Österreichische Post AG (POST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Emma, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining Austrian Post Annual Results for 2020. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Harald Hagenauer, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call of Austrian post. Today, we would love to discuss the Q4 figures for -- from 2020, the full year figures from 2020. Outlook, of course, but also some kind of long-term targets for 2030 on our sustainability program. And now I would love to hand over to Walt Oblin to start the presentation. Afterwards, we can go into a Q&A session. Go on Walter.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our results for the full year 2020. As a summary upfront, 2020 has proven that Austrian Post has a resilient business model. That we are strategically well positioned to capture opportunities from strong growth in e-commerce. And with a strong Q4, we could deliver full year results beyond the expectations that we communicated in Q3. And finally, with a dividend proposal of EUR 1.60 we, 1 more year, deliver on our promise of being an attractive and reliable dividend stock. Let me start the presentation on Page 3, providing you with a short overview of Austrian Post. This is the first year where we report in 3 operating segments, Mail with a revenue of EUR 1.2 billion or roughly 56% of our revenues, Parcel & Logistics revenue strongly increased to EUR 914 million, roughly 41% of our total revenue and Retail & Bank includes our branch network and our newly funded bank99 with revenues of EUR 65 million. Total group, roughly EUR 2.2 billion and full year EBIT of EUR 161 million. Page 4. As you know, 2020 was fundamentally impacted by the pandemic and was a very rough ride through the quarters. Q2 was the quarter where the pandemic really hit us with strong negative impact on Letter Mail and Direct Mail and the surge in parcels, which we were challenged to cope with and to sort in combination with an infection chain, we also had high additional costs, also negatively impacting our profitability. Q3 provided a recovery back to -- not fully, but way back to normality. And Q4, in Austria, the second wave hit, again, with a shorter second lockdown. And here, I think we could show that our Letter Mail and Direct Mail business was quite resilient in the second lockdown. With Letter Mail only down minus 3%, and Direct Mail only down minus 8%. And on the other hand, Parcel strong growth. At this time, with very efficient processes. And as a result, we could also capture the opportunities and the profit potential from the surge in parcels. And as a result, with a strong Q4, we can now communicate here strong full year results with full year revenue up 8.3% to EUR 2.2 million -- EUR 2,189 million in revenue and parcel business growing at -- by 44.4%. And part of that is 4 months of our full consolidation of Aras Kargo, our new fully consolidated subsidiary. Without Aras, Parcel grew at about 28%. Earnings of, as I said, group EBIT of EUR 166 -- EUR 160.6 million. 2020 was a year where we did not push the break on our investment program, rather we accelerated it because we saw that the surge in parcels requires even more capacity, and we try to push through on our capacity expansion program and in some areas, accelerated it. And today, we can also provide a confident outlook for 2021, and I will close with this outlook. Page 6, shows you a more detailed breakdown of our revenue development for 2020 compared to 2019. Mail down 100% -- sorry, EUR 100 million or 7.4%. 100% would be a little bit too much. EUR 100 million, 7.4%. Parcel, more than overcompensating this decline with a growth of EUR 281 million, EUR 101 million coming from Aras. The other EUR 180 million coming from organic growth in Austria and Eastern Europe. Retail & Bank down EUR 16 million. We still had revenues from our former -- from the cooperation with our former bank partner in 2019 and only started our new bank in the second quarter of 2020. So very good revenue development, record growth in the more recent history of Austrian Post. And this, in particular, was a strong Q4, was also the basis and -- for a, I would say, solid EBIT development where our -- with EBIT in our logistics business, so the -- some of the EBIT of our Mail and Parcel & Logistics divisions was almost stable despite the decline in Mail, despite the fact that we had to digest almost EUR 26 million in pandemic related additional costs. So the EBIT from our Logistics business almost stable. And the decline then is a net outcome, mostly coming from the buildup of our new bank99, which produced ramp up losses of around EUR 40 million as we guided in Q3. So total group EBIT then EUR 160.6 million or 20% down from last year. Page 8. With that, with those full year results, we -- I think, can say that we delivered now the 11th year, pretty much in the current management team on our promise of being a reliable dividend stock. We're now