Quadient S.A. (QDT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, and welcome to Quadient's Third Quarter 2025 Sales Presentation. I am Anne-Sophie Jugean, Quadient's Head of Investor Relations, and I am here today with Geoffrey Godet, CEO; and Laurent Du Passage, CFO. We will have a short presentation followed by a Q&A. You can submit your questions in writing through the web or ask questions live by dialing into the conference call. Thank you very much. And with that, over to you, Geoffrey.

Thank you, Anne-Sophie, and good evening, everybody. For the third quarter of 2025, Quadient delivered EUR 248 million in revenue. While this reflects a 3.5% organic decline year-on-year. Our growth engines continue to show a strong momentum. Digital accelerated with a 9.2% organic growth driven by and sustained subscription growth across all regions. Our Lockers business accelerated in subscription growth and once again posted double-digit subscription revenue growth. Subscription growth for the Lockers is fueled by increasing customer adoption and the continued modernization of our U.S., Japanese and European locker networks. Meanwhile, Mail remained broadly in line with the previous quarter's trends and we now expect the rebound in U.S. hardware sales in the fourth quarter firmly. Let me highlight a few key achievements in the third quarter. Quadient's digital SaaS-based intelligent automation platform is now #1 worldwide. Let me repeat this, #1 worldwide for customer communication management according to the latest IDC ranking with a 11% market share in 2024. We are also expanding our portfolio with the future acquisition of CDP Communications, a pioneer in document accessibility and automation. This is an opportunity to reinforce our #1 position on the market. On the invoicing side, Serensia by Quadient, our recent acquisition of Q2 has completed all tests and is on track for final accreditation from the French tax authority. And this ahead of France National invoicing rollout planned for 2026. On the Locker side, we're expanding our European open locker network to Italy and further extending our footprint. Looking at the first nine months of the year, both Digital and Lockers delivered a double-digit growth in subscription-related revenue. So naturally, combined with the expected year-on-year full year EBITDA margin improvement in these Q activities, Digital and Lockers and the continued resilience of Mail margin, these results give us confidence in achieving our full year 2025 guidance. To you, Laurent.

Thank you, Geoffrey. Good afternoon, everyone. So on Slide 6, I would like to highlight some important developments in our shareholding structure since end of July. Here, you can see the shareholder positions as of the end of October. Our main shareholders have recently reinforced their commitment to Quadient. VESA equity investment, our largest shareholder, controlled by Daniel Kretínský has further demonstrated its long-term commitment on September 22. VESA crossed the 25% legal threshold and by end of October, it held 26.1% of Quadient shares, up from 22.7% held at the end of July. In addition, Bpifrance has also strengthened its position rising from 8.1% at the end of July, to 9.2% at the end of October. Furthermore, Bpifrance continued to increase its stake after October 31, reaching 9.91% as of November 14. Bpifrance public disclosures are available on the AMF website. Let me now go over the details of the 9 months key financials. Moving now to Slide 8. This waterfall chart shows the main factors behind the revenue evolution from the first 9 months of 2024 to the same period in 2025. Starting on the left with EUR 797 million, we see a EUR 13 million positive scope effect. It's mainly coming from the acquisition of Package Concierge in December last year and to a lesser extent, from Serensia. Digital & Lockers contributed positively with Digital adding EUR 15 million and Lockers EUR 7 million. However, you can see mail saw a EUR 48 million decline. It's more than half being related to hardware. And finally, currency effect stands at minus EUR 19 million due to U.S. dollar weaker this year than last year, starting Q2 onward. This results in a net EUR 32 million decrease. It's minus 4% reported, bringing us to the EUR 765 million. Moving now to Slide 9 to see the revenue evolution by geography. So due to the large success of the certification last year and slower recovery than expected this year, north America, Q3 and 9 months revenue declining around minus 4% compared to the year before, despite the good performance of growth of core engines locally. It differs from the past year's trends. On the other side, many European countries and international dynamic continues to show a decline consistent with past quarters, with Mail trend partially offset by Locker and Digital growth. But I think we need to mention that we have extremely promising install-based development on Locker side, U.K., France, Italy and also on the invoicing side for Digital. Moving now to Slide 10. So in the past years, we have been focusing on delivering sustainable growth on subscription-related revenue, fueled by the acceleration of Digital and low-cost subscription revenue streams. Subscription-related revenue from these two growth engine is up by 11.4% in the first 9 months of 2025 and represents EUR 228 million, as you can see on the left-hand side. Looking at the longer term, strategy focusing on this long-lasting predictable revenue has paid off when you look at the right-hand side of the slide. Since 2020, the share of subscription-related revenue from Digital and Lockers have almost doubled supported by a 15% CAGR over the 2020 to 2025 period. This reflects our strategic move from a transactional deal based model to a recurring revenue model transformation, we first implemented in Mail and successfully replicated into Digital and Lockers. Year after year, subscription revenue has grown steadily, driven by an expanding installed base. Strong market trends, digitalization and automation as well as parcel growth linked to e-commerce. While Mail continues to contribute its share of subscription revenue, it's gradually declining due to the market decline, primarily due to the mail volume decline. And this decline added by the growth in subscription rate revenue of Digital and Lockers. So let's now move to the business review section. Over to you Geoffrey to give some details on our digital business.

