Poste Italiane Spa

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Over the next hour, we'll be presenting our full year 2025 preliminary results, as well as our 2026 strategy update. As you can see from the agenda on the screen, our CEO, Matteo Delfante, will kick off with an overview of the main achievements to date, our strategic priorities, and key financial targets for 2026. Then our CFO, Camillo Greco, will take the floor to deep dive into the financials. after some closing remarks from our ceo we will open the q a session for any topics we won't be able to cover today please do reach out to the investigations team and we'll be happy to follow up with that i think we can start and matteo over to you good morning everyone and a very warm welcome to post italiana 2025 preliminary results and 2026 strategy update today

We will be running through our record 2025 results, our 26 guidance and remuneration policy, as well as our strategic priorities going forward. 2025 has been an exceptional year for Poste Italiane. We deliver the strongest results in our history with record revenues and profitability, sustained by a solid commercial performance, strong returns from our investment portfolio and continued cost discipline across the group. The strategic plan continues to make excellent progress with all key initiatives fully on track, including the deployment of the new commercial service model and the logistics transformation. We have further strengthened our digital engagement and omnichannel strategy with the successful migration to the Super App, which is now the number one Italian app with over 4 million daily active users. During the year, we consolidated our position as the largest long-term shareholders, reaching a 27% stake of ordinary shares and launched several work streams to generate industrial synergies within. We are proposing a full-year dividend per share of €1.25, up 16% year-on-year, for a total distribution of €1.6 billion, corresponding to a payout ratio of 73%. The balance of €0.85 per share, equivalent to €1.1 billion, will be paid in June 26. These achievements confirm the strength of our platform business model and we continue to execute our long-term strategic roadmap. The new 26 guidance points to an EBIT higher than 3.3 billion and a net profit of 2.3 billion excluding the contribution from the team stake. which instead will be fully additive to our shareholder remuneration policy on a cash for cash basis, as you will see later in the presentation. Our new multi-year strategic plan with updated guidance and targets beyond 2026 will be released later on this year. Let's move to slide seven, please. We pride ourselves in being Italy's largest digital platform, connecting the country through our extensive network of almost 13,000 post offices and 49,000 third-party touchpoints. Overall, we manage 27 million digital daily interactions with our 46 million clients. 19 million of which are digitally enabled. We are Italy Connective Tissue, a platform built on trust, scale and nationwide proximity, committed to generating value for all stakeholders and delivering consistent financial returns to our shareholders. Let's move to slide 8, please. In 2025, revenues reached 13.12 billion and adjusted EBIT rose to 3.24 billion, underscoring the strength of our strategy and flawless execution. Net profit of 2.22 billion comes in at the high end of the updated guidance we released in July. Shareholder remuneration growth is fully aligned with profitability. With the proposed €1.25 per share for 2025, our dividend has increased at an average annual rate of 15% consistently since 2017. Moving to slide 9. With the obvious or sole exception of the COVID year, we have a proven track record of consistently outperforming our initial EBIT guidance. This highlights the strength of our diversified business model and the consistency of our execution. Let's move to slide 10 on shareholder remuneration. Since 2016, we have returned 9 billion euros to our shareholders. Over the same period, our market capitalization increased over 3.5 times, from approximately 8 billion at the end of 2016 to around 30 billion today. This means that our total shareholder return has materially outperformed the Italian market index by 2.5 times. With a record net profit of 2.22 billion, dividends for 2025 will amount to 1.6 billion or 1.25 euro per share. This represents a remarkable 21% average annual growth since 2020. Moving to slide 11. In 2025, we further strengthen our platform by delivering across all our strategic priorities. We completed the migration to the super app, the single AI power access point to our entire ecosystem. We acquired a 27% stake of ordinary shares in TEAM and we're working together on initiative design to unlock tangible industrial synergies. Finally, we expanded our role in Italy's digital transformation with the acquisition of a 49% stake in Pago.pa. We consolidated our position as the number one parcel operator in Italy with record net revenues. In financial services, we reached record investment portfolio revenues at 2.7 billion, while in insurance services, we posted a solid growth in protection with gross return premium up 21% year-on-year to 1.2 billion euro. Finally, we have reached a milestone of 1 million energy contracts and launched Team Energia powered by Poste Italiane with very promising early commercial results, reinforcing our confidence in the strong growth opportunities ahead of us. Let's move to slide 12, please. Let's now look at some KPIs demonstrating the strength of our digital platform, which is the largest in Italy today. In recent years, we have made substantial investments in our digital platform, expanding our footprint and strengthening customer loyalty across all business lines. This platform is at the core of our strategy and remains a key enabler of sustainable growth. We continue to scale our digital infrastructure. Since 2017, we have deployed €6.7 billion in technology, with more than 70% dedicated to transformational projects. We have also strengthened our capabilities with 2,500 IT specialists, enabling us to accelerate time to market and support the evolution of our business. At the same time, we have moved decisively towards a multi-cloud architecture with around 200 million in cloud consumption in 2025 alone and approximately 90% of initiatives being cloud native. This infrastructure gives us flexibility, resilience and scalability while reducing cost over time. Our platform is increasingly AI and data driven. with more than 4 billion transactions analyzed in 2025, improving customer insights, operational efficiency, and product personalization. Our goal is to fully unlock the Platinum Effect by starting with a simple premise. A satisfied digital client is proposed a lifelong client. Moreover, hybrid clients seamlessly using our digital and physical channels show a cross-selling ratio roughly 2.5 times higher than single channel users. And bear in mind that each additional cross-selling point generates a 3-fold increase in revenues per client. Moving to slide 13. Our super app. is the core of our omnichannel strategy. We have successfully completed the migration from our legacy apps to a single unified platform that now serves 16 million users. It has already become the number one Italian app with 4.2 million daily active users, more than the combined total value of all our previous apps together. The Super App is designed as an AI-driven gateway that strengthens our omnichannel capabilities, boosting digital sales while also increasing post office sales initiated through digital engagement, a dynamic we like to refer to as drive to the post office effect. In fact, in 2025, 44% of our total sales involve a digital contribution. 