in the second very fundamental and deep crisis, we showed that we can deliver stable and in this case, now even growing revenues, decent margins, reliable delivery on promises. And with our dividend proposal of EUR 1.60, we keep our dividend policy as we did last year where we decided during the peak of the pandemic not to cancel our dividend but to pay out after our AGM in June. And fourth point, and we would like to emphasize this as of now, a lot more than in the past. Decarbonization of logistics is also not only an area where we have a strong track record in the past, but also where we have committed us to ambitious targets and where we will also, during this presentation, provide more color. So let me now proceed and give you some more details on the development in the core business line -- core business lines along the framework -- along the new framework that we communicated in Q3, summarizing our strategy with the 3 business pillars: Number one, defending market leadership and profitability in our core business. This is about defending our Austrian Mail and growing our Austrian Parcel business. Pillar 2 profitable growth in near markets, meaning geographically near market, this is about growth in our Eastern European and Turkish parcel networks. But also about growth in adjacent areas of the value chain around Mail, our business solutions business and around Parcel, our logistics solution business. And Pillar 3 developing more offerings for private customers and SMEs. This includes our retail network, our bank and our e-commerce marketplace shipping. And that all supported by a strong and enhanced emphasis on sustainability, diversity and customer orientation as a guideline for all our business activity. Let me now shed some more light on some core business areas, starting with Letter Mail. Volume decline last year of around 7% with a strong deviation and change along the 4 quarters of the year: Q1, in line with around 5% that we had in previous years; Q2 then the effect of -- the impact of 9 weeks lockdown, around minus 13%; then recovery in Q3 was minus 6%; and in Q4 a very strong -- relatively strong Mail business with a decline of only 3%. This comes from also increasing share of e-commerce products in Mail, which were heavily used in the weeks prior to Christmas where also a lockdown fundamentally pushed e-commerce in Austria. Page 12, our Direct Mail business. This is -- this is area that suffered most from the pandemic, in particular, in Q2, but also in the quarters following. At the same time with a dynamic that in particular, the unaddressed part of this always came back when stores opened again. We also saw this now in the beginning of the year 2021, where we had 5 weeks of lockdown, with, of course, almost 0 leaflet distribution from nonfood retailers and once they reopened, this business came back. What has not fully come back is our addressed Direct Mail business. Here, we're still suffering from almost 0 activity in many business areas in Austria from tourism to event -- event business and also the continued difficulty of certain nonfood retail segments such as fashion, which are important customers of addressed Direct Mail. So total decline 11% Q4, around minus 8%. Moving to our Parcel business. Parcel was a very -- for Parcel business 2020 was a very successful year in Austria. Starting now here with Austria where not only we saw strong market growth fueled by the pandemic but also substantial market share growth, on one hand, resulting from the takeover of the DHL network that started in August 2019. But also from organic market share growth, you see here the most recent market share statistics where, in particular, in the B2C area, we gained share by around 8.9% in the B2C segment from around 65% to 71%. So we are the clear #1, B2C player in the Austrian market and the growth in the parcel market has almost exclusively come from this segment. As a result, Page 14, our parcel volumes showed record growth of around 30%. Also here, you see the quarterly development. And you also see that even after the DHL impact was not included anymore in the previous year comparison. In Q4, we had a record pure organic growth of 32%, of course, 5 weeks or a few weeks of closed stores helped here. And of course, the Christmas season provided a strong boost. And as I said, we were also, and this leads us to Page 15, able to add additional capacity during Q3, 2 large sorting centers, and we continue to add capacity to more bigger sorting centers are in the pipeline, one in Tyrol, one in Upper Austria, planned for launch this year and next year. And as a result, 2021 -- sorry, 2020, produced a higher CapEx than historic was EUR 143 million. And we do expect also for 2021 an even higher CapEx number, also given the fact that this year, the Aras CapEx will also be included in our figures. Yes. Page 16 shows you the ramp-up of our expansion projects in Austria, basically pretty much every sorting center will be either built new, substantially larger