Deutsche Post AG (DHL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Your line is now open please go ahead sir. Mr. Ziegenbalg, please go ahead.

All right. Here we go. My name is Martin Ziegenbalg. I'm heading the Investor Relations function at Deutsche Post DHL Group. I would very much like to welcome you to our first virtual tutorial. We come to the details in a minute. Just to give you some context when we started into the year. Our plan was basically to have a series of on-site events for investors and analysts to experience what we mean by saying Excellence Simply Delivered, site visits together with expert talks. And obviously, under current circumstances, any physical gathering is not an option. However, we want to continue to not only do the current short-term management, but also want to focus again on what's going to be a very important driver for the group's development going forward, a lot around digitalization. And if you look at Page 2, what we have prepared for you in the nearer future. It's not only today a deep dive on where our Forwarding business stands on digitalization but also later on in the supply chain. And we're hopeful that in the further course of the year, there will still be opportunity to meet again with you physically on the various sites. So stay tuned. This is the beginning of that series, our first virtual tutorial format. And therefore, if things run perfectly well, I'm going to say I'm expecting that anyway. If there are little hiccups in the meantime, this is our premier. So as you see for the program today, I'm glad to have with us Tim Scharwath, the CEO of our Forwarding and Freight divisions. He's going to give you a brief state of affairs in the Forwarding market and our division in this market. And then we come to, if you like, the main act, Thomas Grunau, introducing to you where we stand on IRR and the new products and features that we just recently have introduced and what we are planning to do going forward. If you follow this on the webcast, and I think most of you are, you already find now below -- in the screen below a field where you can punch-in questions that you have. Those will then be passed on to us, and we're going to deal with that after the presentations. Alternatively, a bit more old fashion, but still. You can dial in via the number that you see on the screen, it's 49 for Germany 30-232-531-411. That would give you the opportunity to place your questions right into this stream and have Tim, Thomas or even me answering that. So without any further ado, thanks for joining. Thanks for making this possible, Tim and Thomas. And I'd like to hand over to you, Tim.

Thank you, Martin, and welcome, everyone, to this webcast. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. I'm sitting in my home office in Hamburg today. I'll come to the home office situation in a later stage. I hope that everyone is doing well, and I hope that our families are fine and safe. Maybe a bit on the current state of affairs of the Freight Forwarding industry and also based on the Q1 results, which we've presented, I think it was 2 weeks ago. I think if you look at the first quarter of 2020, you really have to divest or look into each month in a way because each month was different. First of all, if you compare Q1 2020 with 2019, that was already before corona hit us, the shift that the famous Chinese New Year was in January this year compared to February last year. And this was already a change. So everyone knew that January would be a bit more weaker compared to the year before. And also we came in 2019 from a weaker peak season than we had in 2018 going into '19. And this is always important, especially on the air freight side under the volume developments of the first month. So our first month was okay, in line with what we planned. And then, of course, something happened that we had the Chinese lockdown in February. And I always call internally that the Chinese New Year in a way was postponed, you know it was prolonged. So we didn't have the usual week. We had up to 4 to 5 weeks depending where you were in China, where the country was locked down, no volumes coming out and things really changed. And then as you know, in March, China started opening up again. We saw volumes coming out again, very nice volumes coming out again. And then the lockdown started first in Europe and then moved on to the Americas. And you know the situation where we are now, where things are slowly opening up again. I think what went very positively operationally was that DGF was able to move into a home office scenario more or less than 72 hours. And we had over 80% of our people working from home. Please bear in mind that a lot of our handling facilities are outsourced, and we do not have so many blue collar colleagues. But our backbone, our IT systems work very well, and we had very good business continuity programs in place that we were able to manage this situation, which was also something which, to be fair, no one before really tested and no one thought this would happen. But in the meetings we had afterwards and all the phone conversations we had, it was really good to see the morale and good to see how the entire organization adapted to the situation. What we also noticed very early when China was locked down that we felt that there's one silver bullet out of the situation, when something like this happens and that's capacity. The one who has capacity early is the king. So if you secure in a situation like this capacity early, you are able to make a better margin than if you don't do with that early, and wait a bit too long. And I think we were very successful in really closing capacity deals at a very early stage, already in February. And you see this also in our Q1 numbers where our margin and air freight went up. We also had a very good cooperation with our colleagues from Express, sharing capacity and working together. And also what was really well is that we were able to very quickly, when we spoke to our customers, explain to them how we can solve the issue of moving freight out of China, when China reopened into parts of the world. And we really felt that this is also part of our process, connecting people, improving lives and making sure that volumes flow. This continues, then also, of course, if you take Q2 into -- look at Q2, if this