Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter results presentation.

Joining me are Philippe, our CFO, as well as Antoine from Investor Relations. The presentation materials were published on our website earlier this morning.

We will first take you through the presentation and will then answer your questions. As always, we kindly ask you to limit yourselves to two questions each to ensure everyone has the opportunity to participate during the call.

Philippe will first take you through our Q3 financial performance. I will then update you on our strategic and transformation initiatives and conclude with our outlook for the remainder of 2026.

Philippe, over to you.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. As you can see from the highlights on page 3, group operating income for the third quarter amounted to a billion €5 million, representing a year-on-year decrease of €24 million or -2%.

The quarter was characterized by the usual seasonal softness combined with weaker-than-expected demand trends across several parts of the group. Most of the revenue decline was driven by bpost, where the accelerated mail volume decline reached 16.4%, while parcel volume growth remained limited at 1.3%, with September momentum falling short of typical back-to-school trends and our expectations.

At the same time, Paxson Europe delivered revenue growth of 6.6%, helping to mitigate the impact of the previously announced customer churn at Radial US and the broadly stable revenue performance at Staci Americas. At Landmark Global, revenue was slightly higher year-on-year, despite the volume pressure on Asian flows following the introduction of the €3 levy on July 1st.

This pressure was partially mitigated by temporary business opportunities with existing customers, but at a less favorable mix profile, and that's a point I will come back on later. Turning to our adjusted EBIT, which came at -€21.2 million, the year-on-year decline of €18 million was primarily driven by bpost, where the EBIT decreased by close to €20 million, reflecting the termination of the 679 banking activities and the accelerated decline in mail volume, as well as inflationary pressure on payroll despite ongoing FTE reductions.

At Paxson, EBIT increased by close to €9 million year-on-year. In Europe, revenue growth translated into higher profitability, while in North America, profitability improved despite lower revenues, reflecting the benefit from the cost-cutting measures and operational improvements that we already discussed during the previous presentations.

At Landmark Global, as I just mentioned, revenues remained broadly stable year-on-year, but this resilience was supported by temporary business opportunities, and this also came at the expense of profitability. As European and US regulatory measures weight on the product mix and overall margin profile.

As a result, despite relatively stable revenue, the EBIT contribution decreased by a bit more than €7 million year-on-year. While the third quarter is typically impacted by seasonality and summer softness, we recognize that the performance came in below our expectations.

In particular, parcel volume momentum remained subdued in September, while the impact of the new regulatory measures on Asian cross-border flows proved more pronounced than initially anticipated. As a result, and given that part of this headwinds are expected to persist into the fourth quarter, we have revisited our outlook to reflect the trends that we are currently observing across the businesses.

Chris will walk you through our updated expectations at the end of the presentation. With that, let me turn to the performance of the three business unit.

I'm on slide 5 covering bpost segment. Revenue declined by €26 million year-on-year to €487 million.

Domestic mail revenue decreased by €24 million or 9.4%. Mail and press volume contracted by 16.4% during the quarter, compare with 10.1% last year and 15.5% in H1, and in line with the mid-teens volume decline guidance we provided earlier this year.

Besides the lower transactional mail volumes following the introduction of the mandatory B2B invoicing at the beginning of the year, as well as the termination of several advertising contract, the volume decline also reflects an accelerated decline in press volume of 29.5%, driven by the ongoing newspaper volume transition in the northern part of the country. Overall, mail volume decline had a negative revenue impact of around €40 million, only partially offset by a positive price and mix effect of 7% that translate in €16 million.

Parcel revenues increased by a modest €3 million or 2.2% year-on-year. In terms of volume, we saw a growth of 1.3%.

However, this figure benefited from one additional working day, and on a daily average basis, volumes were broadly stable at -0.3% year-on-year. In Q1, parcel volume were growing at around 5% on an underlying basis, broadly in line with our expectation.

Since the disruptions experienced in Q2, volume momentum has remained subdued and growth has not returned to pre-strikes level. This was particularly noticeable in September, where we did not observe the usual post-summer acceleration, leading us to adopt a more cautious assumptions for the fourth quarter.