Thank you, Laurent. As I mentioned in the introduction, IDC ranked Quadient as the #1 global provider of customer communication management or CCM, as we mentioned it for a solution. This represents an 11% market share in 2024. I also want to emphasize that Quadient took the largest share of the market increase in 2024. Quadient actually grew almost 3x as fast as the market growth of roughly 5%, making Quadient the fastest-growing player at the same pace of actually player #3. Quadient is now #1 player globally for the first time. This achievement is the result of the quality of the execution of our digital strategy that we established in 2019. The key element is that we invested to move to the cloud. We move from license to SaaS model. We expanded our solution to target not only large companies, but also the fast-growing segment of midsized companies. And we leveraged our mail sales organization to cross-sell our digital solution to our mail customers as well. So I want to take this opportunity to thank our 15,000 customers and more than hundreds of partners across the world for the trust that they put in us every day. And naturally, I want to take just a few seconds to thank the Quadient teams across the world that are now the #1 in the industry for their relentless efforts, their expertise and their commitment to success. In addition, EY and Numeum recognized Quadient among the top three French software publishers in the category of horizontal solutions. And we're also the 17th overall company in the top 250 of their ranking. And most importantly, I think our true leadership is further validated this year by nearly 1,650 new customers acquired in just the last 9 months. So now moving to our latest acquisition. This is a Canadian company with decades of history in the system space. CDP Communication is a recognized leader in providing what we call advanced solutions that help businesses in their document transformation and most importantly, digital accessibility requirements. So to give you a little bit more context, more recently, compliance drivers around accessibility and I'll take the example of that with the EU Accessibility Act, which became effective earlier this year. And we have other similar regulations. They are all requiring companies to make all digital content fully compliant from an accessibility standpoint. And this includes customer-facing digitized documents, for example, such as the PDF output. So this new regulation, which come together naturally with a greater emphasis on making sure the customer communication is part of a greater overall customer experience and such for all customers is naturally creating a need for organization for businesses, right? to adopt the types of solution that CDP actually delivers. Fully integrating CDP together with our now leading intelligent automation platform, we believe that this will be able to more directly help our existing customers complying with these new market drivers and this new regulation, but also it will help us better competing for new customers because they will increase our differentiation on the market. And last but not least, this acquisition will be immediately accretive in terms of EBITDA basis upon closing, which is expected to happen in the coming weeks. Moving to Slide 14. So another major driver facing the market today is the invoicing regulatory mandates that are facing millions of companies across Europe. Quadient has been rapidly accelerating its ability to help companies and such of all sizes to comply with these new mandates and this naturally supported, of course, with our acquisition of Serensia that we did earlier this year in the second quarter. And we're seeing extremely strong momentum in this area, especially in the last few months. In France, after months of testing together with the central tax authority, Quadient has passed successfully all tests and is now waiting final certification as an approved and compliant invoicing provider. The strength of our solutions, Serensia by Quadient is what allows us to also rapidly grow our market share with some additional recent contracts awards that is putting us in a position to manage over more than 250 million digital invoices in 2026 when actually the government mandate will take effect. And our strength in the French market is also helping to build the momentum for us across other key European markets as well. And I think that the basis of that is that our underlying technology, right, which is integrated across our digital platform is being adapted on to the specific requirements of these markets, which is critical as European-wide mandates are going to be requiring invoicing for cross-border transactions. And those European mandates will come into effect by 2030 across the EU. And because our invoicing solution is so adaptable, so flexible from a technological standpoint, it allows us to attack now this massive market opportunity in very different ways. So not only are we selling it directly to our customers, but also through the integration with our communication and financial automation solutions. In addition to that, we are also partnering with other providers, right, that are integrating our offering into their own applications, and we call that either through what we call fully customized white labels approach or through less customized, I would say, "gray labels" couplings. With this leading product capability, and this 3-pronged go-to-market strategy, we're actually in a very strong position to grow and consolidate our market share by serving the needs of those 4 million businesses in our targeted market areas, which is really the B2B. Laurent?

