Österreichische Post AG (POST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to the Full Year 2024 Results Analyst and Investor Conference of the Österreichische Post AG. [Operator Instructions] The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Harald Hagenauer, Head of Investor Relations.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call of Austrian Post, where we want to discuss the results and trends of the fourth quarter and also the full year 2024. Here with me in the room is our CEO, Walter Oblin, and for the first time, our new CFO, Barbara Potisk-Eibensteiner. Walter, I would love to hand over directly to you, please go on, sir.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our full year results 2024. And as Harald said, allow me to introduce Barbara to you, Barbara has joined us January 1 this year as new CFO. She has a long-time experience -- multiyear experience, both as a CFO in private as well as public corporations before Austrian Post. We are delighted to have her on the board. And so we are now complete. And apart from myself and Barbara, Peter Umundum, who has been a member of the Management Board since 2011 completes the Board. Let me now get into the results and into the contents before I start with the environment. Let me briefly summarize what we present to you over the next half an hour. I think we are pleased to present to you quite strong results in a challenging environment. We have delivered double-digit growth last year. And we're also able to increase our EBIT from a good level already in 2023. Starting with the environment. The environment in Europe as a whole and to postal companies continues to be challenging. Austria is going through the longest recession after the second world war. Fortunately, we also have exposure to Eastern European and the Turkish market where GDP growth has been better than in Austria, in Türkiye. On the right side of this chart, we have a good growth with 3.2%. However, the combination of inflation and the FX rate continues to provide volatility into our results last year, more on the favorable side as inflation has been high, and the FX rate almost stable. In the middle of this chart, the core trends that continue to dominate our business. E-commerce continues to grow, in particular, a strong inflow of e-commerce parcels from Asian e-commerce platforms over the last 18 months. At the same time, letter mail volume continued to decline. However, it is still relatively moderate rate in Austria and also the consolidation in the stationary Austrian retail business continues. In this environment, we are a strong international group covering a region consisting of Austria, Southeastern Europe, Türkiye and Azerbaijan. Since last year, this is a region where we operate parcel networks in 11 countries. And with those parcel networks are able to cover a population of 150 million citizens. We believe a value proposition, in particular, vis-a-vis large global e-commerce platforms that is very -- that gives us relevance and strength and scale in the parcel business. With this footprint, moving to Page 5. 2024 has been a strong year for Austrian Post, we not only were able to stabilize our revenues on the mail side, yellow part of these columns, but in particular, to strongly grow our parcel revenues in total revenues last year across the threshold of EUR 3 billion for the first time in Austrian Post's history, total revenues of EUR 3.1 billion growth -- double-digit growth, 14%. And also our smallest segment, Retail & Bank, has shown a positive development. Page 6 summarizes the results across the major developments across the group and the core divisions. Group revenue, I already mentioned, group EBIT at EUR 207 million, a good growth of 9%. Mail, we are pleased to show here a positive revenue development for mail despite a continued mail volume decline, strong election year and a stronger price increase at the end of 2023 have supported this revenue development. Parcel & Logistics continues to be the growth engine with a growth of 21%, strongly supported by a favorable Turkish lira, but also by good volume growth in Austria and Eastern Europe. And in the Retail & Bank segment, a favorable interest rate environment as well as good organic growth have supported a revenue growth of almost 20%. Let me dive a little bit deeper now into the 3 segments. Mail, you see here over the last 3 years, we were able to keep revenues relatively stable. Mail continues to be a strong and profitable pillar in our portfolio. And I think we have made good progress in coping with the declining volumes. Volumes on Page 8, continued to decline. Last year, addressed letter mail around 6%, given a stronger tariff increase I already mentioned at the end of 2023 and a strong elections year with 3 country-wide elections, mail revenues also addressed letter mail revenues were positive at plus 3.4%. Austria continues moving to Page 9, continues to be one of the cheapest mail countries across Europe and effective January -- effective May 1, this year, we will implement a product and price reform in the Austrian market where we make one more step in moving volumes to the slower economy product. Already today, more