would like to discuss the half-year results of Austrian Post. Here with me in the room is our CEO, Walter Oblin, and our CFO, Barbara Fortis-Geibensteiner. and I'd like to directly want to hand over to you, Walter. Please go on, sir.

Thank you, Harald. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our results for the first half of 2026. As a summary up front, I think we are able to show solid results in a challenging environment. Let me start on page two, providing an overview of both our challenges but also of our opportunities and the key figures of our first six months. We see a lot of headwinds in the market, digitalization in Austria leading to an accelerated net domain decline. On the parcel side, a quite competitive market, in particular in Eastern Europe and Turkey. And for the second half year, a variety of taxes and duties will be imposed on parcels both from an EU as well as on a national level. On the other hand, we see big opportunities. E-commerce remains a growth market. And as I will explain to you during this presentation, there is a lot of strong momentum in the e-commerce market in our portfolio, both in Austria as well as in our international portfolio. And in Austria, our broader services strategy, multi-services strategy is taking off quite well with our bank and our Telecommunication Offering developing nicely so we continue to invest in growth both in e-commerce as well as in Austria. This growth strategy is showing impact. I think we are quite satisfied that for the first six months we show good growth momentum plus 3.8% group revenue growth 1.5 for 4 million Euro in the first six months even more than the 3.8, 6.7 in Q2. And on the earnings side, as expected, we have started into this year with a somewhat weaker earnings level with clear reasons for that. One is an accelerated mail decline. Second is the transition in our telecom business, where last year we still had revenues from the cooperation with A1. and third reason is an intense competition in Eastern Europe combined with regulatory-driven design in Asia volumes in Turkey. However, we look confident, with a lot of confidence into the next six months and we remain committed to our guidance to deliver an EBIT in line with previous years for the four years. Page 3 shows you our strategy. Our vision is to become a leading logistics and services group in our core region consisting of Austria, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and beyond. Three core pillars of this strategy, post and beyond in Austria, implying that we are committed to defend our strong market position in the postal business in Austria, but beyond that we want to become a a leading provider of key services to Austrian households, including financial services, telecommunication, and potentially more in the future. Second, international e-commerce is our growth opportunity internationally. Internationally, we are clearly focused on part-time e-commerce, and we have invested in this business also this year with two acquisitions I will comment on later on. Third element, one group. We believe there are even more synergies to exploit across our portfolio of regions and businesses and operational excellence is a key success factor with technology playing an increasing and very important element in that. And the green circle in the middle of our strategy, we are and remain committed to three core values. One is sustainability, second, Customer Focus People Focus Aiming for an Attractive Company Culture Page 4 shows you that we have achieved important milestones in implementing the strategy on post and beyond in Austria we are investing into our network in Austria in particular in the self-service element of our network We have built up roughly 1,500 24-7 access points, lockers, and self-service branches. And with that, we have crossed the – surpassed the threshold of 3,000 postal points and now have the densest network in the history of Austrian posts. Point two, our bank 99 is developing well, 4 million EBIT contribution in the first six months. I think it's a very nice progress from the break-even results of last year. We have launched our telecommunication offering yellow on April 1st and have seen a strong customer ramp up fully according to plans in a quite competitive Austrian telecommunication market. on international e-commerce. We can show very good growth in Austria with possible volumes in Austria showing growth of 9%. And we have executed two acquisitions. One has been closed. The other one signed. One is EU Shipments, a fast-growing fulfillment business based in Eastern Europe but reaching beyond Eastern Europe, showing strong growth and strong margins. And second, we two weeks ago signed in Serbia, which we will merge with our own company, CD Express in Serbia, creating one of the leading parcel networks, private parcel networks in Serbia. Moving on to our core businesses along the strategy framework, starting with our letter mail business, still more than a billion of revenues. We see a somewhat accelerated decline in Austria, driven by both the government saving across all ministries and also regional governments saving in all areas, trying to save money in all areas, but also, of course, corporates in Austria in a Segment in economy trying to save on communication standings We still managed to Decide so to show a revenue the decline that is more moderate than the volume decline And we continue in the execution of our strategy moving to page six by trying to migrate most of the volumes into a slower and E plus two, three products, so our supposed standard product. In the meantime, we have already around 85% of our volume in the slower standard product, and we have implemented five days ago a price increase on the premium service from 130 to 190, which will help us in the second quarter. stabilizing revenues but also migrating even more share of the total mail market in the slower product why does that help us because we bundle the delivery of the standard products on two days a week so effectively we are moving to a twice a week mail service for the bulk of mail Page 7, an update on Bank 99 after a, you know, quite challenging ramp up over the last five years and the finalization of the merger of Bank 99 with the retail business of ING that we acquired in 21 and where the last step was the harmonization of two core banking systems last year. We are now 100% focused on the market and this 100% market focus in combination with an improved cost structure pays off and we see it in the bottom line. 4.2 million EBIT contribution of Bank 99 in addition to contribution margin delivered into the postal network I think is a nice development and we are very confident that Bank 99 can deliver even more revenues and profits over the next years. One element to improving and supporting growth in Bank 99 is the offering of an asset management business, so basically the offer to consumers to buy shares, ETFs, savings plans, and other products. This has been missing so far, and with that, we have a more or less complete product range for retail customers, both payment services, checking account, as well as loan products, as well as asset management services. So, nice development of our bank, page eight. Similarly, nice development of our postal network in Austria. We have passed the threshold of 3,000 postal access points. The growth has come from 24-7 lockers and self-service branches, which are increasingly accepted by consumers. Last year, 35 million Transactions