Poste Italiane Spa

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Poste Italiane's second quarter and first half 2026 results conference call. In a few moments, our CEO, Matteo Del Fante, will take you through some opening remarks, including an overview of our key strategic initiatives. Then, our CFO, Camillo Greco, will give an update on the team transaction and deep dive on financials. As usual, the presentation will be followed by Q&A session where you can ask questions. Thank you Giuseppe and thank you all for joining us.

Our first half results mark another record for Poste Italiane and confirm once again the strength and resilience of our platform business model. We're reporting record first half revenues at 6.8 billion, up 6%, with healthy growth across all business units. Profitability reached a new high, adjusted EBITDA of 1.8 billion, up 7% year-on-year, reflecting solid top-line growth and continued cost discipline. Net profit came in at 1.2 billion, up 4%. Commercial momentum remained strong, with 2.7 billion investment net inflows, improving postal saving trends and stable retail deposits, taking total financial assets to a remarkable 613 billion euros. Our balance sheet remains rock solid with a solvency to ratio at 303% and almost 900 million cash generated in the first six months. These results reinforce our confidence in the rest of the year. We confirm our 2026 send-alone guidance and dividend policy supported by the consistent delivery of our strategy and strong business momentum. Moving to slide 4. Today is not only about record results. We're presenting also, and this is very important, a clear roadmap for the next phase of our platform company journey. We have agreed the term sheet for the new 2027-2030 Postal Savings Agreement with CDP. providing further visibility on this important revenue stream over the next three to four years. Camillo will cover this in more detail later. With the creation of the Financial Hub, we're simplifying our group structure, reinforcing client-centric approach, and optimizing capital. Yesterday, we have signed a landmark agreement with our labor unions on the reorganization of our physical network through a hub-and-spoke model, making it more flexible and effective for the millions of clients we serve. We are adopting AI at scale to drive cross-selling and efficiency gain across the entire group, powering our tech-enabled omnichannel commercial engine and rewiring the way we work through agentic and physical AI. Finally, we continue to execute decisively on the team's transaction. The tender period offer started on July 20th and will run to September 11th. On July 18, team board unanimously deemed the consideration of FAIR from a financial point of view and positively assessed the rationale and business prospects of the transaction. Upon completion, we expect to present the combined entity business plan by the first quarter of 2027. Let's move to group financial results on slide 5. We have posted for the fifth consecutive time a record second quarter and first half, with revenue at 3.4 in Q2, up 4% year-on-year, and 6.8 in half-one, up 6%. Top line drives profitability with adjusted EBIT for the first half at 1.8, up 7% year-on-year. Net profit, excluding the team's stake contribution, was 1.2 billion in half one, up 4%. Moving to slide six, revenue momentum remains healthy across all businesses. In mail parcel and distribution, growth was driven by parcel and logistics, with mail revenues supported by ongoing repricing. Financial services revenues continue to grow in the first half to 3 billion, supported by a strong investment portfolio contribution and solid commercial activity. Insurance services deliver strong results across both life and protection, with revenues up 9% in the first half to $983 million, reflecting higher CSM stock and CSM release. Both the paid services kept up with solid performance across products, underscoring the strength of the everyday platform. Let's move to our key strategic initiatives, starting from slide 8. We're strengthening our client-centric approach and unlocking additional value across the organization through the creation of a single financial hub, bringing financial insurance and payments together, and moving from four to two reporting business units. The project is structured in two phases. Phase one, by the end of this year, will bring together our banking, insurance and payment activities into a single financial insurance service hub from a divisional and managerial standpoint. PostePay will be demerged and its payment business will be allocated to Banco Poste. Phase 2, over 27 and 28, will see also the allocation of the Postelita stake to Banco Posta, subject to regulatory and legal approvals. This reorganization will generate tangible value through both revenue discipline and cost efficiencies. On the revenue side, we will see higher net interest income thanks to the increase of Banco Posta regulatory capital, enabling additional leverage capacity. We also expect higher inflows supported by stronger network governance and enhanced advisory tools, as well as