CTT - Correios De Portugal, S.A. ($CTT)

[Audio Gap] Because 2025 marks the end of our strategic cycle. We have announced ambitions -- financial ambitions for 2025 back in our Capital Markets Day in 2022 because it's also the end of the term of the present Board of Directors and my own ownership of this company, we decided to include this Slide #4 with a number of remarkable points in our journey. But moving to Slide #5 and starting with the business of the day. We closed 2025 by -- with a very steady growth, both on revenue and EBIT, a cycle that comes back from the early days when this management team joined CTT, but more than that -- more than a significant growth along this cycle on revenues and EBIT, a very significant transformation. And we see a reasonably stable mail revenue profile throughout these years while the company was growing at around 11% on revenues. And on EBIT, a very radical shift in the sources of value creation since the company was a mere mail company with an early bank that had been born a few years before back in 2018. And now we are mostly an e-commerce logistics player, whereby the main contribution for revenues and for EBIT comes from that. Moving to Slide #6. We highlight the achievements of this -- the end of the strategic cycle. Just to recall the ambitions, the targets that were set back in '22, we should close 2025 with revenues ranging from EUR 1,100 million to EUR 12,500 million or 7% to 10% annual growth. We have indeed exceeded that target by posting EUR 1.288 billion for the year as a consequence of CTT having been the fastest-growing commerce logistics play in Iberia throughout the cycle. Then our second ambition was related with margin, whereas the target here was to reach an EBIT in 2025, recurring EBIT between EUR 100 million and EUR 120 million, again, with a very significant, almost doubling the ambition on revenues, growing between 14% and 19%. We ended up 2025 closer to the right-hand side of this range with EUR 115 million, which was exactly the value we have guided the market for. And a third objective, very important, regarding profitability of the bank, where again, we have -- by having posted a return on tangible equity of 13.2%, we have exceeded the announced range that was, as you might recall, between 11% and 13%. All this in a combination that we classify as optimal between shareholder remuneration and the capacity of growth that exactly within this cycle, we combined significant investment on CapEx for organic growth, capacity expansion, investment on IT expertise, but also on nonorganic growth. While closing the overview about the cycle, I would invite you to moving to Slide #8 for a deeper analysis of the year. So 2025 exhibited a resilient organic growth with revenues up 8% and recurring EBIT 16%, part from organic, part nonorganic, as you know. That's why in the bridges that we show in the slide, we have decided to include what would have been the pro forma numbers if we had acquired Cacesa in the beginning of the year. So in a like-for-like organic growth, this represents an 8.4% growth on revenues, but indeed, the real growth of 16.3%. And moving to EBIT, these numbers amplify significantly, more than doubling or almost doubling in revenues. 16.2% of additional EBIT and 35.3% if we consider the actual growth on EBIT. The profile of growth is, of course, mostly on -- in terms of revenues. The highest portion of growth was obviously on e-commerce solutions, but also on EBIT this year, we have posted a very interesting growth on the margin of Mail & Services. With e-commerce solutions, competitiveness and growth profile enhanced, of course, by the fact that we have included Cacesa, which indeed makes CTT one of a kind in Iberia for e-commerce logistics. I will come back to this point later in the presentation. Moving to Slide #9, deep diving on the analysis of e-commerce solutions. We have resumed in the quarter double-digit growth in e-commerce volumes. As you might see, we started the year at 15% growth quarter-on-quarter. I'm sorry, year-on-year for the quarter, then it slowed down. And as guided, growth in volumes grew again in the fourth quarter, 11.3%, hence, the double-digit growth. And this, in a way, is a consequence of an Iberian e-commerce outlook that remains quite competitive. And therefore, we have produced this growth on revenue associated with the growth on volumes. Moving to Slide #10, a slightly deeper analysis on both revenues and recurring EBIT for Parcels. We have posted an 11% growth on the year for Parcels organically, but then including the inorganic effect of Cacesa, a 38% growth, numbers that are much more impressive when we're moving to the right, see the contribution of Cacesa with implying a significant growth on the generated EBITDA of almost 60%. Again, this is a consequence of CTT being a one of a kind. And in fact, with Cacesa, we may state that we create more value per object handled. And therefore, so as a summary, we have shown significant growing EBIT -- recurring EBIT while investing in expansion, capacity and quality. So a very good year for E-commerce Solutions, but also a very good year for Mail & Services. And for that, I will hand over to Joao Sousa to guide us through the next slides.