than 80% of our volumes are in the slower economy product, and this product reform will make the economy product the standard product and transform the priority product into a premium service on top of the economy product. And with that, we also adapt prices with -- to the inflation since our last price increase, roughly a 5% price increase. Moving to Page 10. Direct Mail and Media Post with EUR 445 million continues to be an important business segment. Again, here, of course, also a declining volume. Our products continue to be very relevant. The Kuvert, the cover for the leaflets that we distribute twice a week continues to be the advertising channel in Austria with the highest reach with more than 3 million households twice a week. The next best product, the biggest newspaper in Austria only has a reach of 21%. Here, volumes minus 4%. In particular, it has been the consolidation in the retail sector, particularly in the nonfood sector, where customers have exited, have gone bankrupt has contributed to this decline. Also here, revenues given price changes up at almost 6%. Let me now come to our growth engine, the Parcel & Logistics division. You see here over the last 3 years, a quite strong revenue increase of almost EUR 0.5 billion, again, supported by a favorable 0 exchange rate. Our portfolio consists here of 11 countries in which we operate parcel networks; Austria, Eastern European, Southeastern European countries Türkiye and since last year, a small footprint in Azerbaijan. Page 12 shows you the development in the Austrian parcel market here, in our view, a very good growth of 12%. We have gained market share. We'll come to that on the next chart, plus 12%, also a strong Q4 at plus 10%. And on the revenue side, you see that we have also been able to implement some price increases with revenues growing at 15% and total revenues getting close to the EUR 1 billion threshold. Our market shares, this was just published 2 weeks ago, Page 13 by an independent market research company who publishes market share in the parcel market every year. Our market share has been slightly growing. We were able to defend our clear leadership in the Austrian parcel market for the total parcel market, which is around 400 million parcels, we command 56% of the market and in the growing B2C segment, we hold around 65% market share, which is a plus in both numbers of 2 percentage points. Moving to Eastern Europe. Here, also good volume growth, plus 12% and given certain mix changes and a quite competitive environment on the pricing side translated into a revenue growth of 8%. Asian customers have contributed to this growth and with them also comes a certain volatility. Moving to Türkiye on Page 15. Here, I think the summary is strong euro revenue development, given the mentioned asymmetry between local inflation and the FX rate development. So in euro terms, plus 46% locally, a strong revenue development of 63%. So that is mostly price-driven. Volume-wise, we are relatively flat given the continued in-sourcing of the biggest customer. And at the same time, our Turkish company generates strong margins and contribute substantial profits to the group. Across the portfolio, moving to Page 16, we push a strong growth of our out-of-home network. We have been pioneers in Austria, starting with self-service facilities around 13 to 14 years ago. We have in Austria by far, the strongest self-service footprint, the strongest local footprint across the country. And last year, we've more than doubled that and across the portfolio, there is an ambition to double the number of out-of-home points from around 10,000 end of '23 to around to more than 20,000 by the end of 2025/'26. And in particular, this is driven by almost quadrupling of our postal stations in Austria and in our lockers in -- across the portfolio, where the ambition is to have around a network of around 10,000 lockers by 2026. Moving to our Retail & Bank division. Let me start with the development of bank99 on Page 18, almost 5 years ago on April 1, 2020, we launched bank99 out of the home office into a full lockdown on April 1 at the peak or at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, I think we have made good progress in building up a small focused retail bank that builds upon the postal platform, consisting of a strong brand of the retail network of the noncustomer frequency in our postal branches and of a strong trust of Austrian Post in the Austrian consumer market. You see on this page that we were able to ramp up customers to a total of almost 300,000 retail customers. We have a balance sheet total balance sheet size of EUR 4.1 billion. So we passed this EUR 4 billion threshold, we were able with a substantial tailwind from the interest rate environment. So substantially grow our interest rate income and also in a challenging Austrian credit market, we were able to grow credit volume by 10%. So good development. The target for bank99 this year is to breakeven. This is still -- are still 10 months to go, but we think we are on a decent track record towards breakeven. And with that said, I close now the overview of the 3 divisions and hand over to Barbara, who will dive deeper into our financials.

