Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this conference call.

Today, we would like to discuss the half-year results of Austrian Post. Here with me in the room is our CEO, Walter Oblin, and our CFO, Barbara Potisk-Eibensteiner.

I'd like to directly want to hand over to you, Walter. Please go on, sir.

Thank you, Harald. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our results for the first half of 2026. As a summary upfront, I think we are able to show solid results in a challenging environment.

Let me start on page 2, providing an overview of both our challenges, but also of our opportunities, and the key figures of our first six months. We see a lot of headwinds in the market: digitization in Austria leading to an accelerated letter mail decline; on the parcel side, a quite competitive market, in particular in Eastern Europe and Turkey; and for the second half year, a variety of taxes and duties will be imposed on parcels both from an EU as well as on a national level.

On the other hand, we see big opportunities: e-commerce remains a growth market, and as I will explain to you during this presentation, there is a lot of strong momentum in the e-commerce market in our portfolio, both in Austria as well as in our international portfolio. In Austria, our multi-services strategy is taking off quite well with our bank and our telecommunication offering developing nicely.

We continue to invest in growth, both in e-commerce as well as in Austria. This growth strategy is showing impact.

I think we are quite satisfied that for the first six months, we show good growth momentum: plus 3.8% group revenue growth, €1.544 billion in the first six months, even more than the 3.8%, 6.7% in Q2. On the earnings side, as expected, we have started into this year with a somewhat weaker earnings level with clear reasons for that.

One is an accelerated mail decline. Second is the transition in our telecom business where last year we still had revenues from the cooperation with A1.

Third reason is an intense competition in Eastern Europe combined with regulatory-driven decline in Asia volumes in Turkey. However, we look with a lot of confidence into the next six months, and we remain committed to our guidance to deliver an EBIT in line with previous years for the full year.

Page 3 shows you our strategy. Our vision is to become a leading logistics and services group in our core region, consisting of Austria, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and beyond.

Three core pillars of that strategy: post and beyond in Austria, implying that we are committed to defend our strong market position in the postal business in Austria, but beyond that, we want to become a leading provider of key services to Austrian households, including financial services, telecommunication, and potentially more in the future. Second, international e-commerce is our growth opportunity internationally.

Internationally, we are clearly focused on parcel and e-commerce, and we have invested in this business also this year with two acquisitions I will comment on later on. Third element, one group: we believe there are even more synergies to exploit across our portfolio of regions and businesses, and operational excellence as a key success factor with technology playing an increasing and very important element in that.

The green circle in the middle of our strategy, we are and remain committed to three core values: one is sustainability; second, customer focus; and third, a people focus, aiming for an attractive company culture. Page 4 shows you that we have achieved important milestones in implementing the strategy.

On post and beyond in Austria, we are investing into our network in Austria, in particular in the self-service element of our network. We have built up roughly 1,500 24/7 access points, lockers, and self-service branches, and with that, we have surpassed the threshold of 3,000 postal points and now have the densest network in the history of Austrian Post.

Point two, our bank99 is developing well: €4 million EBIT contribution in the first six months I think is a very nice progress from the break-even results of last year. We have launched our telecommunication offering, Yelllow, on April 1st and have seen a strong customer ramp-up fully according to plans in a quite competitive Austrian telecommunication market.

On international e-commerce, we can show very good growth in Austria with parcel volumes in Austria showing growth of 9%, and we have executed two acquisitions, one has been closed, the other one signed. One is euShipments, a fast-growing fulfillment business based in Eastern Europe, but reaching beyond Eastern Europe, showing strong growth and strong margins.

Second, we two weeks ago signed the acquisition of D Express, one of the leading parcel networks in Serbia, which we will merge with our own company, City Express in Serbia, creating one of the leading private parcel networks in Serbia. Moving on to our core businesses along the strategy framework, starting with our letter mail business: still more than a billion of revenues.