or substantially expanded. Given that we still have to -- a lot of material to get through, I would suggest we move to Page 17. Our stats transformation continues to come along. You see that the change from expensive civil servant in old collective wage agreement to the new collective wage agreement is continuing. At the same time, the increase in parcel volumes led to an increase in total staff numbers. Again, please do not forget that we took over a full Austrian-wide network from DHL. And I think in total, we still saw a lot of productivity improvements. Page 18, probably for the first year in -- also in POST's recent history, our international portfolio really added substantially to the bottom line of Austrian Post in all areas. I think we saw ourselves strategically well positioned for the development at the pandemic pushed and increasing digitization, increasing push in e-commerce. And as a result, growing parcel volumes and growing demand for e-commerce solutions. This helped fuel growth in Eastern Europe, where we had volume growth of around 27%. This helped a lot -- supported a lot positive development of Aras Kargo. I'll come to that in a second. But it also added momentum to smaller subsidiaries, such our Austrian subsidiary, ACL, advanced e-commerce labs providing e-commerce solutions for midsized business -- businesses and also our German remaining subsidiaries our Austrian Post International sales company in Germany and our stake in the German wholesale -- pharmaceutical wholesaler AEP also showed nice growth. Let me talk a few seconds about Aras Kargo on Page 19. Aras Kargo showed a revenue growth of almost 70% last year. And all this at a very strong double-digit margin. As you remember, we closed the takeover of another -- of additional 55% shareholdings at August 25 last year. We are now owning 80% of the shares in Aras Kargo and have started to fully consolidate Aras Kargo as of August 25. And those 4 months also provided already a nice profit contribution to the bottom line of Austrian Post Group. And we see Aras Kargo is #2 or probably already #1. This is -- the statistics are a little bit unclear. At least we are head on with the other big competitor in the Turkish parcel market, we see Aras Kargo really well positioned to capture the future growth potential in the Turkish parcel market. Let me shed some light on the development of bank99. As most of you are aware, we launched this bank in the middle of the lockdown beginning of Q2 on April 1, out of the home office. The bank is up and running since then. In the meantime, we have 70,000 customers, most of them paying current account customers, the current focus is to grow this customer base and Page 21 expand the product line. We have a good product portfolio in the area of payment services are now adding loan and savings products, including asset management services. Also a very good year with a boost for our online marketplace shöpping.at in the median Austria's largest domestic marketplace. The value proposition of this marketplace is to offer the opportunity for Austrian consumers to buy at Austrian retailers and producers. Our parcel volumes, order volumes and trading revenues grew by a multiple of 3 to 4 and we, again, saw here also good growth continuing in the current year. We have not reached breakeven yet, but we think we are in a good way to establishing shöpping as the leading domestic marketplace in Austria. Yes. Page 23 just gives you an update on the well-known successful self-service solutions. I want to leave it with that. And come to the fourth overarching strategy element, the area of sustainability, diversity and customer orientation. Page 25 shows you that we committed ourselves to ambitious targets in 3 areas: One is economic sustainability. Here we give us ourselves a target to reach a revenue of EUR 3 billion in 2030 based on steady parcel growth. This is not about transformational and M&A. This is about really building out our parcel networks in Austria, in Eastern Europe and Turkey. Second area environment and climate here. Already last time, I explained the 3 ambitious targets that we gave ourselves. A 40% reduction in absolute CO2 footprint from 2020 to 2030, 70% decrease in specific CO2 footprint from 2009 where we started to really work on sustainability to 2030 again and target -- the third target, 100% carbon-free delivery in Austria. Meaning that we will not operate any vehicle relying on combustion engines in our last mile in Austria in the year as of the year 2030. And third area people and social here, again, our target is to be a top employer with a diverse workforce and leadership team. But I would like now to briefly hand over to Harald Hagenauer, who is not only our -- who's is not only leading our IR team since 2006, but also our sustainability initiatives already for a long number of years, and he will introduce you a little bit to the program that we set up within Austria Post and some of the quantitative developments in that area.