Thank you, Geoffrey. So Digital continues to accelerate this quarter with a 9.2% growth, thanks to robust subscription rate of revenue and as well as stronger performance on license and professional services. Over 9 months, the growth stands at 7.9%, with a double-digit growth on subscription-related revenue, thanks to a strong underlying demand of SaaS offering in the U.K. being particularly dynamic. Our ARR has reached EUR 242 million, it reflects a 9.1% organic growth rate in terms of bookings, not reflected in this ARR. We are seeing strong sign-ups in France for invoicing and AP platforms which will contribute to revenue, notably in 2026. Overall, the digital segment is delivering sustained growth and is positioning us very well for the future. Now let's go through the Mail financial performance on Slide 16. So mail revenue continues to be impacted by lower hardware sales in the U.S. for Q3 hardware sales are down by 16.7%. It's primarily driven by limited recovery in U.S. mail hardware sales, subscription rate revenue also declined due to a strong comparison base. There was no rate change this year, whereas Germany and Nordics, both saw rate changes in Q3 '24. Over 9 months, hardware and licenses are done 17.3% and subscription-related revenues is down by 5.2%. Despite these headwinds, we see traction on the end of year pipeline. We remain focused on leveraging our strengths and pursuing opportunities for recovery and growth in the coming quarters. With that, I will hand over to Geoffrey for a deeper dive into mail.

So as Laurent just highlighted, for us, our priority is naturally driving the mail recovery at this stage. So very encouragingly, we are seeing now there's some very clear signs of the rebound in the U.S. mail hardware market in the third quarter. This is supported by improving demand trends. What we're seeing is that in the fourth quarter pipeline is already tracking ahead of the one we had in Q3. We see that renewal opportunities for 2026 are also stronger than the one we had in 2025. So we're expecting naturally a strong finish to the year as our portfolio of lease contract returns to a post-COVID momentum. The fundamentals of our mail market remain the same with usage volumes trends that are unchanged. And therefore, naturally, our forecast for midterm mail volume usage is also confirmed. So we're going to continue to capitalize on the highly dynamic segment for us, which is the large mail production sites. We have actually secured some major deals across Europe and North America lately, and in this segment, the flexibility and ease of use of our solutions, I think, are very much appreciated by both the print service providers, who is generally the service providers and the corporate mail centers of the big enterprise. Our solution often combines both the physical hardware and the digital delivery as customers naturally evolve their communication strategies today to a omnichannel capabilities. At the same time, the strength of our portfolio, which is to combine mail and digital is confirmed with the acceleration of our sales synergies and with the mail sales channels growing cross-sell of our portfolio of digital solutions, 22% year-on-year, and this includes actually a surge in financial automation bookings of more than 250%. In the third quarter, we also secured a major digital contract with a U.S. federal agency that is worth approximately $1 million and has been cross-sold by our mail sales team. Finally, we reached an important milestone, I think, in the digital transformation of our mail management with the launch of our next-generation smart mailing solutions in the U.K., which features some advanced security and what I believe, a groundbreaking new user interface in order to drive the renewal and the upsell of our installed base. So this new IX series that will come into 4 different version 4, 6 and 8 is combining both hardware and software innovations and that I think offers a very intuitive design faster access to information. It's a very easy integration with the rest of the Quadient cloud-based ecosystem as well. And I think we're blending ultimately the familiarity of a mobile experience that we're all accustomed to with intelligent automation. This is truly and effectively how we help customers simplify complexity, maintain control and ensure compliance as well. Now turning to the Lockers on Slide 18. I would like to take a moment to come back to our expansion strategy for Lockers. And this is a chart, I think, that many of you already know. The size of the e-commerce market by country, the locker installed base penetration by country as well, right, which is the locker network density in those countries. And the third one, which is the countries where Quadient is present for both lockers, but also for our other activities, in particular, mail activities. So the strategy is to develop our Locker network has been built around those 3 factors and combining them. And if you look at the top 3 e-commerce countries on the graph, you'll see relatively low locker penetration, excluding China, and that Quadient is present and growing in its market share in each of those countries. And I would add that in Japan, the level of lockers penetration is actually linked to our leading position in the country because we have more than 7,000 lockers so we're the one driving the density and the penetration in this country. In Europe, our focus has been mostly on the U.K. And if you recall, we launched the U.K. open network not long ago. and the adoption has been now quite impressive and very fast and that's proven in the significant growth in the volumes seen in the recent months. So I'll come back to it in the next slide. Now looking at other opportunities to expand our Lockers footprint in Europe and applying the same criteria as I mentioned before, we have recently announced our decision to launch a locker network in Italy. So let's move to the next slide. So the launch of the Italian locker network has been one of the key highlights, I think, for the Locker solution in the quarter. In Italy, we have already signed several carriers into the networks with GLS being one of them through a multiyear strategic partnership. And we do benefit also from our experience in Japan and more recently in the U.K. in terms of both location selection strategy and the management of the network, which drives ultimately more efficiency for the launch of our Italian network. As mentioned previously, volumes in the U.K. have been multiplied by a factor of 20 in January 2024, as supported by both adoption and rising density. Our Locker base globally now stands more than 27,100 lockers. And finally, I just wanted to highlight another key point for you is that we just unveiled a new solar-powered locker. This new Quadient, which we call X series is a battery-powered locker and provide reduced installation costs and reduce also further the CO2 emissions. This is a fully self-contained and autonomous locker, which provide us with more flexibility in terms of our outdoor open network location selections. So a lot of progress for our Locker solutions, which translates nicely into the financial numbers that are also continuing to improve. Laurent?