26% were completed through direct digital channels and 19% through the drive to post office effect. Overall, this represents a 19% increase year on year. The clearest success story is in postal savings, where digitally induced inflows accounted for 45% of the total, with a 29% year-on-year increase. In 2025, hybrid or omnichannel buyers generated 35% more sales per customer than offline buyers and grew 18% compared to 2024, a clear sign of moving in the right direction. This is only the beginning of our journey as the super app is still far from reaching its full potential. Let's move to slide 14. Sustainability continues to be a key strategic enabler of our long-term value creation. With the POLIS project, we're supporting greater social and territorial cohesion while strengthening our local presence. The project is fully on track, providing public administration services through more than 4,800 offices already transformed. We have the largest eco-friendly fleet in Italy and continue to invest in energy transition projects with the goal of improving network efficiency and reducing environmental impact while generating cost savings. We are proud to have earned and maintain a solid ESG reputation as underscored by our inclusion in leading ESG indices and ratings. Let's move to slide 15 for a closer look at our people strategy. Our people, as we always say, are the most important asset of the firm. And I would like to thank them for their continued hard work and dedication and commitment to post-Italian and long-term success. Our workforce has consistently evolved since 2017. And eight years, almost nine down the road, our people, on average, are three years younger. And this is clearly a clear sign of the transformation we enable. And we also have today a much higher level of education, as you can see. Women are a driving force within the organization, representing 53%, more than 50% of the population, and holding 46% of middle and senior management positions. HR cost per FTE is up double digit since 2017 and we grow more for the agreements that we have with the stakeholders, underscoring our commitment to reward our people for their exceptional contributions. As the AIR accelerates, investment in training and reskilling has become essential. Our insourcing program has enabled us to reskill 2,000 employees in the past five years, delivering around 40 million in run rate cost savings while preserving employment levels. Finally, let me highlight that Poste Italiane has been certified as a top employer for the seventh consecutive year. and an award that recognizes excellence in HR policies focusing on employee well-being, inclusion, training and development. Let's move now to our key strategic priorities from line 17. These are the initiatives that will be at the center of our new multi-year plan that will be released before year-end. AI will be a key growth accelerator of our strategic plan, helping us serve customers better, grow revenues, and reduce costs in a sustainable way. AI powers the personalization of our super app, boosting digital sales and generating drive-to-post office effect, and at the same time is able to provide smart sales recommendations to our financial advisors in post offices. It is also reshaping our logistic network. Predictive models now support planning, warehouse management and routing of our over 1 million parcels every single day. This means fewer kilometers driven, faster deliveries, lower operating costs and a tangible reduction in CO2 emissions. In customer services, the implementation of AI tools has brought our cost to serve down by 30% compared to 2020. And we expect to see around 30 million additional savings on a run rate basis over the next four years. In IT alone, the use of AI for requirements gathering and new product development will massively reduce time to delivery of new products and solutions. Thanks to AI, we will optimize external professional services and maintenance, generating one million recurring cost savings over the next four years. And importantly, AI is also empowering our people. Tools such as Copilot are helping teams to work faster and smarter. Thanks to higher employee productivity, we have reduced 2026 corporate center new hirings by 15% compared to the average of the past four years. To make AI truly scalable across our digital operations, we must create a digital brain for the entire organization by digitalizing all corporate knowledge and implementing an agentic AI framework supported by our robust and efficient hybrid cloud infrastructure. In summary, AI is a rating poste italiane. Unlocking the new revenue opportunity, enabling smarter and more efficient operations, empowering the next chapter of our growth. Let's move to slide 18. Let me give you a brief progress update on our strategic initiatives routine. We have now launched around 10 work streams designed to unlock synergies. With these projects, our working process and we will take time to mature, the direction is very clear. The foundations are solid and early results are encouraging. In the meantime, our initial 1.3 billion cash investment has more than doubled in value. It is a powerful sign of market confidence in team transformation and the new long-term industrial rationale. Let me briefly walk you through some of the key initiatives already underway. The immigration of Poste Italiane to team mobile infrastructure is undergoing and will generate around 25 million annual rate cost saving for Poste. Team Energia, powered by Poste Italiane, has seen a strong initial customer response. We have also launched our consumer and SME protection insurance products across team retail stores and online with encouraging early traction. In parallel, we are progressing towards the insourcing of selected team services, a move that could generate up to 100 million additional revenues for Poste Italiane, while also advancing several work streams on joint procurement and cost savings opportunities. Through the JV within enterprise, we aim to create a national champion with best-in-class capability across cloud, sovereign cloud, AI, open source, IoT, and cybersecurity. In parallel, we're also in discussion to acquire a 20% stake in Polo Strategico Nazionale, where the team already owns 45%. Polo Strategico Nazionale or PSN is a national strategic asset whose key mission is to create an innovative, secure and sustainable cloud infrastructure for all Italian public administrations, central and local. This is without question a multi-year journey. Benefits will materialize progressively as projects reach maturity and the execution steps are completed. We are building a partnership designed not for quick wins, but for durable, long-term and sustainable value creation for the two groups. Let's move to slide 19. We take always pride in operating the largest network in the country, serving one million customers every day in communities all over Italy, a number that has remained stable even as our digital channels continue to grow. Today, thanks to recent legislative and regulatory development, our post offices are finally being recognized as a fully-fledged market network. The 2026 budget law has extended the Universal Service Obligation to 2036, allowing us to leverage on third-party networks to provide the service, freeing our post offices to focus on higher value services. As a result, Of the 2024 