continued and also in Q2 where the capacity or the demand out of China became stronger with all the medical devices, the masks and protective gear which was being moved, which then made the limited capacity more strained and rates went up even higher. But again, because we were able to very early secure capacity and we have the good relationships and the good collaboration with our Express colleagues, we're also able to move goods in a very good way right now. And we see a lot of positive feedback from our customers, a lot of positive remarks. And I keep saying to our customer base and to the organization, imagine what a great forwarder, you can be, if you're really a great forwarder in a crisis, if you go into a normal way of working again. So overall, we plan right now quarter-by-quarter. So what quarter 3 will bring is it already a bit too early to tell. But one thing we do sense is that the capacity on the air freight side will remain stressed because the passenger airplanes will not come back as we were used before corona -- before the corona situation. And if we see these ghost flights where airlines bring empty passenger planes into certain trade lanes and markets, they are a bit of a relief, but they are not a real relief. And the reason is, structurally, that these airplanes are not made for cargo movement. You can use the belly for lower deck -- lower deck containers, which you can put in there. However, the upper deck where we normally sit as passengers cannot be used for normal freight for pallets. It starts that you can't get a pallet through the passenger door as that is built and constructed for passengers. It also starts that these airplanes are not constructed for high weights on the upper part of the airplane. The higher weights are at the lower part of the airplane. So the airlines are doing this for reasons that they want to make sure that the pilots can keep their licenses, and they keep these airplanes in the air because if an airplane is too long on the ground, you have to go through certain checks. And this is something the airlines are trying to avoid because they also need the flexibility in ramping up again when we see the possibility to travel more internationally. But as you know and I know, it's very difficult to tell when this will be the case, and we have to keep just an eye on these things. So if you look at our results again from Q1, there was a ditch or a dent, I would say, in the conversion rate based on the fact that the February was -- the way that February was and things happened also then in March as they happened. But I think that this is almost -- I'm very positive, this is only a dent, and we will continue the upper trajectory and we will continue working on the plans that we have to get it to a better conversion rate scenario comparable to our peers. So if we go to the next slide then, please, which will be Slide #6. Here, you see an overview of the Strategy House, which we developed for our Strategy 2025, delivering excellence in a digital world. And it shows our purpose, our vision, our values, our mission, the business, good units -- the business unit focus and also how digitalization plays an important part in it. And I think this is the key which you want to talk about today is to explain to you what we mean in Forwarding when we speak about digitalization. This can be a bit different in the other parts of the business, but Forwarding here is the main focus. So if we then go again to the next slide, Slide 7, please. You see the key partners. And it's all about these 4 things that are shown in this slide. We have to -- and remember, we come from a legacy that we have a lot of older systems, which we are working with. And we are moving them now into the CargoWise One environment, which is easy said, in an easy word one system per main product. So the same system for main product, a global system, which we use, so it will automatically come into more standardized processes. This will give us enhanced transparency. And if you define Forwarding. Forwarding at the end of the day is having a transparency and based on that transparency, having a discipline to work with the data to be more fraction on the decisions that you make. This will then, of course, also support you in an improved customer interaction. And that interaction is important because if a customer ask you a question, you need to be able to quickly answer the question based on facts and figures first, so that you both, you and the customer can find solutions or try to solve the problem. And you need a simplified interaction. And the last 2 parts, the improved customer interaction and the simplification, that is all -- that's when we speak about myDHLi, what it is all about and Thomas will give you more details. On Page 8, if you see that the technology will simplify and accelerate many steps in the Forwarding business. And one is, it will give us the possibility to come with additional features for services and growth. Few -- for example, we will be able on the ocean freight side to bring our supply management functions that we have, especially in Asia, closer to the ocean freight department, so it's a more seamless way of working together, which is easier for our customers to understand. It will be a better service for them and we can grow the business better based on the one platform CargoWise One. And the high operational efficiencies will automatically mean that we have -- we'll be able to generate higher margins and a better GP because today, with the new system, and we see this already on the ocean freight side, where we have 97% of our volumes working on the new transport management system, the efficiencies, the central steering of this enables us to be better in the accounting of the shipments that makes us better in order to understand if we need to pay something or not or what we can also charge extra to the customers. So in general, this will enhance us to become a better, greater Freight Forwarding company with the size and the network and the people and the volumes that we have will be, of course, a very important cornerstone for a better conversion from our business. So this was my part, and I hand over now to Thomas to give you more of the details when it comes to CargoWise One and myDHLi. Thank you very much. [Technical Difficulty] Thomas, we can't hear you.