Thanks, Walter. Yes. Maybe to give you a bit more details on our program. We do have clear target in all the 3 cornerstones of sustainability. Walter mentioned already the economical target to go up to being a EUR 3 billion company and being possibility, of course, by doing that, but also focusing on our customers, customer inclusion, customer orientation to bring new products and services online. Very important, of course, everything in connection to the decarbonization, the vehicle fleet and our buildings. This, I think, very important in these times. And also very important that we do have a bigger set on real targets or in the segment of people and society, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, diversity, health and safety. So the accident is down minus 15%. So we do have, on the one hand, a very big program. On Page 27, for example, you can see that there's a kind of master plan in place where we want to handle all the material issues in this topic. And we do have a road map there, for example, especially in the sector economy and end customers to work on the whole supply chain. So our products, our procurement, our governance, everything is very important to improve the situation there. In terms of decarbonization, we did talk already. And also it's a very important point on people and society from the work culture, to data protection and the program improve, increase the rate of -- in our headcount. When we take a look at the numbers, the employee numbers, for example, it's interesting that especially in the year 2020 where we have the COVID environment where we had 30% more parcels in our portfolio. The -- all the key figures did turn to get better. So fluctuation did go down by 25%, sick leaves did go down. We had almost -- our whole accident frequency did go down. And of course, we had, again, 0 vehicle accidents. So very good performance here on the staff side. So COVID and all the health and safety measurements did help a lot to improve these figures. Also in terms of the CO2 footprint, we are quite happy that we could improve our most important targets since the start of the program in 2009. Be the absolute terms, but also be the relative figures because very important to know is that our volume, of course, the shipments has more than tripled between 2009 to 2020. In 2009, Austrian Post delivered 60 million parcels. And in 2020, it delivered 166 million parcels. So that shows that because the fact that we tripled the volume, the carbon footprint did go down quite a lot. In absolute terms, it's about 7% or 8% or so. And we have the clear target to further work on our footprint to bring the volume down by another 40% to 2030. So we are CO2 neutral already since 2009, but we want to be, of course, CO2 free for the last mile business. So we have to work on buildings. We have to work on the postal cars and vans. As Walter told already from 2024 onwards, we just want to buy electric cars and more. And of course, we also have signed up a couple of programs to change the footprint of our trucks. So here, we have to work on fuel cell-driven trucks but also hydrogen trucks. And last but not least, of course, with these volumes in mind, it's very important to reduce a specific carbon footprint with the reduced volume. And here, our target is, of course to go down by 70% from our base line number in 2009. So -- and last but not least, in all our ESG activities, rating is important -- guidelines are important. We are reporting since '22 -- sorry, 2010, in our sustainability reporting according to GRI and we started CO2 report under TCFD. So we have done a published scenario's about global warming. So to a great degree increase of order -- decrease increase so what happens -- what is happening with Austrian Post, this environment test always done. So we think we are here. We're already on track to publish under a very transparent way. And these transparencies always be in our ratings. So I think we are well on track to be placed in the portfolio of ESG front. Well thanks, Walter. You go on with the figures.