handle through self-service facilities Market research shows us that the 24-7 locker is already the most preferred Access point to the postal network in Austria has already surpassed branch offices and postal partners We continue to operate branches because these are the point where we can deliver and sell other services and, of course, also the postal services with around 300 branches. I think we have a quite consolidated network already, and we also remain committed to maintaining a good number of postal partners across the country. Page 9 has already mentioned our mobile offering under the brand yellow, as the name says, very close to the postal brand. positions in a way that it maximizes the strong postal brand in Austria. The launch of this business has gone very smoothly and customer ramp up has been accomplished fully according to plans. We already have a very good five-digit number of customers. our positioning is clearly successful. What is the positioning? It's a quality network in cooperation with the Austrian telecom incumbent combined with fair and affordable prices, not necessarily the cheapest ones. And that is our differentiating factor with service and advice in postal branches and with postal partners. And we see that 90% of customers come from the postal branch channel as opposed to digital channels. It is a strong focus on an elderly population, a population that still looks for advice and people that help them with their mobile offering. And we think this is a nice customer segment where we are seeing a lot of potential. Moving to our parcel business, you see here the footprint parcel networks we have in Austria, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, and beyond in a total of 15 geographies. And we have made two very important steps over the last month. One is the acquisition the company EU Shipments based in Bulgaria with a strong footprint both in Bulgaria and Romania but also servicing SMEs beyond those markets we have closed that transaction in March this year and are seeing nice growth coming from this nice margins and two weeks ago we signed the takeover of 100% of the shares of the Express one of the leading auto networks in the Serbian market. And as said, we will merge this with our company, City Express, and substantially improve our market position in the Serbian market. Moving to page 11, this gives you the overview of how different libraries and taxes will impact our parcel business in these markets so in Turkey more or less as of October last year and early this year the any minimum threshold on duty free imports was removed so all parcels from Asia had to go through customs this had a strong impact on volumes that we also saw in Chicago in the EU and also impacting our parcel business in Austria and in Eastern Europe in the EU markets. The minimum customs rate of 3 Euro per customs category and parcel was introduced on July 1st. We have seen a decline of across the board roughly 30% in the first month. this to put things into perspective on an exposure of roughly 10% of parcels across the group that come from Asia in Austria it was less than that around 8% in Austria also the impact was a little bit lower than the 30% and we have already seen a recovery of volumes over the last weeks we think that the big e-commerce platforms will change their business models. We'll learn how to deal with those levels, how to show them vis-a-vis the buyers in online shops and I think we'll quickly react and find ways to deal with that. Then in Austria on October 1st a parcel tax of 2,40 Euro will be introduced on all platforms and retailers that make more than 100 million in revenues. So this will impact probably 70 to 80% of all Austrian parcels. And finally on November 1, the EU plans to introduce an additional levy of two Euro per item category or parcel. The details still not clear, but of course the combination of these levies and taxes will have at least a short-term impact on our growth. while we do not have full clarity clearly on what the impact be and how it will develop over time we think that for the full year we will still show a good growth in our part of business but in the next six months the growth will come down from public digit growth to somewhere in the mid single digit growth figures Yeah, with that said, let's have a look at Austria. In Austria, a very strong momentum in the parcel business, plus 9% growth in volumes, 10% in revenues, shows that our market position is based on service advantages, on quality advantages, and also on, I think, sheer Cost advantages coming from scale, coming from efficiency, coming from investments. We continue to invest in Austria in infrastructure, in IT, in our network, in new services. Our Sunday delivery is developing well and continue to defend our market leadership in the market. Let's move to Eastern Europe, page 13. Good growth, 8% volume growth, 7% revenue growth. However, quite a competitive market, impacting margins, a battle for market share going on there. Accordingly, also our margins have suffered. We are turning every stone in Eastern Europe, both organizationally Stronger integrating across countries operationally trying to capture efficiencies and strategically investing in those markets both organically in the build-up of own locker networks, but also in acquisitions moving to page 14 the acquisition of the express that I have already mentioned will help to strengthen our market position in the certain market creating one of the leading parcel networks in Serbia, adding 36 million revenues to our top line and offering substantial synergies between our existing companies and D-Express, which we will start on day one after closing by October. driving forward the integration of two networks. Moving to Turkey on page 15. Turkey remains our biggest foreign market, roughly 500 million in revenues for the full year. The volume has been impacted as already mentioned by changes in customs in particular for Asian parcels accordingly growth has been lower than anticipated before that but still we have seen at least slight growth and good growth in revenues coming from a still high inflation in Turkey although it has come down combined with a relatively stable Currency, which also had an impact on our put option accounting, which Barbara will comment on in a few minutes. Page 16, our acquisition in e-commerce fulfillment. We see a substantial opportunity in Eastern Europe, in Central and Eastern Europe, by complementing our strong position in the last mile with fulfillment services. We think that the business model of EU shipment which basically provides a bundle of services to SMEs ranging from software integration into large e-commerce platforms to warehousing, consolidation and shipping, transport and invoicing and returns management without necessarily operating the last mile themselves. and this business has shown good growth WG growth over the last years is serving 1300 SMEs so quite balanced customer structure nice margins and for the first months in our portfolio we have consolidated it in March we have been very happy with the development of We will continue to invest in this fulfillment business with the aim to become one of the leading providers of logistics services for e-commerce companies in Central and Eastern Europe. So with that, I have given you an overview on the implementation of our strategy and the development in our core business lines. And I now hand over to Barbara, who will give you more details on our finances.