One second, we have some problems here. Just a second. Mr. Grunau, you have to dial-in to Skype again. You were lost, we can't hear you.

It looks like that's one of those problems I was talking about. I think what we learned over the past couple of weeks is that those Skype gatherings are typically very reliable but have their weak moments as well. So I see Thomas back on. Frank, I'm still not hearing Thomas.

Yes, we can hear Thomas via Zoom, but we can't -- we can't hear him over Skype.

Okay, as long as he's part of along the webcast via Zoom, that's good enough for me.

Just a second.

So let me know when I'm able to restart.

So I can hear you now, again, Thomas.

You can hear me.

Do we add the voice line from Thomas on the webcast?

Can you say something Mr. Grunau, please.

Yes, I'm on the line here now. Can you hear me?

Okay.

Sorry, can you go ahead, please.

Okay. Thank you very much. So sorry for the technical issues. So let me start again. So thank you, Tim, for handing over to me, and a warm welcome to everybody this afternoon, this morning or this evening, depending on wherever you are. So let's take a look at what Tim already mentioned. I think we are pleased. We actually underlined our strong position in the market throughout these difficult times with our market position and capabilities, I think once again proven, we are the leader in the frozen -- Freight Forwarding industry. And we also truly believe that we have the right initiatives in place with the IT renewal road map, which we have started already a couple of years ago and also with our initiatives when it comes to digital customer interaction. So with this -- with these 2 initiatives, we complement our DGFF market positions we need a global set up. We have DGFF a strong position in many, many aspects. And now actually with our IT renewal road map and our digital customer experience, we will create higher efficiency and better service quality for our customers and also be able to -- this is a foundation to IT renewal road map to develop a best-in-class digital experience. So DGFF has implemented the IT renewal road map really with a high focus and speed, and this brings me actually to the point that I would like to give you just a quick what the life cycle of the shipment looks like so that you gain a better understanding of how complex the process is and why technology is actually key to be successful in the global Forwarding markets. So when you look at this, Forwarding is really more than just brokerage and transportation. It is managing all steps along the life cycle of the shipments, right? So in a complex environment caused by multiple standards and regulations, because you have to keep in mind, we are not just operating in one country. We are talking about the whole globe and, of course, there are a lot of different regulations in place. So the success in Forwarding was really built on experience as well as local knowledge, of course, excellent customer relationships, processes and, of course, our new economies of scale. And all of this is especially important to be able to develop the right system and technology support amongst these various touch points along with the shipment process because only if you really understand how this process works, you are able to set up the right technology on a global base. So -- and this range is from a multitude of systems, and we've only highlighted a few here along the shipment process, the online quotation tools so that customers can actually request striking online in real time instantly, air freight tracking tools in order to really see where our shipments are and then, of course, continuous IT system upgrades because this is, of course, a quite challenging task on a global scale. And these are just a couple of examples that highlight the complexity along with the shipment process. So let me deep dive a little bit more into implementing our IT renewal road map and how this helps to modernize our IT landscape is [Technical Difficulty] So when you look at it, we have basically 3 key things in that the lower part of the page, 3 key things that we keep in mind. There is a quotation to cash. You can consider this as all customer-related processes. We have the carrier book into payments. This ERVs are the processes and for the carrier or supplier related process. And of course, also the pickup to delivery, that we've seen that with full internal process to display realized data along the complete shipment process. And our vision is really to stay along these 3 key processes to completely automate the systems and the processes. And in order to come to this point -- and that's, of course, not an easy undertake, if we have pushed the IT renewal road map into place, our digital backbone for managing global freight. So I think many times also reference to CargoWise, our new TMS, but there are other systems that will go along with this. Paperless Forwarding. I mean if you imagine today, if we would be not operating on paperless Forwarding, what Tim said to get into 72 hours, all employees into the home office would be impossible because they would still wait for the pouch of papers to operate the files. So only because we have -- did a very good job in digitalizing these processes, we were able -- that quickly to transfer the business into the home offices of our employees. Quotation tools, especially in these times when prices are critical, pricing is critical for our customers, track and trace shipment visibility, but not to underestimate the complete steering logic. So putting systems in place that help us to efficiently manage the freight and to efficiently manage our business, and there are many, many more to name. So we can really say that we are very, very happy with the progress that we make with the rollout of CargoWise One and our digital backbone progressing very, very well. So we consider CargoWise One rollout in ocean freights as completed. In air freight, we have already reached over 30% of all files volumes on CargoWise One. So we've started with the air freight rollout following the start of ocean freight, and we did start this air freight rollout in last year. And we made really, really good progress on this one. So we are very, very happy about this. And all of this is really, I mean, CargoWise One and all the systems, which I briefly touched are really kind of the starting point for the benefit realization, and that enables us to further drive automatization. So with this, we achieved really an end-to-end shipment ownership. We achieved data accuracy and, of course, a gradual harmonization of processes in the application landscape, which goes along with this because this introducing one major system, we actually have the opportunity also to harmonize the application landscape as well as the processes to ensure that everybody works with the same approach. So looking a little bit deeper into the IRR benefit realization, there are 6 focus areas to materialize on the P&L. One thing is the automated data entry. In the past, May data was basically keyed in multiple times due to different systems, due to not an ideal way how these systems communicated with each other. And that allowed us not to automate for revenues and costs and also to really ensure that we have all the carriers and bookings electronically. We've introduced this CargoWise One, a single-file concept, so that our operator in one country is exactly seeing the same like an operator in the other countries. So when you look from an exports and an imports perspective, both of our involved people are basically going to see the same data, which makes it much more convenient and, of course, much more efficient to operate these files. When we talk about the whole topic of end-to-end ownership, well, we believe that this is a key driver to enable our people to manage the GP on file level. This is simplified intercompany invoicing and to ensure ownership of gross profits in our operations and actually correct GP sharing on the file. And with this, this is a foundation for us to really efficiently manage the shipments of our customers. Simplified reporting, we only have one single source of truth. And that, of course, takes also a lot of time, energy, so we are all referring to the same data. And why is it so important to measure data? Because now this is one single truth -- this is a source of truth, we are able to improve ourselves against the performance that we measure in order to actually excel. Real-time visibility, the time stem catch up within 1 hour, so what we call near real-time and immediate visibility to our operators, but also to our customers, we actually made a huge step forward. So with this interconnect -- or with interconnected systems, we are able now to capture all of this information, and then we will discuss it at a later stage or to display this information to our customers. I briefly touched on the paperless Forwarding, but -- and the work on the electronic filing. I think, yes, I mean, it's very simple. We have the data in one place. It's accessible by everybody. There's no searching anymore for any kind of pouch folder, which was done in a traditional forwarding. And all information is available right at the file. And then, of course, also a simplified DGF data and IT landscape, converging to global solution and data seamless. So what does this all mean? Well, we've developed