We see a somewhat accelerated decline in Austria, driven by both the government saving across all ministries and also regional governments trying to save money in all areas, but also, of course, corporates in Austria in a stagnating economy trying to save on communication spendings. We still manage to show a revenue decline that is more moderate than the volume decline, and we continue in the execution of our strategy, moving to page 6, by trying to migrate most of the volumes into a slower E+2/3 product, our so-called standard product.

In the meantime, we have already around 85% of our volume in the slower standard product, and we have implemented five days ago a price increase on the premium service from €1.30 to €1.90, which will help us in the second quarter stabilizing revenues, but also migrating even more share of the total mail market in the slower product. Why does that help us?

Because we bundle the delivery of the standard products on two days a week, effectively, we are moving to a twice-a-week mail service for the bulk of mail. Page 7, an update on bank99: after a quite challenging ramp-up over the last five years and the finalization of the merger of bank99 with the retail business of ING that we acquired in '21, and where the last step was the harmonization of two core banking systems last year, we are now 100% focused on the market, and this 100% market focus, in combination with an improved cost structure, pays off.

We see it in the bottom line: €4.2 million EBIT contribution of bank99, in addition to contribution margin delivered into the postal network, I think is a nice development. We are very confident that bank99 can deliver even more revenues and profits over the next years.

One element to improving and supporting growth in bank99 is the offering of an asset management business, basically the offer to consumers to buy shares, ETFs, savings plans, and other products. This has been missing so far, and with that, we have a more or less complete product range for retail customers: both payment services, checking account, as well as loan products, as well as asset management services.

Nice development of our bank. Page 8, similarly nice development of our postal network in Austria: we have passed the threshold of 300 3,000 postal access points.

The growth has come from 24/7 lockers and self-service branches, which are increasingly accepted by consumers. Last year, 35 million transactions handled through self-service facilities.

Market research shows us that the 24/7 locker is already the most preferred access point to the postal network in Austria, has already surpassed branch offices and postal partners. We continue to operate branches because these are the point where we can deliver and sell other services, and, of course, also the postal services.

With around 300 branches, I think we have a quite consolidated network already, and we also remain committed to maintaining a good number of postal partners across the country. Page 9, as already mentioned, our mobile offering under the brand Yelllow, as the name says, very close to the postal brand, positioned in a way that it maximizes the strong postal brand in Austria.

The launch of this business has gone very smoothly, and customer ramp-up has been accomplished fully according to plans. We already have a very good five-digit number of customers.

Our positioning is clearly successful. What is the positioning?

It's a quality network in cooperation with the Austrian telecom incumbent, combined with fair and affordable prices, not necessarily the cheapest ones, and that is our differentiating factor—with service and advice in postal branches and with postal partners. We see that 90% of customers come from the postal branch channel as opposed to digital channel.

It is a strong focus on an elderly population, a population that still looks for advice and people that help them with their mobile offering, and we think this is a nice customer segment where we are seeing a lot of potential. Moving to our parcel business, you see here the footprint parcel networks we have in Austria, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, and beyond in a total of 15 geographies.

We have made two very important anorganic steps over the last months. One is the acquisition of the company euShipments based in Bulgaria with a strong footprint both in Bulgaria and Romania, but also servicing SMEs beyond those markets.

We have closed that transaction in March this year and are seeing nice growth coming from this, nice margins. Two weeks ago, we signed the takeover of 100% of the shares of D Express, one of the leading parcel networks in the Serbian market.

As said, we will merge this with our company, City Express, and substantially improve our market position in the Serbian market. Moving to page 11, this gives you the overview of how different levies and taxes will impact our parcel business in these markets.

In Turkey, more or less as of October last year and early this year, any minimum threshold on duty-free imports was removed, all parcels from Asia have to go through customs. This had a strong impact on volumes that we also saw in Aras Kargo.

In the EU and also impacting our parcel business in Austria and in Eastern Europe in the EU markets, a de minimis customs rate of €3 per customs category and parcel was introduced on July 1st. We have seen a decline across the board roughly 30% in the first months.