For Q3, several factors contributed to this softer volume development: consumer confidence continue to deteriorate throughout the quarter, while household spending remained resilient but subdued. In addition, we experience a temporary operational disruption at one of our largest e-commerce customers, which negatively impacted volumes during the period.

Finally, exceptionally warm weather in September delayed seasonal apparel purchased and weighted on apparel-related e-commerce activity during what is normally an important back-to-school month. Despite this muted volume environment, price and mix contributed positively by close to 1%.

Finally, revenues from other activities, including retail, value-added services, and proximity logistics, declined by €4 million year-on-year. This mainly reflects lower revenues following the termination of the 679 banking activities at the beginning of this year.

However, one should note that this impact were partially offset by continued strong growth at DynaGroup, which delivered more than €13 million or 14% of additional revenue year-to-date. Let's move to the P&L of bpost on page 6.

Including intersegment revenues from inbound cross-border volumes processed through the domestic network, total operating income declined by €23 million or -4.4% year-on-year. On the cost side, opex including D&A slightly decreased by €4 million or 0.7%, mainly driven by two effects.

First, we reduce our workforce by approximately 1,730 FTEs and interim staff, representing a decrease of 7.2% year-on-year, compared to approximately 1,500 reported at the end of the first half. This correspond to an EBIT improvement of more than €20 million year-on-year and reflects the continued benefit from the ongoing reorganization of our distribution and retail operations.

These savings were partially offset by higher cost per FTE following two salary indexation over the past 12 months, resulting in an increase of close to 3%. Second element, transport cost increased, primarily due by volume growth in proximity logistics and the impact of temporary fuel surcharges.

Despite significant productivity effort and continued progress on the reorganization agenda, these benefits were more than offset by inflationary pressures, as well as a decline in high-margin mail revenue and the termination of the 679 activities. In addition, lower cross-border volume from Landmark Asia to Belgium activities following the implementation of the €3 levy reduced the absorption of bpost fixed-cost base, creating an additional drag on EBIT.

As a result, and against a backdrop of muted parcel volume growth, the adjusted EBIT declined by €20 million year-on-year to -€29 million. Turning to Paxson on slide 7, as in previous quarters, the performance reflects two contrasting trends.

At Paxson Europe, revenue increased by 5.5% year-on-year. Across our European businesses and geographies, we delivered growth of around 6.6%, in line with Q2, with several activities continuing to grow at high single-digit rates.

This positive momentum was partially offset by the performance of Staci Americas, which, I remind you, is reported always in Paxson Europe, where revenues at constant FX rate continued to decline following contract termination announced during the fourth quarter last year. In addition, and to a lesser extent, revenue were impacted by customer departure late in the quarter and by reduced service scope with certain existing customers.

While overall growth remained solid during the quarter, we are seeing increased commercial delays. As a result, the contribution from recently signed customers is ramping up more slowly than initially anticipated, which is beginning to weight on our near-term growth expectations.

At Paxson North America, revenues declined by €12 million. At constant exchange rate, this correspond to decrease of around 10%, driven by three factors.

First, the expected revenue churn from customer contract termination announced last year. Second, mid single-digit negative same-store sales, representing a slight deterioration compared with the previous quarter.

Third, this effect were only partially offset by the contribution from recently signed customers, which generated around €30 million of revenue during the quarter. The ramp-up of new customer wins continue to progress more slowly than initially anticipated and remains insufficient to fully offset churn, which is increasingly weighing on our near-term growth expectation here as well.

Let's move to the P&L of Paxson on slide 8. Against this backdrop, total operating income remained nearly stable year-over-year, while operating expense including D&A decreased by close to 3%.

The development of our cost base reflects the different dynamics across our two regions. In Europe, excluding Staci US, operating expense increased broadly in line with topline growth.

In North America, note that Staci currently experience some temporary customer profitability issues, but Radial cost adjusted downwards along lower activity levels, while maintaining strong variable contribution margins. This was further supported by ongoing fixed cost initiative and headcount reduction at Radial, contributing to the continued improvement in profitability despite lower revenues.

As a result, adjusted EBIT increased by close to €9 million to €7 million in the quarter. Turning now to Landmark Global on slide 9.

