InPost S.A. / Earnings Calls / March 28, 2025

    Gabriela Burdach

    Good morning, my name is Gabriela Burdach and I'm the Investor Relations Director at InPost. Welcome to InPost's Full Year 2024 Earnings Call. A quick disclaimer. Today's call includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, and it is possible that the actual results may differ materially. This call is being recorded, and the recording will be available on our IR website shortly after we wrap it up today. After the slides we will have a Q&A session. Today's presenters are Rafal Brzoska, CEO; Michael Rouse, CEO International; and Javier van Engelen, CFO of InPost Group. I am now pleased to hand over to our CEO. Rafal, over to you.

    Rafal Brzoska

    Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Gaby, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm really thrilled to share the outstanding results of InPost Group for the full year 2024. It's been really a record-breaking year for us, demonstrating the strength of our business model. As you can see, we've achieved significant growth across all key metrics. Parcel volumes increased to PLN 1.1 billion, a 22% increase year-on-year. This increase in volume, combined with strategic initiatives, moved our revenue to more than PLN 11 billion, a substantial 23% year-on-year growth. Last year, we also invested heavily in our future with capital expenditures reaching more than PLN 1.4 billion, which is a 37% increase year-on-year. This investment is primarily focused on expanding our network and enhancing our operational capabilities to support our continued growth trajectory, particularly in international markets. Despite of higher CapEx, we finalized 2024 with lower net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, including PLN 0.4 billion spend on M&As reflecting our prudent financial management and strong cash generation. Our profitability has also seen a significant boost with group adjusted EBITDA reaching PLN 3.6 billion, a robust 33% year-on-year increase. This reflects the operational leverage we've gained from our expanding scale but also efficient operations. Group free cash flow also saw a healthy increase, reaching almost PLN 1 billion, up 22% year-on-year further demonstrating the combined strength of our performance and financial discipline. Let me now share some updates on our network development. Last year, we deployed a record high number of APM significantly expanding our network and reach, which goes hand-in-hand with increasing local efficiency. We've added an impressive 11,500 APMs, further solidifying our position as a leader in out-of-home delivery in Europe. Our total APM network now stands at 47,000 machines, representing growth of 32% in recent year. I want to emphasize it across the markets in which we operate. We are the largest APM network and 3rd largest logistics carrier by volume. We've also seen growth in our PUDO point network, which has reached 34,000 locations. This expansion of both APMs and PUDO provides even greater convenience and flexibility for our customers, allowing them to send, collect and return parcels at a location and time that suits them best. Also, this expanded network is crucial for supporting our growth and ensuring we meet the increasing demand for our cross-border service, which we launched last year. Let's move on to the next slide, which addresses market trends. As in previous quarters, we continue to gain market share across all our geographies. Last year, in Poland, we continued gaining market share while already being the outright market leader. In Mondial Relay countries, our growth has outpaced overall e-commerce parcel growth with volumes and a strategically important B2C sector rising by an impressive 28% year-on-year and dynamic growth in APM volumes, up by 81% year-on-year. In the U.K. the demand acceleration is driving the need for faster APM deployment, and we remain focused on network development to expand the volume. Having completed Menzies acquisition in October, we are now a stronger player with fully in-house logistics to out-of-home points. On the next page, you may see that -- of course, we are proud of the business progress. We remain strongly committed to ESG and especially the reduction of our environmental impact. We are on the path to net zero by 2040, with a very strong focus on minimizing our emissions per parcel. Our APM and PUDOs are key to our sustainability strategy. They offer convenient alternatives to a traditional delivery leading to a 98% CO2 reduction over the last mile and 71% across the entire route. We are also continuously reducing overall CO2 emissions per parcel with a 37% decrease over the last three years. As illustrated on the right-hand side, our commitment to ESG has led to consistent year-on-year improvement in our ESG ratings, which notably surpassed the industry average. We will continue investing in green technologies and sustainable practices as we strive towards our net zero goals. Moving on to our business update for Poland, where we continue to strengthen InPost as a love brand. Let's start with our robust and growing user base. 24 million users in Poland use our services. This number represents almost 100% of the Polish e-commerce population which demonstrates the widespread adoption and preference for InPost's convenient delivery solutions. Our mobile app plays a significant role in driving user engagement. We have almost 14 million app users, a number that surpasses the number of households in Poland. These customers order over 40% more than nonmobile app users, demonstrating the increased engagement driven by our apps convenience. Last year, we launched our loyalty program to further enhance user engagement. We already have 11 million users registered. And the program already generates millions of incremental parcels showcasing its effectiveness in driving additional volume while rewarding our loyal customer base. Let's move on to the next page. While the previous slide demonstrate its loyalty, on the next two slides, I'm proud to share some external survey results that clearly show that InPost is by far the preferred brand for e-commerce shoppers. First, almost every e-commerce shopper in Poland prefers InPost APM delivery over other methods, whether it's To-Door, PUDO Point, or other APM provider. The second chart speaks for itself. People are willing to recommend us more often than to recommend other carriers and other APMs brands. Our NPS of 77 stands out well ahead of our competitors. Slide 11 shows the impact input APMs have on conversion rates. Starting from the left, a whopping 88% of consumers choose InPost as their most frequent APM for delivery. And again, this is far ahead of any competing APM network. In the middle, 95% of shoppers claim that InPost convenience, quality and reliability are motivating them to shop online. Let's move on to the next slide. On this page, we go back to the hard numbers of footprint where the share of compartments is the best measure to express InPost's unrivaled proximity to the Polish consumers. We are and remain the leader in terms of the number of APMs, but we have an even more clear leadership with over 70% of the number of compartments on the Polish market. Do note that the balance 30% is shared by many different brands with separate logistics, varying quality, separate IT systems and completely different strategies. Leading in APMs and compartments is one thing, but knowing how to operate them is something completely different. Let's therefore see how our network performs on the next page. Looking closer at our Poland operations, let me draw your attention to the three important performance indicators. First, our APM infrastructure has expanded significantly by 15%. We've grown to over 25,000 lockers, solidifying our leader position in Poland. Second, our parcel volumes increased by 20% year-on-year. APM volume was up by 18% and to-door delivers experienced more dynamic growth of 27% largely driven by the expansion of international e-commerce platforms. Every year, roughly 20% of our volume growth comes from new merchants, in spite of the leading position in the market already. Third, and as a logical result of the first two points, despite our leadership position and the increase of competitive networks, the utilization levels of our lockers continue to grow. This success is not only due to growing volumes. It is driven by our robust logistics backbone, advanced data analytics and cutting-edge technology that enable us to enhance efficiency, particularly in the middle and last mile of delivery. These metrics confirm that we are simultaneously growing our physical presence, increasing delivery volumes and improving efficiency, a very powerful combination that positions us well for sustained profitable growth. Next slide, please. Let me now focus on our innovations, InPost Pay and the more recent loyalty program. InPost Pay already has almost 8 million registered users and partnerships with over 1,600 merchants that already see a 30% plus increase in their checkout conversions. These metrics confirm that InPost Pay effectively meets market needs while delivering value to both merchants and consumers, really advancing our group's mission to enhance e-commerce experiences, which brings us to our loyalty program, although just launched in the last quarter, it is already a success.\ It attracts customers and increases user and merchant loyalization. Over 11 million users have enrolled, and we already see that these users order more than before, bringing in that incremental number of parcels. We've received a lot of positive feedback, and we plan to roll out loyalty program to other markets, too. I'll now hand over to Michael for an update on our international business. Thank you very much.