This, to put things into perspective, on an exposure of roughly 10% of parcels across the group that come from Asia. In Austria, it was less than that, around 8%.

In Austria, also the impact was a little bit lower than the 30%, and we have already seen a recovery of volumes over the last weeks. We think that the big e-commerce platforms will change their business models, will learn how to deal with those levies, how to show them vis-a-vis the buyers in online shops, and I think we'll quickly react and find ways to deal with that.

Then in Austria, on October 1st, a parcel tax of €2.40 will be introduced on all platforms and retailers that make more than 100 million in revenues. This will impact probably 70% to 80% of all Austrian parcels.

Finally, on November 1, the EU plans to introduce an additional levy of €2 per item category or parcel, the details still not clear. Of course, the combination of these levies and taxes will have at least a short-term impact on our growth.

While we do not have full clarity on what the impact be and how it will develop over time, we think that for the full year, we will still show a good growth in our parcel business, but in the next six months, the growth will come down from double-digit growth to somewhere in the mid-single digit growth figures. With that said, let's have a look at Austria.

In Austria, a very strong momentum in the parcel business: plus 9% growth in volumes, 10% in revenues shows that our market position is based on service advantages, on quality advantages, and also on, I think, clear cost advantages coming from scale, coming from efficiency, coming from investments. We continue to invest in Austria in infrastructure, in IT, in our network, in new services.

Our Sunday delivery is developing well and continue to defend our market leadership in the market. Let's move to Eastern Europe, page 13: good growth, 8% volume growth, 7% revenue growth.

However, quite competitive market impacting margins, a battle for market share going on there. Accordingly, also our margins have suffered.

We are turning every stone in Eastern Europe, both organizationally, stronger integrating across countries, operationally trying to capture efficiencies, and strategically investing in those markets, both organically in the build-up of own locker networks, but also in acquisitions. Moving to page 14, the acquisition of D Express that I have already mentioned will help to strengthen our market position in the Serbian market, creating one of the leading parcel networks in Serbia, adding €36 million revenues to our top line and offering substantial synergies between our existing companies and D Express, which we will start on day one after closing by driving forward the integration of two networks.

Moving to Turkey on page 15: Turkey remains our biggest foreign market, roughly €500 million in revenues for the full year. The volume has been impacted, as already mentioned, by changes in customs, in particular for Asian parcels.

Accordingly, growth has been lower than anticipated before that, but still, we have seen at least slight growth and good growth in revenues coming from a still high inflation in Turkey, although it has come down, combined with a relatively stable currency, which also had an impact on our put option accounting, which Barbara will comment on in a few minutes. Page 16, our acquisition in e-commerce fulfillment: we see a substantial opportunity in Eastern Europe, in Central and Eastern Europe, by complementing our strong position in the last mile with fulfillment services.

We think that the business model of euShipments, which basically provides a bundle of services to SMEs ranging from software integration into large e-commerce platforms to warehousing, consolidation, and shipping, transport, and invoicing, and returns management without necessarily operating the last mile themselves. This business has shown good growth, double-digit growth over the last years, is serving 1,300 SMEs, quite balanced customer structure, nice margins.

For the first months in our portfolio, we have consolidated it in March, we have been very happy with the development of euShipments, and we will continue to invest in this fulfillment business with the aim to become one of the leading providers of logistics services for e-commerce companies in Central and Eastern Europe. With that, I have given you an overview on the implementation of our strategy and the development in our core business lines, and I now hand over to Barbara, who will give you more details on our financials.

Thank you, Walter. Also, welcome from my side.

Let me start today with our segment reporting to go through the segments to better understand afterwards our results. Mail, Branch and Services, we started this segment reporting only with first quarter of 2026, also includes branch services and our Telco business together with letter mail business solutions and also direct mail and MediaPost.

This segment amounts for about 36% in the first half of 2026. Then we have the big block of E-Commerce and Logistics where the Austrian parcel business, also the international parcel business, as well as the fulfillment business and e-commerce services are considered, and this amounts for 59% of our revenues.