At Landmark Europe, the main development during the quarter remained the impact of the €3 levy, which came in force on July 1st and weighed on Asia to Belgium volumes, with an impact broadly in line with what market participant have reported over the recent months. Importantly, we did not observe any meaningful sequential recovery throughout the quarter, with volume remaining under pressure from July through September.

This volume pressure was partially mitigated by a temporary business opportunity with existing customers, which helped stabilizing overall volumes. However, this incremental volume came with a less favorable mix profile, resulting in a slight dilution of both revenue and profitability.

Beyond Asia to Belgium, we continue to see healthy momentum across most other European and UK flows, which contributed positively to the quarter and ultimately allowed Europe to deliver a modest year-on-year revenue growth of close to 2%, despite the regulatory headwinds. At Landmark North America, revenue was slightly higher year-on-year at constant exchange rate.

Next to a modest volume growth consistent with a softer macroeconomic backdrop, this performance also reflect an unfavorable mix effect, driven by higher proportion of US domestic volumes and lower US to Canada flows, which continue to be impacted by tariff-related measures. Overall, Landmark Global operating income increased by 1% year-over-year.

As shown on slide 10, opex and D&A increased by close to 7%, primarily reflecting two factors. First, higher transportation costs driven by volume growth, but also by temporary fuel surcharges and lower carrier rebates compared with the prior year.

Second, an unfavorable phasing terminal dues. As a result, despite volume resilient across most our commercial activities, adjusted EBIT decreased by €7 million to just under €10 million, reflecting an unfavorable business mix effect, already visible in previous quarter, but further exacerbated this quarter by the regulatory change impacting Asian volume in Europe, and unfavorable phasing of terminal dues, which is expected to normalize over the remaining of the year.

Moving on to Corporate segment on slide 11. EBIT improved modestly year-on-year to -€9 million, driven by continued cost discipline and a workforce reduction of around 4%, more than offsetting the annual salary indexation of just under 3%.

Let me turn now to cash flow on slide 12. Net cash outflow for the quarter amounted to -€770 million, compared with an outflow of around €16 million last year.

This primarily reflects the repayment of the 2018 bond at maturity in July 2026. Excluding this financing effect, free cash flow remained broadly stable year-on-year at around €63 million.

This reflect, on one hand, cash flow from operating activities of around €91 million, broadly stable with last year. The lower EBITDA was largely compensated by a favorable working capital evolution, notably at receivables level.

On the other end, capex amounted to approximately €28 million, remaining broadly stable year-on-year. As a result, underlying cash generation remained resilient during the quarter, despite the lower profitability performance.

Chris, over to you.

Thank you, Philippe. I'm on slide 13 with the strategy and transformation highlights.

As part of our transformation journey, we delivered several important milestones during the quarter, most notably the transformation of bpost operating model and the commercial launch of Paxson as our unified global 3PL platform. At the same time, as just explained, our financial performance remains affected by a combination of softer demand trends, regulatory developments, and slower-than-expected commercial ramp-up across several activities.

While some of these factors are clearly external, others require stronger execution on our side, particularly in commercial development, which is now a key area of focus for management. If you look at bpost, we see that the revenue pressure remains significant.

The accelerated decline in mail continues to outweigh parcel growth, while commercial development in logistics activities is progressing more slowly than initially anticipated. Another important area of focus remains our IT transformation.

The realization of IT efficiency gains assumed over '25 to '27 has been slower than initially anticipating, resulting in a gap versus our longer-term cost trajectory. We completed a comprehensive review of our IT cost base and identified approximately €30 million of annual savings potential.

We have now established a phased implementation roadmap running from '27 to '31. While this confirms our ability to capture meaningful efficiencies, the timing of these savings is now expected to be later than originally planned.

Despite these headwinds, execution of our transformation agenda remains on track and continues to deliver tangible milestones. If you look at the operating model, in September, bpost implemented significant changes to its distribution model to support the transition towards a parcel-focused operating model.

These changes include the implementation of dynamic distribution rounds, more efficient pre-sorting of mail at sorting centers, and later delivery start times, allowing customers to inject parcels later into our network. At the same time, the rollout of our dense, non-dense operating model continues according to plan and remains a key lever to further improve workforce efficiencies in the coming years.