Thank you very much, Joao. As you can see on Slide 11, as previously mentioned, CTT operates across 3 segments: E-commerce Solutions, Mail & Services and Bank. On this section, Mail & Services, we like to highlight the increasing relevance of services in this segment. As you can see, financial services -- on financial services and retail, public debt placements increased approximately 147% normalization developments compared with the previous years. I would like also to highlight that in 2025, we marked the consolidation of the app for digital that around 10% of the operations are already conducted in the app. And maybe just also to give you the number on the first quarter of this year, it's already more than 12%. So that's a good number. And the customer base on the app are double in 2025. So this means that we are bringing new customers to [indiscernible] by the app, new generation, lower ticket, but more frequency and more recurrent on this. As you know, also on retail and financial services, we are very concerned to developing, selling services on this network to have a recurring in revenues. And as you can see on the right side of the slide, health plan customer base increased more than 23,000 users on this year, a very good number. But also, I can tell you that we have a strong growth in insurance distribution, particularly driven by the health insurance that the product that we launched in the last quarter of 2025. On the next slide, coming for Mail, as you can see, we see volumes decline 8.6% when we look for '25 compared with the last year, reflecting ongoing structural trends. However, mostly of this decline was offset by the price increase spread item. And -- but importantly, as you can see also in the right side of the slide, Service segment showed a strong growth, enabling the overall business area to grow year-on-year. As you know, on this area, we are developing business solutions and payments, also financial services. And the idea is putting this business area growing that in a way, compensate the decline of mail. And this year, we already saw that with this increasing 1.5% compared with 2024. On Slide 13, even with this decline of Mail, we are still working on profitability which continue to restructuring the central structure and also operations in all the areas we have. And with this, we see EBIT reaching EUR 32.8 million in '25, this is growing -- sorry, 46.3% against last year. And that means an EBIT margin improving to 6.3% comparing with 4.4% in 2024. These results demonstrate a clear operational discipline that this company showed in the last years. And with this, I pass to Guy Pacheco.

Thank you, Joao, and good morning. I will start in Page 14 with Banco CTT's operational highlights, where we see a very strong growth once again in business volumes growing 12% year-on-year in the quarter with a special highlight to the off-balance savings that grew 26.1%. That also drove banking revenues that grew 23%. In the quarter, our net interest margin stood at 2%, a slight decrease year-on-year. In terms of profitability, a small decline of 4.3% as we continue to invest preparing the next growth phase of the bank. Also, the bank delivered all the commitments it had promised for 2025, where you can see all those green tick marks. We delivered the targets for business volumes, current accounts, return on tangible equity that stood at 13.2% and also in profit before tax. 2026, as said in our Capital Markets Day, it will be a year of focusing and accelerating the business of the bank. I'll move on to the financial review, starting in Page 16. These numbers include the inorganic effect of Cacesa. And as such, we see a strong progress in all the metrics. I would highlight the net profit for the full year, where we grew 11.4% and a strong cash flow generation at the consolidated level, be it on the quarter with growth of 19.4%, but also in the full year with 13.2% growth. Now moving on to our revenue bridge, where we continue to see e-commerce as a core catalyst of our performance. In the full year, it already accounted for almost 49% of our revenue. So this very marked shift of the profiles of our revenues. In the quarter, contributing with additional almost EUR 20 million, plus a growth of 11.3%, driven by volume growth in the Mail and Services, as Joao shared, a flattish performance with Business Solutions and Services offset by Mail decline and the Bank growing 23% in Banking product. In the Slide 18, we can see our operational costs that grew 16.4%, mostly coming out of our E-commerce Solutions division with 11.6%, slightly above our activity as we saw unit cost increase due to the investments on capacity to face the peak season. In Mails & Services with a decline of 1.2%, where we continue to implement efficiency and restructuring measures that are bearing results. The bank increasing EUR 8.1 million in the quarter or 31.7%. This is a factor of not only increase of cost of risk that now stands at 0.9%, but also in the investments in staff -- commercial staffing and IT in order to secure the next phase of growth. In Page 19, we can see our EBIT performance in the quarter with a very resilient growth of almost 11%. Our margin stood at 10.9%, and that was driven by Mail and Services and e-commerce. E-commerce growing 3.9% with margin compression with a focus on quality during the peak season. The Mail & Services division growing 36%, driven by the performance of services and mail efficiency measures and a flattish performance on the bank, where we continue to reinvest resources in future growth. And with that, I'll move on to free cash flow performance. In Page 20, we see our consolidated free cash flow that stood in the year in EUR 83.6 million. And our net financial debt now stands at EUR 7.9 million at the year-end. Page 21, where we see the same numbers, but excluding the consolidation of the bank, where we see our leverage ratio finishing the year at 1.9 following a very strong cash flow generation in the fourth quarter. This is below the 2x as we guided the market. The free cash flow for the year, excluding the bank, stood at EUR 46.9 million, and that's as we see the leverage growing from 1.6 to 1.9. That is a very modest increase if we take in consideration that we invested EUR 90 million in the acquisition of Cacesa and still concluded EUR 14 million of the remainder of the buyback announced back in 2024. And that shows the strong generation of cash of the company and solidity of our balance sheet. And with that, I'll hand over to Joao Bento for his final remarks.