Then we have our youngest and smallest segment. It's the bank, the pure bank.

We are showing now is about 5% of our revenues. Let me come to the next slide.

Revenues, Walter already mentioned. EBITDA is down by €11.7 million to €187.7 million due to the weaker business we saw in different segments.

I will come back afterwards. Balance sheet, still very solid with a low financial debt, amounting for 0.6 times net debt EBITDA, only considering the financial debt, and also logistic equity ratio of 24%.

What we also showed in the first half of the year is a cash flow of €117 million, which is also quite solid. I do not want to spend too much time on the revenue side, even that the news are good, gross of 3.8%, different pictures in different segments Walter already commented on.

Let me go through our profitability to our EBIT. There you can see the sharp decline on the Mail, Branch and Services side by minus €21.1 million compared to last year.

Main reasons: the decrease in volumes, and on the other hand, also the lack of the Telco business with A1 we still did in the first half of 2025. Rather good profitability on the E-Commerce and Logistics side, driven by the Austrian parcel business as well as by our fulfillment business.

What we are not that happy with is the profitability in CEE. Also there, Walter already mentioned that we are facing strong competition, and also in Turkey with the customs on Chinese parcels starting from the beginning of the year.

In Turkey, we already saw good improvement in June 2026. Let me come now to the detailed income statement where I want to put your focus on our staff costs.

If you compare our staff costs in the first half of 2025 with the first half of 2026, you see an increase. If you take the increase, it's mainly coming out of the inflation in Turkey with €12 million, and on the other hand, with the expansion of our scope of consolidation.

That's mainly euShipments, but also our HLX, our Greek IT company. Otherwise, we were able to take out the cost on the personal side with the wage increases we were facing on.

EBIT, €73.3 million. I would like to come to the financial side with the next slide, because there we see a tremendous decrease on the financial result side, and it's mainly driven by the valuation of the put option of Aras Kargo where you can see on the right-hand side the discrepancy between the high inflation and the changes in FX rates in the first half of 2026.

The total impact of inflation and FX was amounting for €20 million, and this is the main reason for the sharp decrease on the financial result. Going through to our segments, main message of Mail, Branch and Services division is that the stronger volume decline and limited price effects in mail, combined with the transformation of the Telco business, reduced profitability in H1 2026.

E-Commerce, there the positive revenue and earnings development in Austria and in e-commerce fulfillment; high competition and price pressure in CEE negatively impact earnings. This we already commented on.

Bank division, there we see now a sound and profitable course. We did the IT migration of the core banking system, and what we see is that bank division is delivering good results every month.

Coming to our solid balance sheet. Balance sheet mainly depends on the balance sheet of bank99.

There we are quite stable, and where I want to spend some words on is the equity. Equity declined due to the payout of dividends in April, amounting for very close to €124 million.

On the other hand, we also did the initial consolidation of euShipments and of HLX in the first quarter of 2026, and this also had a negative impact on the equity. Coming now to our operating free cash flow: our maintenance CAPEX in the first half of 2026 amounted for €32.4 million.

Out of this, about €11 million of green investments for e-mobility and e-charging infrastructure. Operating free cash flow amounting for €116.6 million, gross CAPEX of €12.3 million, and €59.3 million for the acquisition of euShipments.

Coming to the split of our CAPEX: 27% of CAPEX were done internationally, mainly coming from Budapest and Slovakia, but also for our out-of-home initiative in the other countries in CEE; and 73% were done in Austria, mainly in our logistics hub in Salzburg and the initiatives already mentioned on the green investment side. Green investment, with this, I come to the kickoff of our initiative.

Vienna became the world's first major city with a population of over 1 million to achieve 100% CO2-free last-mile delivery, and there we had a celebration with Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was really recognized very positively in the media. With this, I want to hand over for the outlook to Walter.

Let me close our presentation with the outlook. As already mentioned, we confirm our guidance that we have already communicated in the last quarters.