    Michael Rouse

    Thanks, Rafal. Good morning, everyone. 2024 has been a strong year for the international business and all the markets that operate within it. We continue to accelerate our flywheel across all of its components as our international expansion gathers increasing momentum. We expanded our international network by over 11,000 out-of-home points, including over 8,000 APMs. We continue to heavily invest in our critical infrastructure capabilities both in APM network deployment, but also in logistics sites opening over 20 new depots and hubs in 2024. These investments build the backbone and allow us to continuously improve the quality of our services in each market to enable our long-term consumer centricity and adoption that now fuels our Polish business. As Rafal mentioned, it's not just about lockers. In all our international markets, we've continued to grow our volume well above the market rate, taking market share from incumbent legacy players, supporting merchants and fueling the local and cross-border e-commerce markets and solidified InPost in Mondial Relay as the leading locker solution in the U.K. and France. In our international markets, we're either a clear number one in terms of APM network, which is the case in the U.K. and France, or we're number two like in Iberia and Italy and accelerating, we're the number three today as Amazon, but operates a different model. What we are really very focused on is investing in the network in all markets, but with the U.K. taking greater importance to satisfy rising consumer demand for our APM solution in Europe's largest e-comm opportunity. What we're also proud of is our merchant base, we cooperate with over 56,000 merchants, with 2024 being a year of big wins, and our app has gained significant penetration attracting millions of new users to APMs. As we move on to the next slide, just to demonstrate, 2024 has been such a big year of wins with our merchant B2C base expanding, and this has been such a critical element of our international expansion. That's why I'm extremely proud of what you can see on this slide that we have such players in our portfolio such as H&M, adidas, ASOS, Zara and international marketplaces to name a few. And as our market penetration and quality of services improve, we continue to see increasing share of checkout development, coupled with a growing pipeline for new brand additions. The growth potential from B2C has such significant headroom as we start from such a low base in all our markets. Now let's focus on Mondial Relay. There are two crucial points that I'd like to highlight here. In 2024, we deployed a record high number of almost 4,000 APMs in Mondial Relay markets. The number of APMs increased by 73%. One of the drivers of such dynamic network expansion was deals with major retail chains like Carrefour, Conforama and Little, as we continue to leverage Pan-European coverage. As our locker density coverage increases with increasing density, we continue to observe the positive trend of the increasing adoption of our lockers. The number of parcels delivered to lockers has almost increased by 81% exceeding the APM growth by almost 10 percentage points, with locker volume now accounting for 30% of our volume within Mondial Relay, again, demonstrating significant potential for volume conversion as the locker estate expands. As you can see on the right-hand side, the result of APM volume growing faster than deployment is the increasing utilization of our network, but also a factor of the quality of locations being deployed. Javier later will talk about this in the financial section and how it enhances the economics. On the next slide, we continue to see strong growth in the B2C and Return segment, which has significantly outpaced total volume growth, almost higher than in previous quarters. With C2C year-over-year remaining stable, the share of B2C in our total volume is increasing. For Q4, it was almost 50% but there were some weeks in Q4 when we saw a B2C share even close to 60%. What I'd also like to highlight here is the improvement in delivery time and quality. We always say that we're more than just lockers, and quality is one of those components of our success in Poland. Our infrastructure investments in not just lockers, but also last mile and middle-mile coverage with the 20 new depots and hubs I mentioned before, demonstrate our road map to replicate quality in international markets. The results in Q4 in Mondial are a testimony to that and with over 60% of Mondial Relay B2C parcels in Q4 in 2024 were delivered next day and 90% within two days. Also last year, we focused on our merchant base expansion, both with hunting and farming activities. We expanded our merchant base by a few thousand and now 55% of top e-merchants in France are Mondial Relay clients with significant headroom to expand share, both with new wins and share of checkout. In '25, we'll remain hyper-focused on the strategically important growth opportunity. So moving on to Slide 21. This slide is extremely important, and I'm really pleased to present it. This journey of the transformation of Mondial Relay began in '21 to turn around a legacy low-cost regional player into a number two market plan disruptor is now gaining clear consumer choice and recognition. According to a recent consumer perception survey, awareness levels have significantly improved for Mondial Relay and we now lead in top of mind awareness in France. We are also the most recognized out-of-home provider, which is critically important, given that more and more French consumers are choosing out-of-home delivery with over 50% of total e-commerce shoppers in France making up their preferred choice. The satisfaction of our APM clients whose numbers has increased by over 80% is also reflected in the NPS index, where we have held the highest position in the market for the last two years and with that gap increasing against the nearest competitor. On the next page, our mobile app development and traction is an important ingredient to creating this consumer awareness and satisfaction. We have now 3.2 million downloads at the end of '24, with the 4 million number fast approaching this month, demonstrating the pace of traction within the French consumer base. We've been adding new features and actively listening to our customers' needs and responding to them. We are very excited to see that our app was one of the most downloaded in the mobile stores in '24 in France, reaching number one download during Q4. Together with what you saw in the previous slide, this confirms that we're on a good path to replicate the premium Love Brand that we have in Poland across the French market. Now, let's turn our attention to the U.K. The U.K. is the largest e-comm market in Europe with volume reaching over 4 billion parcels on an annual basis. We have a strong presence in C2C and returns for B2C. The product offers that started our U.K. journey has allowed us to quickly capture consumer adoption for using lockers to drop off parcels. The largest part of the U.K. e-commerce market is B2C where we have just launched our services in Q4 '24. We're currently focused on enhancing our B2C offering and driving greater adoption among merchants, where we're already live with 40 merchants and over 50 already in integration pipeline. So we have a strong base of returning clients, mainly from the growing Fashion segment, and we're focused on adopting them to use our B2C services. Our plan in '25 is to have over 300 B2C merchants by the end of the year. And from the user's perspective, we see that approximately 50% of our B2C users who ordered for lockers were already our clients, either with returns or C2C previously, demonstrating that the entry strategy has provided us a strong consumer base to further drive adoption and usage. And let's move on to Slide 24. On the next slide, we show how we are expanding our focus on the network and expanding this network is crucial for our growth in volume, especially as we've launched our B2C offerings. In '24, we significantly accelerated our network by deploying nearly 3,000 machines and almost doubling the number of PUDOs. As a result, we now boast the largest APM network in the U.K. reaching 65% of the population in the top three cities and over 40% of the entire U.K. population. This enhanced convenience has attracted more customers, leading to a 60% increase in the user of our services while maintaining our high Trust pilot score. Similar to France, quality and consumer centricity is at the backbone of these services. Throughout the whole of '24, utilization of our network was over 100%, which means that our locker growth must now even be faster in order to meet demand for our services from the increasing number of InPost users. So the focus for '25 in the U.K. is to accelerate the deployment, to ease utilization and prepare for B2C service expansion at even better quality with 15,000 locations our target for the year-end, and that will be our single biggest ever deployment in a year in a single market. So here on Slide 25, we focus not only on our network, but also on merchants on an InPost users. Similar to Mondial Relay, we're seeing great interest in our U.K. mobile app. The number of our app users has doubled year-over-year, nearly approaching 2 million and were ranked highly. The U.K. app remains a key focus and the key area of development, especially since we see that users who engages with it, pick up more parcels than those who don't. So the U.K. market is really set for further development in '25. And now I'll hand over to Javier to talk about the financials. Thank you.