station metrics out of this. So this is just for an illustrative purpose, of course, but this gives you a sense and idea of what our operators are basically seeing in the day-to-day work. And it enables our local operations to take better educated decisions due to better transparency and higher data quality. So with a station metric dashboard, we provide basically on station, on country, on regional level, the visibility of our operational KPIs like volume, time stamps, e-bookings, but also that, of course, also very important on our key financial KPIs. So really, given the visibility on the file profitability, the GP, the cost of the shipments, and with the aim to do this or with the aim to strengthen the accountability to maximize EBIT and GP conversion. So what happens if you have actually all this information in one single place. Well, this enables us to offshore processes to our global service center. And with this, we are able to take repetitive tasks to take time-intensive tasks to our 5 global service centers, ranging from India to Colombia and to take these and to actually make -- realize the benefits for potential savings and realizing these benefits out of standardization. So we have, in total, 14 service lines implemented in our global service centers and have identified a range of services, which are mandatory, which are now mandatorily rooted to these shared service centers and that where all of these activities basically take place in the global service centers. And then once the task has been completed, operator in the respective export or import country is taking over again and is continuing to work on the file. Why is it -- why do we highlight this here? Well, if you think about process automation technology, of course, and this is the reason why it's actually highlighted here in yellow, you must imagine that if we think about -- and if we actually -- and we see that already in our projects that we are running on advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, that with this process automation technology, we actually need to have certain tasks at one location because that way, we can hand-in-hand work with our colleagues in the global service centers to automate these processes with the experts. And then also, once we have implemented the automatization, we can, on cases which are not covered by artificial intelligence or advanced analytics, we can actually -- can have our people at the global service centers still take over and then actually also train the machines in a very, very efficient manner. So we believe that this is really the way how to drive this and to further leverage the potential savings of standardization. What we are really proud of is the fact that throughout this huge endeavor, because the customer satisfaction went up. And we see this -- if you see here the Net Promoter Score, which we measure on one hand on a yearly basis, but also on a monthly basis, we track continuously in the different DGF countries the Net Promoter Score. So we ask our customers, would you actually recommend this, our service, to a friend. And with this, I think most of you know, the Net Promoter Score. We have a good indication if we are on the right track. And it makes us very proud to see that we already see this big uptake that's clearly above 40 in 2019, and we are continuously working on to move this even further. And so I think that is a very, very good message here. So with all this said, I think we can clearly say we can make a big tick mark at the IT road map, our foundation of further modular application for internal efficiencies. And we consider, as I said, ocean freight as done and we are working hard on air freight. Of course, it makes us very excited and we see the benefits that we already can see in the ocean freight and to bring them actually also completely into air freight. So -- but why is it even beyond this importance? Well, you must imagine that the IT renewal road map is basically our heart. And this is heart, it powers all the digital customer experience because it's kind of the engine in order to electronically communicate with our customers. So -- and that is the reason why we have not started this in parallel to the IT renewal road map. We have waited a little bit to get the basics right. And now basically since a couple of months, we have developed our new myDHLi portal, which we will -- which we are going to talk a little bit more about in detail now. So the lower part of the picture, you probably already remember, these are -- this is the internal view of the 3 key processes of the IT renewal road map. And as I said, this is really kind of the heart of it. And now with our myDHLi, the external perspective for the -- so the perspective of the customer, we provide our customers the same view to the data that we actually have in our systems, but just in a very, very user-friendly way in a top-notch custom interface as we will give them our customers with full access to all information documents, status of shipments, et cetera. But on top of that, we also reimagined our collaboration for our customers can work with their team and their stakeholders like suppliers as well as their own clients. And we have highlighted this on this slide as well, 360-degree visibility. What our customers care the most about is the shipment. And they want to get a complete view on this and therefore, we are really committed to provide them with the best 360-degree visibility on the shipments that they can imagine. So myDHLi is basically the shopping window to our IT renewal road map, the window to access all this information. So how have we started our journey here? This myDHLi portal book, which we have launched in March 2019, we have basically developed a first, very important element of our customer -- digital customer experience. What is new to this and what was new to the industry is that we've chosen an approach that we will deliver instant quote in bookings across transport mode. So if the customer is requesting a quote with myDHLi, he is actually able to get a price for his air -- if he gets a price for the shipment, if he wants to deliver -- wants to deliver it or transport it by air, by ocean freight, LCL. And now since February this year, we have even added the ocean freight FCL option. So this allows our customers with a few clicks to compare the price, to change the time of his shipment and because our customers really care about this, about the environment, they can see the carbon emission of that respective shipment and they can base on these 3 attributes, the decision on which mode to choose. If it was a time-critical shipment, then most likely they will choose the air freight shipment. If they -- it's not that time-critical and they actually care for price, they will probably choose for FCL option. But it allows them to really kind of look into this. And that's also very important, they are able to directly book an insurance and also to come offset their shipment. So that was our first element launched in 2019 with freight and book. Next, myDHLi analytics. In October last year, we launched myDHLi analytics because we understood that our customers want to really gain an understanding of what they are shipping with us. So they are keen to get their hands on the standard dashboards spend. So basically, what we have invoiced to them, volume, so what they have shipped with us, to get an overview about the service quality, so we are very transparent in this. Have we delivered the things on time? Where can we actually -- where do we have areas to improve? And then also the customs activity, which brings them very much about duty state, et cetera, to really give them also a good idea of this. And with this tool, they are able to drill down and explore the numbers with ease. And so our customers are really excited about, and that, of course, makes us also very happy. So as said, we launched it in October 2019, and we saw an impressive uptake in usage over the last couple of months with more and more customers actually requesting to get their hands on it. So let's talk a little bit about customer experience. So basically, March last year, we said we need to reimagine how customers want to act with us digitally and how they actually want to -- what is actually -- what do they actually want to see. So we really said, let's focus on the most important thing, our customers and the experience, and we have listened to our customers because one thing is important. We might not have been the first to the party when it comes to these digital systems. But we strive to be the best in all aspects. And therefore, we have defined 3 guiding principles for the development of myDHLi. One thing I've already mentioned, 360-degree visibility. We want to provide the end-to-end visibility to our customer for their shipments with the possibility to really understand all the aspects of the shipments with no measure on which stage their shipment is. Multichannel, I think everybody knows that from its private life, it is not that everything is digital or everything is analog. We are actually living in a much more complex world. So our customers, and we understood this, are actually requesting to use some parts digitally, some parts off-line. And that is, for us, a very, very important element. So no matter which channel the customer wants to use, we will provide it anywhere at