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

Today, we would like to discuss our Q1 results. Here with me in the room is Walter Oblin, our CEO, and also our CFO, Barbara Potisk-Eibensteiner.

I would like directly to hand over to Walter. Please, Walter.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to present to you our Q1 results.

Let me start right away on page 2. I think the summary is the environment continues to be quite challenging, both on a macroeconomic level as well as for the postal industry Europe-wide and also in Austria.

The market environment, on the one hand, provides some positive perspective as the longest recession after the Second World War is forecasted to be over. At the same time, geopolitical uncertainties and the Middle East conflict weighs on the macroeconomy, and tariff measures and different regulatory proposals, both on an EU level as well as on a national level, have the potential to disturb e-commerce markets.

The two megatrends dominating our industry for the last years are continue to be present and continue to be to dominate our industry: number one, digitization of communication with declining letter mail volumes and direct mail as a result; and second, e-commerce continues to fuel growth in parcels, but this all this in a quite competitive and volatile environment. Page 3 gives a summary of the key developments and of the key topics in Q1.

In Austria, an accelerated decline of letter mail for this single quarter of around 9%. We do not expect this figure for the full year, but we have seen a rise in letter mail decline over the last roughly 18 months.

Second, there is good parcel growth in a large part of our portfolio, both in Austria as well as in CEE, 10% and 9%, respectively. A little bit less in Türkiye, but also here on the positive side, we are in growth mode again despite a regulatory burden given that the threshold for for imports for customs for Chinese Asian parcels has been taken away, and there is a substantial reduced inflow of Chinese parcels into Türkiye.

In this context, the 2%, I think, are quite quite okay. On the revenue side, again here the positive news, revenues are up by 0.9%.

This despite what I said happened in Türkiye, and this despite the the a quarter where we did not have any revenue from our telecommunications business, neither from the old corporation, which ended in December 2025, nor from our new telecom offering, which only started on April 1st. On the earnings side, the quarter was, as expected, weaker than last year.

EBIT down €7.7 million—sorry, EBITDA down €7.7 million at €93.8 million, and EBIT down €11.6 million. Basically, three main drivers: one is the silent period in telecommunications; second, a challenging market environment, in particular competitive environment in Eastern Europe; and third, the already mentioned absence of Asian volumes in Türkiye.

Three highlights to mention on the positive side: one is the closing and initial integration of euShipments, an e-commerce in e-commerce fulfillment company based in Bulgaria with a presence across Eastern Southeastern Europe and including also in selected Western European markets. We feel very positive about this company.

Second, a very good quarter of bank99 with an with with a profit of more than €2.5 million in the first quarter. Third, the successful start of yesss!.

yesss! is our telecommunications brand that we launched on April 1st with an MVNO offering, which has been well accepted in the first months.

Page 4 gives you the usual overview of Austrian Post. One thing to remind you that as of this quarter, we are switching to a somewhat modified segment reporting.

We have decided, given that bank99 now has reached a level of maturity that we want to present it as a stand-alone segment. Accordingly, we have taken the the retail, the Austrian retail segment or retail element of the segment, and included it in the Mail segment, which we now have named Mail, Retail and Services.

In the middle, E-Commerce and Logistics is is is mostly a or only a renaming. We think that E-Commerce and Logistics better reflects what we're doing here, given that we are a partner for e-commerce companies on the logistics side.

Page 5 summarizes the strategy we decided and communicated a year ago. Our vision is to be a leading logistics and services group reaching more than 150 million people in Austria, Eastern Europe, Türkiye, and beyond.

Three core elements: one, post and beyond in Austria. We want to be a strong post in Austria, but beyond that, offer key services for consumers, including financial services, telecommunication services, and potentially more in the future, all integrated into one consistent ecosystem.

Second, international e-commerce. Our aspiration is to be one of the even or maybe even the leading e-commerce partner in Austria, Eastern Europe, Türkiye, and beyond for e-commerce retailers, be they small, be they large.

Third element, one group, operationally excellent. This means that we want to stronger harmonize across the group, stronger integrate, stronger exploit efficiencies with the aspiration to be operationally excellent in whatever we do and to be a leader in the application of modern technologies.

Let me now go through the core elements of the strategy, starting with the Austrian business, and here again, starting with the incumbent mail business. Letter volumes continue to decline now for the 17th or so year.

This first quarter at a rate of 9%. In total, we've lost around 60%.

Similar development on the direct mail side with a relatively stable development on unaddressed mail, but a stronger decline on addressed mail. Revenues overall still declining substantially less than than volumes.