Thank you, Harald. Let me continue now with Chapter 3 group results and go a little bit more into the numbers. Page 34, again, summarizing our financial KPIs. I think the revenue, I have commented on EBITDA margin of 14%, I think, given the environment, a quite solid number, EBIT margin, 9.6% in our core logistics business, almost on the level that we've seen in recent years, 7.3% for the group. Earnings per share of EUR 1.75 and a free cash flow of EUR 125.7 million shows that our business has been -- has shown a robust cash generation. Equity ratio of 24.4%. The significant decline in equity ratio is not due to the fact that we have reduced equity. Our absolute equity is almost stable at an absolute number of EUR 650 million. The decline is due to an extension of our balance sheet due to our bank99 and due to the full consolidation of Aras. Page 35 shows you our group P&L. I think all lines of the P&L are, of course, impacted by a good 4 months of consolidation of Aras Kargo with a revenue -- full year revenue of around EUR 280 million. I would not like to comment now on the detailed lines of the group P&L. Is there a question? I'm happy to answer them. Profit for the period, EUR 115 million resulting in an earnings per share of EUR 1.75. Let me shed some light on the divisional development. Starting with our Mail division. Here in our Letter Mail segment, I would say, a resilient figure of only 4.2% despite all what happened last year, in particular, surprisingly positive development also for us in Q4 with a small revenue increase compared to previous year. On the other hand, Direct Mail, as I already said, substantially impacted by the pandemic and, in particular, by lockdowns with -- for the full year decline of 12.5% in revenues. EBIT margin on Page 37 was 13.4%, again, showing a resilient Mail business showing that we can take out costs in the Mail segment when volumes decline and that we can shift utilization in our Mail network to the Parcel business, given that we operate in a highly integrated last mile across Austria. Moving to our Parts & Logistics division on Page 38. Revenue growth in this division of 44.4%, without Aras around 28%. In Austria, almost 30% growth in Eastern Europe also a very good growth in Turkey, adding, as I said, already EUR 101.5 million revenues for 4 months. And this good growth, in particular, strong Q4 growth and profit development led to a full year EBIT in the Parcel segment of EUR 33.5 million, almost doubling last year's profits, a strong EBIT margin surpassing our own expectations at 8.0%. And a double-digit margin in Q4, probably not sustainable or, I would say, definitely not sustainable, given that this was the combination of lockdown Christmas business that we will probably not see again soon, but I would say, really a sign that our Parcel business can generate profits from good growth and good revenue development. Finally, third segment, Retail & Bank. Revenue down minus 20% on Page 40, coming from the fact that in 2019, we still had service fees from our former banking corporation of bank99 ramping up. And as previously guided, producing a ramp-up loss of around EUR 40 million in 2020 also with a quarterly reduction already that you see here for the full segment, EUR 44 million in negative EBIT. Page 42, I think, shows you our balance sheet. The summary is, we continue to operate a very healthy, very conservative balance sheet. Substantial balance sheet extension, as I already said, given the fact that we have around EUR 530 million of customer deposits in our bank, point 1. And point 2 around EUR 180 million balance sheet expansion from the full consolidation of Aras Kargo. Our balance sheet continues to include, as I already said, a strong equity position of EUR 655 million, a cash surplus. We do not have any financial liabilities, and we have a low level of intangible assets and did not face any real impairment topic in our -- in closing our books this year, which I think also shows that we are strategically well positioned in our subsidiary portfolio. Page 43. The overview of our cash flow development, I would like to focus on the pillar in the middle, operating free cash flow of EUR 125.7 million. This is the cash flow number where we want to cover our dividend. The proposed dividend in absolute terms is EUR 108 million. On top of -- or also to be financed were $75 million of growth CapEx and property expansion. Part of that was financed by the sale of our shares in contributing EUR 37 million. And all this together, resulting in a free cash flow of EUR 87.3 million for last year. Given the total picture of full year earnings, our local GAAP accounts and our cash flow and balance sheet picture, we came to a dividend proposal of EUR 1.60 for AGM, which will be held in April. This is a payout ratio of 94% of net profits and is in line not only with our dividend policy, where we have committed us to distribute at least 75% of net profit, but is also in line with the historic payout ratio, which was around 95% in recent years. Let me close with the outlook for the year that we are already in the third months now. And I think we have seen 2 months where much of what we saw in the last 6 months of 2020. Continued strong Parcel business, a challenged Mail business. The outlook is still on the cautious side as we do have no visibility how the pandemic will be handled further and controlled in Austria going forward. As we speak, infection numbers are rising again. But I think the last months have shown that also during lockdowns, we are well prepared to handle them, to handle the additional parcel volumes, but also to cope with reduced Mail and Direct Mail volumes. So as overall, and again, this is probably on the cautious side, we do expect revenue growth of at least 8% to 10%. Being the combination of a modest decline in the Mail division and the strong increase of approximately 20% in the Parcel & Logistics division. We will probably also have some upsides. As already said, on the CapEx side, 2021 will be a strong CapEx year with around EUR 60 million of growth CapEx in addition to maintenance CapEx in Austria of around EUR 70 million, international CapEx of around EUR 20 million and property acquisitions, again, in this order of magnitude. And on the earnings side, we currently target an EBIT increase of at least 10%, depending on what we will see in pandemic handling in Austria, the Mail division will end up somewhere in the range of stable or slightly lower. EBIT, we do see the potential for at least 20% earnings rise in the Parcel & Logistics division. And we also do target and improved earnings in the Retail & Banking division. And with that EBIT outlook, I think we can also lay the base for a continuation of our dividend policy. Also for the year 2021. With that said, I would like to close and take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Andre Mulder with Kepler Cheuvreux.