Thank you, Guy. If you move to Slide 23, it's a new slide that we decided to include because as I'm going to explain, we are somehow guiding for a weaker first quarter result even with the eventual decline year-on-year for the quarter. But the overall message that I want to stress is that we are posting a final year growth guidance despite the first quarter being marked by significant external events. And I don't want to guide you through all the details, but basically 3 classes of events. The first one, the obvious Middle East geopolitics that became aggravated by the recent war with Iran, where we are seeing supply chain disruption with impact on volumes and, of course, impact on costs. On costs, mostly driven by fuel cost impact that for line hauls and last mile costs for us are extremely important. But on volumes, we have -- well, less bad news. We have a short-term effect because we see prenoticed volumes remaining high, meaning that people keep buying. Our e-commerce -- large e-commerce clients out of Europe keep pre-noticing significant volumes. But then these objects don't reach Iberia. They are somehow through slower routes, land routes, sea routes, some of them stuck in intermediate airports. So this disruption in logistics are returning. The good news is that this is not lost business. This is just delayed business. So with a short-term impact, that is the less serious of the aspects that I've seen. And a final note on this volume aspect, which is we see a very strong growth observed in non-agent clients. This is not a replacement. This is in our view. This is not, of course, because of the geopolitics. This is because we are becoming a more reliable and better perceived operating in Iberia and some of these clients are growing significantly. For example, with Zalando now posting 5x more objects than they guided us when we started relation with them recently. The second line of concern is regarded with past events during this quarter. We had this hurricane Kristin in Portugal and in Southern Spain, unfortunately, very well known for all of us. We had 2 significant negative effects with this. One, significantly lower walk-ins in our retail stores and this lower volume, of course, implies lower business and significant operational disruption, abnormally high operating costs to maintain operations and quality of service. And this was not only in Portugal, which is probably better perceived by some of our analysts, but was also significantly -- very significant in Southern Spain. With weather stabilization, we expect this to return to normal, although we are now -- we have now been receiving warnings of hopefully much smaller storm reaching the Portuguese coast. And the final line is, in fact, related with the end of the year and some spillover to January. That then will have an impact on first quarter. We had a very concentrated peak season in 2025, which has 2 effects -- had 2 effects. One, the ramp-up was, I would say, less efficient than ideally because we were reading capacity and volumes were -- came a bit delayed. The volumes that were processed were very good. We've seen that before in the presentation. But then because of the concentration, we had, as always, the more volatile and the less smooth is the evolution of volumes, both upwards and downwards, we have to deploy significant effort to maintain quality. And unfortunately, especially in all the Mediterranean areas, Southern Spain from Malaga and the Luzia region, Valencia up to Barcelona, we had significant costs to be able to keep quality. Just to give you an idea, in Malaga, our -- the demand for our services multiplied 2.5, 2.5x because the market basically failed and CTT being the most reliable operating company over there. And so this had very significant impacts on costs. And this effect spilled over to January because it took us almost to the end of January to be able to process all this backlog that in a way represented volumes being processed without -- and the due cost without the corresponding revenues. Finally, because last mile capacity is being adjusted and it is adjusted already, and we are seeing already favorable impact on unitary costs, namely on handling. This is an effect that -- well, it's here, it's registered, but fortunately, is resolved. And with this, I would invite you to move to Slide #24, where again, we are issuing a growth guidance, notwithstanding a high volatility context. And now with less detail, the first aspect is that the number is, in fact, at least EUR 125 million. The introduction of new customs, moving to expectations and risks that somehow framed the reason why we have posted this guidance. The introduction of new customs regulations will create future growth opportunities for Cacesa, both possibly on B2B, but certainly because where we see the market evolving and the national authorities in Europe evolving to and moving to this will represent for sure, as predicted and many times shared with you additional services and more expensive services for the customers. So good news for Cacesa. But in the short term, we are expecting some penalization on customs in the short term. And I think that we could probably resort to what happened back in 2021 when the VAT de minimis ended well, the customer experience was very, very -- well, very much the same. People kept buying with the same ease, although paying VAT, but just because there was a change, we saw short-term volatility that then resumed. And this is how we are looking at volumes regarding the introduction of these new custom regulations. We expect high single-digit to double-digit growth in CEP in a scenario of limited impact of the new customer regulations that will, and let me repeat that, get a favorable kick in for additional services