Mail remains a large and profitable and cash-generating business with revenues of beyond €1 billion last year. Also, our tariffs, shown on page 7, remain moderate if compared across across Europe with other countries.

I think there's also some leeway still, some headroom for further price increases without pricing ourselves out of the market. We have increased prices on the standard product May last year, on other products, registered mail, international mail, direct mail effective January 1st this year.

I I would still expect some further price increases on the standard product or on the core letter product still this year in the second half. Much on mail.

Moving to our bank. Bank99 is developing quite well, is is well accepted in the market, constantly receives positive feedback from different customer surveys.

Second year in a row, best customer service among retail banks in Austria, which I think is remarkable given that the bank is only six years old and has a quite small marketing budget compared to the main retail networks such as the Sparkassen sector or the the the Raiffeisen sector. 300,000 consumers, €4.2 billion balance sheet last year, break-even was an income of with a net income of €1.5 million, a very good start into the first quarter with an EBIT of €2.6 million.

This includes a smaller one-off, but still, we're on a good record of expanding our profit also for the full year. We will expand our our asset offering, our offering of stocks and and ETFs, the ability to trade, to buy and sell single stocks as well as ETFs in the coming months.

We're work working also on a focused SME offering to be launched in the second half of the year, and we're constantly working on automation and cost efficiency. Excuse me.

Our self-service network is being expanded month by month. We are soon reaching the or surpassing the threshold of 3,000 postal access points.

With that, we have increased the number of postal access points by more than 60% over 2.5 years, and this self-service network is well accepted by consumers. Last year, 35 million transactions, I think, is a number that speaks for itself.

Page 10, our mobile offering has been launched in time, in budget on April 1st. The idea is similar to the bank.

We do have a strong postal ecosystem consisting of a brand, of a retail network, of digital channels, and offering customer frequency that we can use to cross-sell and to add further services. This is the plan for yesss!, the brand we launched on April 1st.

yesss! is an MVNO offering which is running basically on the network of A1, the Austrian telecom incumbent.

We offer a very focused, transparent, simple offering consisting of mobile phone rates, hardware, internet rates, and a few additional packages. The positioning is to offer a quality network at quite affordable rates combined with consulting and service close to customers in our retail network, which is the densest retail network in Austria in the telecommunication sector with 340 postal branches and 1,300 postal partners.

This has This offering has been has been received well on the market. We are fully on plan with customer acquisition rates over the first month.

This despite a very price-aggressive competition given that there is a battle between two other mobile companies going on in Austria. Our positioning here with the retail network as the main sales channel has proven very effective in this context.

Moving to page 11 to our E-Commerce and Logistics business. We have expanded our presence, now operate in more than yeah, in in 15 countries with last-mile networks in most of these countries.

With now the acquisition of euShipments, also a logistics and e-commerce fulfillment offering for cross-border e-commerce in Eastern Europe. The idea is also to expand this to Austria and Türkiye and also selected Western European markets step-by-step in a capex-light business model.

Let me start going through the geographies, starting with Austria on page 12. Again, 10% growth in Austria, quite strong momentum.

We are gaining market share and gaining new customers on a already strong level against a already strong level in 2025, including customers such as Vinted, which is the European category leader in the second-hand C2C business, a quite strongly growing business segment. Also revenue-wise with 9.5%, a good revenue growth.

Moving to Eastern Europe, here light and shadow: good volume development with +9%. EBIT-wise, we're not satisfied.

The competition is quite price-aggressive, in particular from the side of new entrants on on the parcel locker side. We see that in some markets, this competition is not sustainable, such as in Hungary where one competitor has announced to exit and where we have engaged in a transaction which is still not closed yet as we're still collecting the necessary approvals.

Overall, a good revenue development in Eastern Europe, but not satisfying profitability in the first quarter, and we are addressing both operational as well as strategically ways to get to a profitable get back to a profitable growth path. Moving to Türkiye on page 14.

Here, as I said, a regulatory discontinuity with very restricted import rules for parcels from Asia, which have led to a drop of volumes of around 5%. Still, the company was able to achieve a net growth of 2%, and revenue-wise, including also price increases and and inflation, +20%.

Of course, there's inflation in these numbers. Overall, a again challenging quarter in Türkiye, but we are looking more confidently in the next quarters.

Page 15, a short glimpse on short glance on euShipments.com. Company is based and and founded in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria will is targeting revenues of about €55 million for the full year. We have fully consolidated the company as of March 1st.

See good profits, good growth, good customer satisfaction. Are trying to integrate this where reasonable and where necessary with Austrian Post Group.