Thank you, Geoffrey. Lockers continued to demonstrate strong momentum in subscription rate revenue in the third quarter of '25. We saw robust strategic organic growth again in subscription rate revenue, reflecting outstanding volume ramp-up in the U.K. and France continued solid momentum in the U.S. and growing usage in Japan. Hardware services were down in Q3 may need to do a high comparison basis last year. The reported growth for the first 9 months of 2025, is very strong at 25.4%. This includes the positive impact from Package Concierge acquisition, which contributed EUR 12 million. The installed base and usage of our low-cost platform continue to expand, ensuring long-term growth perspectives with well-oriented underlying market trends. Over to you, Geoffrey, to conclude with the outlook.

Over the first 9 months of the year, our digital and Locker businesses, delivered, as you've seen, a strong double-digit growth in subscription-related revenue. Meanwhile, mail continued to follow prior quarter trends with the anticipated rebound in the U.S. hardware sales that we now expect for Q4. So far, we've got a good resilience of our EBITDA and EBIT margin after the first 9 months. So when I combine that with our expected year-on-year improvement in EBITDA margin for digital and lockers in addition to the resilience of the mail margin, these results reinforce our confidence in achieving our now full year 2025 updated guidance. So we maintain our guidance that is as presented on this slide. I want to thank you. And with that, we're ready to take your questions with Anne-Sophie and Laurent.

Our first question comes from the line of Jean-Francois Granjon at ODDO.

Yes. Jean-Francois speaking from ODDO BHF. Three questions from my side. The first one, could you come back on the low-cost business with a more limited growth for the Q3 compared to double digits we had during the first semester. So could we be more secular about that? And what do you expect for the coming quarters? The second question for the acquisition of CDP in Canada, could you give us some ideas on the size and the sales of this company? And for sure, the margin, you mentioned and accretive impact, but could you be more precise about that? And the last question is regarding next year 2026 at this stage, due to the fact that, in fact, we have a more limited growth of the -- slightly decrease in 2025. Do you expect -- nevertheless, do you confirm the target you have for the EBITDA margin for each division in 2026?

Laurent, do you want to take the first one?

Yes. So Jean-Francois, if you look at the growth of lockers in Q3, the main difference with H1 is really on the hardware and the hardware portion is, if you recall, Q3 last year, there was a strong double-digit growth on that hardware piece. That's the main explanation of the direction being different from H1. The subscription part is really well oriented, continue to be very well oriented, quite much in line with what we had in H1 and due to the development of notably, the open network in the U.K., as you could see, volume has been multiplied by 20 since January, and I think it's reflecting the fact that the network is growing, the recurring is coming with it. So I would say the hardware comparison is mostly one of the big 17.6% on subscription growth in Q3 compared to 16.1% over 9 months means it's even improving compared to Q3. And I think that's the metric that is particularly important. I would put the hardware momentary drop in comparison with the growth we had in Q3 last year.

So I'll take the second one. And Good evening Jean-Francois. Thank you for your question on CDP. So we're not going to give the exact information because the transaction is not closed yet, but just in terms of rough order of magnitude, I think CDP and I speak under the control actually of Laurent, on the revenue is probably around CAD 10 million on a yearly basis, sorry, CAD 7 million in term of revenue and with a percentage of EBITDA margin, that is probably more than twice where we could see currently in our digital platform. So it's a strong EBITDA margin contribution that we could expect on that limited scope. That being said, we haven't completed the acquisition yet. So we'll probably wait until we could see you again at the end of March to try to understand the perspective that we could have, in particular for our European-based customers. As I mentioned, they could all be interested in having those kind of compliance solutions and see how they could contribute to the further acceleration of the growth of digital next year. So it's a good acquisition. It's a long partner that we had a relationship with. We know them. It's mostly going to be an asset-based transfer. It's a limited number of people in Canada, the team know each other. We already have team in Canada. So we do expect also a quite easy and fast integration of both the teams, the technology so they could really benefit into our intelligent automation platform. And then for 2026...

I've already mentioned it. And in H1, Jean-Francois, yes, we confirmed the EBITDA margin by solution for 2026. And we stay confident as Geoffrey mentioned that in the outlook, of the positive development of each of the solution and the resilience of mail on the EBITDA.

The next question comes from Flavien Baudemont at Bernstein.