for Cacesa. Then unfortunately, now very common and very present geopolitical situation, and the disruption of logistics chain that I referred to. And this leads to high volatility in volumes and higher fuel prices. And here, the assumption is that this conflict will not be too prolonged. So this is not going to be a new Ukraine war. And so that's why we have decided to be so explicit in the assumptions that are guiding this guidance. And finally, to conclude, recurring EBIT of at least EUR 125 million represents at least 8% growth anchored on efficiency measures on Mail & Services and central structure in line with what we're doing recently. And here, we are also guiding for restructuring charges associated with this that will then have obviously a positive implication in efficiency. Then recurring EBIT, excluding the bank to grow 11%. We don't give you -- we don't guide a number for the bank. But if you look at the right-hand side of the 2026 column in the left-hand side of the chart, well, basically, the gray area is more or less the same size, which is totally in line with what we have said in the Capital Markets Day, and Guy already noticed very clearly, the bank is now on a ramp-up phase for higher growth. And so this is very much in line. The positive thing here is that the growth that we are posting on EBIT is, in fact, the growth that comes from CEP volumes growth and again, with a not very prolonged fuel price hikes. Therefore, the bank will have a flat recurring EBIT while preparing for high growth. And with this, I would invite you to move to the final page. Again, we are delivering future growth by building upon our very strong strategic foundations that were clearly well shared with the market back in November. So looking at first, 2025, a strong financial and operational performance for the year. Revenues and recurring EBIT growing 16% and 35%, thus meeting or exceeding our Capital Markets Day targets for '25. This growth has been driven mainly by E-commerce solutions, and we'd like to stress more and more that we want to be an E-commerce logistics player. So this is not only very good news, but also aligned with what we see being our future. Now the largest business line. And in the quarter, for the first time in our history, E-commerce Solutions represented more than half of our total revenues. And with this, we set the growth outlook for 2026 while navigating regulatory and geopolitical developments with confidence. I believe the company is better prepared than ever to face a year that for reasons that are related with the external context will be, well, possibly very challenging. Moving to the second bucket of -- regarding the cycle. Well, everything -- all the targets were successfully achieved, successful execution then, which builds confidence for the 2026-'28 execution. And in my view, we have posted ambitious targets, not less ambitious than we had before. And the fact that we have proven and we have executed according to the ambition that was posted back in 2022 gives us and should give the market confidence that we're going to deliver again. We are strengthening our logistics footprint through the integration of Cacesa through the joint venture with DHL that, by the way, was approved yesterday, just announced to the market, as you have seen, new automation investments, new engineering expertise, expansion of our lockers network with Iberia and a much, much more robust retail cross-selling with significant contributions for Mail & Services. Then the never-ending efficiency measures and resection of Mail & Services and Corporate Center stabilized margins in 2025 despite falling volumes. And again, I would like to stress something that both Joao and Guy mentioned that we see and we see this -- we saw this very, very clearly that the revenues generated by business solutions, by services in general at large and of course, retail services as well. So services at large compensated -- more than compensated the revenues lost by Mail that were somehow favored, of course, by the price increase, but not -- that was not sufficiently. And finally, we believe that our portfolio is poised to take full benefit from the EU upcoming regulatory landscape, thanks to Cacesa. And this is not because we are more than anyone involved in the customs area of the value chain is also because Cacesa is in a very large number of European countries. And so we have a very privileged viewpoint, both because we talk with all the relevant Chinese players, all of them and also because we talk with a very diversified number of national authorities, most of them in Europe, of course. But although the regulations are European, we are seeing a very differentiated interpretations of the law, and that's why we believe we're going to be better positioned than anyone to navigate this regulatory change. And finally, a word on the financials. Cash generation supports financial resilience and attractive shareholder remuneration, and it is a significant advantage for the upcoming cycle because when I say that we are better prepared than ever, it's not because of -- not only because of technology, operations efficiency, knowledge, it's also because we have a very solid balance sheet, and we are prepared for the future better than ever before. So our -- the strong free cash flow generation reduced our leverage to 1.9x as guided. Now with DHL, this will improve significantly with the completion of the joint venture. And we have also once more complied with our announced dividend policy and are posting a dividend per share of EUR 0.19 and of course, are completing the share buyback that was announced recently. And with this, I believe we are ready for Q&A, and I'll pass the well management of the meeting to [indiscernible].