    Javier van Engelen

    Thank you, Rafal. Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Let's now see how all of this translates into the company's key figures in Q4 and for the full year 2024. At the group level, both parcel volume and revenue showed continued strength in Q4 2024, outpacing the market in all our geographies. Parcel volume was up plus 20% year-on-year with Poland and International growing at respectively, 20% and 21%. Group revenue increased by 26%, driven by a 15% growth in Poland and a 44% increase in international markets, more on the international revenue growth a bit later. Group adjusted EBITDA rose by 35.7% with international markets contributing significantly. In both Poland and international markets, Q4 2024 adjusted EBITDA margins were high, 47.2% in Poland and 18% outside of Poland. While, I'm sure you'll find Slide 28, very informative. I won't spend too much time on revenue and EBITDA by segment as this will be discussed on the next slide. Instead, I will focus here on CapEx, net leverage and free cash flow. As you can see in the table, in Q4, CapEx intensity increased year-on-year with CapEx to revenue ratio reaching 12%. This was primarily due to our strategic investments in the APM network, which accounted for over 62% of Q4 CapEx, along with further investments in our logistics infrastructure, such as sorting hubs and depots mentioned by Michael. Group free cash flow for Q4 2024 totaled PLN 355.6 million. Combined with adjusted EBITDA growth, this helped reduce our leverage ratio to 1.9x, which is a marked improvement compared to the 2.2x at the end of 2023. As mentioned by Rafal, the solid financial performance underscores our commitment to balancing growth with financial discipline, enabling us to deliver strong results across the board. Overall, in full year 2024, at the group level, but also at every segment, which you will see on the next pages, we have more than delivered on the full year outlook given to the market. Now, let's discuss the quarter four financial highlights from our Polish business. Parcel volume in Poland grew by 20%, with a strong performance across the board and the greatest gains coming from SME merchants, Fashion and domestic and international marketplaces. Revenue increased by 15%, lower than volume due to a higher share of volume from international marketplaces. Our adjusted EBITDA margin in Poland reached 47%, slightly above the year-on-year figure due to a flat cost per parcel year-on-year and control over SG&A. On the full year, in Poland, we delivered growth above the market, and we delivered guided growth in revenue and even slightly better on EBITDA profitability. Moving on to Mondial Relay on the next slide. Mondial Relay achieved a 10% decrease in volume, largely outpacing the broader market. This was fueled by a robust 28% year-on-year increase in the strategically important B2C segment along with a slight decrease in the C2C segment. Revenue in local currency rose by 16% year-on-year, strongly above volume growth which is attributed to favorable product mix within the cross-border volume. Our adjusted EBITDA saw a substantial 55% increase or 60% in local currency, driven by robust B2C volume growth, APM adoption, operational leverage and well-controlled SG&A expenses. This is a continuation of the trend we have seen in the previous quarters. On the full year numbers, we grew by 11% in volume and revenue, and we overdelivered on the adjusted EBITA margin by growing not between 200 and 300 basis points guided earlier but by 360 basis points. This trend very much is in line with our medium-term ambition. On the next slide, you'll see that in the last quarter, combined volume for this segment grew by 56%. The 151% increase in revenue for the segment is impacted by the Menzies consolidation. The revenue of our old U.K. segment increased by 57%, fueled by both volume growth and an optimized product mix supported by rapid network expansion and logistics enhancements. In Italy, revenue reached PLN 93.6 million, marking a 56% increase compared to quarter 4 2023, driven by strong B2C and C2C growth. For the segment as a whole, adjusted EBITDA moved from a low PLN 7 million in quarter 4 2023 to PLN 111.3 million in quarter 4 2024, achieving a double-digit margin of 13.7%. Profitability for the entire reporting segment is higher than in Q3 2024 due to the improvements in margins in each market. On a full year basis, just like in other segments, we delivered on the volume and revenue growth and guided improvement in profitability. On the next page, you can see our usual bridge between adjusted EBITDA and net profit for full year 2024. Year-on-year adjusted EBITDA in PLN for 2024 is up by 33.5%, translating into a profit margin improvement of 250 basis points from 30.8% to 33.3%. Net profit from continuing operations in absolute terms is up by 93% or by 400 basis points from 7.3% to 11.3% of sales. Group EBIT is up in 2024 by 30.8% year-on-year. The higher IFRS 16 amortization is mainly driven by network scale, APM land and depot leases and the atomization of operations. Between EBIT and net profit, you can see the usual interest expenses connected with debt and the sustainable improvement in our effective tax rate due to lower losses in the U.K. and Italy compared to last year. One small note here, apart from the usual adjustments, you can also see a new line that reads incentive programs set up by shareholders. This line will show our old management incentive program as well as the earnout given by our shareholders to the CEO, both noncash and unrelated to our financials. However, we need to book it here in line with IFRS two guidelines. This noncash item will be visible going forward at around PLN 60 million annually. The next slide again showcases the very healthy cash generative dynamics of InPost business. In 2024, Poland generated almost PLN 1.6 billion in free cash flow, representing a free cash flow conversion rate of 53% compared to 49% in the previous year. Free cash flow investment in international markets amounted to PLN 662 million, resulting in a 26% group adjusted EBITDA conversion slightly lower than in the same period in 2023, mainly due accelerated international APM network developments and the increase in Mondial Relay lease payments. To close the financial highlights section, let me say a word on net debt and leverage, as shown on this slide. In 2024, gross debt increased by PLN 1.1 billion up to PLN 7.8 billion, with changes mainly in IFRS 16 lease liabilities and other IFRS 16 items such as transportation fleet and office leases. Net debt increased by PLN 891 million, lower than gross debt on the back of higher cash generation. The higher net debt, combined with a 33.5% increase in adjusted EBITDA, resulted in a decrease of our leverage ratio from 2.2x at the end of 2023 to 1.9x at the end of 2024. As you are probably aware, we have recently provided information about the refinancing of our debt. So starting from Q1 2025, the structure will be slightly different. Now let me close the financial highlights with our outlook for 2025 and an update of Q1 trading, as you can see on the next slide. For full year 2025, we anticipate group revenue to grow in the high teens to low 20s range and will surpass market volume growth in all our geographies. We expect volume to grow in the mid-teens across the group, high single-digit to low double-digit growth in Poland, mid- to high single-digit growth in Mondial Relay markets, mid-40s growth in the U.K., reflecting network expansion. Revenue should grow slightly higher than volume in Poland and Mondial Relay due to favorable mix and repricing. In the U.K., newly acquired Menzies News trade part will be consolidated for the full year and will boost our revenue in that part. At group adjusted EBITDA level, we expect an increase in the low to mid-20s, translating into a slight improvement in group adjusted EBITDA margin. We expect Poland to stabilize at mid-40s margins and international markets to continue showing improved profit margins. We plan to deploy over 14,000 additional APMs this year, including 3,000 in Poland, 4,000 in Benefralux, 4,500 in the U.K., 2,000 in Iberia and 1,000 in Italy. Our CapEx should reach around PLN 1.8 billion with 60% invested in APM production and deployments. Despite this, we expect positive cash flow and further deleveraging excluding M&A activities. Now for quarter one 2025, in Poland, we anticipate around 10% volume growth, thereby clearly outperforming a softer e-commerce market and delivering year-on-year growth across all segments regardless of the very high baseline established in Q1 2024. In International, we also continue to outgrow the market, expecting around 70% InPost volume growth year-on-year. These numbers support our full year 2025 outlook. Before we go to Rafal and Q&A session, I'd like to highlight one thing to those that model in excels. On the last page of our slides available on our website, you'll find segmental division as reported in 2024 and 2024 recalculated to the new segment reporting. Starting from 2025, we will change our reporting slightly, but our Investor Relations team prepare additional data in the slides and Excel to help you understand it better and be ready for Q1 2025 numbers. And with this, let me hand it over to Rafal for closing comments and a focus on the key points for 2025. Thank you.