amendments to the 1990 antitrust law, we have no residual obligation to grant access to our network to competitors' products. Finally, relevant Italian and EU authorities have confirmed that our US loan compensation is not linked to post office and network costs. The implementation of the new commercial service model is progressing as planned. This transformation is strengthening the way we serve our clients by improving the quality of our coverage and deepening the relationship we build with them every day. For our premium and affluent segments, we reached 69% specialized coverage today and we're heading towards our 80% target in 2027, one year ahead of plan. A key enabler of this transformation will be the post office network and reconfiguration towards a more efficient hub and spoke model expected to be in place in 2027. This change will deliver better network governance, stronger engagement from small and medium offices and more options for our clients. Poste is a unique network, by far the largest in Italy, able to provide the broadest distribution and service capabilities. Let's move to slide 20, please. Let me now discuss briefly what will be a key pillar of our new multi-year plan we will announce by year end. We have launched a small group reorganization process to create a new financial hub, a strategic step that will further strengthen our client-centric approach and platform effect. We are bringing together our payment businesses with our broader financial services activities to unlock cross-selling opportunities, harnessing growth and potential of post-pay clients. Over the past decade, the number of post-EPA cards has grown at an impressive 7% compound annual rate, with Ivanbeck post-EPA evolution cards reaching 11 million at the end of last year. This reorganization will be a key step towards maximizing and extracting the value of our client base, enhancing cross-selling by better addressing our clients' everyday and long-term needs. The new setup will ensure stronger network engagement on our key strategic priorities and significantly improve time to market. Capital optimization will generate additional revenues for the group already in the short term. This integration is also a driver of efficiency. By streamlining group functions and capturing scale and scope advantages, we expect to deliver co-synergies effectively redeploying 25% of current PostePay and Banco Poste merging employees to support anticipated growth of the overall group. Reorganization is expected to be completed by the beginning of 2027, subject to regulatory approval from Bank of Italy. More to come on this with our new plan, please stay tuned. Let's move to slide 22. Let's briefly look at the key drivers of our 2026 plan. guidance by business unit, starting from mail and parcel. In mail, we will continue to use repricing to mitigate volume decline. Going forward, the new USO service will enable efficiencies thanks to more relaxed level of service requirements, such as the elimination of the J plus 1 deliveries. Through our participation in Pago.pa, we will ensure a seamless integration of physical and digital public administration notifications. Moving to Parcel, we will reinforce our leadership leveraging our unique assets, such as the unmatched PUDO network and long-standing customer relationships. The internal courier network will be 80% completed in 2026, generating efficiencies and operating leverage through parcel insourcing expected to reach 50%. Let's move to financial services on slide 23. In financial services, the focus will be on increasing net inflows of customer assets and cross-selling. From a product perspective, we will continue to introduce new solutions to attract additional liquidity across savings and investment products and add a market-leading player as a new partner for salary-backed loans. Our financial advisors will be empowered by AI-driven front-end tools that provide smart sales suggestions, guiding them towards the next best action for each client. They will also leverage a super-powerful drive-to-post-office effect to enhance client engagement and conversion. Moving to slide 24 and turning to insurance, we're seeing a positive and supportive environment in the life segment with steady growth of client assets. Net inflows are recovering across the sector and improved portfolio returns are giving additional support to the business. We remain focused on our life insurance business to attract fresh liquidity. Protection, where we have doubled our market share in the past four years, will continue to serve as a key growth engine for the group. We see substantial untapped potential within the existing client base and across the Italian market, which we aim to capture through our Omnichannel platform. In addition, third-party networks will provide a meaningful contribution to the growth of the business. Let's move to slide 25. Ahead of the creation of the new financial hub, post-pay services will continue to generate revenue and profitability growth for the group in 2026. In payment, we confirm our above-market growth driven by e-commerce leadership and enhanced customer experience. In telco, we expect the stability of customer base and revenues while the transition to team mobile infrastructure will deliver cost savings already in 26. Finally, energy growth will be further boosted by the team partnership. We are confident to reach 1.4 million contracts by the end of the year. Let's move to the key financial targets starting from slide 26. We expect organic revenues to continue to grow steadily reaching 13.5 billion in 26 with a positive contribution from all segments and increasing exposure to growing businesses. The growth trajectory will continue into 26 with an adjusted guidance of more than 3.3 billion and net profit excluded excluding equity accounting of the team stake at 2.3 billion. We will update this guidance and provide visibility beyond 26 in our multi-year strategic plan before year-end. We are further reinforcing our dividend policy, payout greater than 70% applied to the net profit excluding the team stake, to which we will add the dividends received from team on a cash-for-cash basis. We expect to receive approximately 100 million in cash dividends from team in 27 and in addition to stake accretion from the recently announced team share buyback of up to 400 million. With Poste Italiane as the largest long-term strategic shareholder, team governance has been stabilized, unlocking long-term strategic priorities and paving the way for future earnings and shareholder remuneration growth in the firm. Let's move to slide 27. Let's look at what underpins our full confidence in the reinforced dividend policy. It is backed by a diversified dividend stream from our subsidiaries, with a solid coverage ratio of around 1.7 times in 2025 and 2026. The group cash generation remains strong, with the net financial position improving on an underlying basis, factoring in competitive shareholder remuneration and continued investment in business growth. At the end of 2026, Postedita Solvency II will land at a solid 20% 290% solvency to ratio on a pro forma expected basis. And this includes the 500 million additional remittance to be accrued in 2026. Our leverage remains low with around 4 billion of untapped debt capacity and growing EBIT. Finally, distributable reserves at the parent company level projected around 4.4 billion by the end of 26, a 1 billion improvement from 3.4 billion level at the end of 25. And thank you now and over to Camillo for a deep dive into the financials.