Good evening to all of you, and thank you for the presentation. I have two questions on my side. First, can you give us more color on the local's launch in Italy? What is the time line? How much lockers are you going to install and is there any other open network lockers in Italy? And the second question is on digital. Can you, let's say, confirm that the FX impact on the digital revenues is roughly minus 3%? Just to have an idea of what is the organic subscription revenue.

Flavien, thank you for your question. I will let Laurent take the second one. If you want to start with this one, maybe, Laurent, I'll take the first one...

I understand. You're asking the FX impact on the subscription-related growth?

On the [indiscernible] digital with the...

Yes. Exactly.

So in a nutshell, year-to-date on the revenue side, you have about EUR 20 million of impact at group level, okay? And the split between dollar and euro for each of the solution is approximately the same. So you should consider that you probably have around 2% of impact of currency on digital, which is the overall revenue of EUR 200 million. So we are probably about EUR 4 million.

So on the locker on Italy, obviously, we have a high ambition for this market because it's a market that is combining a lot of the things that we like to be able to go after market. It has a low penetration of lockers today. So it's a good time to get started. It's a country that is pretty high in its usage of e-commerce. So it's going to drive a lot of those flows that will need to have automation and most importantly, it's a fragmented market from a carrier perspective. So contrary to France or Germany, we do not have a dominant player that has more than 50%, 60% or 70% market share. So this is a much easier country for us to be able to have higher market share to ensure a minimum market share for us. So that's the first thing. This is why we like Italy. And we felt that based on the momentum and the news and the things we've seen from the other players, now would be the right time. You don't want to go too early and you don't want to be too late, right? So we think it's a good moment to start the race. As it relates to the pace, obviously, we are helped as we get studied in Italy by all the knowledge and the relationship that we have built and the other European, actually or the other countries network. So we are starting and we're embarking carriers. I mentioned GLS, but there are others that we have already a relationship with in other European countries. So that made the starting point to secure volume and long-term relationship faster and easier. So we're really down now to how fast we can secure good location. And on that front, on the other hand, we'll be very pragmatic because we want to secure a good location. We know very well by experience that location is prime from that perspective. It's like in real estate, location, location, location. We have actually built an AI engine with our own modeling to be able to learn on what could be the best locations, and that's what we're starting to do. So we're really at the early stage, and we'll see how long we need to take. Before we go at a much lesser pace naturally, we're going to ensure that everything works operationally that we can ramp up the few first hundreds. And based on the traction we could get, especially with the selection of location. I'm sure, by March, it will be much easier to give you a better sense of what it could mean in terms of ramp-up. At this time, we're really at the beginning of the launch. Thank you for your question, Flavien.

And just Flavien, one last point. I told you 2%, EUR 19 million of our EUR 765 million more 2.5%. So [indiscernible] 4 million takes 5 million, I think is probably a bit more accurate for the digital ForEx impact.

Okay. Maybe a follow-up on the lockers in Italy. Do you think it's going to be easier to find location in Italy rather than in the U.K.

It's a good -- very relevant question because as you mentioned, finding location is key, could be tricky. So a few things that we also have for us is we also have retailers that we have signed retail chain that we have signed in France or in the U.K. that are European retailers and also already have footprint in Italy. So I'm thinking, for example, of pretty large customers of ours like Decathlon for which we're going to install those lockers as well as in Italy and that have prime locations, so that makes it easier. Two, because it's a market that is not yet penetrated with many lockers. There is obviously more opportunities and easier opportunities to find those locations compared to the U.K., in which we shared transparently that we started on the other hand, a little bit late compared to some of the ideal condition that I outlined for Italy, which made the selection more competitive in terms of location with the other players that already had existing footprint. So that's why overall, it feels today, but it's very early, and this is also we to start that. It should be an easier pass, but the proof is in the delivery. So that's why I look forward really to try to update you at the end of March to see after probably 6 months, 5, 6 months, what progress we have made in terms of the potential ramp-up in finding good affordable locations.

We have a couple of written questions sent through the webcast. So I hand the conference back to you, Anne-Sophie.

Thank you. So we can move on to the written questions. So we have a first question on mail. Actually, two questions on mail. So can you detail the performance of the mail hardware in Europe versus the U.S. Is there any difference of renewal opportunities between these regions? And second question on mail. What makes you confident that you will see a recovery in Q4. why was Q3 weaker than you expected?

Which one do you want to take, Laurent?

I can take the first one. So I think from a hardware perspective, in -- over the 9 months, the trajectory, I mean, the trend for this time is quite similar in NorAm, in Europe, but for two different reasons. I think in Europe, we've seen historical decline on the hardware portion being north of double digit, whereas in NorAm, it used to be relatively flat or even growing in the past years. The reason for having this year, a decline of NorAm at the level or close to -- or a bit more than the level, in fact, than Europe is mostly driven by the decertification moves we had last year. It's not related to an overall trend that would have changed. And I think it's important to underline that you have close results for two different reasons.