Thank you, Walter. As you already heard, it was a good year for Austrian Post with a revenue increase by about 14% to EUR 3.1 billion, also a great EBITDA margin of 13.5% and an EBIT margin of 6.6%. And we were also able to increase our earnings per share from EUR 1.96 to EUR 2.04. Cash flow, and this is only the cash flow we are showing for the logistics about EUR 254 million financial debt, EUR 167 million, slight increase and equity ratio also of the logistics business of 29%. So what has happened on the revenue side Walter already showed that we were able to grow in all segments, starting with the mail business despite the falling business on the volume side, we were able to increase the revenues driven mainly by the elections. But on the other hand, also by pricing effects. Pricing effects were also necessary to cover our inflation on the cost side. The parcel business also a very strong growth, not only driven by Türkiye but also by Austria with a strong and healthy growth of 15.2%. And we're also happy that we were able to increase our revenue on the Retail & Bank side already shown by Walter. More important for the CFO is the EBIT increase from EUR 190 million to EUR 207 million. Where does it come from? Additional contribution from the mail business, plus EUR 6.8 million, the pricing effect and of course, the elections. The Parcel business not only the positive impact of the Türkiye business because there, we also had a negative impact of the revaluation of our put option for the second shareholder of the company, this had an impact of EUR 14.9 million. And is up to a certain extent also eating up some positive EBIT effects we were gaining out of the price increases on the Turkish business. Retail & Bank also there a positive contribution of EUR 1.9 million. This then results in EUR 207.3 million EBIT and if we compare year-on-year Q4, also there, we see the increase from EUR 59.5 million, up to EUR 62.5 million. Let's come now to the income statement. I only want to go into some of the positions. As already said, there was inflation, not only in Türkiye, but there was also inflation in Austria and CEE. Due to this price increases, but on the other hand, also cost increases. EBITDA went up from EUR 391 million to EUR 422 million and EBIT ending up in EUR 107.3 million. Profit for the period EUR 146 million after EUR 139 million. What are the key messages out of our divisions already shown the increase on the revenue side and the EBIT side. I think the good news on the Mail division side is a stable EBIT margin of 12.8%. If we get to the Parcel & Logistics division, then I think the interesting thing is Q4 on the parcel Türkiye side. So if you take Q4 2023 and you take Q4 2024, you see the increase from EUR 95.33 million up to EUR 171.5 million on the revenue side. And this is also driving then the results on the Turkish results. The EBIT margin on the Parcel & Logistics division side 6%. Getting deeper into the Turkish business, we show you the quarter-on-quarter development and there you see on the one hand side, as already mentioned by Walter that we had a quite stable Turkish lira. On the other hand, there was a positive impact from Q3 to Q4, getting from 38.27 to 36.74. And this is also driving the good Q4 on the parcel side. Retail & Bank division. There, we were growing due to the ramp-up of the bank and also due to the better interest rates. So the revenues went up to EUR 201.5 million. EBIT is still negative. But there, we had some costs from the migration of the core banking system so this is a onetime effect, and we are really aiming at breakeven this year in the bank. Getting now to the balance sheet, which is a quite solid one. The growth of our total balance sheet is driven by bank99 because bank99 has already reached a balance sheet of EUR 4.1 billion, and this is also driving our balance sheet -- the group balance sheet. The logistic equity ratio, I already mentioned, was 29%. The equity ratio with the bank is about 12%. Coming to the cash flow now. Excluding the core banking assets. So the cash flow from operating activities was very close to EUR 360 million. Then as we're always showing maintenance CapEx was EUR 121 million. Then we had some interest gains on the investment cash flow and ending up in operating free cash flow of more than EUR 250 million. Then we had about EUR 22 million of gross CapEx, some acquisitions, divestments, and we are ending up then very close to EUR 230 million of free cash flow, excluding the core banking assets. The CapEx of EUR 143 million is a lower one because what we did in the last years was doing a lot of investments in Austria not only into our logistic infrastructure, but also in the decarbonization of the Austrian entities and also of our vehicles. Also a lot of solar panels were done. Now we are aiming more for the transformation and some CapEx in CEE and also in Türkiye. So what you can expect for the coming years is a CapEx of about EUR 150 million. On the right-hand side, you could see the CapEx mix where you see that 30% of our CapEx went into the decarbonization, about 43% went to the maintenance and about 27% was driven by growth CapEx. Coming to the ESG indicators and there are at the moment, a lot of discussions regarding sticking to decarbonization targets and so on. We are very much committed to our targets. We will go on this path. This I think we committed already in the past, and this we are still committing because we see also the economic feasibility for Austrian Post and also the value contribution. If you take our logistic related emissions, then you see that we were able to reduce them by more than 20%. In Austria, if you take the whole group by about 5%. If you take then all or if you consider also then the Scope 3 emissions of bank99, with the financing for households, it's really increasing. This is driven by construction of homes. And I think this we cannot avoid as long as we are driving our business on the banking side. The e-vehicles fleet went up to very close to 5,000 vehicles -- e-vehicles in Austria, and on the group side, also in CEE and in Türkiye, we were able to increase the e-vehicle fleet. As we are celebrating the International Women's Day tomorrow, I also want to show you 1 figure on the women in leadership position side, there we were also able in 2024 to increase the rate from 35% to 35.4%. Next slide, decarbonization road map in Austria. As we already showed, we are growing on the parcel volume side more than 30% and -- the same time, we were really able to decrease our carbon footprint coming on the one hand side by -- from nonfossil fuels. On the other side, also from vehicles and also the solar panels on our buildings. Now I want to hand over to Walter again to give you an outlook and also some flavor on the dividend policy.