    Rafal Brzoska

    To wrap up the presentation, let me highlight our key focus areas for this year. In Poland, we are expanding our APM network to meet the growing e-commerce demand and to strengthen our brand through improved user experience and loyalty programs. We continue to grow and expand our digital services like Pay and InPoint that entrench mutual customer and merchant loyalty as we accelerate heavy and medium user engagement. In France, our focus remains on B2C merchant acquisition and farming launching to-door delivery and investing in quality improvements for faster delivery. In the U.K., we are accelerating local deployment, expanding our B2C merchant base as we develop our new services and optimizing network utilization for efficiency. In all our markets, we will continue to expand our cross-border offer that includes adding U.K. to the rest of the pack where we are already connected under InPost's network. Our 2025 plan is designed to position us for sustained growth and market leadership in these key regions. We are absolutely confident that these strategic initiatives will deliver strong results and create a significant value for all our stakeholders. Thank you all. And now over to the operator for the Q&A session. Please go ahead.

    Operator

    [Operator Instructions] The first question today is from Alexia Dogani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

    Alexia Dogani

    Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I had three please, if possible. Just firstly, can you talk a little bit about the consumer backdrop in Poland and how you see the e-commerce penetration evolving over the next couple of years? Secondly, can you talk a little bit about your customer composition in the Polish market? Where do you see growth? And if you're able to give us an indication of how much you expect to derisk your exposure to the largest customer currently? And then finally, in the U.K., can you just discuss again your M&A strategy? Clearly, you've done the Menzies acquisition that really has helped your logistics capability you're now accelerating your kind of customer sign-up. And do you need M&A to deliver the plan that you're presenting today or additional M&A rather? Thank you.

    Rafal Brzoska

    Thank you. Maybe let me first, good morning guys, answer the first two questions, then I will hand over to Michael. So, the consumer backdrop, definitely, we observed -- I mean we observed that earlier on, but it was confirmed by some of the external sources of information. I mean, the base linker index that was published for Jan and for Feb is confirming that we see a kind of slowdown in terms of the consumer sentiment, of course, the quarter -- the first quarter in 2024 was extremely strong, so the base is playing a role here. But what we see, it's all about consumer sentiment linked to the geopolitical situation, that's first element that comes from many surveys that people don't feel comfortable what's going on. It's -- we need to be very clear saying that we are very close to the situation in Ukraine and the question marks around the peace in Ukraine, which I strongly believe we'll end up as a positive outcome, but the uncertainty around this is literally something was not helpful. I feel that the good thing is we see clearly that and maybe that's a segue to the second point that the Polish merchant specifically, the verticals, independent merchants are becoming stronger and stronger. We have more and more people creating vertical marketplaces, and that definitely it's a great pro for us because then we are more and more diversifying away from the biggest merchant, which is already visible. I mean, all the data points showing clearly that also Q1 slowdown is less harmful to the smaller players than to the biggest and also the challenge coming from Asia is more and more visible already, both on the number of consumers using the Chinese platforms, which is now, I think, already the leadership position on Temu side and us being agnostic working for all of them being integrated with 60,000 merchants in Poland and having all the consumers in our hands, having 24 million, it's literally 90-plus percent of online shoppers using InPost and having InPost as the preferred delivery method. That gives us confidence that not only in Q1, although it's maybe less positive on the consumer sentiment that Q1, again, we will prove that we are growing. And in terms of the overall like picture for the short to midterm, we definitely want to steer our consumer base, specifically by boosting our International expansion into the moment that the largest client with another portfolio will be below 10% of our revenue. And that's, of course, something what we want to steer and we want to have our testing in our hands, not someone else. And by definition, showing the results of '24 and recent years, we already proved that this is something that we can execute very well. But cutting more light on the U.K., Michael, handing over to you.

    Michael Rouse

    Good morning, thank you, Rafal. Yes, look, I think Menzies has been a very successful acquisition and integration. Really, we've seen the effects of that now since we took full ownership and the performance across Q4 has really cemented how we really see the opportunity in the U.K. and really unlock in those bottlenecks for volume growth. On the last call, a quarter ago, we also updated that we've done an investment part into Yodel to really cement that partnership because 1/3 of our U.K. business today is to-door delivery. Clearly, our Menzies focus is very much on out-of-home coverage. But clearly, we can't ignore the to-door penetration in the U.K. and the opportunity to convert that volume. So, I think overall, really, we're really happy, near term. Really, we'll continue to focus on cementing and integrating Menzies as well as developing the Yodel partnership to really increase the quality and coverage of that solution to really increase our addressable market in the U.K. With regards to M&A overall, I think really, we remain opportunistic very much so, clearly, looking across not just the U.K. but all of Europe, as we think about what potential assets could be available and two, how they could complement our network in any element, not just in terms of logistics, but sort of either technology or even locker development linked to that, as we try to increase our penetration. So -- but U.K. very much happy with our current position and cementing it and improving the quality.

