Operator
Hello, and welcome to CTT's first quarter 2026 results conference call. This event is hosted by Mr.
Guy Pacheco, CEO of CTT, and by Mr. João Sousa, CCO of CTT.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your microphones will be disabled.
We will have a Q&A session at the end of the presentation, and analysts will have the opportunity to ask questions. To do so, simply click on the button to raise your hand, and we will give you access to the microphone.
If you are dialing from a phone line, press *9 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute yourself. I'll now turn the call over to Mr.
Guy Pacheco, CEO.
Guy Pacheco
Good morning to you all, and thank you for attending our 1Q conference call. I would invite you to start our presentation on slide number 4, where we show a quarter of resilient growth, with 4.3% growth, with our growth areas performing well, parcels and Banco CTT showing gross acceleration.
Although, as anticipated, our profitability was impacted by a number of conjunctural impacts, namely the Middle East crisis and new regulation introduction in parcels, concentrated peak volumes that spilled over to the first quarter, and the storms that affected the center of Portugal due to the Hurricane Kristin. With that, our EBIT declined 35.3% year-on-year on a comparable basis.
These events were contained in April, and April is showing strong signs of improvement, with CEP volumes accelerating, e-commerce solutions recurring EBIT also improving sequentially, and public debt placements showing signs of strong recovery and should improve further with revision of the limits that government announced last week. On page 5, we can see the e-commerce solutions volumes, where we continue to see strong volume evolution, with another quarter of acceleration on growth.
We posted a very strong 14.3% in the first quarter, and April shows strong signs of improvement, with almost 30% growth on April. This growth is supported mainly on non-Asian customers, with strong volume acceleration.
With this, we continue to see a very strong Iberian structural opportunity that remains unchanged since the last quarters. On page 6, we can see e-commerce solutions revenues growth that remained very solid.
CEP revenues increased 14.4% on the back of strong volume growth that we saw. E-commerce solutions revenues consolidated growing on a pro forma basis 10.2%.
The non-CEP revenues, namely on Cacesa, were impacted by discontinuing of low gross margin business, like handling, and impact of the introduction of the new G4 regulation in March. Our margin had the impact of this specific events, and as such, we had a challenging margin in the first quarter.
Regulation, peak volumes, and Middle East crisis introduced volatility in the volumes throughout the quarter, as shown in the intermonth detail that we shared on the previous slide, and that posed a number of capacity management issues that affected the margin in the first quarter. All those issues were resolved, and as such, profitability in April is showing strong signs of sequentially improving and normalizing.
With that, I would pass you over to João to take us through the public debt numbers.
João Sousa
Thank you very much, Guy. Good morning, everybody.
As we did in the last call, last results call, we start this Mail & Other section with our growth and diversification areas. As you can see in this slide on the left side, we show the performance of public debt placements.
This first quarter performance was impacted by two main factors. The lower footfall in our stores due the severe storms that affected Portugal during the quarter that led to several stores being closed for a long number of days, and also a demanding of this quarter versus the quarter of last year when we compare, because as the quarter of last year was still benefiting from the cap increase that we see in the last quarter of 2024, and also the improvement remuneration conditions.
The good news is that we already saw a sequential improvement in April, and in addition, the upgrade limits at the end of April already translate into a strong growth in the first days of May. We can highlight that this first days of May, we see two times of public debt placements in a daily basis, and even in our app, we see a best day ever, a record in our app in a public debt placement.
On the left hand side, we see our diversified services we are doing, health plans and insurance. Here, we highlight health plans that, even with this lower footfalls in stores, we see the customer base continue to increase.
Both health plans and insurance products are evolving very positively and helping us to build a customer portfolio with recurring revenue and great predictability for CTT. On page 8, we see the revenues decline from €128.7 million in this quarter versus €132.2 [million?]
in the last quarter. This performance reflects two main factors: so, the decline in mail, that is a well-known trend that we are managing with improving in pricing and with managing churn with the big customers, but more important, the reduction in revenues from the savings certificates that I explained before, but it is not a trend, this is a specific impact that we already solved or is already solved, and we are seeing already a positive trend.
In the other hand, positive in this chart, we can see Business Solutions and Payments, another important pillar in our diversification strategy, continue to grow. This area continues to support the overall performance of this business unit.
In terms of profitability, recurring EBIT in Mail & Services was impacted by lower revenues from this saving placements. Recurring EBIT stood at €4.2 million in this first quarter versus €7.9 million in the last quarter, represent a decline on 46.6%, and EBIT margin was 3.3% on the first quarter versus 6.0% on first quarter of '25.
Nevertheless, we maintain a positive outlook on this Mail & Others because continued growth of Business Solutions, and we see and we already see this recovering on savings placements in April and this first days of May. With this, I pass to Guy.
Vitor Esteves
Thank you, João. On page 9, we can see Banco CTT operationals.