any time. [indiscernible] our customers have asked us or asking us for guidance. We are the experts. And therefore, they're asking us, can we please get notified? Can we get information when action by me is required, when a document is missing. So please help us to get through this. And in order for you to get a better understanding what I mean by that, we just basically brought a couple of quotes from our research. So I need to know the shipment status because I need to inform my customer. So it's not only important for them, but also for them to communicate this properly. I don't know how to join visibility on my shipments with my suppliers, or we lose so much time every day waiting for e-mail replies and asking for information. So this is something that we need to tackle. And I really want to see the shipments that need my attention right away instead of checking long list of single shipments because we have, of course, also a lot of customers that transport thousands of shipments. So we put all this into our thoughts, and it's myDHLi Quote & Book, it's myDHLi analytics. We complemented it with track and documents. So we developed a module on track with a beautiful interface and a module on documents, which is very important. And these are 2 key aspects that we have added to the myDHLi platform. But this is not all. We introduced and we actually reimagined the way collaboration in our industry should be, and we will take it to the next level. With myDHLi follow and share, we introduced social media features to the logistics industry. So customers are able to follow shipment and we see notifications about updates, something that they have really requested and to share shipments with their colleagues, customers and suppliers, so that they can invite colleagues, customers and suppliers to really work and see the same information also on the myDHLi. And all of this is integrated in one-stop myDHLi portal, and the best really is we have developed it with the mobile-first design approach, myDHLi can use seamlessly on all devices anytime anywhere, so you can use it on your smartphone, you can use it on your tablet, you can use it on your desktop. And we can -- we are really proud to say it is best-in-class user interface and usability that is available in the market right now. So we've started already to roll this out to customers. You might have surely have recognized that we launched the system yesterday to the public. But we have already onboarded customers onto this platform because we wanted to also understand what they think about it. And not to leak, actually, a company that is doing haircare products really gave us a very, very nice feedback: "I really like the system. It helps me a lot that I instantly get an overview of all my shipments, and I can see if there are any updates to them. This saves me a lot of time." Or from Boehringer Ingelheim, which we are very proud of to actually welcome to the very early stage of the rollout. It's one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, headquartered in Ingelheim. It operates globally with 146 affiliates and more than 47,000 employees. And we also were very, very happy about this statement: "It's much better than the current platform. The portal is much more user-friendly, and it is a more efficient communication model." And I mean, this is really what we were striving for. So we are very proud to see that our customers value the simplification, which myDHLi brings to their business. And in order to show you this and to also get a first-hand experience of this, I would like to give you a very, very brief demo on this. So let me switch to myDHLi. So once the customer has locked in, and you should be able to see now my -- the beautiful myDHLi dashboard, you'll see a map on the top of the page with all the shipments. So we are here now basically a demo account because, of course, we take the data of our customers very serious, and we wouldn't share this. So we have basically set this up for the demo environment based on real data. But if you look at it, we have all the shipments on the map. You can actually click and say, "I would like to see the raised rates in transit, and it's being highlighted. And the top map is the only widget, we call it widget, these elements, which is not configurable in terms of that it can be turned on or turned off. But you see below the map already the managed widgets button, so you are able to decide what we want to see. So in a very easy and efficient way, you can disable and enable the different widgets. So these are my settings, and the settings are individual by users. So everybody can modify this to his own needs. So on top of it, I have the followed shipments. I can also see the last few shipments because these might be the -- or these are most likely the most recent shipments. If I scroll down further, I not only have the opportunity to jump into a list of followed shipments if there are more but also I can actually see a list of the last updated shipments, so where we actually provided a recent update on data. And in the bottom, I already get a nice overview on the -- from myDHLi analytics, but of course, I have the possibility to deep dive into it, to drill down, if I want to understand better what are the differences compared to 2019. So when I go here on top, I -- as you hover to the left, the menu, so I can actually also look into shipments. So if I click on here, the system is loading. What you might see on top, there's a search, and the system is constructed in a way that it remembers what the user has actually done last. So in my last search, I was actually looking for Pittsburgh. And because I might change to another screen to get a different view, this is being remembered. So if I'm not interested in this, I can just simply deselect it, but in fact, for this single purpose, it's quite good because I'm sitting in -- imagine, I'm a logistic manager sitting in Pittsburgh, I can see all my shipments that are being transported from Pittsburgh. And in fact, and I'm very, very much interested in the shipments that just departed on the 14th of May. Air Freight, as you can see, so you can see the mode there as well. And you can see the origin, you can see the destination. But of course, also, this is completely configurable. So it gives the customer a broad range of items, and they can actually move this around and move it actually to a different stage so that they are able to envision what this is about. So I can put in last event, and now when I go back, I will see the last events being displayed here on the list. So with one click, I basically get into the details. So here, I have a nice high-level overview of the shipments in a visual way as well, Pittsburgh, Tianjin. Hence, -- so that's been received in the Pittsburgh warehouse. And it's good, it's on time. And I can scroll down and actually see what is the route and at which stage are we here. So everything is on time. And I can go to the top details. I can see who is the shipper. I can see the consignee. I can see the customer, the references. I can see what is the volume. This is a very, very small shipment. And I click -- when I click in here, on the document, and that's documents module, I can actually get access to all the documents, which are being in our CargoWise One system so once the customer has actually provided to us. So this is actually his electronic archives as well now, and he can actually look at all the documents to check this, and of course, is able to provide us more documents. I've talked already a lot about follow and share. So if I'm interested to get regular updates on the shipments, I simply click here on the yellow star and make it a favorite. And as of now, I basically get regular updates when a milestone change happens. And I can share the shipments by entering an e-mail address. So I would like to share this with a colleague, so I share this with Björn Müller, from my team to share this. And I get the notification that it has been shared with Björn Müller. But in addition, I can also just simply copy the link of that shipment. So now it's in my spaceport, and I could actually take this now and service into an e-mail that I just want to send. So this is a follow and share concept. And now Björn, basically, receives an e-mail with the information about the shipments, so you already get the summary of this. And with this, he is able also, with one click, to get to myDHLi, is able to lock in and sees all the shipment information that I see, and he is also able to follow it or to share if his user account announces. Because we, as I said, we take the data privacy very serious. And I think that is really the key aspect of the system. So when we log, when we work, especially with larger customers, with a multitude of users, we actually discuss and understand what should be the roles and rights of the different users to ensure that they also get the right access to the data. So with this, I would actually jump back to the presentation. I think this gives you a good understanding of where we are with our digital customer interaction. So I think we also can turn to put the first checkmark in. Now with this, with myDHLi, we have really enabled our customers to work in the best possible way with us and to experience the best possible digital customer experience that you can imagine. Thank you. Over to you, Martin.