Our out-of-home strategy also continues to gain traction. The bpost network now exceeds 3,000 lockers, with more than 600,000 new users acquired through targeted customer campaigns, and we are on track to reach approximately 3,300 lockers by year-end.

We also successfully secured the renewal of the Belgian license plate production and distribution contract for another 5 years, ensuring a meaningful recurring B2G revenue stream through 2032. In parallel, we continue to increase the relevance of our retail network through new partnerships.

The home security provider Verisure and the telecom operator DIGI are now available across the entire post office network, while our partnership with the energy provider Luminus has started in an initial wave of offices ahead of a broader rollout next year. Finally, one should note that uncertainty remains regarding the eighth management contract with the Belgian State, with the year-end deadline approaching and no further clarity having been provided at this stage.

While these transformation initiatives are progressing according to plan and already contributing to workforce efficiencies, their financial benefits are currently being absorbed by the challenging revenue environment. Turning now to Paxson and Landmark, and I'm on page 14.

The launch of Paxson in September 13 marks an important milestone in the creation of our unified global 3PL brand. By bringing together Staci, Radial, Active Ants, and Base Logistics under one commercial identity, we strengthen our positioning and our ability to serve customers globally.

In Europe, we continue to deliver revenue growth and cost synergies. However, commercial execution remains below our ambitions, both in new business acquisition and cross-selling activities.

While topline development remains positive, commercial ramp-ups are taking longer than initially anticipated. As a result, we have launched a dedicated growth plan focused on accelerating sales execution, strengthening lead generation, and increasing commercial conversion.

In North America, operational performance continued to improve, and the fixed cost and overhead reduction initiatives launched over the last quarters are delivering tangible profitability improvements. However, here as well, commercial momentum remains softer than expected: customer churn, slower market growth, and delayed ramp-up of new customers wins continues to weigh on revenue development.

Strengthening commercial execution in North America is therefore a clear priority for management going forward. Landmark continues to demonstrate commercial resilience in an increasingly challenging regulatory environment.

The introduction of the €3 levy weighed on Asian volumes throughout the quarter, without any meaningful recovery from July through September. Targeted commercial opportunities with existing customers helped mitigate part of this pressure and supported revenue resilience.

However, these opportunities were temporary in nature and came with a less favorable mix profile and therefore impacted profitability. Looking ahead, the introduction of the additional €2 handling fee will further increase regulatory pressure on Asian flows and reinforces our focus on continuing to expand the range of commercial services offered to our customers.

Finally, at group level, we recently adapted our Executive Committee structure and organization to support the next phase of our transformation. These changes are designed to strengthen customer focus, improve execution, and accelerate decision-making across the group.

As Nicolas Baise prepares to become CEO of bpost on January 1st, I will return fully to my Group CEO responsibilities after a period during which I combined both roles. This additional focus at group level will allow us to further accelerate execution of our strategic priorities across all business units.

To conclude, the transformation continues to progress and confirms the strategic direction we have set for the group. While recent market developments and commercial headwinds have impacted our short-term performance, our priorities remain unchanged.

Beyond productivity initiatives, we are now placing even greater emphasis on commercial execution and customer profitability across all business units. This will be one of management's key priorities going forward.

This brings me to the outlook update for the remainder of 2026. I'm on slide 15.

As Philippe highlighted earlier, third quarter performance came in below our expectation. More importantly, several of the trends observed during the quarter are not showing the improvement we had anticipating heading into the year-end peak season.

Parcel volume momentum remained muted during September despite usual back-to-school period, commercial ramp-ups are progressing more slowly than expected, and regulatory pressure on Asian cross-border flows continues to intensify, all these in a challenging macroeconomic environment. As a result, we now expect fourth quarter adjusted EBIT to be between €55 million and €65 million, with weaker revenues expectation across all of our major business units as detailed on this slide.

This translate into a full-year adjusted EBIT outlook of €95 million to €105 million, compared with our previous expectation of around €140 million communicated at the time of our first half results. At the same time, we remain disciplined on capital allocation and have therefore reduced by 10% our expected full-year capex from €150 million to approximately €135 million.

While we are clearly disappointed by this revision, we remain fully committed to delivering on our transformation agenda, accelerating commercial execution, and reinforcing profitability growth across the group. With this, we are now ready to take your questions.

Again, two questions each.