Thank you, Barbara. Let me continue on Page 32 with our dividend proposal to this year's AGM. We propose a dividend of EUR 1.83 per share, which is an increase of [indiscernible] and which is in line with our dividend policy, which has been in place since the IPO to distribute at least 75% of group net profit, also a clear signal that the management is committed to grow the dividends going forward. And with that dividend proposal and the results that you have seen now over the last half an hour, we continue moving to Page 33, a 15-year positive development of Austrian Post, where I think we have delivered now over 15 years against the proposition to be a defensive dividend stock. We have delivered stable revenues and earnings in at least 3 crises, the financial crisis of 2009, 2010, the pandemic and over the last years in a prolonged crisis, starting with the Ukraine war with strong inflation, high paper and energy prices and so on. And we, at the same time, as Barbara showed, we're able to substantially decarbonize our logistics network, and we're able to decrease the footprint per shipment volume by around 75% from 48 to 11 kilograms. Looking ahead, we are in the process of a strategy update of the process that the new Board team has started in fall last year. We will conclude this strategy process with our Supervisory Board meeting beginning of May, and we'll communicate the results in our earnings call early May. I think the direction is clear. We want to continue our profitable growth path, we have defined the target of EUR 4 billion revenues by 2030 at a decent margin. So the transformation of Austrian Post was a strong focus on growth in international e-commerce in our region, consisting of Austria, Eastern Europe and Türkiye and beyond will continue. And let me now conclude this call with the outlook for the year 2025. For the current year, we do expect a challenging macro environment to continue also the core structural trends declining Mail and Direct mail volume on the one hand, and on the other hand, continued growth in e-commerce, we expect to continue -- on that basis, our objective for 2025 is to generate modest revenue growth. Revenue growth will clearly be smaller than last year as the strong tailwinds on the one hand, strong inflation in Türkiye, combined with a favorable FX rate, the strong election impact and high inflation that was the basis for strong price adjustments in the Mail segment end of 2023, those tailwinds will not be present in this magnitude in 2025. Still, our objective is to generate modest revenue growth. We plan to continue to invest at a level of around EUR 150 million into capacity expansion in our international networks in the continued change transformation towards an electric fleet and in maintenance CapEx. And on the earnings side, we target stability with an EBIT target at an order of magnitude of around EUR 200 million. And of course, we will stick to our dividend policy and remain committed to being an attractive dividend stock. Thank you for your attention, and we are now happy to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first one is from Othmane Bricha of BofA. Over to you.