Thank you, Matteo, and good morning, everyone. I too am pleased to report that POS Italiana delivered an excellent set of results in both the four quarter and full year 2025. These were the strongest Q4 and full year results ever reported by the group in terms of revenues, EBIT and net profit. Focusing on the full year revenues came at 13.1 billion, up 4% year on year. Adjusted EBIT at 3.2 billion, net profit at 2.2 billion, both up 10%. In Q4, we posted a record group revenues of 3.5 billion, up 4% year-on-year. Adjusted EBIT reached 729 million, while net profit increased to 447 million, both up 7%. On slide 30, you can see how our profitability growth continues to be supported by sound top-line progression in cost discipline. Looking ahead, we are guiding for 2026 revenues to reach 13.5 billion, with adjusted EBIT higher than 3.3 billion, and net profit, excluding the impact of the team stake, up to 2.3 billion. Our healthy profitability, visibility on cash flows and capital generation give us the confidence to commit to a payout ratio for 2026 higher than 70%. While going forward, we see upside from team dividends. In the next slides, we'll look at 2026 guidance for all our businesses. In 2025, mail parcel distribution revenues were up 3% to 3.95 billion, with parcel delivering a strong growth across all customer segments. Mail revenues were in line with guidance and supported by favorable business mix and repricing measures. We expect these trends to continue into 2026. Mail revenue will be supported by repricing actions, partially offsetting structural volume decline. Parcel and logistics revenues are poised to reach mail revenue in 2026, driven by sustained parcel growth across all customer segments and contract and healthcare logistics revenues up more than 20% year-on-year. Overall, we are looking at 4.1 billion external revenues for 2026, while EBIT is expected to be at around 0.1 billion. In financial services, revenues grew 4% to 6.7 billion in 2025, mostly on the back of strong investment portfolio revenues, up 4% to 2.7 billion. For 2026, we expect a top line at around 6.8 billion, with investment portfolio revenues remaining resilient in a normalized interest rate environment. Our active portfolio management component is already secured for the whole year, and the gross annualized capital gains, currently amounting to over 2.5 billion, give us ample flexibility to achieve our targets. Postal saving fees will remain stable, benefiting from a renewed product offering and strong commercial focus. Our consumer loans business will continue to be supported by the strength of our multi-partnership model. Finally, higher assets under management will drive higher fees. We have a strong visibility on 2026 investment portfolio revenues and absolute confidence in achieving at least the same revenues as 2025, only with a marginally higher active portfolio management component, which has already been secured. Our rate sensitivity remains broadly unchanged versus last year. A 100 basis point downward parallel shift of the swap curve would lower fiscal year 26 and an high yield by circa 20 basis points, less than 200 million, while generating 1.9 billion additional gross annualized capital gains. Insurance service revenues reached over 1.8 billion in 2025, up a remarkable 11% year on year, driven by both life and protection. Life investment and pension technical reserves reached $170 billion in 2025, up from $165. We expect our insurance assets to further grow in 2026 and our margins to improve, leading to life revenues of $1.7 billion. Protection gross return premium grew 21% year-on-year to $1.2 billion, and we see this trend continue in 2026, where we are targeting $1.3 billion and a further improved combined ratio at 83% or less. This will lead to protection revenues contributing by more than 10% to total insurance revenues. Finally, we anticipate resilient profitability supported by positive top-line trends and slightly lower free capital returns due to the additional remittance to the parent company. Solvency to ratio at 3 or 4% remains solid and well above the managerial ambition. In line with what we have announced last year and thanks to the strong capital buffer, the solvency ratio embeds the second 500 million tranche of additional remittance to be paid by post evita to the parent company this year. On top of 100% of net profit and the repayment of the 250 million tier 2 loan done in October 2025. Impressively, over the 2024-2026 period, the total cash remitted by Postevita to the parent company will amount to 5 billion, 600 million more than what was originally planned. The performance of the situation, embedding the final 500 million additional remittance tranche to be accrued at the end of 2026, is at around 290%. 2025 saw a 5% revenue growth for post-pay services, up to $1.7 billion, with strong adjusted EBIT up 11%. In 2026, we are looking at revenues of 1.8 billion, with payment revenues sustained by organic growth in transaction value at 7%, and total number of transactions up 8%. The energy business will continue to grow in 2026, supported by an enlarged customer base, as well as the contribution from the team distribution. Finally, we can confirm solid EB growth also in 2026. In 2025, we continue to work on our people transformation, driving higher productivity with the value added per FTE reaching €90,000. In 2026, we will further renew our workforce and we will focus our hiring efforts on expanding business activities, leading to 120,000 FTEs by year end. In 2025, total HR costs came in at 5.73 billion, driven by higher salaries as per the 2024-2027 labor agreement and a variable component linked to commercial targets. Productivity-improving trends are confirmed, with ordinary HR costs on revenues down to 39%. 2026 HR costs are expected at 5.9 billion. Total non-HR costs for 2025 are 4.71 billion, with variable cost trends reflecting higher business volumes. We expect these trends to continue also in 2026, with non-HR costs landing at 5 billion. Variable costs on variable revenues are anticipated to improve to 60%. Let me remark that over the 2024-2026 period, we have achieved 900 million of cumulative cost savings, thanks to around 50 different cost reduction initiatives across insourcing, cloud optimization, process automation, energy efficiency, and contracts renegotiation. As always, our focus on cost discipline remains razor sharp, and protecting our bottom line remains a top priority for the group. At the same time, we continue to increase our capital expenditure in key areas of development to support the business transformation. In 2026, we expect 1.1 billion capex, excluding Polish, with the last share of investments in the hybrid cloud transformation and IT platform coupled with the logistics evolution. All the above investments are at budget and subject to approval of the investment committee, which has a specific return threshold for each project. That's all from me. Over to Matteo for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Camillo, and thank you, And thank you all again for joining us today. Our strategic execution is accelerating and momentum continues to build. We delivered record results again in 2025 with adjusted EBIT of 3.2 billion and net profit of 2.2 at the upper end of our upgraded guidance. Performance was strong across all businesses driven by solid commercial progress, discipline, cost management and healthy investment returns. On the back of these results, we're proposing a full year 2025 dividend per share of 1.25 cents, up 16% year-on-year and corresponding to a 73% payout ratio. This is a clear confirmation of our commitment to delivering sustainable and attractive shareholder return. The 85 cents per share balance will be paid in June this year. Our leadership in digital, supported by continued investment in AI and data, remains central to our long-term strategy and enables us to innovate continuously to anticipate and meet our clients' ever-evolving needs. The reorganization bringing together our payments and financial services business is underway. The new financial hub will strengthen client centricity, accelerate time to market, optimize capital and boost cross-sellency, efficiency and growth, maximizing the value of our platform for sustainable value creation. All of this is supported by our unmatched network, now fully operating at market with unparalleled distribution and service capabilities. We continue working closely with TIM to unlock long-term synergies. As TIM's largest strategic shareholder, we have helped stabilize governance and unlock strategic value, supporting future value creation and sustainable development. remuneration for team shareholders. Looking ahead, our 2026 guidance points to an adjusted EBIT higher than 3.3 billion and net profit of 2.3 billion excluding the team stake. We have reinforced our dividend policy going forward, committing to a payout ratio greater than 70% applied to our net profit excluding the team stake. To this, we will add dividend received from team on a cash-for-cash basis. We remain fully confident in our long-term strategic trajectory, which we will outline in detail in our next multi-year plan by year-end. Please let me say a few final words in Italian. together with President Filvia Rovere, Director General Giuseppe Lasco, I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the results achieved. A heartfelt thank you to the institutions for their trust, to the entire Board of Directors for their support for the continuous councils, to the trade unions organizations for their continuous support, Thank you and over to Giuseppe for the Q&A session.