Thank you, Joao. As Joao said, we are now available to take questions. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Joao Safara.

A few questions from my side. So first one on the guidance. Just wanted to have some clarification here. So let's assume that we are on the low end of the guidance, meaning EUR 125 million of recurring EBIT. Is it fair to assume that there is, I mean, barely any impact from the DHL synergies if we were to go to the low end? Just to understand a bit -- I know there are several moving pieces this year and uncertainty, but at least on the DHL side, how do you see the synergies playing this year? And then also linked to this on the timing of the deal. I mean just wanted to understand what is your degree of confidence that May '26 for the completion of the deal will not derail. I mean, just want to have your view there. And then last question, just on the -- I mean, there were some news report on Bloomberg last week. You probably saw that saying that, I mean, you were -- you invited advisers to pitch for potential sale of the Banking business. We know you are focused on growing the Bank, but would there -- are there still options being considered in terms of someone joining the Banco CTT or what would be your role in this process of growing the Bank? Will be a minority role or still a controlling role? I don't know. Just if you could a bit elaborate on that, that would be great. And that's it.

Thank you, Joao. So your assumption regarding the guidance is right. And indeed, I think I may confess that this guidance was designed and approved yesterday in the Board of Directors prior to us receiving the news that the deal would have been approved yesterday. And so yes, that is a good assumption. Regarding -- and then maybe Guy can complement my answer with the details about how we see the synergies deploying for the year. But let me move to the other 2 questions. So we are very confident that now because there are, of course, a number of preconditions that now the most relevant one was this one, that this one didn't depend exclusively on us, only on our collaboration. But what we have to do now is it gives us great confidence that this deal should be closed, I would say, in early May. And so yes, we feel quite confident on that. And then Guy will also take this for the issue of the unfolding of the synergies. Finally, on the Bank, I would -- if you allow me, correct your statement, Bloomberg does not say that we have hired consultants to discuss the selling of the Bank. We would have denied such a statement. They say that advisers were contacted for -- if I'm not wrong, discuss options for the Bank. I don't know. I don't care actually. What I may say is that we are very happy with the development of the bank. But I must also add that we keep receiving manifestations of interest. And of course, we look at them very seriously. And that's it. We don't want to add anything more. But the statement that has been used several times that we would like to -- we see ourselves in the long term mostly as an e-commerce logistics player, and that we'd like to have a lower importance of the bank in our portfolio stands. Having said so, we are first rational agents and react to demonstrations of interest that I must say are probably today more frequent than before. With this, I will ask you to complement the other questions, please.