Are trying to use the platform of Austrian Post in other markets to also support geographic expansion. Think that this e-commerce logistics offering will help us growing profitably in Eastern Europe, but also in Austria and in Türkiye.

Much as an overview on the most important developments in our strategy eight weeks after we communicated the full-year results, and I'm now handing over to Barbara, who will give you more details on our financials.

Thank you, Walter. Also welcome from my side.

In line with our guidance we gave with the full-year results, Q1, we expected weaker, and yes, it's weaker. We are showing some growth on the revenue side, about 1%.

As Walter just mentioned, with March, we are also including the revenues of euShipments. We did another fully consolidation of HL Kleos.

It's our IT company in Greece. I will come later on because this has also some impact on our balance sheet.

EBITDA and EBIT are in line with our expectations, but of course, they are down by €8 million on the EBITDA side compared to Q1 2025 and also down by €12 million compared on the EBIT side. We're still showing a stable balance sheet with low debt.

Financial debt to EBITDA is showing up by 0.3 times, and the logistics equity ratio is 27%. I will also do some comments on this later on when we're going through the balance sheet.

We were able to produce a strong operating cash flow. Also there, I will spend some words later on.

Walter already mentioned the change in our segment reporting. We already did, I think, a first intro on this with the Q4 results.

We have now a clear result reporting on the bank99, and I think this also helps you to go on with your estimates in a better way. If we're coming to page 18, Walter already mentioned the situation on the market, the tough situation on the digitization side on the mail business, and we also saw that pricing measures could not offset the volume declines there.

We also lost revenues on the telco side due to the silent period. This we will be able to recover within the coming quarters.

On the E-Commerce Logistics side, we really had a great Q1 in Austria with a strong growth of nearly 10%. In Türkiye, with just saw the volume development, but due to the inflation and FX, in total, we see -2.7% on the revenue side in euros.

CEE, there we had a very weak Q1 in 2025, and we see that there the revenues are coming back and we see there a good growth on the parcel side, on the volume side and also on the revenue side. Bank, also Walter already commented why are the revenues lower.

It's due to the lower interest rate level we saw in Q1 2026. Coming now to the earnings.

We already went through. What do I want to mention there?

We are lacking the telecommunication income, we saw the revenues of about €7 million we lost, and it's falling through, I would say. On the other hand, on the e-commerce side, we have had a good profitability in Austria on the parcel side.

In Türkiye and also in CEE, there's room for improvement as competition was really intensive there. The bank, €2.6 million of EBIT, that's a really good improvement compared to last year, but there is also a one-time positive effect of about €0.8 million.

Please do not take 2.6 times 4 for the full-year EBIT of the bank. It will be a little bit lower.

The bank is really doing well. Coming to Corporate and Consolidation, there we see a minus of €5.7 million.

It shows that the cost savings programs we are running at the overhead side and the focus there. Going now into the detailed profit and loss account.

I only want to have a short discussion on the financial result. There we have the negative impact out of the valuation of the put option for Aras Kargo.

We had there a valuation effect of -€8.4 million in the financial result 2026. In 2025 in the first quarter, we ended up with +€4.4 million.

You see there we have a quite high swing. This is what we cannot really steer.

It's really depending on inflation and FX in Türkiye. Also the tax rate is suffering due to this because this valuation effect we're not able to take as a tax-deductible.

Going now into more details on the segment side. Mail, Retail and Services, there you see the development of the different segments within this segment.

What I want to address is we saw that on the direct mail and media post, the main decline in the addressed segment, and in the unaddressed segment, that the business was better. The EBIT of this segment suffered due to the loss of telecommunication income, where we are trying hard to come back to levels of before.

On the E-Commerce and Logistics division side, I think everything was said. Profitability is suffering out of Türkiye and CEE, and good profitability on the Austrian side.

There we are also showing in-group logistics solutions, the result of euShipments, which amounts for about €5 million on the revenue side and about €0.8 million on the EBIT side. Division Bank, I think everything said.

Then coming to the balance sheet. You can see a decrease on the equity side compared to end of 2025.

It's coming out of the put options we got out of the acquisition of euShipments. It's the liability we booked against equity and for HL Kleos and euShipments.

For both together, it amounts for about €75 million. On the other hand, I think the balance sheet is quite stable.

Financial debt is at 124.2, and equity ratio still amounts for 27% for the logistic part. Coming now to operating free cash flow.

Our cash flow from operating activities amounted for about €79 million. We did some investments.