Thank you Matteo. We'll take your questions now. You can ask a question directly via the audio line or through the webcast platform. Please, if I can ask you to speak clearly into the microphone and limit yourself to two questions. Again, for any topics we won't be able to fully cover today, the ER team and I will be available to follow up. The first question we have today is from Gianluca Ferrari in Mediobanca. Go ahead, Gianluca.

Yes, hi, good afternoon, everyone. So the first one is on page 32 on financial services. I was wondering if you can remind us why 130 million higher revenues is not translating into higher EBIT. The second question is on the 832 million negative operating variances in the CSM in Q4. I think there is a footmark explaining that. different cash flows, lapses, claims. Again, I thought lapses were improving, so why you got negative operating variances in the quarter. The third is on postal savings, postal products. There is a tremendous improvement in net new money there in Q3 and Q4. This allowed you to reach 1.8 billion. If I recall properly, you had an upper end of the range at 1.9, assuming certain level of gross flows. Given the results reported in Q3 and Q4, what is needed to get there to the 1.9 billion, assuming this performance is maintained in 2026? And if I may, last one, would you ever consider investing in data centers together with Tim? Thank you.

Thank you, Stefano. Gianluca, I'll start with the final one. We will not invest directly from our balance sheet in the data center with Tim, but we are aware that Tim is looking at doing those investments on the real estate side with specialized funds that are focusing on the specific asset class.

On financial services, I will ask Camillo and then... So on financial services, it has to do with our infra-group relationships and the additional cost of selling the product due to the distribution. So it has to do with infra-group arrangements.

On the operating variance Gianluca, as we discussed previously, the high elapses we had in 2025 were for half of it pretty much self-induced by the activity of the network that worked on client portfolio to rebalance those portfolios. As we anticipate to continue this activity to a lesser extent also in the next two years, we increased our lapse assumption on the existing portfolio, especially for the next two years, effectively taking up front the impact of higher self-induced lapses with benefit of new production that will only come when it materializes in 2026 and 2027. The impact on the PNL of this is not negative. I mean, the PNL is resilient because the effect of iron lapses is a lower liability duration and therefore a higher percentage release to the PNL with the CSM staying stable after release. Thank you.

And on parcel, I think, you know... There was a point... It was on parcel or postal savings? No, postal savings. Ah, postal savings.

So what do we need to get to 1.9?

Well, I mean, the first thing I would say to frame the conversation is that last year we made 1.75 billion on postal savings. This year, 80 million more because we're at 1.805 billion. we are above budget so i think that we should first of all take a note of the fact that 2025 has been an exceptional year with respect to poster selling performance to also the extent we had positive net inflows 600 million euro in the last quarter of the year having said that you know we are getting into a next leg of that relationship we are clearly doing what we are supposed to do, so at some point there will be a conversation about how further up the performance can improve. As far as 2026 is concerned, we have a budget another 1.8 billion, which I remind everyone is 1751-1849, so there is space to go possibly above also what we did this year, but this year we did make 80 million more than the year before. Do you see net inflows in postal savings in 2026 overall? In postal savings in 2026 we won't see a net inflows. I think that historically what we have done is we have tried to sort of compensate for net outflows with accrued interest on the remaining portfolio, and I think this is a strategy we see also for next year. This year we had net outflows of 5 billion compared to 6 billion in 2024, so we had a net positive performance of one extra billion. Brilliant, thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you Gianluca. The next question is from Sophie Pettersen Goldman. Please Sophie, go ahead.

yeah thanks a lot for taking my question so um the first question would be around the new payments and financial services hub how should we think about the impact on your telco subsidiary and how should we also think about your stake in team kind of longer term now that you have kind of a home product subsidiary or hub, do you plan to expand into other products? And then my second question would be around your solvency to ratio, which is exceptionally strong. You still have a 290% solvency to ratio, which includes the 500 million of additional remittances in 2026. How should we think about the solvency ratio going forward, given that you target closer to 200%? Thank you.

Thank you, Sophie. That's a good question on the financial hub because technically today both our energy and our telecom business are sitting on the poste pay which is merging with Banco Posta. As a result of this merger, we will hold the energy business and the TLC business at the parent company at the holding level. which means that it would be basically distribution agreement with the network from external third party or directly from our PostEnergia or Poste Mobile specifically. And with relation to our new shareholder position of team, we are clearly working at potentially having some of the team products hosted in our networks, but that's work in progress and at this point in time we cannot comment more specifically on this. Solvency to ratio at 290. I will leave it to the CFO.

So we are obviously, as you have seen also in the presentation, always figuring out ways to make our capital structure more efficient. And I did say it in the script, I'll repeat it, we did get out of the insurance business 1.9 billion this year between repayment of intra-group debt dividend, extraordinary dividend, which totals in the period 2024-2026 should total to 5 billion. We are clearly hence looking into what's next. That's really going to be part of a capital markets session which will happen later in the year as the CEO already mentioned, but it's clearly something that we are very focused on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sophie. The next question is from Farouk. Go ahead, Farouk.

Hi, everybody. Thanks very much. Just firstly on your AI initiatives, when you talk about the $100 million annual cost savings, is there going to be like a big cost to achieve or is that already in your capex? And will you get that down to the bottom line? So should we expect EBIT to benefit by some proportion of the $100 million? My second question is on the TIM benefits. So you've very kindly given us the 100 million kind of revenues and the cost savings, but you mentioned kind of energy and insurance. initial kind of work into this. What are you seeing here as the potential and the timeline of sort of delivering that? I mean, I get that you will talk about this later, but just to get a sense for now, for our forecast. And maybe if I can just slip in a very quick third one, apologies, but your deposits in Q4 in financial services were really quite negative.

just wondering whether we can read anything to any trends here and what you expect going forward in net inflows thank you thank you Farouk on the first question on AI initiative we mentioned 100 million of cost reduction within four years which means you know being cautious I'm sure would be before four years and will be certainly you know a reduction of our cost base by 100 million if you look at page 17 we mention specifically ai For new product development and requirements gathering, it's a product we call Storyteller that will save us a lot of money and a lot of time in the multi-thousand process. product that we generate for internal purposes from our IT department. So I think that's a cautious estimate both in terms of time and impact on our cost base. Which Farouk, doesn't mean that, you know, we'll have a hundred million better EBIT because maybe we'll reinvest it again in transforming our company but you know on the current cost basis we will have that saving. On team giving you a feel is some we will see certainly in 2026 and it will be around energy around insurance for consumer and preliminary insurance for smes i believe that will take more time to see the full impact of you know getting the two networks together But historically, TIM is the SME and public administration and the corporate commercial company of choice in Italy, the same way POSTE is the commercial company of choice in the consumer so you're taking you're talking you know historically the two best commercial platforms across client basis you're talking at this point of a lot of products that are in-house within you know the call it post slash team framework so the exercise now is to get this broader platform at work and that's why you know we're spending a lot of time on industrial and these are more you know, revenues work stream that we're working on, but there is also a lot of cost savings that will come down the road and, you know, some of the 10 work stream mentioned in the presentation are also focusing on cost savings. more, I think, this year on our new plan presentation.