Two questions. First, can you give us, let's say, a rough estimate of what the direct cost of COVID has been? And also, what kind of EBIT that you extra earned based on your estimates in 2020. We've seen all of these statements from the other players as well. So if you could get an estimate of what you see as a sort of excess of income there? Also for the branch network, can you give us a split of what the bank left you with revenues? Because now there's a number of, I think, EUR 20 million, what is including some pension payments. So if you can split that number that will be welcome.

Yes, Andre, thanks for your questions. Let me start with the first question, direct cost of COVID. We gave already some numbers in Q2 and Q3 for the full year. We calculated EUR 26 million in COVID-related costs. So this includes items like masks, additional labor cost due to the fact that a number of people were not available for work all the time. Additional costs for transports due to our infection series in April and May, testing programs and so on. So around EUR 25 million, EUR 26 million is the cost that we have digested in our full year P&L. On the bank, so we -- the bank had around EUR 20 million to EUR 23 million pool of revenues. This included some ongoing stable revenues. So roughly half of that is cash payout for pensioners and other people who receive cash payments on their accounts, but in cash. And the second question I understood was, what is the extra kind of the one-off revenue from the pandemic in the parcel business is that correct?

Yes, that's right. I think most of that will be there, of course, maybe there's some impact on Mail also. But if you can get this, let's say, your rough estimate of what you feel that the extra income in EBIT terms has been?

Yes. Andre, to be honest, we did not calculate this because I think it's a little bit of very disciple question to split out the lockdown volumes in the pre witness period and to really differentiate what is a sustainable increase in e-commerce. I think we all have found that we are now using technology in a different way than we have done a year before, and much of that will stay. Of course, when shops are closed, there is something like I mean, I think you could probably take maybe 10 percentage points of the growth in Q4. If I want to try to give you what number, then I would say take 10% of the growth that we had in Q4 and 10% of the growth that we had in Q2, and that might be volumes that we will not see -- repeat it. But again, we entered the year again with 5 weeks of lockdowns, and it's unclear whether Austria will have to decide on another lockdown in the weeks coming.

The next question comes from the line of Marco Limite with Barclays.

So I've got one question on your Q4 volumes, both around Mail and Parcel volumes. So if I look at your chart slide, Slide 11, you're pointing at December up year-on-year. I know that you mentioned earlier in the beginning of the call that, that was a bit of e-commerce falling into Mail volumes. I was just wondering if you have seen something like more greeting card, which is something that another possible most operator mentioned? And when instead, I look at your chart at Slide 14 around Parcel volumes. Your Q4 volumes are quite much stronger compare your Q2 volumes, if we take out the inorganic growth. So yes, I was just wondering what's your view around why Q4 volumes were actually stronger than Q2, given that both were during a lockdown period? And thirdly and last question is about your 2021 outlook, where, yes, you are saying at least an improvement of EUR 50 million in a way. So yes, I don't know, like do you think that's conservative as there are quite a lot of moving parts, including the financial business performing better. You have got Aras Kargo of inorganic growth for 8 months, plus improvement in the Parcel division? And actually, can we expect an improvement in Austrian Parcel margin? Sorry for being a bit long.