Yes. On the guidance clarification, back when we announced the transaction of the JV and sequentially to Cacesa, we said that the synergies of Cacesa will be faster to materialize than DHL. And we guided the materialization of the synergies between 1 and 1.5 years after the completion of transaction. This year, the only impact that we are assuming is the consolidation of DHL Portugal that will occur after May -- to remind that we guided the value of the EBIT of the Portuguese operation on a full year basis of EUR 2 million -- around EUR 2 million. I would take the opportunity also to clarify what we are seeing on the guidance. So we chose to post a conservative guidance because of 2 functions. First, this year is a transition year for the bank and one of the growth engines of the company will be stalled for 1 year. We see the bank growth resuming after this year in '27, '28, having significant growth after this repositioning of the growth engine of the bank. Our remaining growth engine that is parcels as this year, a lot of sources of volatility, one from regulation that is de minimis and the other from the geopolitical context. Just reminding that most of the sources of E-commerce originate on Asia and most of the flows from Asia to Europe come through the Middle East. And with this disruption, we are seeing what we understand as temporary disruption on these value chains that we cannot estimate how long they will take. But we continue to see, as long as mentioned, resilient demand from our customers because the pre-notice continue to be very strong. But the transit times from Asia to Europe are expanding immensely because of the lack of flights during -- in the Middle East. In terms of de minimis, this is a year of some volatility. We see in medium term, de minimis as positive, if any, positive impact on our business because we see higher value chain of logistics in Europe as this regulation will force Chinese platforms to invest in Europe, and that will entail opportunities for CTT as we have assets with true Cacesa throughout Europe, and that will mean more opportunities to grow in the short term because of all the news flow that will entail and short-term impact on pricing. We see some volatility on customer demand that as we saw in 2021 with the VAT de minimis will be temporary and as such, but nevertheless, impacting 2026. And with this volatility, that's why we chose to have a conservative guidance at this point.

Thank you, Joao. Our next question comes from Joaquin Garcia-Quiros.

Most of it was on the guidance, which was already been discussed. But another one on the DHL deal. Is Cacesa going to -- sorry, is DHL going to acquire the 25% of Cacesa? Or what can we expect there?

Thank you, Joaquin. What I believe was announced before is that DHL is interested in participating in Cacesa. If that materialize, it will be in a percentage similar to the joint ventures, so 25%. We have decided because we didn't want one deal to affect the other and namely the approval by the European authorities. We have decided to keep this apart. So we keep developing Cacesa by ourselves and discussing with DHL if, when and in which terms they will join. But yes, that interest remains active.

And may I ask another question? Can you quantify the impact from the hurricane of the recurring EBIT to know a bit on a like-for-like going forward, what can we expect for 2027 onwards?

At this point, it's difficult to estimate. We saw obviously impact on volumes that are retail linked as debt placements in financial services, B2C Mail and also on the Bank side, and some costs because of the disruption in [ 19 ] buildings that we had throughout Portugal.

And also more than 100,000 companies around these areas was closed for this week. So no -- and it's an area for small, but E-commerce companies that was closed during this time also.

Our next question comes from Filipe Leite.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Joao Bento for this incredible journey at CTT. Regarding my questions, I have 4, if I may. First one is actually a follow-up on your guidance or full year guidance and your expectation of a decline in the organic EBIT for this quarter, first quarter of this year. Just to understand because we don't have the contribution of Cacesa during last year. So for us, it's difficult to calculate the organic growth. My question is, should we expect or what kind of organic growth should we expect for second, third and fourth quarter to reach your full year guidance? Or if you prefer, what is the organic growth assumed by us in your EUR 125 million recurring EBIT guidance for this year? Second question on working capital. And if you can elaborate on the strong performance of fourth quarter and if we should expect some reversion of this working capital inflow in the upcoming quarters? Second, on DHL, just to confirm that the initial expected EUR 69 million net cash impact is still confirmed despite the delays in the approval of the deal? And last one on Business Solutions and Payments because the revenues of this specific line dropped for the first time in fourth quarter in the past 2 years. Can you explain this evolution? And how should we expect this business line to evolve in the future?