And we don't expect major change in the future trends of Europe. So this way, we felt that pretty confident when we see the usage of the various European countries that our long-term assumptions or midterm assumptions are quite realistic today and been proven accurate over the last 7, 8 years. I think we get a good way to predict that. And out of all the European countries, the French country France as a country, sorry, is probably the one where we see the highest level of decline and the lowest level of usage. And on the opposite end, we see in Germany, the highest level of usage on the machine, the highest level of renewals and the lowest level of decline out of the European countries. So that's a good side way to explaining the Q3 performance, and it's really building on the explanation that Laurent gave. There's really 2, 3 things, I think, that make up a result of a particular quarter or a particular year in the mail in the U.S. To explain Q3, they will explain Q4 evolution and what we also expect for 2026. The bigger gap that we've seen that explained Q3, but also Q1 and Q2 in 2026 is the fact that the market opportunities has been dried up because of the end of the certification program that happened by the postal organization in '23 and '24 for which we enjoyed double-digit placement of hardware in the U.S. market during that period of time. And as we did the same thing, which is to go back to the customers and engaging with them, our competition did the same thing. So we exhausted a little bit for a long period of time, most of the new opportunities in the market. That's the reason where we see after a high comparison basis, lower level of placement. That being said, the further away we move from the end of that decertification that really ended for us started to end in Q3, Q4 of 2024. The easier it will be to find those new opportunities as they become part of a natural cycle of customers looking for either renewing or extending contracts. The second driver for which we have very clear visibility is the renewal of existing customers. So for every new quarter that we get into or every new year or every new period that we get into, by anticipation, we know for Q4, how many customers of existing contracts are up for renewal. We know today for 2026, how many contracts are for renewal for 2026. So what we could say with confidence today is that the level of those renewals are increasing in Q4 compared to Q3 and '26 will have a higher level of opportunities for us to renew versus '25. And why are we confident on that is that we actually had a lower point of opportunities to renew those existing contracts because we suffered from the lagging effect of the COVID impact that we had 5 years ago. So 5 years ago, in 2020, we had lower renewal opportunities and placements because of the confined period. And the year after, which is '21, we've seen a bounce of those engagement in those customers, so more contract plays and more contract renewed. And naturally, 5 years later, which is first '26 and a little bit in Q4 '25 because the rebound started in Q4 2020, we see that we can count on those. So that's really where we have our confidence is built, and this is the way when I look now at the pipeline we created in Q3, which is the sum of the renewal opportunities from the base that I just described and the result of the effort that we do with the sales team to go after customers and prospects to identify those opportunities, driven both by our sales team, but also driven by demand generation activities by our partners we see with more confidence that the pipeline is much bigger as we go into Q4 and bigger opportunities we could close in Q4 and same thing for the opportunities that we're starting to see for the beginning of 2026. So this is why we have more factual evidence of why Q4 is going to be, obviously, a better quarter, a much better quarter than we've seen for the rest of the year.

Follow-up questions on mail. What is the current mix of hardware sales in Europe versus the U.S.?

Yes, it's more a question for me, Geoffrey.

As you wish, Laurent.

No, I think it's for me. So we don't generally publish that level of information because if we start giving hardware by region or by country, it starts to be quite a demanding number of data, and we already shared, I think, a lot of data. That being said, I think we can probably say that there is a slightly stronger proportion of hardware in NorAm than there is in Europe, also due to the fact that there is a level of least penetration is particularly high. So I think that's the color we can give.

Thank you, Laurent. Moving on now to lockers. Is there any other existing open network of locker provider in Italy?

Yes, there is. You have -- at our open network, it's a good point. I think you have a semi -- I think it's a private network, actually, but I think it's the results, sorry, of the joint venture between the Italian postal organization and DHL. So that's the one. You have also some lockers coming from Amazon already in place in the market. And that's, I think, the key element, the one top of mind. I'll try to think if I missed any. But again, those networks are relatively small in comparison to the network you could see in Poland or even in France or in the U.K.

Still on Locker. So Vinted recently announced it was launching in the U.S. in some limited cities and states to begin with. Could this be an opportunity for you to look at the open networks in the U.S.