I have a few ones. Maybe we can do them one by one. First, on the mail reform, can you quantify potential cost savings for moving more mail into the economy service.

Yes, we're talking about a mid- to higher single million digit euro figure.

Mid to high single-digit million euros. And as...

This is not a -- sorry, this is not a huge step, but it will allow international flows to be moved to the economy stream. And we already today have around 85% of mail volumes in the economy product, which we only deliver twice a week. But this product reform will add and support that development.

Okay. Then on advertising mail. I think you had good momentum in Q4 with a volume decline, I think, of only minus 2%. Going -- heading into 2025, how do you see volumes and also pricing for this segment?

Yes. I think on the pricing side, we should expect pricing to come in line with inflation as inflation has come down to around 2.5%, 3%, I think that will be roughly the order of magnitude of price changes on the volume side. We have to expect a continued mail decline in, I would say, in the lower single-digit figures given consolidation in the stationary retail and a continued move from retailers to digital advertising. At the same time, in particular, with the food retailers our leaflets, our Kuvert product remains a very strong element of their advertising mix, and we do expect these volumes to be relatively stable.

And then on CapEx and investments with heightened focus towards Eastern Europe and Turkey. Could you elaborate more on which areas in the business are you investing in?

Yes. So it's mainly on parcel business. And for example, what we are planning for this year in Hungary is to build up a logistics center in Budapest. And we are also thinking about investing more on the Docker business side in Eastern Europe and also in Türkiye. Türkiye, we have to further invest in the parcel business.

And in general, I would like to add that our international logistics network are substantially more asset light than our Austrian network in Austria, we tend to own most of the real estate and most of the fleet, whereas in Eastern Europe, we rather rent real estate and work with subcontracted delivery partners.

Okay. And on Turkey parcels, how do you see volume growth in 2025? And do you expect any continued impact from customer in-sourcing their volumes?

5 Yes, I think we should not expect substantial growth in Türkiye. I would -- we continue to see a growing market, but we continue to work with large e-commerce platforms that -- where some of them continue to grow their in-sourced share. And as a result, I would expect volumes to be somewhat flattish.

Okay. And last question, which is on interest income, which was quite strong this year at EUR 28 million. How should we think about interest income for 2025?

Yes. I think what -- so are you -- you're talking about the bank interest?

No, no, sorry, I'm not talking about the bank. I'm talking about the income -- the interest income at the end of the P&L.

Okay. So about our financial results.

Yes. Exactly, yes.

Yes. I think that is hard to forecast as we have here a combination of Turkish lira, put option valuation impact -- and with the fluctuation of the Turkish lira and hyperinflation and all the drivers. Please bear with us that we're not in a position to provide a reasonable forecast there.

So if you take 2023, we had a positive impact of EUR 3.5 million. This year, we had the other way around. So the swing is quite high on the Turkish lira side, only for the put option, yes. And it's really very difficult to predict.

The next question is from Patrick Steiner of ODDO BHF.

It's Patrick Steiner speaking. I would have a few, let's take them one by one, I would suppose. Firstly, I mean, in 2024, we saw mail volumes declining in most of the categories despite the special effects from the elections. Can you give us a number for this positive volume effect from the elections in 2024?