Yes, hi, and thanks for taking my questions. A lot today, yes, during this results release.

My first question would be a bit on Paxson and more specifically the outlook for the fourth quarter. In Q3, your revenues were broadly flat.

You guide for a high single-digit decline in the fourth quarter. Can you help me understand the dynamics a bit better here?

Because I understand at Radial North America, the same-store sales, they go or they deteriorate a bit from mid single-digit to mid-to-high single-digit. Then in Europe, you guide for low same-store sales.

How does this compare to Q3 for Europe? Or how I interpret this guidance is that Europe should also experience a meaningful decline in the fourth quarter.

I understand there is still that US Staci customer that is lost, but help me understand a bit here what is changing in terms of same-store sales for Europe as well, and what the impact maybe is of potential new onboarding customer delays, and how you look at this going into next year. Then the second question would be on looking a bit into 2027.

You lowered your guidance two times this year. You now guide at around €100 million at the midpoint.

Next year, you should have some tailwind from the strikes that will hopefully not reoccur. At the other end, at Radial US, there is no improvement in sight.

Looks like the EU is deteriorating a bit as well at Paxson. Then you have, of course, the de minimis impact at Landmark Global, which is expected to intensify further in November, if I'm not mistaken.

Quite a lot of headwinds, despite hopefully no strike impact. How are you looking at EBIT for 2027?

Do you think you can increase there, or what measures can be taken to offset these challenges? Those would be my questions, please.

Thank you for your question. Indeed, it's a lot, but I think with what we have announced, it's absolutely logic and normal, and those are very good questions.

In the US, speaking former Radial, sorry, to go back to the old terminology, but you referred to it too, indeed, what we are seeing is that the same-store sales really is accelerating. I think, I'm looking at Antoine, but it's maybe what, more than 12 or 15 quarters that we see a degradation of the same-store sale.

We always believe it's the last one, but it still continues. We don't see, based on the forecast that our customers are providing us, that the peak season will be a great season in the US this year.

It's part of the element. On the other hand, you also noticed that when it comes to variable contribution and effort made to adjust the structure to the current volumes, we are continuing, and I repeating that quarters after quarter, but it's still the case, it helps mitigating the lower development.

This being said, we have also to acknowledge the fact that in terms of rate that we're receiving from transporters, the providers, the discount we are getting are lower also. There is a huge overcapacity in transport capabilities in the US, and it weighs also on the rebate that they are offering us.

When it comes to Paxson Europe, indeed, there will be further degradation in Q4 2026, but it's just, quote-unquote, the annualization or the follow-up, if you want, of what happened in the third quarter, namely a low growth rate and a same-store sale which is not also picking up in Europe, and the impact of loss of certain customers at Staci Americas. It's more like what we're observing in Q3 was not applicable to the entire trimester, but it will be annualized or quarterized, if I could use that bad word, in the fourth quarter.

That really explain why we are more concerned for the fourth quarter than we were some weeks ago.

Good. On the EBIT guidance, as of course, this is not a moment to give EBIT guidance for next year.

We're still in the middle of the budgeting process. I agree with you that there are a couple of, let's say, negative external trends that play against us, most importantly, of course, the one on the tariff and handling fee from Europe versus Asian volumes, which both affecting Landmark and the unit bpost.

That's an important negative trend that we see. The overall consumer confidence, which gives a slower-than-expected parcel growth environment, and still a acceleration on the mail volume, mainly coming from digitalization such as Peppol in Belgium, that has accelerated decline in mail, and we expect that to continue.

That being said, of course, we are putting in place a bunch of measures against that, both on the cost reduction side and on the sales stimulation side. We will ensure that on those different fronts, we will look for an acceleration.

There are also new opportunities in the market, and as you clearly said, the big impact that we saw last year or this year, in April, on strike, we at least hope that there is no reason for a similar thing. The transformation now has been realized.

We see that, let's say, the dynamic in our personnel overall, in general, is positive against the changes that we've done. Once the implementation was there, we see that we have a positive dynamic for most of our employees at this point of time.

We continue, of course, to do changes, but none of them with the same level of impact as the ones that we have just executed during the month of September, and so therefore, we're pretty confident looking at that side in it. When we will come back to you with a better guidance, it will be a little bit the sum of those two: an increased focus on some cost reduction measures that we have, very much focus on how do we see alternatives for topline growth.