And on deposit, I think there is a specific... Yes, so on liquidity on our bank accounts, I think the first good news is that if you look at beginning of the year we had 84 billion of liquidity between retail, public administration and enterprise and at the end of the year we have 87. The liquidity which is the stickiest of all which is the one of the retail deposits has gone up. We had a specific PA account which has taken away some liquidity at the year end. That's typically the part of the liquidity in which we earn less because it's more volatile throughout the year but we have ended up the year actually above where we plan to be in terms of budget and we see no trend that could affect the trajectory at this point.

And already beginning of 2026 in the first few weeks we have seen a significant reversal. So there is some seasonality related to public administration deposits.

Very kind, thank you so much.

Thank you Farouk. Next question is from Antonio Gianfrancesco at Intermonte. Go ahead Antonio please.

Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Two from my side, please. First one is on dividend policy, because the dividend policy was supported by additional remittance from Poste Vita in the period 24-26. So growth has been very strong, but looking beyond 2026, Can we consider the year-on-year growth seen over the last four years to be a valid indication also for the future? And in this sense, what should be considered as the drivers that could replace the current additional remittance of 500 per year from insurance division? And second one is on payment leaps, because we have seen recently that the national social security system has stopped sending payment leaps for domestic workers, so accelerating the transition to fully digital payments. So taking into account this, how should we view the structural decline in revenues from payment leaps in general? Do you expect this decline to be accelerated in the future? Thank you.

Okay, thank you for your question Antonio. The dividend policy is totally independent from the remittances. So we pay the 73% this year of our net profit. That page 27 showing our coverage ratio. is only reassuring investors that there is ample scope to support from a cash standpoint, because we're showing that both in 2025 and we expect in 2026 the underlying cash generation by the company is positive in the range of 600 to 700 million. Two, on a capital strength because of the level of capitalization of Solvency II of Post Evita. On a leverage, lack of leverage basis because we have around 4 billion of untapped debt capacity. And finally, as the CFO mentioned on page 27, we also have 4.4 Distributable reserves. So we have the cash, we have the profit, we have the distributable reserves, we can pay the dividend no matter what we will have as an extra dividend from post Evita.

The second question on payments, I leave it to the... Yes, so with regards to payments, it is fair to say that this year we recorded a 3% top-line growth compared to a healthier level in the past. However, as mentioned in previous slides, quarterly updates this lower level was expected as this year we have a step to absorb which is the equivalence between the cost of an instant payment with a normal payment and our assessment is that within the P&L of payments, this change of low, which affected the entire market, had a cost in the neighborhood of 30 million euro. If we look at only card payments, so excluding instant payments, which are part of the subset of payments, that growth for the year was actually at 6%. In other words, if you take away instant payments, the growth of the division was at 6%, which is a level more consistent with the past. If we go forward and we see what we are expecting for 2026, what you will see, Anton, is that we put it in the slides which are commented by the CEO, which is that we expect... transaction value in Euro terms to increase 5%, 26 versus 25. And as far as post-EPA, we expect to continue to outperform the market with an increase of 8% of overall transactions in numbers. and 7% in Euro terms, which will translate in, for the first time of the group, exceeding 100 billion of transactional cards vis-à-vis the 95, of around 95 of this year. So we are positive on the division going forward, and this is on a standalone basis without taking into account

the possible additional opportunities identified with the aggregation with financial services yeah and sorry let me just add I think that we should look at payments more and more in the context of our platform has a tool to increase our cross-selling so we today gave the 19.4 million digital clients of which 16 million are super app clients okay and the 16 million super app clients have 4.2 million daily average users is by far the largest Italian app number of daily users. And out of the 16 million, there are 14 million digital payment wallet. Which means that our super app now for 14 out of 16 million clients is used as a payment tool. So now that the client is inside the firm. has a payment client, the game becomes in selling other products. And that's the rationale behind the Financial Hub aggregation. We gave the number that every extra product we manage to sell, we have a multiple of three times the revenues so if i go from 1.5 cross-selling index to a 2.5 cross-selling index because i've sold one extra product to a client the value of that one extra point is three times the value of the previous client before the additional point. And that's the game today. The game is cross-selling, up-selling within the platform, across products, across channels.

Very clear, thank you. And if I can just a brief follow-up on slide 19 on the USO and the USO compensation because it is no longer linked to the cost of postal network, postal offices. So how structurally transformative is this change for your distribution model? I mean, should we view it primarily as a potential lever for cost efficiency with, for example, a more selective network positioning?

No, I think it's more, you know, first of all, we are a company which is owned 65% by the state that has a universal service obligation. related to mail and had 13,000 offices that were somehow related to the universal service obligation so we always use the network as a market network for all the products we already distribute but there was a thin legal link to a public domain of the network. What is very important is that from now that network is purely a market network. So, you know, honestly, as a shareholder, obviously, given the value of this network, I should assign a lot of value to the fact that today it is a fully fledged market network, which doesn't mean that we will change our strategy. We remain present. in all small offices and small cities. We push ahead with our policy project. We will have just our hands free to do it in the most easy way with this concept of drive to the post office. And I think it was very remarkable, we didn't mention it today, The fact that in 2025 the traffic, the number of people that enter post offices in 2025 is stable versus 24. And in a world that is becoming more and more digital, And in the previous years, this was a negative 2%, 3%, 4%. So we stabilized, we had more people, and those people, as we have shown in my presentation, are coming to the post office thanks also to the warming up, we call it, done by the digital media. contacts that we do for our clients by our call centers and you will see in the presentation we will deliver this year increasingly by the third party network, the 49,000 third party network that will also support our drive to post office targets.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Antonio. Let's move to the next question from Daniel Wilson at Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, Daniel.