Good. So I should be audible again. Good. All right. Well, thanks, Tim. Thanks, Thomas, for that comprehensive rundown on the new functionalities. In the meantime, as I said, we have received a couple of questions which were passed on to us on the webcast. Nevertheless, let's give those following us on the phone also an opportunity to place their questions. So the operator will briefly tell you on how you would be placing your questions. Eleanor, over to you.

[Operator Instructions]

Okay. Eleanor, until you've got the first question being placed over that line, let's start with one of the questions that came in over the web to Tim and in chronological order, so to say. The first question came actually from Kerstens from Jefferies. And it is simply referring to your, Tim, observations in air and ocean freight volumes in the course of April and going into May. Would your business support what Frank and Melanie are talking about last week that there are signs of recovery of normal industrial volumes?

Well, one sees recovery in certain trade lanes, but overall -- not certain trade lines, but overall, like, Maersk already announced a bit the situation is not as positive as one might hope. But in certain trade lanes, there's a very good trend to see that things are getting better.

Okay. David, that's a useful answer to you and also the rest. Eleanor, you just step in here if you've got any questions coming in from the phone?

I will do. There are none at the moment.

All right. Good. Well, one more for Tim, and Neil Glynn from Crédit Suisse was kind enough to place those. How close is -- you mentioned the cold call operation with the other businesses. How close to optimize the DGFF coordination with other businesses in maximizing the group's share of customer wallets? And what are the opportunities to do them more?

I think the way of working together has become better over the last couple of months. It started a very pre-corona situation, and it's also become even better throughout the cold except the situation. I mentioned the part with Express where we share capacities. We are working together also between the Supply Chain and us on the LLP product, where we offer to our customers solutions to manage their transport departments. And between freight and P&P, we have found good ways forward on the bulky shipments that freight -- that, sorry, P&P has in Germany, where freight is taking over the distribution in these difficult times also. So you can see compared to when I joined the group, there's much more collaboration and much more tangible collaboration also between the different divisions. And there's probably much more one can do based on the size that every division has and based on the possibilities and the business models of the different divisions.

All right. Thank you. Let's continue with the questions referring more specifically to Thomas' part. Again, with Neil Glynn asking, yes, we were not separating out in our reporting GP or EBIT by air and ocean. The early experience now with the CargoWise roll out complete in ocean, do you already start to see significant differential in efficiency levels to before and after?

So is this question for me?

Why don't you start?

Okay, I can. So when you look at it, I mean, as you said, we have started the roll out of CargoWise One for ocean, of course, just 2 years ago. And we already see the impacts, which this has. Of course, when you look at it, why is that? I mean, I explained a little bit about data transparency, about the possibility to see the GP of the file. Of course, when you look at it, it's very important to also understand whether the file is -- whether we get charges from our carriers, et cetera, and to -- when you work really on the file, that's the heart of the forwarders. I mean, you give them this transparency. He is able to actually work on the file and to actually take up the discussion with the customer because there are unforeseen charges, and that is active working on a file. And with this, we are very happy to see that the system is greatly supporting this. And therefore, we already see an uptake, especially in stations and countries where CargoWise has been rolled out, so this is what we call benefit realization. And of course, we are following this very, very closely, also to identify where we need to further train colleagues, yes, to actually develop our colleagues on the ground and to even make them even better forwarders.

Okay. Thank you for that. And I think there is a cluster of questions, which I'd like to group as follows and direct to you, Tim. Where do you see, as now with the current functionalities, positioned versus the peers offering in the field of digitization?

Well, I think we had to -- we have to catch up. I think it was clear that we were not in the position to be seen as some -- seen as a company, which has -- that's comparable functionalities out there. And with myDHLi, we believe we have caught up and even set a bit of a benchmark and are more forward than others. I'll give you 2 examples. What Thomas pointed out and this demonstrated the follow and share collaboration model, which brings a social media aspect into the way of working because we believe that our -- that the employees of our customers are used to this in their private life and also their private shopping. It is something which none of the other systems have as far as we know. And we also believe that the mobility of the system, so the capabilities to use it on your mobile device, be it a phone or be it a pad, anytime, anywhere, is also something which is totally different to what we know from the systems that our competition has. We have looked, of course, into this and tried to differentiate ourselves. We wouldn't blow on the market and do a press release if this was something which was comparable. I think it's also very important to mention that in part of our strategy to digitalize our internal and external systems, we have continued to invest and we will continue to invest also in this part and there's more to come. We have another few more things up our sleeves. The basics for us to doing this is that we roll out CargoWise more and more. So whenever we get on CargoWise or the TMS project, the Transport Management System project that we do under freight division but also have benefit because this would also be then on myDHLi. Our vision is to have one system where anyone, any customer of ours, who works with us in the forwarding world can use this system, and we're also having discussions internally to widen this to other divisions.

Okay. Thanks, Tim, for that. And there's a question, a very good question again from Bernstein. Tim, I would like to pass that on to you but also to you, Thomas. We talked about customer feedback customer reaction. That's an important aspect for sure. But what have you experienced as a feedback from the employees' side during the roll out? Was there lot of resistance to be overcome or how that has evolved?