Overall, the market remains challenging. We don't see immediate relief on the volume decline of mail.

However, we see continued volume increase, however, in the second half of the year, somewhat burdened and yeah, burdened by the levies and taxes that I mentioned. What does that mean in revenues and EBIT?

On a group level, we aim for a slight revenue increase for the full year despite the mail volume decline. On the mail side, as mentioned, we have implemented a price increase on the premium price product, which should stabilize mail revenues, and also on a quarter-by-quarter per quarter comparison, the delta in telecommunication will become smaller for the full year.

We talk about roughly €20 million in decline versus last year. In E-Commerce and Logistics, we continue to expect growth for the full year despite the levies, however, a reduced growth in the second half year.

Bank, we more or less expect a continuation of the positive development of the first six months. As Barbara mentioned, we do expect to invest roughly €140 to €160 million in CAPEX in logistics infrastructure, IT, and in locker networks.

On the earnings side, we rain we remain committed to target operating earnings in the order of magnitude of recent years. A bandwidth in the order of magnitude of €180 to €190 million plus/minus.

You may ask the question, where should improvement come from? On the one hand, we expect improvement from the price increase in the on the premium letters.

We do expect an improvement in Turkey in the next six months coming from product price measures, but also from efficiency measures that we have implemented in the first six months, and we have already seen strong impact in June. Third, we do expect support from the acquisitions which we have made, in particular on the earnings side from e-commerce fulfillment.

Of course, we are living in volatile times, and visibility is somewhat constrained. We continue to see both opportunities and risks.

On the risk side, it is the decline of letter mail volumes and the the duties and and levies and taxes on on parcels where the impact is still unclear. Of course, the currency and the implications on our on on certain non-cash effective accounting positions remains a risk, at the same time also an opportunity, of course, depending on the development of the Turkish lira.

We also see opportunities basically on the cost side in Eastern Europe, Turkey, but also in Austria. We are continually working on anorganic strengthening of our portfolio, and we are in in an early phase of negotiations with the federal government.

Some of you may remember that we have a yeah, a a dispute around social security contributions way back in the period from 1996 to 2008. All this is fully provisioned, any positive outcome of a negotiation should be a a positive impact on the on the cash side.

We remain cautiously optimistic to again make a little bit translate the EBIT guidance into specific numbers. In the last years, we had an EBIT in the order of magnitude or in the in the range of €188 million up to a few million above €200 million.

That is basically the bandwidth that we guide here. With that said, thank you very much for your attention, and we now look forward to your questions.

Can you hear me? Hello?

Now, yes.

Sorry. Thank you for taking my questions.

A couple. First one is on the de minimis.

I appreciate the 10% mentioned in your slides for exposure on parcel volumes. I'm wondering whether you can provide that exposure by country, what's your exposure of those volumes in Austria, CEE, and [Turkey?]

as well? How July has been, let's say.

That will be my first question.

Marco, I'm sorry. We can hear you, but we can hardly understand you.

Is there any chance to—

Is this better

now? Try again.

Let's try again, yeah.

Sorry for that. First question is on the de minimis.

I appreciate the 10% mentioned in the slides for exposure on parcel volumes. I'm wondering whether you can provide that exposure by country, what's your exposure of those volumes in Austria, CEE, and [Turkey?]

as well? How July has been, let's say.

That will be my first question.

Marco, I'm sorry. It was very hard to understand you.

I heard the first part of your question addressing the topic of de minimis, and if I understood it correctly, the question: what is the exposure by countries? If that was the question, we have in Austria, the Asia share of volumes is around 8%.

In Eastern Europe, it's in the low double-digit figures. The impact in July—and let's really regard that as very early indication of the short-term impact, and let's not forget, after such a change, there are a few days of technical issues where some systems might not be working, there may be some advance purchases where people have bought end of June to avoid the €3.