    Alexia Dogani

    Thank you.

    Operator

    Thank you. We will move to our next question from David Kerstens from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

    David Kerstens

    Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for the presentation. I also have three questions. Maybe as a follow-up to the consumer sentiment in Poland, can you also talk about what's driving the weaker momentum in the International business? Is that exactly for the same reasons? Or any other factors at play there? Then the second question. It seems that the pace of International margin expansion is accelerating to 720 basis points in 2024. Do you expect this trend to continue? And when do you expect to reach the 25% to 30% EBITDA margin target for the International businesses? And then finally, on the competitive landscape in Poland, you clearly highlighted it's not about the APMs, but if you look at lockers, you have a market share of more than 70%. Can you also give an indication what that market share would look like based on volume given your very high utilization? I suspect your utilization is above 100%. Is there any indication you can give what the market share would be based on volume? And how would you expect that utilization to be impacted with Allegro and DHL further expanding their network? I guess adding lockers does not improve the utilization per se.

    Rafal Brzoska

    Thank you, David. Maybe on the first and on the last one, in terms of the consumer sentiment, unfortunately, not for us, but for the market, we see many e-comm players claiming Q1 is weaker than they expected. It differs from market to market. The markets were -- it's not so visible, like in Spain, for instance, the Spanish merchants are not saying so. But Germany, France, some of the U.K. merchants, they claim it's below their expectations. So I think we observed an overall softer Q1, but of course, for us, specifically on all our International markets, we are super satisfied with the first volume work on the InPost market share and the growth opportunities. So it's not only Poland. It's not only Poland definitely. The question about the volume market share, I have a deja vu. I think I had like two or three times already since our IPO. We had a moment where some of the people were questioning, what's really most important in terms of the InPost flywheel. And the only change in what we said in the past is that lockers itself, it becomes less and less relevant. I think three years ago, I said this is maybe 1/4 of our success. Now I would say it's 15% of InPost success. The more we develop, the more we add on top of the stickiness of the consumers loyalization loyalty program now new services like in InPost Pay, we literally have stronger confidence that it's much more complex. And just to give you an example, we pick up in Poland from 130,000 places a day. 130,000 a day, we pick up parcels from the merchants, from the senders. 85% of those pickups is below 10 parcels. Now imagine that you want to send two or three different vans of three different companies to pick it up to deliver like InPost delivers next day, it means that one courier company will pick up maybe two out of those 10. The other one, the lucky one, maybe 4. And the last one, another three or maybe one. How will it change the cost of the first mile for those three players? And this is just the first one. Then you have the mid mile where you have exactly the same problem. And then you have the last mile where you split that utilization between a few parties. I mean, I don't understand where the logic is behind, but only through consolidation of the full value chain, you may get to the point that something is better, cheaper or at least comparable to what we do. That's why being agnostic and having opportunity to steer to serve the whole volume that is existing on the market to the entire group of consumers, 24 million consumers, you may really replicate InPost business model. In any other proxy scenario, you will just create a noise because non-single number will support that noise because of the reason I gave you in this one short example, this is just one example. So in our hands, we want to keep the opportunity for the future growth on that market. That's why we have accelerated our locker deployment because our machines are full, like you rightly said, David. So we want to be ready for peak. We want to have enough capacity for our loyal merchants for peak. And we need to build that capacity for those who really want to complement their end users, not want to spoil them. And I think that's in a nutshell. But happy to hand over to Javier in terms of the margin expansion.

    Javier van Engelen

    Thank you, Rafal. David, first, on the margin expansion, let's go back to 2024. Yes, of course, we're happy on the performance. Total EBITDA margin up 240 basis points. Montreal Relay, 360 basis points, U.K. and Italy from a negative profit margin to 13.7%. And in all those metrics, we have done better than what we had as an outlook, especially if you look back at the beginning of 2024. So happy with the outperformance, happy with the year-on-year progress and at the same time, Poland stabilizing. So also that is 46.2% is what we promised. So number one, I think happy not just for the numbers. Also, if you look at the dynamics in -- when you go back to international markets, it's a continued proof that what Rafal talked about, the flywheel is working. This is about strategically choosing to move more to B2C, moving business more to APM. And we know that all of that together with quality density and merchant acquisition is creating that flywheel, which allow us to improve profitability as the business grows. So in that sense, also from an outlook point of view, it shows that I think we're pretty disciplined. We're reliable on what we say we will deliver, and I hope we also see that we're pretty transparent on how we can explain the numbers. As you look to the future, remember, we've always said that with the flywheel working that midterm, those international markets should get close to a 30% profit margin. And that is a trajectory that we are on. Now it will take a couple of years as we build volume. But the same strategy will apply. It's B2C acceleration, it's further deployment and converting and moving volume from to-door and PUDOs to APMs. And therefore, again, it's a flywheel in motion. So we will continue to smartly invest. We've got a disciplined approach, whether it's with M&A or organic on how to further deploy APMs, how to grow the business. And yes, we expect in the next couple of years to keep on driving towards that 30% margin. Is it going to be exactly the same 700 basis points that we have in 2024 versus 2023? Perhaps not because the base now is, of course, a little bit higher than that, but still a marked improvement we should be able to achieve as we get more volume and as we get this flywheel really working as it has done in Poland. So we've always said that the end point is not 30%. Longer term, it might be higher. But again, the first midterm point would be closer to 30%, and we keep on building for that.

    David Kerstens

    Very clear. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

    Operator

    Thank you. We will now move to our next question from Marco Limite from Barclays. Please go ahead.

    Marco Limite

    Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So the first question is a follow-up on the Mondial Relay margins. So clearly, you achieved a very big improvement in margins in '24 compared to '23. You are not guiding for any, let's say, margin improvement range for '25. So just wondering if you will be able to give an indication on that? And second, still on the Mondial Relay margin. I mean, my understanding is that in '24, the margin expansion was driven also by the switch from PUDO to APM. So just wondering if you are able to provide a bit more color on the difference in margins between an APM delivery and the PUDO delivery in France. So for example, how lower is the unit cost when you deliver to an APM versus PUDO? And the third question is your -- on your loyalty program in Poland, which Rafal was mentioning before. So can you give a couple of, let's say, the most successful example in your program? So for example, you were mentioning the coins that the consumer can collect, how these coins can be used? Yes, so just practical examples on that.