Should I start? So if I would start, I think it's something which we could use internally very well for our employee. I mean, I think it's a 2-sided question. So on the CargoWise roll out, the employees were very happy that we show that we invest into a new system, which makes their life also easier. Because for them, if they don't have to search for data in the legacy systems anymore, have it all on -- with one file and have one view on the shipments that they're working on with the full transparency, also, on how much GP they generate with that shipment, gives our employees a better feeling for how their work is being valued. And we had people joining us who knew that we are investing into a new system, and they saw still the terminals of the old system. And we're very happy that they knew that the new system is coming up because our legacy system was not even close to being state-of-the-art. So there was no difficulties from getting the people motivated. What we did experience was that we needed to train our people because we gave them, based on the transparency of the files, more power and also a higher value in their work, and they had to start to learn and use these things. This is something that we also saw some great benefits going forward.

Okay. Thomas, anything you want to add from the employee perception angle?

Yes, sure. I mean, Tim has described very well on the CargoWise One, I think that is also where that's most important that you really kind of take your people with us because only if they're happy with the system, they can deliver excellent service. What I must say, when we look at our digital customer experience in our system that we build for customers, and of course, we showcased this to our people, the excitement and the joy and the power we've seen, the reaction, the positive power in the reaction, was really, really exciting. And so I think everybody, as we call it, is fired up and ready to go. And everybody is really striving to roll this out to our customers and to present it in the best possible manner. I think the best is, if we have this into the other people, with our colleagues, then I think this is the best to underline that this will be a successful enterprise.

All right. Coming back to the general market conditions and Andy Chu is referring to your introductory remarks, Tim. How stressed do you still see the market for charter capacity? And also how -- we get other questions who are wondering what the current capacity situation means for the competitive landscape going forward, particularly with regards to smaller players who may be having more difficulties in securing capacity.

Okay. I think on the freighter capacity, I think we've -- what we see now is that the demand is slowly because the PPEs have -- that the hype on those have gone away a bit, so the peak rates that we saw are slowly coming a bit down, but they are still much higher than this time last year. We also saw a notice that small and mid-sized customers were not able to secure cargo and small and midsized customer -- or forwarder, sorry, who did not have a network approach also had difficulties in getting their goods on airplanes. Let me explain how I mean that. If you take, for example, the market of Austria, where the main airport is Vienna, today, nothing moves out of Vienna because there are no passenger planes out of Vienna, and the freighter services into Vienna are very limited. If you want to fly out of Vienna, you actually have to use Frankfurt, Brussels, Luxembourg or Amsterdam, if you want the cargo from Vienna, for example, to go to China, to Shanghai. So that means if you're not able as a freight forwarder, a midsized freight forwarder, to Vienna to secure capacity in Frankfurt, you have a problem with your customers. The larger freight forwarders are able to do this because they have new European networks so -- and they also have offices everywhere. And you need contact and a good collaboration with the carriers to get these things done. As I pointed out earlier, we were very early in securing capacity on the flights. And today, for example, we track everything from Vienna, either to Frankfurt, Brussels or Amsterdam, and fly it out from there, and we won additional business out of Vienna based on the fact that midterm players who are local players, local -- large players locally in Austria, who were not able to deliver this, we were able to develop business out of this.

Okay. And also in terms of the more technical financials working out, is it correct that if you buy charter, you're more or less buying on sign -- you're paying on signing the contract, and there's a time to go until the actual flight goes, right?

It depends. If you work on a charter chain or more than one charter, you can also have different payment terms around this. What you don't do is, you normally don't use the cat system for charters. And in the real charter world where you have one charter, you pay upfront the charter and your customer also has to pay upfront the charter.

All right. Good. We have further questions coming in. Referring Thomas also to the wider IRR roll out. Does the current situation push out our targets on completing the roll out now also into air? And what are our expectations there?

Okay. So -- when we look at that, we have to clearly say that we, of course, can't foresee how the development in the next couple of months is going to happen. But you probably can imagine that due to the travel restrictions and not the travel restrictions that we gave to our people but just on a global scale, that this is, of course, something which is just not easy to handle. But we've already in the past rolled out also systems, also the IRR system, the CargoWise virtually. So what that means is that we do sessions with our employees like we do it here. This worked especially well in smaller countries. For larger countries, this is a little bit different. There, we actually have figured out that for an efficiency and roll out, it is beneficial to be there and to support the colleagues just on a local level. So right now, we don't see that the Air Freight roll out will take longer than we have envisioned. But this is, of course, also something which we will definitely need to watch very carefully throughout the next month. And then we will actually be as agile as it requires to deal with the recurrent situation.

Okay. Thanks, Thomas, for that. We got a couple of questions referring to your slide showing the life cycle of the shipment, 2 angles to that. What do you think in ocean freight, what percentage of these steps is now with the new system setup already sort of frictionless or the other way around? In what areas would you expect manual work still being required? For the longest time, which are the areas where there is digitization alternatives going to kick in at a later point in time only?

So I mean, when you look at this shipment cycle, this is, of course, something which we developed and it simplifies because it would be a huge page when we want to put all the details in. But I mean we also only highlighted a few. I think what you can say is that from end-to-end, we have really covered the main topic sales already. But of course, there are aspects in this whole process where we still have a couple of manual steps here. So for example, customers are just sending us the commercial invoice, so just a pack of paper, they're sending us a pack of paper, imagine we need to scan this because we still have customers that do it that way. We need to scan it. And then, of course, they say because it's the usual shipments, "Can you please just ship it like on a regular -- as you do it on a regular basis?" But this still requires that we actually capture that information, scanning, and then, of course, also to create the carrier booking. And so there are certain elements in the whole process where still it takes manual interaction, which is the typical, let's say, topic when you interact with your customer. So they provide you with information in a certain matter and you need to find the most efficient way to deal with it. And therefore, we also look very much into AI, predictive analytics, natural language processing, what I described also with the complete global service center approach, where we take mandatory service that are already in the global service center and then actually automate them step by step with best-in-class technology. And I think with this approach, we will, going forward, really get close to our vision to automate end-to-end the 3 key processes.