enhanced cross and upselling between current accounts and prepaid accounts fostered by a new digital platform to be launched next year. On the cost side, we will generate efficiency through the redeployment of up to 25% of the combined Banco Posta and Postepay workforces. The new divisional reporting will be implemented from beginning of next year. Finally, we are proud to have been selected as a pilot PSP for the Digital Euro by the ECD, a recognition of our leadership and focus on digital payments and financial innovation. Let's now look how we are reshaping our physical network on slide number 9. Today each province, and we have 132 of them in Italy on average, covers around 100 post offices. We believe this is not the most effective way to drive growth through our new proactive mode and capture the full potential of our network as the 1 to 100 span of control limit the support we can provide to some offices. Many of our smaller offices operate in markets where traditional banks have withdrawn, leaving posts that have a primary financial presence. This community represents a significant growth opportunity, provided we can deliver stronger commercial focus and advisory support. That is why we are introducing a hub-and-spoke model, an initiative shaped through years of planning and constructive engagement with the union representatives and the stakeholders, reflecting both the scale and the complexity of the transformation and leading to a signing of a landmark agreement with the unions just yesterday. Under the new structure, province offices will oversee around 10 hubs each and each hub will coordinate approximately 10 spoke offices. This reduces the span of control from 1 to 100 to 1 to 10, creating a much more effective management model. The benefits are clear. Stronger governance, better training, greater accountability, and more consistent execution across the network. We're also aligning incentives at hub level to encourage collaboration and improve performance across all offices. This model also accelerate the rollout of our specialized advisory model. Our dynamic advisors, almost 3,000 of them, serve affluent clients and must be highly productive. Our personal advisor, over 5,000, serve the mass market in a more reactive way across a larger book. The combination of these two initiatives is particularly powerful. The hub structure provides the local leadership and support needed to fully leverage a DISA specialization across every office in the network, improving governance and productivity with the ultimate goal of delivering growth. Let's zoom for a second on our platform on slide 10. The slide captures the essence of Work2Building, a connected and trusted platform, a client-centric ecosystem focused on our client needs rather than products. We have built a connected and trusted ecosystem that serves both customers and businesses, combining physical and digital capabilities under a single platform. We support clients across everyday banking, daily services, and long-term wealth and protection needs. For businesses, we provide a comprehensive suite of solutions spanning financial services, logistics, welfare, and IT operations. At the center of this ecosystem sits Postepass, the single unique access point to our platform. that will seamlessly connect our clients to our full suite of solutions, facilitating, onboarding, and cross-selling. This will make our platform truly unique. One trusted relationship, one point of access, meeting the full range of client needs, generating engagement, cross-selling, and long-term value. Moving to slide 11, this starts This chart shows how we are evolving our unmatched platform to be further accelerated by potentially the team upon transaction completion. Today our consumer platform includes a logistic and distribution B2B2C model and financial and insurance services which are more on a B2C operations model. Team Consumer will add an upmarket connectivity offering to our consumer platform as you can see on the slide. The platform is underpinned by Italy's largest integrated physical and distribution network comprising Today, 13,000 post offices, the country leading up with 4.2 million daily average users and 49,000 third-party network points. TIM will further enhance this footprint with approximately 4,000 retail outlets, including premium locations highly complementary to the post office network. while also providing opportunities for further optimization and rationalization. All of this is powered by best-in-class intelligent IT infrastructure and by an AI-powered omni-channel commercial engine, which I will present a little later. The more connected the ecosystem becomes, the greater our ability to deepen client relationships, increase revenue per customer Accelerate cross and upselling and finally expand customer lifetime value. To ensure successful execution, strong leadership and clear accountability are essential. This is why we will entrust shortly the responsibility for coordinating the entire consumer platform to one of our most experienced senior leaders.

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