    Michael Rouse

    Thanks, Marco. I'll take the Mondial Relay questions and then refer it back to Rafal for the loyalty in Poland. So answering your question on Mondial Relay guidance, no, at this point in time, we're not going to provide any more detailed guidance. We still say that international keep on improving. That's across the territories. So we expect Mondial Relay will also continue to improve. By the way, in the new segmentation, we will basically also see that we look at U.K. and we're going to be more transparent that you see the U.K. as a whole, and you're going to see the rest of Europe basically combined as there's also more cross-border happening. But fundamentally, underlying the same what we've said on the flywheel before, we need to keep on converting more customers SMEs, B2C business, and we need to convert more business to the APM. So that is still the two margin drivers together with general volume that should make us further improve our profitability in Mondial Relay margin. That's basically what we are doing in the past and what we continue doing in the future. In terms of your question more strategically on expansion and PUDOs versus APMs, look, we don't disclose individual numbers on those different streams, but it's obvious that the efficiency of delivering a PUDO network versus an APM network is much more to the favor of an APM network. Of course, it depends on the density of the APM network and utilization of the APMs, but we've proven in many markets that we know how to manage that. As Rafal said, it's not just about putting APMs in place. It's the expertise on how to run them, which makes a difference. On top of that, PUDOs also have separate fees you need to pay. So obviously, lower efficiency in the amount of parcels you can deliver logically to the PUDOs versus APM and the fees you need to pay make APMs clearly the preferred vehicle to go to and also from a profitability point of view. And therefore, also, there's been a couple of articles on that. It's clearly also for us that, when you look at the amount of touch points for the consumer, we will be building up APMs and you will see PUDO touch points going down over time because that is both from a consumer experience point of view, a merchant quality point of view and from a profitability point of view, the right way to go. So again, in line with the strategy that we've laid out for other markets, the same applies to Mondial Relay, and it's also a profit driver. Rafal, can I refer to you for that?

    Rafal Brzoska

    Yes. Sure, sure. Happy to, Marco. So the loyalty program we enrolled is the most successful loyalty program ever enrolled in Poland in such a short time in recent 30 years. So this means 11 million clients in literally less than two quarters. And what is the most profound effect, which is already visible, we may and can steer the traffic of our consumer base with this loyalty program. We have already tested that successfully, and it is already visible in Q1. That's why we'll continue to focus not on the noise, but on our consumers because it's us being in control where we steer our consumer base. What does it mean? We have already embedded AI. We have created personalization. We are meeting consumers' expectations before they even say what they expect. So I don't want to disclose all the details at this moment because it's a very early stage but we see first results that every consumer we steer them with proper incentives towards certain merchants keys number of parcels ordered or number of orders increased by 40% in some cases, means we are multiplying the fact of the, let's say, organic growth of the market by having a very visible additional boost if we want to boost them towards the direction of certain merchants or certain marketplaces. And that gives us this enormous confidence that loyalty and stickiness of the end consumers will be the critical taper of the market in coming few years. And that really makes us happy. That's why also the list of new features that we are developing around that environment that we have created for and the ecosystem we've created for the end consumers is really a long list. So quarter-by-quarter, you will see new features being applied for our consumer base. It's like with the subscription model for the magazines and weekly, monthly magazines that we have started last week, this is a total potential of 200 million parcels just in our nine geographies, 200 million parcels total completely new business where, of course, we combine all the competencies from Menzies, but also our stronger position across the markets and out-of-home. This will bring the effect, and this is just one of the examples.

    Marco Limite

    And if I can sneak one quick one to Javier, just to make sure the message is clear. So you're guiding for stable margins in Poland at mid-40s. But under the new disclosure, your margins in Poland were 47. So just to make sure that the guidance is stable year-over-year rather than 47 going slightly down to mid-40s.

    Javier van Engelen

    As we said before, our guidance is to roughly stable margins, which is 45, 46%, where we were, so that's indeed the guidance that we have.

    Marco Limite

    Okay. Thank you.

    Operator

    Thank you. We're going to move to our next question from Roman Reshetnev from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

    Roman Reshetnev

    Hi. Thanks for the call. A couple of questions. The first one is a follow-up on the growth in Poland, with your 10% volume growth guide in Q1 was presumably impacted by the leap year effect, colder weather and Easter timing. So could you clarify in what scenario the growth rate for the rest of the year might decelerate from the Q1 level? And to what extent the lower end of your guidance incorporate potential volume softening from U.K. clients? And separately on the loyalty program and InPost Pay, beyond improving checkout conversion, what additional monetization opportunities do you see and particularly for financial services or merchant advertising going forward?

    Rafal Brzoska

    Happy to take the second one first and then handing over to Javier again. So the critical effect is that we increased the share of checkout among the merchants. What does it mean? For some of the merchants where we applied both InPost Pay and Loyalty program, incentivizing end consumers to shop online with certain merchants, they realize their checkout rate went up by 30 percentage points, which is something that you cannot deny running a marketplace or running a shop. So the combination of the two is the most powerful advanced tool we have developed to help the merchants grow on the market. And those who already are with us, they already noticed that not only InPost Pay, but now a combo of InPost Pay and Loyalty program is driving their top lines. That's, again, a reinforcement of the statement, InPost has nothing to do with the logistics, nothing to do with just the last mile. InPost is all about helping the merchants run their business and improve their basket conversion because the basket conversion is the main challenge for all of them. And yes, that's in a nutshell. So just giving you one case study on one of the vertical marketplaces where we applied both services just for three days MVP. The number of parcels that our consumer base has ordered from that merchant went up by 45%. Just to give you a point of reference. So we know still we need to develop a lot of new features, but already those we have developed so far are playing a crucial role in the strategy we enrolled here for our consumers.

    Javier van Engelen

    Roman, I'll take the outlook question for Poland. So just to get the numbers here on Q1, we're saying around 10% growth, which again will be significantly better than what the market will be doing. So -- and for the full year, we're saying high single digit, low double digits. So it's pretty much in line what we're saying for Q1. With the same message, we will be taking market share in a market, which we expect to grow less than that. What are the parameters, which could be different in Q1 versus the rest of the year? Number one, as we keep always tracking is the e-commerce market development. We saw also last year, at the beginning of the year, the assumption was slightly different than what happened across the market. With a strong e-commerce market last year, we'll have to see how the e-commerce market develops this year in view of the comments also Rafal made on consumer sentiment and the rest of the quarters, which hopefully will stabilize a little bit the volatile environment that we've been in, in the last couple of months. Again, strategically, the key components for us to not sit here and wait, but us to control our destiny is following our strategy. Selective continued APM deployment to make sure we're being close to the Polish consumer, almost all of which shop with us anyway, making sure we keep on delivering the quality that no one else can match was proven again by the peak period at the end of last year, where we were the only ones being able to deliver with late cutoff times and then basically some key marketplace having a benefit from that. And then basically, we have to keep on working with Rafal just said, Loyalty, right? So building Loyalty with the consumer. The consumer knows that we are the preferred network, and we need to keep on building on that. So that's what we control. The markets we don't control. And we also know that over time, we are becoming less dependent of some key customers, and that keeps on being the same. So that's what we need to work on, and that defines the range between high single and low double digits.