It's a very good question, and it gives me an opportunity to share back a little bit where we are in the U.S. We have launched already quite a few initiatives as there is to ramping up an open network in the U.S. We have an open network that is what we call at home with quite a high level penetration of the at-home market for those open network, and it's an open network at home because all carriers, right, all players can deliver into a single locker is not limited to Amazon product at a home or a multifamily situation. So we now -- I took the question in the angle of looking at the open network out of 1 in the U.S. And we have placed already some lockers in that context, both in Canada, actually in the U.S., in Canada with partners like [indiscernible]. We have already also made some more than proof of concept because we have some live lockers in Atlanta and in New York City. So we are obviously refining and fine-tuning what could be the best way to expand the out-of-home open network opportunity in the U.S. market for us. So that's the first thing. So we're quite active on this. And as it relates to that, definitely, I see the potential venture of intent in the U.S. as clearly another way to be able to accelerate on the U.S. consumer trends and behaviors to get them more comfortable for an out-of-home delivery versus at-home delivery because today, contrary, for example, a country like France, where a lot of the deliveries are done out of home with the -- like the [indiscernible] distribution, including also the lockers. The U.S. market is mostly at home delivery, right? So there is definitely an opportunity to rebalance, not necessary to rebalance, but to provide another level of automation on top of the at-home delivery to provide an out-of-home delivery. And in that context, players like Vinted or others coming in the U.S. market would definitely help accelerate that potential penetration. And I think we're in a very good position to benefit or seize those opportunities.

Thank you, Geoffrey. We have a last question on Lockers. So what does the increased volumes translated into increased profitability in the Lockers business providing your strategy of having a succession model?

So I think we need to remind that on the open network, we have a combination of both fixed and variable revenue on the subscription side. I think the fixed part, and that's what we shared with you in the past quarters is we don't like to go in an open network without a commitment. And I think that, that commitment that we built together with [ Carrier ] so that we are safe on -- at least we limit the level of risk we take. And clearly, the volume part that goes on top is whatever will bring the incremental margin that obviously is almost 100% margin because basically, for the same investment, you get more revenue, and it's not because you have 10 parcel or 5 parcel but because the odds are just the same, just about the same, probably some levels that you should factor in. So there is, for me, a great relevance having, especially on an open network, an ownership of the asset where your role, our role is to bring in volume sufficiently to enhance the margin to the maximum we can, so meaning driven by the using usage of these lockers but we only entered that scheme when we get a certain level of commitment, which you could translate as a fixed, and that can offset our investment and all the margin will come from our ability to attack more volume.

Thank you, Laurent. So now we can move to digital questions and more specifically on invoicing. So in the context of the investing mandate, what do you think of the acquisition of Shine by Cegid, what impact does this consolidation has on your strategy and positioning in this sector?

Thank you for this question. So definitely, a more strategic consideration. So I need to step back a little bit to give you some context. So I think for everybody on the call, Shine is French or I think actually not French, but I think they're based in Denmark or Netherlands, I forget exactly the mother company, but it's a mostly French operating company that is an online solution for the very low-end companies, very, very small companies, right, and try to provide them an online banking, full-stop solutions that includes the capability to not just do banking transaction, but also invoicing accounts receivable, accounts payable, et cetera, and obviously, being able to certify the invoice for the upcoming mandate in the French market. This company has been -- I think it's probably in the EUR 60 million or EUR 50 million in revenues, but it's been acquired for, I think, a EUR 1.5 billion valuation by Cegid with the help of Silver Lake. And that really is a way for Cegid as well, right, on the accounting system for the low end to try to provide a holistic solution for those very low end customers. It is our view today that potentially a combined holistic solution, including the banking aspect, stood better the need of those very low-end customers that have the need like bigger companies, not necessarily the means to pay for a lot of value for it. And therefore, a one-stop package could potentially be helpful for them. This is also the reason why we have decided for the time being, not to go after several years because we obviously had many opportunities to consider it. Our strategy has been deliberately to not go after those very low-end customers, but focus on what we call the enterprise and mid segment, the mid segment going sometimes to companies up to 20 people in size. And we consider that mid-enterprise segment is much more suited to the strength of our Intelligent Automation platform. And this is combined both from a technological perspective, I would say, an ISP in value versus the customer acquisition costs, those very low-end customers. So that when we call the customer acquisition cost versus the long-term value LTV and CAC is what you can -- you need to measure. And that makes a very difficult equation for us to see a successful path. We've seen that with companies, I think a little bit like Backup that is based in Belgium that is also addressing the low end of the market. We see that a little bit more with companies like [ Bill.com ]. So you need a pretty extensive high base to try to scale to potentially generate profit, and we haven't seen many companies actually have not seen any making money on that. So we see the low-end market being addressed potentially more by those banking solution, online banking solutions. On our side, that gives us comfort that on the other hand, our mid-enterprise strategy is a successful strategy for digital approach, where the combination and the platform approach to have a holistic view of how to engage with the customer in the business communication, the contract, the orders process, the relationship you have on the business side up to the invoicing and how to collect and how to send those invoice and how to collect the cash is a most successful approach on that mid-enterprise segment. And I do believe today that most players will either position themselves on mid-enterprise segment, no longer stay on enterprise, mid-enterprise or low end and also have to have a need to go from a niche products, narrow product solution to a platform solutions and other M&A activities in the recent months or years actually have confirmed, I think, the vision that we have on the market today. I think on our position, we're quite satisfied. We have anticipated those moves now for quite a few years and being passed the time to integrate those solutions and to adapt the go-to-market. And that's I think what we're seeing, in particular, in Europe and the French market is the acceleration of the pipeline of the momentum. Here, the last few months have been very successful for us in seeing the traction that we wanted to see in the French market.