Thank you, Walter. Also welcome from my side. Let me start today with our segment reporting to go through the segments to better understand afterwards our results. So mail branch and services. We started this segment reporting only with first quarter of 2026. Also includes branch services and our telco business together with letter mail business solutions and also direct mail and media posts. So this segment amounts for about 36% in the first half of 2026. Then we have the big block of e-commerce and logistics. where the Austrian part of business, also the international part of business, as well as the fulfillment business and the e-commerce services are considered. And this amounts for 59% of our revenues. And then we have our youngest and smallest segment. It's the bank, the pure bank. We are showing now with about 5% of our revenues. Let me come to the next slide. Revenues was already mentioned. EBITDA is down by 11.7 million to 187.7 million due to the business we saw in different segments I will come back afterwards. Balance sheet still very solid with a low financial debt amounting for 0.6 times net debt EVDA, only considering the financial debt and also logistic equity ratio of 24%. What we also showed in the first half of the year is a cash flow of 117 million, which is also quite solid. I do not want to spend too much time on the revenue side, even the news are good. so growth of 3.8% different pictures in different segments was already commented on let me go through our profitability to our EBIT there you can see the sharp decline on the main branch and services side by minus 21.1 million compared to last year Main reasons, the volume, the decrease in volumes, and on the other hand, also the lack of the DELCO business with A1 still in the first half of 2025. Rather good profitability on the e-commerce and logistics side, driven by the Austrian puzzle business, as well as by our fulfillment business. What we're not that happy with is the profitability in CE. Also there, Wojt already mentioned that we are facing strong competition. And also in Turkey, with the customs on Chinese parcels, starting from the beginning of the year. But in Turkey, we're ready for good improvement in June 2026. Let me come now to the detailed income statement where I want to put your focus on our staff costs. If you compare our staff costs in the first half of 2025 with the first half of 2026, you see an increase. If you take the increase, it's mainly coming out of the inflation in Turkey with $12 million And on the other hand, with the expansion of our scope of consolidation, that's mainly in shipment, but also our HLX stores, our Greek IT companies. Otherwise, we were able to take out the cost on the personal side with the wage increases we were facing. EBIT 73.3 million. I would like to explain come to the financial side with the next slide because there we see a tremendous decrease on the financial side and it's mainly driven by the valuation of the put option of Argos Cargo where you can see on the right hand side the discrepancy between the high inflation and the changes in FX rates in the first half of 2026. The total impact of inflation and FX was amounting for 20 million, and this is the main reason for the sharp decrease on the financial side. Going through to our segments, main message of mail branch and services division is, that the stronger volume decline and limited price effects in mail, combined with the transformation of the telco business, reduced profitability in H1 2026. E-commerce, there the positive revenue and earnings development in Austrian e-commerce fulfillment, high competition and price pressure in CE, negatively impact earnings. So, as we already commented on, bank division, There we see now a sound and profitable course. We did the IT migration of the core banking system and what we see is that bank division is delivering good results every month. Coming to our solid balance sheet. Balance sheet mainly depends on the balance sheet of bank 99. There we are quite stable. and where I wanted to spend some words on is the equity. Equity declined due to the payout of dividends in April amounting for very close to 124 million euros. On the other hand, we also did the initial consolidation of EU shipment and in the first half of 2026 and this also had a negative impact on the equity. Coming now to our operating free cash flow. Our maintenance capex in the first half of 2026 amounted for 32.4 million. Out of this, about 11 million of green investments for e-mobility and e-charging infrastructure. Operating free cash flow amounting for 116.6 million. Growth capex of 12.3 million. and 59.3 million for the acquisition of EU shipment. Coming to the split of our CapEx, 27% of CapEx were done internationally, mainly coming from Budapest and Slovakia, but also for our out-of-home initiative in the other countries, and 73% were done in Austria, mainly in our logistic hub in Salzburg, and the initiatives already mentioned on the green investment site. Green investment, with this I come to the kickoff of our initiative. Vienna became the world's first major city with a population of over 1 million people. to achieve 100% CO2 free last mile delivery. And there we had a celebration with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was really recognized very positively in the media. With this, I want to hand over from the Outlook to Wolfgang.