It's very hard to really from the first weeks to project anything into the future, but the impact has been more in the order of magnitude of 25%, below 30% in Austria, above that in Eastern Europe. For the full group, we're talking about 10% share of Asia parcels that are our exposures to Asian volumes, and that 10% have decreased to 7% in July.

We expect that number to improve, as I said, why? Because first, technical issues are being solved; second, e-commerce platforms learn how to handle this and how to optimize the way they show it during the online buying process; and they're also building up inventory and fulfillment centers in Europe.

Some Chinese customers that have already done that before, there we see a clear difference. There the impact is much smaller, if at all visible.

We do expect that Chinese e-commerce platforms will recover from those losses. May take some time, but we think that after July, we should expect a lower decline than we have seen in July.

I don't know if I answered your question because it was really very hard to understand anything.

Thank you. I will try to speak very slowly for my second question, which is on your mail division.

You've introduced big price increases on premium letters. Can you clarify how much of your volumes is coming from letters?

Then second question within mail is about the run-out of Yelllow revenues. Shall we expect Yelllow to get to 7 million revenues already in Q3, or maybe Q4, or maybe next year?

What's the indication there? Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Marco. I I I think I understood 75%.

I think the first question was, and please correct me if I'm wrong, was on premium letters, the the exposure. As you rightly said, there is a significant price increase from €1.30 to €1.90.

There there is a strategic intent behind it, which is to migrate even more volume from the premium letter, which we deliver every day, five days a week, to the slower product, which we bundle on two days per week. We already are in the area of around 85% standard letter share, 15 million sorry, 15% share left in the premium letter, and we expect that that price measure to further decrease this share, on the one hand allowing us to save further costs in bundling and in not touching households anymore, in particular on the countryside, on the three other days.

Just to give an order of magnitude, the average Austrian household today receives once a month a premium letter. We're really in an area where every letter that is not being sent in a premium product helps us to leave out one stop for the mailman.

At the same time, of course, 60 cents on €1.30 is a quite significant price increase, and for the for Q4, this should also support revenues. On Yelllow, to be honest, I did not fully understand the question.

I I am guessing it was around the the EBIT impact. Last year, we had a ramp-down of our telecom cooperation, we had €20 million revenues for the full year, 13 in the in the first, seven in the in the second.

This year, we had nothing in Q1 and a ramp-up in the, starting from Q2. In Q3, the the delta between the two years will become smaller from quarter to quarter.

Thank you. Very last one question.

Shall we expect the second-half EBIT in the mail division still to be down year-over-year, or the price increases plus Yelllow ramping up means that second-half EBIT in mail is flat or up year-over-year? Thank you.

I would not expect it to rise, but it should be, in relative terms, it should be better than in the first half.

Thank you very much, and sorry for the technical problem.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the solid operational performance in the first half.

First, on your expansion strategy: the integration of euShipments is already showing good top-line results, and you announced the acquisition of D Express in Serbia. How do these additions strengthen your competitive edge in the CEE region compared to local players?

Second, regarding the international market environment: you mentioned persistent price pressure in CEE and Turkey, as well as new regulatory hurdles for Asian e-commerce imports. How much of these cost pressures do you expect to offset through your July price adjustments, and what is your outlook on Asian parcel volumes for the rest of the year?

Finally, on bank99 performance: after the very strong Q1, the bank's segment normalized in Q2 with an EBIT of 1.6 million. How should we think about the underlying earnings trajectory of bank99 for H2 given the lower interest rate environment and ongoing customer growth?

Thank you.

On bank99, of course, there is some uncertainty, as you correctly already implied in your question, on the interest rate environment. Overall, we see a rather supporting interest rate environment for the next six months, and I would say roughly take the first half year and multiply it by two roughly.

Of course, there is some uncertainty, maybe a little bit lower than that, maybe a little bit higher, rather I think 100% is already the upper bandwidth. Overall, we see now a good run rate of maybe 1.5 to 2 million per quarter if there are no substantial changes in the interest rate environment.