As many of those Chinese platforms are looking for fulfillment opportunities in Europe as we speak, and also for logistical opportunities there. There will be new sources of volume likely being in Europe soon as well, and we're looking at those as well.

It will be a continued focus on those dimensions where it really matters for us, where we can make a meaningful change in the light of the transformation we have done. I think the important message here is that the transformation as such has advanced well.

Couple of external headwinds that I mentioned, internal headwind, the strike. Looking forward to that, external remains the same, internally probably allows us to have more focus on both cost and revenues in the coming year.

The balance of that, we will communicate with you at the moment that we have the full-year results of 2026.

Thank you.

Yes, good morning, gentlemen. My first question is on Radial US, because, on the one hand, you've still got client churn, and on the other hand, the commercial delays.

Can you elaborate when we can expect some kind of turning point for Radial US? Will also be client churn still weighing on 2027, or when could we expect some kind of inflection point?

My second question is more on, let's say, the Capital Markets Day you hosted last year. Of course, obviously, there have been much more headwinds than anticipated since then, but how should we look at the strategic progress so far, and also the targets you gave at the Capital Markets Day?

I remember also a target for next year, how should we look at that in the current context? Thank you.

On Radial, it's a combination of two things. It's the customer churn '25 in '26, '26 having impact in '26, and some of them will also have impact in '27.

Also, just want to remind, as I mentioned it before to the previous question, in the answer to the previous question, in Radial, what is positive is they are capable and they've demonstrated the capability to adjust the cost base on a variable basis, but also on a fixed-cost basis, to the level of activity. You might tell me that reducing costs is not a sustainable way of developing a company, totally agreed, but at least this continue to go, while operational excellence is delivered to customers.

In fact, the turning point, I think it's a bit too early to come to that one. It will come with the announcement of the '27 numbers, as Chris referred to, that we will bring to you with the Q4.

Yes, we will be turning into a positive momentum, but the question is what is the full-year impact of the customer lost in '26 that will still have an impact in '27, and the pace as which we can onboard customers. Of course, we will have also, conversely, the full-year impact of the customer that we have onboarded in '26 that will have a full-year impact in '27.

For more details on that one, ask you to have a bit of patience and wait for our budget exercise being completed, and we'll come back to you on that one. On the Capital Markets Day, Chris?

Yes. On Capital Markets Day, we will obviously have to revisit that, given the more complex external environment.

That being said, the fundamental drivers of our transformation remain solid. We had intense review of all the drivers that we had.

As always said, we are in a transformation which, given the context of the company, we came late and we have to accelerate on many of those dimensions. Obviously, the strike of this year has not helped us, a lot of focus on the operational transformation that we should do, and that was fairly successful in the end after the strike, so that is something that we do.

Now we will re-emphasize the focus on some of the delays that I mentioned, the one that we have seen in the digital transformation and the one that we have seen in the commercial transformation, so that focus will be there. I think that there will be for sure a delay in execution compared to the announcement what we've done in the Capital Markets Day at that moment, due to the combination of headwinds and some delay of transformation.

Overall, the fundamentals that we have, the kind of company we will become after the transformation, and the way how we will create profitability and value creation remain solid and the same.

Thank you for your comments. Thank you.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. A similar question on Q4 high single-digit decline, but rather than on Paxson, into Landmark.

I'm aware that, of course, we have had several regulatory headwinds in summer and from the 1st of November, but just checking that the acceleration in revenue decline in Q4 versus Q3 is basically all driven by new regulatory headwinds or if there is anything else there. The second question is just to go back on this IT transformation.

Are you able to quantify by how much you are, let's say, behind the plan? In euro million terms, how much cost savings, let's say, are missing?

If I can stick a third one quickly on this license plate distribution contract, you are talking about lower annual value. Can you just remind us how lower?

Thank you.

On the Q4 forecast, Marco, on Landmark, it's really, really driven by the regulatory impact, huh? It continues.

We had that two waves: the €3, and we have now the additional €2 for processing fees that will come into effect. It will have an impact.