Yeah, let me close our presentation with the Outlook. As already mentioned, we confirm our guidance. that we have already communicated in the last quarters. Overall, the market remains challenging. We don't see immediate relief on the volume decline of mail. However, we see continued volume increase. However, in the second half of the year, somewhat burdened by the levies and taxes that I mentioned. What does that mean in revenues and EBIT? On a group level, we aim for a slight revenue increase for the full year, despite the mail volume decline. On the mail side, as mentioned, we have implemented a price increase on the premium price product, which should stabilize mail revenues, and also on a quarter by quarter. quarter per quarter comparison, the delta in telecommunication will become smaller for the full year. We talk about roughly 20 million in design versus last year. In e-commerce and logistics, we continue to expect growth for the full year, despite the levies, however, a reduced growth in the second half year. Bank we more or less effect the continuation of the positive development of the first six months as Barbara mentioned we do expect to Invest roughly 140 260 million in capex in logistics infrastructure IT and in locker networks and and on the earnings side, we remain committed to target operating earnings in the order of magnitude of recent years. So bandwidth in the order of magnitude of 180 to 190 million plus minus. You may ask the question, where should the improvement come from? On the one hand, we expect improvement from the price increase on the premium letters. We do expect an improvement in Turkey in the next six months coming from product price measures, but also from efficiency measures that we have implemented in the first six months, and we have already seen a strong impact in June. and third, we do expect support from the acquisitions, which we have made in particular on the running side from e-commerce fulfillment. Of course, we are living in volatile times and visibility is somewhat constrained. So we continue to see both opportunities and risks. on the risk side it is the sign of letter mail volumes and the duties and ladies and taxes on parcels where the impact is still unclear of course the currency and the implications on our on certain non-cash effective accounting positions remains a risk at the same time also an opportunity of course depending on the development of the Turkish Lira but we also see opportunities basically on the cost side in Eastern Europe, Turkey, but also in Austria. We are continuously working on inorganic strengthening of our portfolio and we are in an early phase of negotiations with the federal government. Some of you may remember that we have a dispute around Social Security contributions way back in the period from 1996 to 2008. All this is fully provisioned, so any positive outcome of a negotiation should be a positive impact on the cash side. We remain cautiously optimistic to again make a little bit translate the EBIT guidance into specific numbers in the last years we had an EBIT in the order of magnitude or in the range of 188 million euro up to a few million above 200 million so that is basically the bandwidth that we guide here And with that said, thank you very much for your attention. And we now look forward to your questions.