    Roman Reshetnev

    Fair enough. Thank you very much.

    Operator

    Thank you. We will now move to our next question from Othmane Bricha from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

    Othmane Bricha

    Hello Rafael, Javier and Michael. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few. First, on your slide, action plan for 2025, you plan to now do a total delivery in France. I would assume that is a response to demand from merchants, maybe similar to the U.K. So can you expand a bit, Michael, on what you planned to do there? And how big you want to be in the to-door delivery? Then again, Michael, on U.K. M&A, in case you would want to acquire another logistics company here in the U.K., do you have a preference between a minority or a majority stake? And then on cross-border, can you update us on the progress you've done over the years and in 2024 in intra-Europe cross-border? How much does that cross-border make up of your volumes in '24? And I think you will connect the U.K. to the rest of your network in Europe, when will that happen? And generally, how should we think about growth in cross-border? Thank you very much.

    Michael Rouse

    Good morning. Thank you. Let me take that. Yes, we plan to start to-door deliveries in France in Q2 -- late Q2. The initial plan is really just a target somewhere between 40% and 60% of French geographic coverage. And I think as you flagged, it's a reaction to how our merchant relationships are developing in B2C. Specifically, if you go into the smaller merchant segment, such as mid-market and SME and in specific regions like Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille and Greater Paris, there is clearly a demand from the SME merchant not just to have an out-of-home which is their preference, but also to ensure they have a to-door offer for certain parts of France where there's a demand. And the simplicity for that merchant is really having a single -- or sorry, a one-stop shop. And so as clearly as our APM growth increases in France, in particular, we're clearly getting a lot of demand now coming from that segment. That whole segment is an area where there's a significant growth opportunity both in volume and margin for the future. And clearly, we want to be able to service the merchants with a single one-stop shop, very, very similar to what we do in Poland today. But the coverage itself will probably expand to a maximum about 60% because it's very targeted based on the merchant demand and regions that we want to operate within. When it comes to U.K. M&A, I think the specific question was minority. I think we've continued to see that, that is a really good path for us. We saw it with Menzies, where we took a minority investment really to develop a partnership. But as that partnership evolved, we really saw the opportunity to take full ownership of parts of the Menzies business, but not all of it. As we go forward, I think M&A and investment in that way, it will continue to probably be an attractive way for us to, one, solidify a partnership and then two, really evaluate whether actually an acquisition will be an attractive part, and I think sort of that's -- sort of how we think about the structure and approach. Obviously, in the U.K. today, we have an investment that we've done into Yodel in Q4. And really, we're working on the ground with Yodel to develop their operations. I mentioned this earlier on the call, whether we decide that is then a full acquisition, it's really too early in this partnership to make that evaluation. But clearly, we're very pleased with how the partnership has already developed quite quickly to really enhance our coverage. And moreover, one of the opportunities we see in Q2 is the immediate access to over 500 merchants that Yodel has integrated in the B2C environment, and really partnering with PayPoint together to really drive the out-of-home coverage across all of the U.K. as we see the demand continuing to increase for our locker solutions. And so this is really about not just about partnership, but also potential path to cement speed to market that gives us competitive advantage. When it comes to cross-border, we don't comment specifically on the volume mix and components within it. What I would say is that clearly, it's a fast-growing segment within the business. It has been, not just in '24, but actually in '22 and '23, it's also been developing quite well. If you look at markets like Italy, I've said in the past, at least growth has really been fueled by cross-border and now we see both a strong mix of domestic and cross-border volume within it. So as a growth opportunity, it's still very early for us on cross-border across the whole network, including Poland. But clearly, we see it as a massive opportunity for the future, and we're still very early on it. And I would probably more comment our cross-border volume in totality is more in sort of high single-digit low teens than actually saying it's anything more significant than that at this point, but growing very fast, in terms of that potential. The Q2 and the overall cross-border solution for the U.K. is really in the second half of this year. And we'll start that phase really post summer and really start to offer targeted merchants the opportunity to work on a cross-border business, connecting both into the Mondial Relay network and the Poland market because clearly, cross-border is a huge opportunity, not just in Mainland Europe, but obviously the U.K. with all the challenges post Brexit also. So we think we have found a very simple solution to enable that, and that will be in the second half of this year.

    Othmane Bricha

    Thank you. And on the to-door delivery in France, I would assume that you will do it yourself and not go through partner rights?

    Michael Rouse

    It's -- I think we will cement it quite fast speed to market with some small regional partners that we can enable us to do it very quickly. Yes. So to an extent, more smaller regional players and actually trying to organically build it directly. But it will be a combination of both, not just one single solution.

    Othmane Bricha

    Okay, thanks a lot, Michael. Thank you.

    Michael Rouse

    Thank you.

    Operator

    I will hand over to Daniel for any webcast questions. Over to you Daniel.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks. We have a few from the webcast this morning. Firstly, could you explain why you expect only mid- to high single-digit volume growth in Mondial Relay markets, while your APM network in Mondial Relay markets is expected to grow in high double digits?

    Michael Rouse

    Yes. I mean, yes, I can come back on that. Thank you. I mean really, it's fundamentally because of the mix of C2C and B2C. And clearly, B2C is growing, while C2C is quite stable and C2C has had a dominant position in the overall mix. So clearly, you see very high double-digit growth in the 20s around B2C. But C2C not growing, but the overall mix itself clearly is in single digits in this element. But the reality here also on APM growth you saw on the charts earlier that our APM distribution is only about 30% of the total distribution points. So we still have a huge opportunity to grow our APM network across those markets and clearly accelerating that and converting that from the legacy PUDO business is why those rates are at a higher level than the actual volume growth itself. Really, that's the simplicity of that solution.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks, Michael. And our next question, what level of cost inflation per parcel in respect of revenue per parcel do you expect in FY '25?

    Javier van Engelen

    Yes, I'll take that. Look, if you look at what we've been doing in the last couple of years, in general, we follow -- or we look at the inflation, which is normally in the euro zone, where it's Poland versus other markets. Our basic strategy is that we price with inflation, but wherever possible we don't pass full inflation, and we're able to do that because we're focused on cost per parcel improvements and efficiencies, which means that if you look forward also at our profit improvement, of course, our profit improvement is coming from gross margin improvement and the SG&A efficiencies, but mainly gross margin improvement. So I would say, in Poland, if you look at inflation probably between 4%, 5%, the Euro zone further than Poland, 2% to 3%. What we want to do is to make sure that we keep our merchants happy that we are not able, not necessarily. We're having to price everything through. And then the cost efficiencies we need to keep on driving, which is again the whole flywheel and volume that we can drive to then keep our gross margin increasing. So that's our overall strategy, which has been successful so far.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks, Javier. Now does your volume guidance for 2025 and Q1 '25 include recently announced service of press distribution?