Yes. Thank you, Marco, for your questions. I think we -- on your first question about December revenues in Mail. I think one should not look too much at monthly revenues and volumes because depending on how much working days and the exact position of the end of the year and the holiday season. There could be substantial deviations between revenues in the given months in the next months from year-to-year. But there were -- indeed, we saw stronger -- so first, we saw a strong use of Letter Mail e-commerce products. But second, we also saw strong revenues in our branch network, resulting from private and SME consumers, and it's hard to find out what comes from greeting cards and what comes from SMEs again sending e-commerce products, maybe in Letter Mail products. But there has probably been some increased use of private mail in December. But I would say, I would not count on that to be substantial and sustainable going forward. Q4 volumes in Parcel. I think the question was why higher than in Q2 -- why the growth was higher in Q2? Let's not forget that in Q2, it took a few weeks until e-commerce really took off, point 1. Second, we saw substantial supply chain disruptions in Q2. If you try to order certain categories, you had to wait until Q3 until the shops could deliver them. And I think also the fact that we had capacity in that came on top in Q3 and Q4, we were probably the only provider that really could take on additional capacity in Q4 and that probably also helped, yes? And let's not forget, we also had -- we had a shorter we had a lockdown also in Q4, and it exactly happened in the period where people were buying their Christmas gifts. So the 3 weeks, end of November and the first 2 weeks of December. And it was unclear whether shops would open at all. So this was really in the perfect time if you operate a parcel network for lockdown to come. On the other hand, it does, of course, on the Mail side. And on the 2020, also, I think the question was, is it conservative? I said it is on the conservative side. We have seen last year that a lot can happen in the year and that there is really limited visibility. Nobody anticipated second wave that high weeks before it came. And today, we don't know whether we -- we are at the beginning of the third wave or whether the virus will be -- will disappear once the vaccination really takes off. So it's limited visibility, and therefore, we prefer to be on the cautious side, but there is probably some upside on the revenue side in Parcel and maybe also on the Parcel side.

And yes, sorry, following up on that. Do you think you will be able to have better margin in full year 2021 versus 2020 just because the environment, hopefully, will be a bit less volatile, you will have enough capacity for the full year. So yes, just sort of better planning for you, which means better margins. And second, if you can disclose what's the average EBIT margin for Aras Kargo, please?

Yes. So we do not disclose detailed EBIT figures for Aras Kargo. But I said, it's double digits. The question on the margin, full year margin for a -- for our Parcel & Logistics business, I think there are various factors that will determine that there is one-off part of volume, which we will probably not see again. That was a question from Andrew -- Andre. On the other hand, in particular, this December, November and December peak will probably not come again. At the same time, we also hope that difficult periods in Q2 will not come again. We have a little bit of changed mix with our portfolio, given Aras. So I would say in the positive scenario, there is some slight upside, but a margin of 8% is something which in previous calls, we did not even dare to give ourselves as a target. So I think if we repeat the 8%, we would be satisfied, but there might be some small upside.

[Operator Instructions] At this time there are no further questions at this time. Excuse me, there's a follow-up question just coming from the line of Andre Mulder.

Looking at the development of the bank. Would you say that you maintain your targets for the sort of longer-term also the bank. So let's say, a breakeven situation or maybe a plus in '23, 260,000 clients. Are those numbers that are still being maintained?

We will not give a new guidance today. I think they are clearly challenging targets, but we continue to pursue them. Of course, the pandemic has not made life easier. Also the bank in recent months, the interest rate environment is rather changing to the negative side. So I would say, in the last months or since we've talked in Q3 -- it has probably become a little bit more difficult to reach these targets, but we continue to pursue.

There are no further questions at this time. I hand back to Harald Hagenauer for closing comments.

So thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in this call on Friday afternoon. If you have a number questions, don't hesitate to call us up the next days, we are available and hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.