It's a little bit more than €20 million. The biggest spend we did in the first quarter of 2026 was the acquisition of euShipments, and we had a payout of €59.1 million.

Free cash flow before money market investments was €8.7 million. Where did we spend our money in the first quarter?

Mainly in Austria for our extension of the logistics center in Salzburg-Wals, also for some EV vehicles, and on the other hand, also for our out-of-home business internationally. Now, I would like to give back to Walter for the outlook for 2026.

Thank you, Barbara. Let me close with the outlook for the full year.

I think as a summary, a stable outlook, a rather confident outlook that assumes that we can catch up most of what we are behind the prior year in Q1 over the next three quarters. In terms of market environment, of course, there is some uncertainty, but the core trends of a declining mail volume and and increasing still-increasing e-commerce markets, the the market environment remains pretty stable.

On the parcel side, we have some uncertainty from different levies on parcels, mostly from non-EU countries, which are still not 100% clearly defined. We we will have to see how this affects parcel volumes.

On the revenue side for the overall group, we expect a slight revenues increase similar to what we what we've seen in Q1, potentially a little bit above that. This will be the net of a decline in mail in the mid-single-digit range, a higher volume decline offset by certain price effects; a revenue growth on the e-commerce side in the upper single-digit range; and a slightly growing income also on the bank side.

Overall, and we expect growth for the full year. We continue to invest, as Barbara said, with a capex guidance of €140 million to €160 million, with our Salzburg logistics center as the main big project included here, and the expansion of our electric fleet as the other the other big investment program, part of the investment program.

On the earnings level, the target is to achieve earnings that are in line with the last years, with the band with of the last years, of course depending on the macroeconomic environment and on the Turkish lira/euro exchange rate. Overall, as I said, we do expect to catch up some of the decline that we've seen in EBIT versus last year over the next three quarters.

With that said, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are now happy to take your questions.

Good afternoon. This is Ingo Schmidt from Montega.

Congratulations on a solid set of operational results in Q1. My first question is about Aras Kargo.

We know that the drop in Asian import volumes is a temporary effect due to the new custom rules. Based on what you see now, when do you expect these volumes to recover?

Are you already seeing a stabilization in the second quarter? Secondly, on CEE and SEE, you mentioned continued margin pressure in the region.

Could you maybe explain a bit more how euShipments can help you over time? Should we mainly think about higher parcel volumes, or can services like fulfillment also help to support margins going forward?

Thanks.

Thank you, Ingo, for your questions. On Aras Kargo, as you said, there has been this discontinuity on the custom side.

We do expect Chinese volumes to find other ways into Türkiye, and part of the volume to be over time absorbed maybe by Turkish e-commerce platforms, which are, to some extent, anyway in the hands of large Chinese e-commerce groups. Overall, we are optimistic that both revenue-wise as well as EBIT-wise, that the next three quarters will be better than the first quarter.

There is a variety of initiatives underway, in particular focusing on SMEs, where we see potential for Aras Kargo, and what we've seen in April confirms that we seem to be on a good way. On CEE, I think there are also a number of initiatives ongoing.

You're aware that there is one strategic project, which is the acquisition of an exiting competitor in Hungary, which should help if this acquisition goes through. There are a number of initiatives on the operation side, but also initiatives which go in the direction of a stronger integration across the group, exploiting synergies between companies that in the past have more acted on a stand-alone basis, where we're now trying to stronger integrate across the group, exploiting synergies on the cost side, but also presenting the group stronger as a region to large international customers.

Again here, the volume development in the first three months makes us optimistic that volume-wise, we are on the right way.

maybe I can answer this question. What we're focusing together with euShipments to roll out the concept of euShipments in countries where we are already.

This means going to Türkiye and other countries where we want to do fulfillment for the customers. What we want to avoid is only shifting parcels to Austrian Post and its subsidiaries because then this would put the business model of euShipments at risk.

Of course, it will help our entities with some volumes, but it's not the focus to ship every parcel coming from euShipments with our entities. It's more the rollout of the fulfillment business and also getting new customers in these countries.

Okay. Thank you for the answers.

I wish you continued success for the rest of 2026 and, of course, have a great weekend.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hello. Hi.

This is Marco Limite from from Barclays. I've got few questions on your your E-Commerce and Logistics print in Q1.

Clearly, Austria volumes quite strong. CEE volumes also not bad.

Turkish volumes up 2%, revenues in euro a bit down year-over-year. Overall, top line was good, but EBIT was down year-over-year.

First question is if how the EBIT in Austria, parcel Austria only, develop on a year-over-year basis on the back of 10% volume growth? Did we see growth in Austria in terms of EBIT?