Okay. One further aspect to it, and maybe that's for you, Tim. So this whole database approach, how important do you see that for us to retain or win over customers? And if that's a great percentage, how big a risk do you see for competitors copying what we have been put together now with this whole setup?

Well, I think it's one thing to put the setup together, but I think it's more of the usage of this setup which will make the difference. It's a bit also the discussion we have when we talk about CargoWise, how DSV uses CargoWise, how we use CargoWise, how Geodis does, how [indiscernible] all these companies in future will use CargoWise. And it's a bit like -- it's the same approach what I explained in the past that it's like a sandbox we are playing in, and you have the ability to move around in the sandbox and do things there differently. So I think I'm not worried about other companies duplicating what we are duplicating because of the way we also duplicate what other companies are duplicating. It's more how you use the data and how you work with it. And I'll give you an example, myDHLi has a Quote & Book function, as you know. So we are very much keen and our customers use the quote function because based on the quote function, using the analytical things and ideas that we have in the group, we can also then pinpoint what is the right price for a certain trade lane based on the behavior of our customers. So if we see, for example, that a customer gets -- submits a quote, gets the price back and books immediately, and either we made the mistake that our rates are too low or we had a real problem. And if we see that he does this 3 or 4 times in a week or 2 weeks, then we can visit him and see that we have regular business, is there something going on where we can support the other things. So this kind of behavior we can use. And I think we have more resources in the group to use this kind of data to be closer to our customers. In the corona situation that we are now, we have seen also a much better way of working together with customers and get much better -- get a very high feedback because we are very much solution based in the situation now. And I think we can take that with the new systems also going forward. And part of the reason why we could do this was because we had an ocean freight with the CargoWise out. And Quote & Book is something, which we have been out there in the market since March last year. So we could use this data already in the situation.

Okay. I think that's covering most of the questions that we received. And sorry for the individual contributors. I think we've got certain clusters, so this is why I didn't single out necessarily all the names. Let me ask, Eleanor, the operator, whether in the meantime we have any interest to place a question live on the phone.

At the moment, there are no questions on the phone. [Operator Instructions]

So then I'd say, let's maybe sort of approaching the finishing line here with 2 questions that are still out there. One is from Sam Bland from JPMorgan. You referred to the collaboration with the other divisions. Is the capacity that we hold in the Express division an important element of your overall Air Freight business? Or is it just adding to the flexibility? Or what's the main advantage there?

Well, the main advantage goes both ways. We secure sometimes capacity on some trade lanes where Express also needs support. So they co-load with us on deals that we have or the other way around. We co-load with them on certain trade lanes. And it gives us flexibility, and it can also bring us, depending on the customer, on the customer advice, what the customer needs. It can also bring us solutions, which only we can offer to customers because we have the flexibility of being the only large freight forwarder with a larger system who has lot of airplanes. So this gives us a great opportunity. And the working together part on this is really great to see. There's one -- one other element one has to keep in mind is, we can also use now in certain airports, the Express facilities for the handling, the import handling, of airfreight pallets. This can save a customer between 6 to 9 hours, depending on where the airplane lands on an airport because the process is that when the airplane lands, someone from the airport picks up the pallet, brings it to a handling agent who is paid by the airline, and then the forwarder picks it up with that handling agent. We can now bring the pallet in front of the facility of Express because they're always at the tarmac, and then we pull the goods through the facility onto our forwarding truck and bring the goods to the customer, do the customer clearance, anything else within the goods of the customer. This is something which is unique, which only we can do. And those are the great examples how the collaboration within the group is there and it can also be further developed.

Okay. Very good. I would say, interestingly, I think a very good question, summarizing all the bits and pieces that we heard now from you and Thomas coming from the buy side, actually. So with all that now manifesting, what does this mean for your long-term growth outlook and for our profitability relative to peers? In other words, how instrumental is this digital capability?

I think it brings us into a comparable situation with our peers, especially with DSV, including Nagel at the moment, because system-wise, I think we all are comparable -- when we have finalized the roll out of Air Freight, we are system-wide on a comparable level with them. And I think this should then give us the opportunity to continue year-by-year to get into a profitability situation on the GP conversion rate, which then at least goes in the direction with Kuehne, and if that -- if we do that, then later on into the next level that DSV we had. And I think it's just a question of timing and having the motivational teams around it to see that as an objective and to work on it. Of course, there will be dents that we have now with the situation which we -- no one planned and no one saw coming, which we in right now. But once this is over and we have a normal way of working again with normal macroeconomic KPIs, I have no issue. And I stated that in the past, continue to state that we can continue on the path that we've been in the past 2 years and continue that.

Okay. Excellent. So that now brings us 80 minutes into the whole thing. We want to keep it on the point. I think we brought across all the key information that we had for you. I'm hopeful that we were sort of putting together the topics that you wanted to cover with all your questions. If not, as always, the IR team is ready here to deal with any follow-on questions. For now, I would like to thank you, Tim and Thomas, of course, for taking the time and the effort to really take us through what you've been doing and how you see us positioned right now. For you, who are out there, thank you very much for joining. I hope this, an overall virtual format, sort of, worked out okay for you. Pretty sure there's room for learning curves also on our side. The next opportunity to practice will come in the not-too-distant future when we will look at how digitalization and technology is also helping Tim's colleague and the Supply Chain division, Oscar De Bok and his team. So with that, I'd like to thank you. I want to thank my team, who's done a very good job in putting this together and wish you all a good rest of the day or the afternoon wherever you are, and looking forward to talk to you soon. And in the meantime, please stay safe.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.