    Javier van Engelen

    I'll take that one. From the guidance point of view, if you look at the guidance we've given in the range, it's early in the year, and we're not going to change that if we have new ideas. What I think is important on the non-service of the press distribution, it shows that we keep on looking for opportunities, which will give a benefit to both merchants and to consumers. And servicing basically press distribution is one of those ideas where we can create again a new revenue stream where we can again prove that we are building new services to the market. So I would say this is not a question of guidance in or out, and the first year might not be the biggest item we have, but it's important in terms of always bringing new ideas, new innovation and new opportunities to the market. And then, it's a part of building in the guidance of the high and low end will be part of that guidance.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thank you. What are the plans for expansion into the U.S.A.?

    Rafal Brzoska

    Happy to answer that question. There are no plans, zero plans, and we have full focus on the key geographies we operate, for many reasons, but the Q1 is -- this is enormous opportunity. U.K. is 6x to 7x larger opportunity than Poland for InPost. France, Italy, Spain, combined, is another 8x bigger market opportunity than Poland. So we already became number three in the geographies we operate. We definitely want to become number one. And the opportunity underlying there is massive. We don't want to be distracted.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks, Rafal. Now can you comment on customer retention or loyalty in the U.K. market, i.e., repeat customers, average parcel per customer? How does it compare in C2C versus returns?

    Michael Rouse

    Yes, I can -- given overall, I can't comment on certain specifics because we don't disclose that, but I think probably I would frame it this way. I think, two things that are quite important. One, we see generally actually across C2C on returns, it tends to be around two parcels per week per consumer to give an idea of what we see as a general traction. And clearly, that has increased slightly as the network has continued to grow, but that generally gives a good average. And again, it's an average. It's not the complete distribution. Again, when you look at C2C in returns, it's quite similar, different behaviors between drop-off and pickup and actually on C2C, then when you look at that across the average as well. But again, I think the other important data point that I flagged earlier in the presentation, I think what we see as we roll out our app, we're seeing more and more users and more repeat usage of those that use the app than those that don't use the app. So clearly, we're seeing a highly engaged population base with that. So I think the initial data, again, very early is we're seeing sort of a 50% improvement in those that use the app than those that don't use the app to give you an example. So again, early indicators. But if you look at the average shopper online within the U.K., that's generally doing about 2.5 parcels per week. Again, we're nearly approaching the average of the U.K. and still very early. So clearly, as the more users we grow through either merchant acquisition or product development, clearly, we're seeing the benchmarks being very much around where the U.K. e-commerce population is. So that definitely defines the opportunity as grow the network, grow the merchant base, increase the offering. And clearly, those numbers demonstrate that we'll get very high market penetration.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks, Michael. Next, who will be your main competitors in to-door delivery in France?

    Michael Rouse

    The main competitor now in France is La Poste. So we've clearly, over the last three years, gained significant market share, created quite a significant gap between us and sort of third and fourth player in the market. But clearly, our competitive advantage is really about leading with out-of-home, leading with lockers, where we have the largest network in that market now. And clearly, we're seeing the consumer adoption of lockers growing quite rapidly in France because out-of-home was already well penetrated. Really, the to-door competition is not really how we look at it. It's about the complete service offering, of which we will lead with lockers. But clearly now, merchants in France going forward will now have the opportunity to use to-door solutions, not just out-of-home, and that gives us an even greater opportunity to take a larger share of checkout for those merchants as well going forward.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thank you. How much do you expect APM volume as a percentage of total to be for Mondial Relay in 2025?

    Michael Rouse

    We're not commenting specifically on that share. But what I would say this year, clearly, we are going to grow our APM network even faster than we have in previous years. And for the first time, our APM network will overtake our actual PUDO coverage in France. So I would expect that growth to go probably north of 40% in terms of direction, but I'm not going to comment on specific ranges at the minute because actually, what we're also doing is optimizing the network and actively closing PUDO locations in France this year for the first time as part of the change in volume dynamic with the growth of the APM network. And that will be an important tipping point this year in the market because clearly then that locker density, locker coverage in terms of acceleration as well as the closure of PUDO points, we'll start to obviously enhance how we think about our unit economics, going forward also.

    Unidentified Company Representative

    Thanks, Michael. And it appears that's all we have time for. So Rafal, I'm going to hand it back to you for closing remarks.

    Rafal Brzoska

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining. So very quickly, I kind of wrap up, I guess, the noise around the relationship with some of our clients is a dominating concern, which I get. But I suppose the nervousness of our friends from the most significant marketplace comes alongside, we have visible acceleration of the performance in Q1 based on the base linker data. But I don't want to be as arrogant as some of the managers in the marketplace, a visible lack of leadership as Roy is departuring unfortunately for Allegro. And I think claiming that you will replace InPost in the light of still three years ahead of the existing contract, it's like announcing you have become a candidate in the presidential election which will happen in three years and you for sure will win the office. We may and can steer the traffic of our consumer base with a Loyalty program and InPost Pay. And we have already tested that successfully and it's already visible in Q1. That's why we will continue to focus not on the noise, but on our consumer base. And it's us being in control of our destiny, not the others, and we will prove it quarter-by-quarter, very soon. The thing I can promise to you is very clear, guys. We will not slowdown in our efforts to become a real market leader of Europe. Looking ahead to 2025, we are fully committed to sustaining this momentum by focusing on the three strategic initiatives, which Poland definitely will continue to enhance our APM network and digital services, such as InPost Pay and the loyalty program, but also introducing new venues for our future growth, like we've already proven with eco-returns with the subscription of the magazines and with the cross-border to strengthen customer and merchant engagement and more to come, by the way, still in 2025. France, literally, like Michael said, our efforts will center on acquiring the B2C merchants launching to-door delivery services and investing in quality improvements for faster deliveries, which is already a massive milestone versus what we saw when we took over Mondial Relay three years ago. And of course, U.K., it's that market for us because of the size, because of the early adoption, willingness among the breeds. We plan to accelerate local deployment, expand the B2C merchant base and develop as well the new services that we have already developed in Poland because that will definitely optimize the network utilization for greater efficiency. So additionally, we aim to broaden the cross-border offerings, integrating the U.K. into that existing network. And, of course, provide a very good, very seamless services across all the markets, which we know is the key driver for the international marketplaces. And all these strategic initiatives are literally designed to position us for sustained growth and market leadership in these key regions, and we are absolutely confident that we will deliver strong results and create significant value for all our stakeholders like we do continuously. So thank you for your continued support, guys. Thank you for joining us today. See you soon.

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