Yes, thank you very much. And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will start the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may click on the raise your hand button. And if you're connected via phone, please press star nine on your telephone keypad and enter it here. So, the first question is from Marco Limite. You should be able to unmute yourself, switch on your microphone and give your question, please. Mr. Limite. We can't hear you by now.

Sorry.

Thank you for taking my questions. It was helpful. This one is on the DVDs.

I'm sorry. We can hear you, but we can hardly understand you. Is there any chance to... Yeah, try again. Let's try again, yeah?

Okay. Sorry for that. First question is on Leninist. I appreciate the 10% mention in the slide for exporter, which I apologize. I'm wondering whether you can provide that exposure by countries of zero exposure to solids. So I'm wondering whether you can disclose how the slide has became That would be my first question.

Yeah, Michael, I'm sorry. It was very hard to understand you. I heard the first part of your question addressing the topic of the minimis. And if I understood it correctly, the question, what is the exposure by countries? That was the question. So we have in Austria, the Asia share of volumes is around 8%. in Eastern Europe it's low double digit figures in the impact in July and let's really regard it as very early indication of the short term impact and let's not forget after such a change there are a few days of technical issues where some systems might not be working maybe some advanced purchases where people have bought end of June to avoid the 3 Euro so it's very hard to really from the first weeks to project anything into the future but the impact has been more in the order of magnitude of 25% so below 30% in Austria above that in Eastern Europe And so for the full group, we're talking about 10% share of Asia parcels that are our exposures to Asian volumes, and that 10% have decreased to 7% in July. We expect that number to improve. As I said, why? Because first, technical issues are being solved. Second, e-commerce platforms learn how to handle this and how to optimize the way they show it during the online buying process. And they are also building up inventory and fulfillment centers in Europe. Some Chinese customers that have already done that before there we see a clear difference there the impact is much smaller if at all visible so we do expect that Chinese e-commerce platforms will recover from that from those losses may take some time but we think that after July we should expect a lower decline that we have seen in July I don't know if I answered your question because it was really

Very hard to understand anything.