Hi, morning, guys. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Some broader ones today. So on the EBIT guidance for 2026, the greater than 3.3 billion, I'm just wondering what are your main levers in your head when thinking about whether EBIT could land at 3.3, 3.4, et cetera? What are the main levers you think could move up within that range? Beyond that as well, slightly related, Poste has had an expanding EBIT margin as a staple of its business for the past several years. It feels like that might be slowing down a little bit over the next year or two. I wanted to know how you see the EBIT margin expansion evolving beyond the next year, over the next two, three years or so. What are the key levers in that? Finally, it's been asked in different ways today. If we look back to regarding Posta Vita and the solvency ratio there, if we look back to 2023 or end of 2023 when you announced this 500 million additional remittance, we're kind of back at the same solvency ratio we were when you announced that. policy so i'm wondering to what extent do you think that policy could be extended from here as in could you continue doing additional remittances from postavita for longer than you previously stated okay i'll uh i will start with this last question and then let the ebit upside space to the cfo

I think it's a very simple logic we are applying to all the companies in the group. They need to have more than ample capital to run their business, but not more than that. is as simple as that so when we see that there is a space as we saw in 2023 we will intervene and this applies to all the companies in the group in terms of the operating margin To be entirely honest, Daniel, it might be at the percentage level, if you're talking, but what we're trying to do is to grow, you know, the Euro EBIT margin and keep the pace we had in the last few years, whether this will come, will keep coming from, you know, a mix of higher revenues and lower cost uh and what kind of mix we will have going forward i think is a bit premature but overall i don't feel that you know going into the new plan we will present this year i really don't feel that the company has lost momentum i think we tried today to give you the feel that Everything we invested on in the digital space in the last nine years is finally paying off very well. And so, you know, when you have the products, you have the digital presence, you have the trust. Sorry, you have the physical presence. You have the trust if you are... Blending this with a strong digital evolution and transformation of your relationship with clients, I think you have today with what is happening in technology and the tools we are starting to use to manage the space, I think there is a lot of upside.

Can I go ahead? So, to elaborate on what the CEO just said, David, if we... I mean, we could talk for hours about top-line growth, but I think that the key single element that I would point to in terms of incrementally positive performance for the group is the ability to continue to cross-sell, and that's why we refer to this index at one cross-selling point equates to 3x revenues per client. If that materializes also in a small part in 2026, that will have a pent-up effect throughout the P&L of the group. So that is on revenues, but it's more a kick to talk about that. As far as costs instead are concerned, which I certainly do manage, with care. We do believe that we have put forward as an example in our fixed costs some impact of inflation. I'm referring to slide 39 of the presentation. We have the non-HR cost overall that are going to around 5 billion. We don't say exactly what's that but we have the part in blue that has grown by 110 million and then we have also variable costs which are related to business which are also growing. We certainly want to be more efficient there on both sets of costs, i.e. driving more our machine in a more efficient way. And if you look at HR costs, there too we have an important step upwards which has to do with the new leg of the 2024-2027 contract came into place, but there too we have some margin for maneuver in terms of how we manage mainly new individuals joining the firm. What you can see on slide 37 is that we plan to hire 5,000 new FTs throughout the year. Obviously, depending on our performance, we might accelerate or not that number. So we have at least two macro categories of layers on the cost side which we can activate to ensure that we get where we want to be at the minimum.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you, Daniel. Next question is from Elena Perini, Bancaimi. Go ahead, Elena.

Yes, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is about your contractor service margin release. which was above my expectations. What can we expect for next year and going forward? Should the trend be maintained or could revert in the future? Then the second question is about some press articles coming out in the first part of the year about if on the speed. Can you elaborate a bit on the potential contribution coming from such an initiative? Thank you.

Okay, thank you Elena. I will let Giuseppe answer the first question and then I will pass it on to Camillo for speed. Please Giuseppe.

Yes, sure. Elena, the reason why the percentage of the CSM released to the PNL has gone up? is what we were discussing earlier, i.e. the revised assumption on lapse rates. So if you assume higher lapses on your existing portfolio, the duration of the liabilities of your portfolio goes down and therefore you release more to your P&L every year. But as I said earlier, you know, the other side of the coin is higher new production related to these lapses and therefore a stable CSM as a result. Now for 2026, we expect... Our numbers, our budget includes a coverage unit that is pretty much in line with what we reported in 2025. Going forward, it will depend on how we're going to revise the lapse assumption at the end of next year, but it's too early to say.

With regards to speed, first thing I'd like to remind everyone is that not everyone pays speed, which is a source of great discussion. Whoever is an Italian resident abroad, minors or individuals over 75 years old are excluded from the fee. The fee materializes upon a year passing from the existing contract, so it doesn't run from the 1st of January, but depending on when in 2026 your contract expires, then you will be asked to pay a fee provided you want to renew the service. This, in other words, means that for 2026 we do expect a contribution from Speed for around 25 million euro, which should double up at EBIT level in 2027, as at that point the impact will be for 12 months.

Okay, thank you very much. Just a follow-up, if I may, on the insurance business. As regards the protection, it seems that your production for this year was, especially in some segments, more concentrated in the first part of the year. Can we expect it to be the same for next year or... is something going to change. Thank you.

I think you might be referring to the fact that if you compare the full-year growth to the growth we reported in Q4, clearly in Q4 it looks like we have a slower growth. The reason for that is seasonality in some areas of our production business. For example, the collective policies, the collective corporate policies. Last year, Posse Segura booked an important contract in Q4, and therefore, you know, you have a higher Q4 base. That's why the growth rate Q4 on Q4 seems lower. But it's only a matter of seasonality in the booking, mainly of the corporate welfare business.

Okay, thank you.

Okay. Grazie, Elena. The next question is from Michael Attener, Berenberg. Go ahead, Michael.

Fantastic. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry about that. Can you hear me? Yes.

Perfectly.