This is really the main driver for the decrease that we are seeing. Historically, when we have seen a change in regulation, you have a drop, which is typically around 10%, 20%, and then over a period of 4 to 6 weeks, it goes back nearly to the same level.

Here, we experienced, we as the business, we experienced, or the profession if you want, we experienced a drop of between 30% and 40%, and it has not come back. It will be an additional layer of €2, which weighs a lot when you make purchases of an average value of €3 to €5 for the product itself.

If you have to add another €5 on top of it, now it's really an impact on the decision of the customers: do I buy, yes or no? We are really seeing an acceleration of that.

When it come to Paxson, it's again just the continuation of what we have observed in Q3. Those customers who left us or reduced scope, in the context also of a lower same-store sale, it will have a even more important impact in the fourth quarter.

When it comes to IT transformation, we said that we revisited what we could achieve in terms of IT efficiencies, and we mentioned a number of €30 million over a 4 years period, which is a revised version of what we had anticipated 2 years ago, it came out a bit lower. Meaning that it has an impact on a non-delivered saving, if you want, in '26, more than €10 million.

On the license plate, I don't have the number in my head. We will refer back to you on that one.

Thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the first question around Landmark.

You are talking about 30% to 40% decline in volumes, which makes sense, the number I've seen elsewhere. Then how we reconcile the -30% to 40% to, let's say, only high single-digit percent decline?

I guess other trade lanes are growing, but...

Yes, we successfully reached out to those clients, and so we increased our market share in a declining volume. We still are affected by some decline in volume, but we increased our market share in those Asian volumes coming to Europe.

Obviously, that came based on a new product offering that we had with a lower margin than the previous one, but we took the opportunity to focus on ensuring that we could have a market share increase in the flows from Asia to Europe, and that was successful starting from, let's say, second half of July throughout the month. You see that it has a stabilizing effect at the topline, but you don't see it fully translated in the EBIT lines because you have some volume decline that we still see, even net of that we still lose some volume, big market share increase, but on 40% decline, obviously even with market share increase, you still lose some volume and price/mix effects that you see in the overall result of Q3.

Very clear, thank you.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I've got a lot, but I'll try and wrap them into two long questions.

First one is on Landmark. Chris, you already elaborated about increasing your market share in the Asian volumes and that sort of things.

At the end of the day, you already said it is a temporary thing. We see a lot of Chinese platforms moving their warehousing and fulfillment to Europe.

That means that effectively you should increasingly switch from Asia-Europe into a network that is intra-Europe, cross-border. How are your chances there?

Because I asked the same question to CTT earlier this week. Everybody is talking about the same.

Whether I talk about Spring or I talk about Cacesa, or I talk about Landmark Global, how are you going to build a position or extend a position here, and what are your advantages? Is it very much the strength of Liège as a hub?

That's my first question. The second question is more on Paxson, and especially on Paxson Europe.

If I look at what the Chinese are doing, it looks as if they are creating their own dedicated fulfillment and warehousing capacity in Europe. Is it right to assume that Paxson is not benefiting, or Active Ants or Radial Europe or whatever, is not benefiting from the move from the Chinese to local warehousing and fulfillment in Europe?

That's one thing. Secondly, I'm a bit puzzled, and maybe the explanation is easy, about what you say about the prospects of Paxson Europe for the fourth quarter.

It says low same-store sales, but Paxson Europe is mainly B2B. Is this being caused by Staci US or are there any other things I don't see at this moment?

It's a long question, and so let's try to structure it a little bit. If you look at the Asian volume, indeed, the commercial repositioning that we did, increasing market share, is of temporary nature, as we also mentioned in the documentation that we sent out today.

That being said, of course, we are of the opinion, as you also underlined, that those tariffs will be there to stay, and that the change in the nature of the business that we will do with the Asian platforms, Chinese mainly, will change. As that we still have some of the business as well coming from other Asian countries coming to Belgium, there we see less of a change today than that we see on the Chinese platforms.

They are equipping themselves for today a build-up of fulfillment capabilities within Europe, some of them already active and running, and from everything that we can see, also from every discussion that we have, they run fully on their own warehouse management systems, on their own order management systems, and they want to operate most of those facilities today, mainly positioned in Eastern Europe, themselves. That being said, you've seen that we also did big steps already in the splitting off inside of the legal entity of our transport entity, and so there will be increased linehaul activity coming in the first phase of this transformation coming from Poland, Romania towards the Western Europe, and so that's a opportunity that we are investigating as we speak.