On the expansion in e-commerce fulfillment, I think if we look strategically at it, we believe in the region Eastern Europe. We see margins in parcel networks under pressure, in particular where we do not have a strong market position.

We think that is an opportunity for players that offer a broader bundle to less dominant customers, smaller and medium-sized customers, where the strong competition on the carrier side is basically an opportunity. Therefore, we think this acquisition and the ability to serve SMEs with a broader e-commerce offering should help us to strengthen our Eastern European business and also, if you look at it combined, to support margins.

Third question on cost pressures and price increases: yes, we are always trying, of course, to compensate cost increases through price increases. The competitiveness of the market environment sometimes makes this difficult.

I think in Turkey, and that was where we mentioned price increases, we are quite confident that price increases will help us improve our margins substantially in the second half of the year. In Eastern Europe, I think we do not yet have substantial clarity to provide a very clear guidance at this point in time.

Then I think the final question was on Asian parcel volumes outlook. I think I have already talked a lot about that, there is little more clarity as visibility is still low.

Please bear with us that for the third parcel levy that comes in in November, we don't even know how it will work, it's hard to project the impact on parcel volumes. Overall, we think that, again let me remind you, the exposure of our group to Asian customers is around 10% of our volume, this is not nothing, but it's 10% and not more.

We think that the 30% decline that we've seen in July is already the bottom, and it should become better after that because the second fee on Asian parcels across the group will only come in November. It will be €2, smaller than that, and we think by then, a lot of Asian platforms will already have adjusted their business model.

I think there was another question on Serbia. We signed the acquisition, but we're still waiting for merger control clearance.

Due to this, we cannot name the effect on our results in year 2026. On the other hand, this acquisition will, of course, strengthen our position there.

Perfect. Thank you very much, and all the best for the second half of the year.

Thank you.

Hello?

on.

Is this better?

Perfect. First is a clarification question.

I heard you talking about the fulfillment business. Am I right to understand that you see it as part of the parcels business and not as a potential future 3PL division?

Let me put it in those phrases, as a segregated business, more in the sense of a call it, I would almost say an end-to-end solution, but that's not the right expression. The second one is you also mentioned that you saw increased activity from the Chinese marketplaces building their own or renting their own warehousing in the countries where you are active.

In some countries, we already see that they are taking the next steps. Look at Joybuy, for example.

They've taken the last-mile delivery with Joy Express in their own hands. We see the same with Cainiao and GoGo.

How do you look at that? Is the arrival of the Chinese in the mid-mile a prelude for more competition from the Chinese on the last mile as well?

Maybe

let me start with the first question of the fulfillment business. We are very new in this business, and maybe the coming years, it might become a new segment, but for the time being, it will stay within E-Commerce and Logistics.

To add to that, I think the question was also do we is our plan to operate operationally to integrate that with the with the last-mile carriers? I think the answer is no.

I think we the the value proposition is to be the integrator and to offer the best last-mile solution for a given country, and we don't want to weaken that value proposition by a too strong integration with our carrier networks in Eastern Europe. We see it let me put it maybe in some other terms also as some kind of hedge with increasing competitive intensity.

Some of the margin shifts from the carrier networks to a level up to the buyers of of last-mile services, and if you're on the buyer side, you you benefit from lower prices, which we see with with euShipments, yeah. The answer is no immediate integration, and I think in terms of size, this is still far from a from an own division.

On Chinese competition, yeah, I think we have to expect everything from Chinese competitors. They certainly do have, an an ambition to to cover additional value chain elements, and last mile is an obvious one.

These markets are already quite competitive competitive, and again the the share, the customer share of Chinese e-commerce platforms is limited. We have limited exposure to Chinese e-commerce platforms, and our intention to strongly increase that is limited.

Very clear. Thank you.

Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for participating in our call on on a Friday afternoon. We hope to that all your your questions could be answered.

If not, if it's not possible wasn't possible for acoustically or so, please send us an email or call us the next days, and we can come back, of course. Thank you very much.

Goodbye.