Yes, we can. Thank you. So I had two questions, and they're really, really simple. Can you remind me of the split of net investment margin? between the capital gains and the recurring and you did say it, but I wasn't quick enough to write it down. And then the other thing is I noticed the parcel volume growth accelerated in Q4 a little bit with that hope. But can you give us a little bit more of a feel for how far we are in the growth trajectory of this business where you've invested a huge amount? Thank you.

Yes, so with respect to the question on AI, we do report what we call portfolio return, and this year the return was 2.7 billion with a very marginal contribution from active portfolio management, so it was basically 99% in AI. As we expect next year, the net yield on the portfolio to go down by 10 basis points, from 3 to 2.9, we do expect a marginally higher contribution from active portfolio management, which we have estimated at 0.2. And the amount that we quote has already been secured, as we speak today, as we have predicted. completed forward sales on bonds. With respect to the second question, which is what to expect going forward on parcel, we continue to be very optimistic with the business. And to the extent that we think that next year the amount of revenues generated in mail is going to be equivalent to the one in parcel, which is expected to continue to grow. And specifically, we do assume that the overall parcel division should grow around 10% year on year in revenue terms.

Fantastic. And mail? Just ask a little bit of question. Yeah. I didn't understand. You invested 20% alongside Tim in something. What was it? It was a business which is the strategic business.

Ah, yes, il porto strategico finanziario. Yes, Michael. This was a next generation EU initiative. from the European Commission basically is a company that is in charge of signing contracts with public administration both central public administration or local public administration to support their digital transformation. The key shareholder of this company is TIM and this company the moment that they sign the contract with let's say the Ministry of Health just to make one simple example The company has no technical capabilities. It's sort of a quasi-shell company. It turns to Tim and says, please allow the Ministry of Health to move from on-prem data center to cloud data centers. And given one of the shareholders is a financial shareholder, is Casa Depositi and Prestiti, which is our shareholder, we are going to buy the stake from Casa Depositi and Prestiti. The capital is... a few million units, euros, so it's a small investment, but that would help us support TIM in the ongoing process of moving the Italian public administration into The third shareholder of this company, which is focusing on mainly cyber security aspect of the process, is Leonardo.

Okay, thank you, Michael. We now have a few questions from our webcast platform. The first question I'm going to read is from Kan Benning at Citi. Kan is asking, given the fact that we reached one million clients in energy, what's the trajectory we see going forward in terms of customer growth? And secondly, he's asking how do we measure the super app contribution to cross-selling? I think we already discussed, but we want to clarify.

Okay. we are ahead of plan on the energy and 26 started very well is a product that to our surprise has more than 50 percent of new clients on our new contract we sell which is kind of a surprise for us because we have a lot of clients and to think that there is one new product that is bringing client that we didn't have before is very very positive because it means that is a product that is really you know welcome and liked by clients Telecom Italia launching Team Energia in their offices has started very well. The product has been really appreciated by their network and volumes are interesting and that allows us to say that we are targeting the 1.4 million clients before year-end. um the second question was uh how do we measure the super app contribution to increase gross selling if you go to page 13 we have the on the top right hand side of the chart you have this hybrid or platform buyers percentages let me explain how we measure it to answer your question Ken basically if you try to measure the value of the super app contribution on all clients you are in our opinion not getting the right picture because you need to focus on clients that have actually bought a product so we measure you know all the clients that bought products from poste in 2025 and then we said let's do two different groups the one that have only bought it through a offline purely physical experience is group one and the second group is the one that either bought it digital or it was a drive to post office situation so they had a warm up online and then they went to the post office so you have two groups within the buyers of products and then you look at the numbers and you see that the The ratio of cross-selling of the digital clients to the offline clients is 35% higher. So it's 1.35%. Which means that we're selling 35% more products to the digital clients than to the physical one. That 35%, if you stay on the previous page, tells you that I'm increasing significantly my revenues because every point is... three times extra revenues. The second thing we measured, that 18%, again in page 13, upper right-hand side, is those clients that have bought digital or have been warm-up digital, how much do they grow year on year? And they grew 13%. which means that the ones that are only physical decrease by a different percentage. But if the total amount of clients that are coming to our offices is stable, But the ones that are digital are increasing and the ones that are only physical they are decreasing. It means that we are in the right direction for educating our clients in leveraging on the super app. That's a clear message that is coming through this analysis.

Okay. So the next question from the webcast platform that I will read is from Paola Zambione in Barclays. Paola is asking if we see any meaningful competition from Revolut. And the second question she's asking is whether we believe that AI will, over time, help us reduce variable costs in the parcel business.

I can start with this one. I don't think so. I don't think so significantly. On the first question, and thank you for your question, Paola, of Revolut, certainly, yes, they reach a significant amount of clients in Italy. They are, you know, gaining market share. And so, yes, we see them, no doubt. Okay.

Professor, learn from them.

The next question we have from the online platform is again Farouk from Jimmy Morgan who wants to ask a follow-up question. Farouk is asking, given that we have done a lot of M&A and clearly have financial flexibility, what part is going to M&A play in our new strategy, the next leg of our story?

I don't want to create expectations, you know, our style, but certainly we are in a very strong capital position and cash generating position and overall relatively cautious dividend policy position. So we certainly have munitions to... to grow inorganically. I think that the area where we should focus and we will focus is the logistic space. The reality is that in the last nine years we managed not only to become a player of the logistic arena in Italy. And Farouk, you remember the data of nine years ago, we were number six in Italy. At the time, it was BRT, the top market share. There was DHL, there was UPS, there was FedEx, and there was GLS, and then there was Poste. So we were number six. Today in the ranking we are number one out of the six. We have the strongest momentum of the lot. And so we are in a position of strength in logistics that probably we have never experienced. And that's when you might want to, you know, try to consider. It's Italy mainly, nothing that we have, you know, obviously we always monitor opportunity, but nothing that we have seen at the moment. We know the space very well, so nothing that you should expect to see anyway over the next, let's say, six months. Nothing in the cards.

Okay, we have one last question from Vincenzo Montiglia at Basel Capital. Vincenzo is asking if the creation of the new financial hub will also generate capital optimization for financial services. Camillo, please.

Yes, it will. We are assessing, as we speak, what's going to be the exact level, and that's something we will disclose with the market, in the capital markets. That is something which will benefit the P&L as of 2027.

Okay, we have no further questions, so thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you for your time and attention to post.