Second thing is, in what we understand from our conversations with those platforms is the first wave will be Eastern Europe with this kind of still few days before you can deliver after you order, will be also complemented with more local fulfillment in the second wave that they will do once they have established their position. We're looking at what the opportunities would be there.

We consider that for Paxson fulfillment opportunities in the, let's say, the big volumes that you will see that still have a D+3 to D+7 kind of delay, we don't think that we play any fulfillment role into that. We think that likely no major fulfillment player in Europe will play a role in that.

That being said, around the markets that you serve, there will be opportunities when they want to increase their quality of delivery. That's an active discussion that they have, that they want to move those platforms as a digital platform which is Chinese-owned, but with a logistical activity which is regional.

In that regional play, we look if there are opportunities. A bit too early to say if they continue to what they say, we want to partner on those ones and they execute on that one, but at least they were very clear: for the first bulk, they don't look specifically at partners in fulfillment; for the second one, they announced that they would look for partners, and obviously, actively, we look for that at this point of time with Paxson.

That's clear.

Then your other question was on the Q4, maybe you can...

Yes, talk through that, Philippe. Yes.

You are absolutely right, Henk, that we are mostly in Paxson Europe having B2B customers, but nevertheless, those B2B customers are also impacted by the global economic environment, where we see less development in their topline, and as a consequence, a trickle effect on us as well. Also in the US, we said we have some customer churn, customer totally exiting us, also reducing their scope of services, but we also experience both in the US and in France some temporary profitability issues with, in fact, three customers that weigh quite significantly on the result, and that will take a bit of time to be brought back to an acceptable level of profitability.

Okay. Maybe a clarification, not so much a question, because otherwise I would violate the rules.

Be careful there, Henk.

The €50 million subsidy, the federal government wanted to cut the subsidy with €50 million, given what's taking place in Belgium, I believe the Prime Minister is heading towards the King for a second time this week.

Should be there at this moment, yes.

Okay. What is the status there?

Because, on the one hand, you said if this subsidy is cut by €50 million, we will act correspondingly, but is this still to be expected as of the 1st of January, or are we going to see a push-out of this whole phenomenon?

There are a couple of, let's say, legal safeguards around that, it's fairly unlikely that there will be any plan that needs to be fully implemented as of 1st of January, given the timeline that we're on now, meaning as well that in any case there needs to be a European approval in case that there is this proposal of a revisited network with different opening hours or different size of the network, which depends on the government choices that we take. We have a reasonable implementation time of that once that decision is taken.

As you can see, the political standstill that we see in this country today will also make it unlikely that we will have that decision, let's say, in the coming weeks. I think that we're not the highest priority file, it's first the budget, and you have a couple of other, let's say, very sensitive files, as was published in the press, the nuclear file, the file around the banking situation are probably the ones that are higher on the list than the bpost one.

We expect that the government will miss the deadline in giving us clarity before, which would mean that we would roll over next year for a couple of months in the current system, and at the moment that we have an agreement, we will probably then see what reasonable timing is, combined with the approval of Europe, to get it right. I think what is important in this for us is that in all the negotiations that we have, I think that every party participating in the current government has also made clear that they agree that this needs to be a phased approach that can be handled by bpost in a reasonable way without big hiccups in it, a little bit like what we do in the reorg situation in distribution, where we adjust volumes with the speed of the natural attrition curves that we see within this company.

There are the kind of scenarios that we have on the table. Now it's a little bit, of course, difficult to see when and which scenario they will choose, but once it's there, we will have an execution plan which will continue to have the logic of the management agreement, which is the Nac+ agreement, where we have, let's say, a accepted return by Europe of 7% of that activity, and so that is the one that we likely will continue to have also in the next phase of that.

That's very clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We would like to thank everybody in the call for having taken the time to be with us and for your interesting questions. We look forward to staying in touch.

We will have, of course, our more outlook, as some of you asked for 2027, at the moment that we have the full-year results, and we thank you very much, and have a nice day.