Yes. I think the impact of the election is more on the revenue side than on the volume side as we are talking about registered large letters that are used for mail voting so -- but there has been some volume impact, I would say, around 1% is probably a reasonable number.

Okay. Perfect. And thinking about 2025, I mean, based on further expected organic mail letter volume decline and also lack of an election effect. What kind of volume development would you expect for 2025?

I would expect somewhere 6% to 7% as an order of magnitude.

Okay. Great. Perfect. The next one is a bit more theoretical, I would say, firstly given that the volume losses in mail trigger higher pricing per item in the form of tariff adjustments. And this, in turn, should theoretically again, reduce demand and so on. Do you think that the decline or any physical mail could come earlier than we would generally assume would be -- just be happy to hear your thoughts on that.

I don't think so, to be honest. I've been now in this industry for around 16 years. The question of is there a cliff ahead of us has been constantly in the room over the last 15, 16 years. I think in reality, we've always seen certain more disruptive changes in individual customer segments, but across the whole portfolio, they have resulted in a more linear decline, which in Austria has always been in this range somewhere between 4% and 7%. And given what we see with customers, with the public sector, we would not expect a disruptive development ahead of us. And we have a good diversification of our mail volumes across different sectors, applications and so on. So I think, yes, we have seen some acceleration, but still relatively modest. And we don't see any disruptive changes in the near future.

Okay. Very helpful. On bank99, very, very good customer growth again in 2024. How should we think about growth over the next 2 to 5 years roughly? What are your expectations, your thoughts?

Yes, I think we -- of course, we -- the immediate focus is on the breakeven so I would say a more qualitative growth is ahead of us. Also the interest rate environment, given that in our group P&L, we show gross interest income and net debt with the second line so we don't show net interest income, I think -- so the interest income will come down just because interest rates are coming down. But overall, we see further growth potential with -- in a very early phase of bank99 development. And one clear focus will also be to stronger penetrate the customers that we have, many of them are still single product customers, which are either only working with us on the current account side or on savings products. And we think there's a lot of potential by offering them the full product range that we have in the meantime with consumer credit, mortgage loans, investment products, insurance products and so on.

All right. Last one from my side. If I understood this correctly, you increased the 2025 revenue guidance slightly while keeping the EBIT target unchanged. Does this imply a lower margin expectation compared to Q3?

I don't think this is an intention to now signal a stronger confidence on the revenue side. What we do in November is typically some rough leaning out of the window for the next year. And with increasing visibility, we try to be a little bit more specific. Maybe the starting point, the end of year revenue has made some changes that you have interpreted now. But there is no margin dilution that we expect. Yes, the reality is we are competing in a challenging environment. Parcel market remains competitive. But we also think -- we focus primarily really on absolute earnings and less on a margin guidance.

The next question is from Henk Slotboom from The Idea.

I've got 3, if I may. The first one relates to Asia. And you said Asian volumes have grown nicely. I did some quick industry calculations on the Asian Parcel side. And I see that the average price per parcel has gone up. And it is quite in contrast to what we see from peers just look at PostNL, for example. Can you give me any idea about what the growth was in Asian Parcels into Austria and what volume share it accounts for now? And how do you manage the yields per parcel?

So the total share of -- let's focus on large Chinese e-commerce platforms is in the mid- to higher single-digit order of magnitude. So we are talking about 6%, 7%. They have contributed disproportionately to growth, starting from a relatively low pace. They are, of course, quite sensitive customers, but we try to make sure that we earn decent margins also with these customers. And across the board, I think our good market and quality position in the Austrian market has helped us to both gain market share, but also to execute price increases given also the strong inflation we've had.

Okay. That's clear. The next question relates to the green investments. I'm pleased with the overview you provided on Slide 28. Now if you invest in e-mobility, often, e-vehicles are more expensive than, call it, traditional fuel-powered vehicles more around because you have to invest in infrastructure as well. How does it affect your cost price per unit? Is it manageable? And you mentioned also in the drive to go to more out-of-home touch points. Is that counterbalancing the effects of the higher cost of investments in greening?