Maybe I will start and...

Let me just start by thanking your congratulations, Filipe.

So the EUR 69 million, just -- so no difference on the announcement only to clarify what was announced. This was assuming a cash neutral transaction. So there is to be expected some adjustments by net debt evolution during the period. Then on working capital, Filipe, we are working with an estimate of neutral working capital evolution. But as you know, there is some seasonality. So normally, we are -- we have more working capital investment in the first quarters of the year that normally we recovered throughout the second half, and that is what we are expecting. On the organic growth, we are assuming some organic growth. You should assume that Cacesa will contribute more or less EUR 4 million in the first 4 months of the last year.

In Business Solutions is something structural. As you can imagine in Business Solutions, it's something one-offs because you -- as you know, in Business Solutions, sometimes you have just one-off products that you are selling. It's just that nothing that we are concerning about that.

Our next question comes from [indiscernible].

I've got 3, 2 are connected. So it's basically 2.5 question. Let me put it in those phrases. First of all, you mentioned a shift from Asian volumes to, call it, domestic or European volumes. With the Chinese so much focused on tariffs, am I right to assume that the margins -- that this will have a positive effect on your margins? So the mix is changing towards domestic that the margins are there higher? Connected to it, on the China-Europe lane, let me put it in those phrases that's the area where Cacesa is active as well. We see more and more competition on that front. We see PostNL announcing new initiatives with Spring. Bpost is pretty active there. Austrian Post has recently done an acquisition in Central Europe, which is active in that field. But on top of that, we see companies like GD Express, like [indiscernible], Chinese competitors coming in. Is this an area where we should expect margin pressure or tariff pressure as well going forward? And then the final question is, obviously, the -- what's happening in the Middle East is beyond your control. And I understand what you say about procurement and distribution lines and whatever there is higher fuel costs. But there's also something like inflation, and we're beginning to see, especially in the chemical sector, the first price increases, and they are pretty hefty. [indiscernible] announced some price increases by 30%. There's a knock-on effect on detergents, on shampoos and that sort of things. And before you know it, the consumers are getting cautious again. We've seen something like that before. I haven't followed CTT long enough to judge what happened during the start of the Ukraine war. But perhaps you can shed some light on it, what your expectations are in terms of consumer sentiment on the Iberian peninsula. Those are my questions.

Thank you, [Hank]. Let me start with the geopolitics and the implications. We have a good observation point in E-commerce in general. I think it's very early days for us to evaluate what's going to be the influence, but we can only draw expectations from, well, I would say, history. And typically, high inflation produces -- and somehow retraction on consumer behavior. That's why we -- one of our assumptions is that the war is not going to be very prolonged. Regarding the impact on pricing and the competition of Chinese players, I will ask Guy to help you.

Yes. Let's see. On the -- so the 2.5 questions are trying to separate them. On customs, let's say, we see some competition, of course, because namely the customers are very price sensitive. But we work at the European level, so not in specific airports, as you mentioned with the examples that you said. And as such, that enable us to continue to grow and to capture the volumes that swing between the local attractiveness of each customs authority. More than that, we see with de minimis the type of clearance evolving for more complex clearance in terms of process, and that will entail, in our view, upside risks in pricing and in margins as the direct-to-consumer things will be diminishing. Poland was, in fact, in the first quarter, so Eastern European in first quarter are the fastest-growing geographies in terms of customs clearance. And this has to do with all the dynamics around handling fees and others throughout Europe. In terms of local last mile Chinese operations, that will entail some more competition. We think that we have a differentiating offer. So we don't provide the same service as these guys do, although still not much present in the markets we operate. They are mainly focused still in France and Italy. That will -- may entail a new -- more price competition, but we always said since our Capital Markets Day that we see in the next cycle more competition on price because not only more last milers, but also less abundant growth. But we see our best-in-class margin as a key advantage going forward as we can lean in on that margin if we need to keep being competitive and keep growing market share. As we stress, we aim to be leaders in Iberia, and we are on the clear path to do that. Moreover, now with the completion of the JV where our offering will be largely extended and that complete offering will enable us to win in Iberia. If needs be, we can always resort to having a competitive offering with the kind of services these guys provide that are actually very different from our...