And especially on Serensia and invoicing, do you see upside to your CMD plan, thanks to the already significant market share that you have captured on invoices?

It's another good question. So Serensia was not -- I mean, the acquisition of Serensia was not part of our CMD plan. During the CMD, we had definitely accounted for being able to provide a solution to our customers for the compliance aspect of the invoice, but we had the plan to do that through a more white label approach using a third party to do so. So the upside actually is now resulting in the benefit of the acquisition from Serensia. So what did Serensia provided us above and beyond, I would say, the volume of invoicing, we could have captured in the CMD plan is a few things. Not only we have that certified platform that seems to be one of the best in the market today. We have already secured probably 10%, 15% market share potentially based on the numbers of invoices that we have on the contract for the upcoming mandates, which out of the 118 companies that are applying for it, puts us in a very strong position to be the leading or one of those leading company. So that's definitely combining the strength of Quadient and Serensia and that's above and beyond, I think, what we had anticipated. The second thing is definitely the fact that Serensia also had a strength in their go-to-market with partners, right? So they've been more successful or they had initiated the fact to resell the platform in white label or gray capacity that I mentioned earlier and allowing other players to go potentially after the low end of the market. And we've seen that with platform like Cerfrance that certified accountant network in France. We've seen that with Dext, that is addressing also as a software player, the low end of the market. And we are continuing to sign additional partnership on that front. So that's obviously also a nice upside. And I think the last one is the fact that Serensia has an invoicing platform that provide reporting and dashboarding capability for the large enterprise so that we could go direct. Our opportunities in France was mostly focused on the mid segment. And we've seen recently that by combining Serensia invoicing platform and the Quadient offering, we've secured a large enterprise in France actually, even just in the last few days, but also throughout Q3. And that's -- and we're combining the Serensia invoicing platform with our Inspire platform, with our Evolve platform, as well. So the combo of those solutions is really what we did not necessarily anticipate on the enterprise segment and that we are seeing just the early signs. So same thing. I think we'll probably have better visibility on what it could mean for the French growth for us next year.

Thank you, Geoffrey. We are done with the business-related questions, so we can move on now to the financial questions. So first question, can you provide some insight into the main factors of uncertainty included in the EBIT margin guidance for 2025 from stable to low single-digit decline? In other words, what conditions are necessary to achieve stable EBIT?

So overall, as you remember, the guidance has led to losing digit decline on the top line and from flat to losing decline on EBIT. In H1, we had maintained the EBIT at the same level. The key question for the [ year ] is about a mix. We are confident, I think, in the evolution, the positive evolution of EBITDA percentage, both in Locker and Digital, that we are going to be resilient in May. But as you know, the EBITDA is still higher than the one for the worse engines. So depending on where we go in terms of revenue for mail, or for Q4, where we have expectations that Geoffrey mentioned being stronger than the one of Q3. That's going to make or not a more favorable Q4 and a more favorable full year. If we have that additional top line, it will help if we don't have it, it may fall on the low single-digit decline more than stable.

Thank you, Laurent. And we have one last question. Just from a theoretical perspective, some brokers believe that everything is ready for a carve-out of one of your free business, legal, central functions. But do you believe that the good traction of the cross-selling prevents you from any possible carve-out?

This is an interesting question. So I think I understand which broker you refer to. I think it was probably a note from David Cerdan from Kepler and that's something actually that we have shared quite regularly, right, that you need to differentiate the fact that we have organized the company in 3 independent structures, those 3 independent companies to some extent got to have their own life and which means that from a technical perspective, any carve-outs are possible, or we can divest any of those business. We could bring investors at any of those business versus the benefit that we enjoy and benefit from, from the synergies among those 3 business and working together then and then. And so one doesn't prevent the other. We are both ready from an organizational standpoint to have those 3 business organized independently. Laurent worked on that for the last 3 years. And on the other hand, we enjoyed from increased benefit and synergies as we could see in the third quarter result where we see the cross-sell on both financial automation for digital solution as well on our CCM solution, increasing quite fast. On the Locker side, sometimes we spend a little bit less time together to mention that, but we have also have increasing benefit from both the cross-selling, in particular, in some corporate segments, university segment or with the carriers but as well from an operational standpoint where we leverage the same capability to maintain and support a network of device on the mail side and a network of device on the Locker side. So one is not independent of the other. We're fully equipped today to benefit from all opportunities.

Thank you, Geoffrey. We have no further question at this time, so we can close the call. Thank you very much for attending this presentation and for your questions. Our next call will be on the 25th of March 2026 for full year 2025 results release. In the meantime, we look forward to meeting some of you in the coming days during our shows. Thank you, and have a good evening.