So what we can say is if you compare how long the e-vehicles are driving, then we see that they're driving -- are you still there?

Yes, I'm still here, yes.

So the e-vehicles is running up to 10 years. What we saw on the fossil side, it was between 6 and 7 years. So this is already increasing the economic visibility of the e-vehicles, yes. We also got subsidies in the past. Also, this helped us due to this transformation.

And then my final question.

And also 1 thing in addition what you also see on the maintenance side, it's also more favorable to go into e-vehicles than to go into the normal cars.

Overall, there is a positive total cost of ownership, yes. So it's -- we are doing it because we take responsibility, but also because it's economically favorable.

Yes. For a Dutch guy like me, that sounds like music in the ears. Then my final question is on the out-of-home. What proportion of your parcels in Austria, for example, is currently delivered via the out-of-home channel? And where do you see this in, let's say, 5 years' time or so?

Yes. We're still talking about a quite low percentage. In the past, this was only more or less deposited parcels. So parcels were the delivery at the door was not successful. In the meantime, we have, I would say, a low single-digit percentage of direct to locker parcels coming from 2 sources, either the consumer, which would like even more, asks us to directly deposit it into a desired locker as we don't have to share the reduced cost to the consumer. And the other sources, of course, the senders that use a direct locker product. We do expect this to increase substantially. But I think it's hard to project what percentage that will achieve. I think the market in Austria is still in a very early phase. We try to be clearly the #1 in offering a dense network with enough capacity to offer also to our large customers, a direct to locker product, but we also have to observe how quickly Austrian consumers accept this type of product.

So the next question is from Marco Limite of Barclays. Over to you, Marco.

So I've got 1 question back on the outlook of 2025. So your outlook for '25 is for, let's say, about EUR 200 million, which is a small step down year-over-year. But on top of that, you are also guiding for the bank to go to breakeven. So if you normalize for that actually you are guiding for quite a step down underlying when you exclude the bank division. Now I was just wondering if you would be able or in the position to quantify again, back to your question that was asked before, but if you are able to quantify the EBIT tailwind in '24 coming from elections, number one; and number two, also was the tailwind from favorable effect from Türkiye. Yes, just to understand whether the EUR 200 million guidance is maybe extra conservative. And second question, is on your strategy for 2030, while you are showing today a revenue ambition for 2030. Just wanted to make sure that I'm getting this right and the idea of that target is also that you are growing a lot more into international expansion. So the growth is not only coming from Austria, but you want to become bigger in CEE internationally.

Right. So let me maybe start with the second question. Yes, you're right, the revenue aspiration that we shared with you today implies that we grow substantially across the whole portfolio that we also grow our regional footprint. Most of that growth, we believe, can be done organically, but we will continue to look out also for opportunities to strengthen our portfolio, both in adding additional regions as well as gaining market share within our regions. To the first question, you're right. The ambition is to break even on the bank. So that should provide some uplift on the EBIT side. At the same time, we will lack the tailwinds on the mail side that have supported us last year. Let me remind you, we have 3 country-wide elections, EU election, national parliament election, and chamber of labor elections. Those big nationwide elections will not be present this year. So on the mail side, we have to expect mail volumes to continue to decline as already discussed multiple times in this call. And at the same time, the tariff increase that we also shared will not fully compensate. And so we will see some decline on mail profits clearly. And overall, also, please understand that we are still early in the year and in some areas, visibility is not -- is still a little bit foggy and we'll try to get more precise and clearer over the course of the next quarters.

As there are no more questions in the queue, I would like to hand over back to the host.

So thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in this call. If you do have more questions in the next days, please don't hesitate to call us up the next days. We are ready. Thank you, and have a nice weekend.