Yes. If you allow me, the feedback, it's more qualitative than quantitative. That's the feedback I have from the customers. So the feedback I have from the customers is we had conversations in the last weeks that we call postmortem of the peak season. So it's typical with these big clients from the Chinese and the quality that we are bringing to our services, that's enough to compete, but we have space always to retain these volumes like Guy was saying.

On inflation, let's see, we're still early days to see how prevalent will be inflation. Obviously, that gives us more pricing power within our customers, we have been in e-commerce resilient during inflation cycles, where we see more risks is on the labor side of Mail. Of course, it's difficult to translate labor inflation because normally, it's very difficult to delay the inflation impacts on labor. And obviously, on Mail, we cannot -- we don't have enough pricing power to translate fully to price on the competitive side of the Mail, the level of inflation, although Mail is less and less meaningful in our profitability, but normally, are those areas impacted by inflation.

Quick follow-up, if I may. In relation to fuel prices, is there a fuel surcharge provision included in the contracts you have with the big E-commerce firms?

We have fuel surcharge in most -- almost 60% of our revenues, not in all contracts, but we have a significant hedging in terms of revenues.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Mathias Paladino.

I have only one question. I'd like to come back to public debt placements. So they recovered strongly in 2025, mainly because of certificates still offer an attractive spread over deposit rate. But if the current geopolitical context pushes [LIBOR] above the certificate gap, I think that spread will be -- will disappear in some ways. So how meaningful is that risk? And how do you have any sense on whether the treasury will adjust the terms of the current series?

Thank you. We actually see [LIBOR] going up as an upside pressure on the -- also positive impact on public debt placements. As you might recall, the remuneration of that product is completely [LIBOR] linked with a cap. So as long as we keep being below the cap, normally, this product is more interesting than the bank competing offerings on deposits. And as such, normally, this pushes placements up. We are working with placements for this year between EUR 4.5 billion and EUR 5 billion. That is slightly below the last year numbers, but above the average on the last years in terms of placement.

Our last question will come from Antonio Seladas.

First of all, thank you, Joao, for the last 5 or 6 years, and I wish you all the best. So my question is just a clarification on your first quarter guidance. So you basically mentioned that organically, it will come down. But does it mean that if I compare last year figures with first quarter figures that we are going to release in 1 or 2 months, it should increase. So organically, it will come down because all the arguments that you mentioned. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, it should increase. So can you confirm, please?

Antonio, we -- what we had to say on that topic, it's what is written on the slide. So we won't clarify or give any additional detail.

So organically, without Cacesa this year, it should come down. Is that it is what we say. Nevertheless, Cacesa should have EUR 1 million, EUR 2 million, EUR 3 million on the quarter. Is that right?

Antonio, this is Nuno. We have given you the numbers of Cacesa in the last year. So you have that impact, more or less around EUR 4 million for the 4 months that we have not consolidated in the last year. And the message that we can give you at this point is that organically, the recurring EBIT will come down, but we are not providing any comments beyond that at this point. Thank you, Antonio. Thank you all. As there are no further questions at this time, I'll hand the call back over to Mr. Joao Bento for any additional or closing remarks.

So I thought I should have a bit of a more extended final remark. When I woke up this morning, I counted them and this is my 28th results presentation, webcast and the seventh yearly results one. So Antonio is 7 years now. A good part of this journey was made hands-on hands with our analysts, of course. Some are already here when I came in, some others started covering mid mile. Some others returned to us possibly because they were happier. We've had a desertion of someone that preferred to cover smaller peers, instead of us that are now much smaller than us. And to all of you, we feel thankful. I'm sure my colleagues are with me for helping us while guiding the market and your clients and somehow also disciplining us and helping us delivering more and more. So thank you for that. And the last slide that we are seeing here summarizes my main feeling now that I'm about to hand over to Guy and to Joao. I think that we've delivered. I feel happy for that and thank you for that as well.

Thank you, Joao. On behalf of CTT, I would like to thank you all for your participation. This earnings call is now concluded. Thank you very much.