I will try to speak very slowly for my second question, which is on your pay equation. You're announcing big or they'll be introducing big price increases on big investors. Can you clarify how much of your volume is coming from investors? And then second question, Thank you Marco, I think I understood 75% I think the first question was

Please correct me if I'm wrong, was in premium letters, the exposure, as you rightly said, there is a significant price increase from 130 to 190 euro. There is a strategic intent behind it, which is to migrate even more volume from the premium letter, which we deliver every day, five days a week, to the slower product, which we bundle on two days per week. We already are in the area of around 85% standard letter share, so 15 million, sorry, 15% share left in the premium letter, and we expect that price measure to further decrease this share. on the one hand allowing us to save further costs in tumbling and in not touching households anymore in particular on the countryside on the three other days just to give an order of magnitude the average Austrian household today receives once a month a premium letter and so we're really in an area where every letter that is not being in the premium product helps us to leave out one stop for the main man. And at the same time, of course, you know, 60 cents on 1 euro 30 is a quite significant price increase, and for Q4, this should also support revenues. And on yellow, to be honest, I did not fully understand the question. I am guessing it was around the EBIT impact. So last year, we had a ramp down of our telecom corporation. So we had 20 million revenues for the full year, 13 in the first, seven in the second. This year, we had nothing in Q1. and the ramp up in the, you know, starting from Q2. So in Q3, so the delta between the two years will become smaller from quarter to quarter.

Thank you. And the last one question, shall we expect the second half in the next year to be down in the year or the price increases faster? Thank you very much, sorry for

Yes, thank you very much. And we now move on to the next participant, Ingo Schmidt. You should be able to unmute yourself and ask your question, please.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on this collaboration from the first half. First, on your expansion strategy, the integration of EU shipments is already showing good top-line results and you announced the acquisition of the Express in Serbia. How these additions strengthen your competitive edge in the CE region compared to local players? And second, regarding the international market environment, you mentioned persistent price pressure in CE and Turkey, as well as new regulatory hurdles for Asian e-commerce imports. How much of these close pressures do you expect to offset your July price adjustments? And what is your outlook on Asian parcel volumes for the rest of the year? and finally on bank 99 performance after the very strong Q1 the bank's segment normalized in Q2 with an EBIT of 1.6 million. How should we think about the underlying earnings trajectory of bank 99 for H2 given the lower interest rate environment and hard-crooking customer growth? Thank you.

Yeah, so Bank 99, of course, there is some uncertainty, as you correctly already implied in your question on the interest rate environment. Overall, we see a rather supporting interest rate environment for the next six months, and I would say roughly take the first half year and multiply it by the by two roughly. Roughly, you know, of course, there is some uncertainty, maybe a little bit lower than that, maybe a little bit higher. Rather, you know, I think 100% is already the upper bandwidth. But overall, we see now a good run rate of, yeah, maybe 1.5 to 2 million per quarter. If there are no substantial changes in the interest rate environment on the Expansion in e-commerce fulfillment. I think if you look strategically We believe in the region Eastern Europe We see margins on in parcel networks under pressure in particular where you Where we do not have a strong market position We think that is an opportunity for players that offer a broader bundle to less dominant customers. So smaller and medium sized customers where the strong competition on the carrier side is basically an opportunity. And so therefore we think this acquisition and the ability to serve SMEs with a broader e-commerce offering should help us to strengthen our Eastern European business and also if you look at combined to support margins. And third question on cost pressures and price increases. Yes, we are always trying of course to Compensate cost increases through price increases. The competitiveness of the market environment sometimes makes it difficult. I think in Turkey, and that was where we mentioned price increases, we are quite confident that price increases will help us improve our margins substantially in the second half of the year. In Eastern Europe, I think we do not yet have substantial clarity to Provide a very clear guidance at this point in time And then I think the final question was an evil Asian passion volumes. Although I think I have already Talked a lot about that. So there is a little More clarity as visibility is still low. Please bear with us that for the for the search Puzzle levy that comes in in November. We don't even know How it would work so it's hard to project the impact on partial volumes but overall we think that you know again let me remind you the exposure of our group to Asian customers is around 10% of our volume so this is not nothing but it's 10% and not more and we think that the 30% decline that we've seen in the July is already the bottom and it should become better after that because the second fee on Asian parcels across the group will only come in November. It will be two euros or smaller than that. And we think by then a lot of customers, Asian platforms will already have adjusted their business model.