Would be the first question. Then the second question is on your CEE business because you're growing volumes 9%, but revenue a bit less.

Overall, you are flagging competitive pressures affecting on margins. As your 2030 strategy is about growing more in CEE, the question to you is, does that makes sense strategically?

Do you think that you can grow volumes, but also EBIT? If you could just explain why you're seeing these margin pressures at the moment and how you think you can, let's say, solve the problem and grow not only top line, but also EBIT in the future if these are, such challenging markets.

Then third question, on your wage increase from from the 1st of July, whether you have had negotiations, whether you expect any challenge, let's say, from from the the current situation in Iran increasing fuel price and therefore, possible inflation going up, and therefore, are unions already asking for higher wage inflation than what you were expecting maybe a few months few months ago? Thank you.

Marco, thanks a lot for your comprehensive questions, which also allow me to address a few topics that we did not cover in our presentation. I think they're important ones.

Let me start from the back: Iran crisis. I think the good news is that directly, there is very little impact on our business.

We are not present in any way in the region where there were military actions, neither Iran nor UAE nor Saudi Arabia. Point one.

Point two, on energy costs, we are relatively relaxed given that in Austria, we have electrified already 60% of our fleet. Point one.

Point two, we are on HVO, not on oil-based diesel, but on vegetable So I think you're aware what HVO is. There is also a price fix at least for the year 2026.

We are relatively relaxed on energy costs. For the remaining exposure to diesel, we are well hedged given that there are also so-called diesel floaters in our pricing.

Energy costs is not an issue. Of course, the secondary effects of the Iran war on the global economy will also at some point in time, and nobody knows to what extent, this will hit Europe and Austria.

I think the good news is so far, direct effects almost none. Third question, I'm moving back up, was on the collective wage negotiations.

We closed these negotiations last week or the week before last week. The outcome was a 3% increase as of mid-September.

This is, on the one hand, a little bit below inflation. Relevant inflation was roughly 3.4%, we closed at 3.0%.

Second, it will not start July 1st, which is the typical effective date for our wage negotiations, but only on September 15th, 2.5 months of saved, yeah, wage increases, which should help on the cost increase in the second quarter. Overall, I would say a satisfying results.

Of course, such a wage negotiation is a difficult one in tough times, but we feel quite good about the outcome. We do not expect any further wage increases for the next 12 months.

Then your second question was on Eastern Europe. To summarize, where should the improvement come from?

On the one hand, as mentioned, we are strategically trying to gain market share with, also inorganic moves, such as in Hungary, and we're looking at other options. Second, and, in the end, we are in an economies of scale business where market share counts.

In some of the countries, we need more market share and would benefit from further market share. We're looking for strategic ways to increase market share.

Second, we are in a big out-of-home initiative. All those markets are at different speeds migrating towards out-of-home delivery.

In Hungary, we see that this can go quite fast. There is an advantage of pure out-of-home place, at least for a certain time, but we are catching up fast, improving our out-of-home footprint, and we do expect some improvement from that.

Third, as mentioned, we're working on synergies across countries, both on operations, but also on the sales side, where we are aggressively establishing a group sales. This leads me back to the strategic question, why do we think it's wise to grow and invest also in Eastern Europe?

We think we will benefit from being able to offer a region, a larger region. We think Austria in itself is in a consolidating industry too small as a stand-alone entity to operate.

We think this region gives us relevance, gives us scale, and gives us, in particular, eye-level scale in negotiations with large customers. Therefore, we still think that our strategy is the right one.

Of course, you are right that Eastern Europe currently is very competitive market, but we think over time, this industry will also consolidate, and as we're seeing in some markets, some of the competition is not sustainable.

May I add something? In addition, we're working on the logistic network side.

We are coming up with a new logistic hub in Budapest in the second half of this year, which will also help us on the cost side, and also we will be able to handle higher volumes. Also in Slovakia, we are going to get more efficiency in our logistic network with a two-hub system.

Also on the cost side, a lot of things are happening there.

Marco, I think your first question, and sorry for missing out on that, was the profit development in parcel Austria, in e-commerce logistics Austria. Yes, this has gone up.

The volume has translated also into improved absolute profitability, and we see that, our investments, the capacity we have installed that we benefit from increased market share and increased scale, given that a substantial share of costs has a fixed-cost characteristics.

Thank you.

Marco, I think.

Thanks, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for participating in this call.

Of course, as always, if you do have some more questions today or the next days, don't hesitate to call us. Thank you very much, and have a nice weekend.