I think there was another question on Serbia. So we signed the acquisition, but we are still waiting for much control clearance. So, due to this, we cannot name the effect on our results in the year 2026. On the other hand, this acquisition will, of course, strengthen our position there.

Okay, perfect. Thank you very much and all the best for the second half of the year.

Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions, and the next participant is Henk Slootboom. Mr. Slootboom, you should be able to unmute yourself, switch on the microphone and ask your question, please. Mr. Slootboom, you're still muted. Yes, now we can hear you, but very, very difficult.

Please, come on.

So, it seems not to be possible to listen to Mr. Slobom. Yeah, is this better? No, we can hear you clearly, yes. Thank you very much.

Okay, perfect. First of all, clarification question I heard you talking about the fulfillment business am I right to understand that you see it as part of the parcels business and not as a potential future 3PL division let me put it in those phases as a segregated business so more in the sense of a I would almost say an end-to-end solution, but that's not the right expression. The second one is, you also mentioned that you saw increased activity from the Chinese marketplaces building their own or renting their own warehousing in the countries where you are active. In some countries we already see that they are taking the next steps. Look at Joybuy for example. They've taken the last mile delivery with Joy Express in their own hands. We see the same with Shiro and GoFo. How do you look at that? Is the arrival of the Chinese in the mid mile a prelude for more competition from the Chinese on the last month as well.

Let me start with the first question of the procurement business. So we are very new in this business, and maybe in the coming years it might become a new segment, but for the time being it will stay within e-commerce and logistics.

I think the question was also do we is our plan to operate operationally to integrate that with the last mile carriers I think the answer is no I think the value proposition is to be the integrator and to offer the best last mile solution for a given country and we don't want to weaken that value proposition by a too strong integration with our carrier networks in Eastern Europe. And we see it, let me put it maybe in some other sense, also some kind of hedge with increasing competitive intensity. Some of the margin shifts from the carrier networks to a level up to the buyers of last night services and if you're on the buyer side you benefit from lower prices which we see with EU shipments so the answer is no immediate integration and I think in terms of size this is still far from an own division on Chinese competition I think we have to expect everything from Chinese competitors they certainly do have an ambition to cover additional value chain elements and last mile is an obvious one but you know these markets are already quite competitive and Again, the customer share of Chinese e-commerce platforms is limited, so we have limited exposure to Chinese e-commerce platforms, and our intention to strongly increase that is limited.

Okay. Very clear. Thank you. Well, thank you very much and we have one last remaining participant with a question. Mr. Steiner, you should be able to unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Steiner, we still can't hear you. You are dialed in by phone, so please dial star six to unmute yourself. That seems not to be possible for Mr. Steiner to join, unfortunately. We have no more received questions, and therefore I hand back to Harald Hagenauer.

Yes, so thanks ladies and gentlemen for participating in our call on Friday afternoon and we hope that all your questions could be answered. It's not, if it's not possible, version possible for acoustic here, so please send us an email or call us the next day and we can come back of course. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you will be disconnected. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day Goodbye.