The bank continues to accelerate sequentially its volume growth, showing early signs of success of the new strategy that we have been implementing, with volumes growing almost 14%, especially on the loan book, with growth of almost 16%, and off-balance sheet savings that continue to overperform, with 23.2% growth. Banco was one of the bank that grew most within the retail banks in Portugal, for the ones that post results, very strong performance here.
Current accounts continued to grow 3.5%, reaching almost 712,000 customers. On banking revenues, we continue to see net interest margin improvement, that now stands at 2.2%, and the banking revenues, driven by net interest income and commissions, reaching almost 9%.
In terms of recurring EBIT, a flattish performance or marginal improvement, as we continue to invest in reinforcing our commercial and digital capabilities to refuel or to reignite the bank growth going forward. On page 11, we can see the beginning of our financial review with our key financial indicators.
Please bear in mind that these are not pro forma, include the impact of the acquisition of Cacesa. We see 14.1% growth on revenues.
Our operating costs, as mentioned, with the additional costs due to capacity management and impacts of weather, growing 17.7%. Recurring EBIT reaching €15.3 [million?]
, with a decline of 24%. Our net profit was €4.5 million, with 17.6% decline.
Our free cash flow was heavily impacted by seasonality, and that is due to the repayments of the capacity installed for to face peak, and the capex that normally is back-end loaded, and as such, we saw this reversal that we expect, as previously commented, to reverse during the year. On page 12, we see revenue growth continues to be pulled by solid performance of e-commerce solutions, where we see CEP with very strong performance, and overall growing 10% or €15.1 million.
On mail, we saw the decline of financial services placements that account for €3 million of this decline. The remainder is the net effect of good performance on Business Solutions and still decline on volumes of mail.
Banco CTT growth of €3 million driven by volumes that drove net interest income and commissions, and overall growing 4.3% on a pro forma basis on the first quarter. Our e-commerce will continue to be the catalyst or the core catalyst of our revenues and accounting more or almost half of our revenues in the first quarter.
On page 13, we can see the evolution of our costs that, as mentioned, were mainly driven by temporary e-commerce capacity challenges. E-commerce solutions grew 19.8%, with high volatility due to supply chain disruptions and peak season 2025 spillover to January due to an abnormally concentrated peak around Christmas, required a significant additional effort to maintain quality, and as such, we continue to prioritize quality for our customers because we think that is what protects value in the long term, and this had a contained impact on the first quarter.
Mail & Services declining €0.8 million, showing lower activity in mail and financial services, with some cost impacts resulting from the storms in Portugal. The bank a €2.9 million increase due to the investment on growth and commercial expansion.
Our cost of risk now stands at 1%, with a slight increase from 0.9% last year. Overall, our revenues grew 7.5%.
In slide 14, we can see our recurring EBIT bridge, where we see a first quarter showing compression in our margins due to these related events, where we see early signs of recovery with a strong April in terms of operationals. Our EBIT is declining 35% on a comparable basis due to these impacts, namely on e-commerce solutions, where the capacity management issues and regulations impacted the performance, with €4.7 million decline.
In Mail & Services, the impact of lower public debt placements also affecting performance, with a €3.7 million of decline. The bank showing a flattish performance in line with guidance and with the phase of investment that we are now undergoing.
The recurring EBIT performance is set to improve in the rest of year. The second quarter started strongly, with parcel volumes also posting strong performance and recovering of profitability.
On Mail & Services, we see financial services benefiting from not only higher interest rates, but especially from the increase on limits. The government increased limits on the current series from €100,000 per person individual limit to €250,000, and we, as João mentioned, we see early signs of elasticity due to those changes.
The net interest margin in the bank will have tailwind from form interest rates, but investment will continue as guided. In page 15, we see cash flow and our net debt.
Our leverage ratios, due to the working capital performance, now sits at 2.2 times, still below the self-imposed limit of 2.5 times. We expect working capital normalization throughout the rest of the year, that will help deleveraging, that coupled with the proceeds from the JV with DHL that we expected to close this month, we see leverage immediately below 1.7, and with the reversal to improve further throughout the year.
With this, I would move to my final remarks. We continue to believe firmly in the future growth of this company, continue to building upon our strategic foundations.
We have been building this commercial franchise, strong commercial franchise throughout Iberia, and that continues very strong, especially in the dynamics of revenues, where we continue to see resilience growth in e-commerce solutions. The first quarter was affected by anticipated headwinds, with limited impact throughout the quarter, and we see April trading showing strong signs of recovery.
For the rest of the year, we see normalization underway, with this recovery on the margins on e-commerce and continuous strong volumes. Mail & Services stabilizing on the back of recovery and better performance of financial services with the revisions of savings certificates, and Banco CTT will continue this its path of accelerating growth, with no changes in our strategic stance in terms of investment.
With this, we are reiterating guidance, notwithstanding a volatile environment in regulation and increasing execution risk, but we remain committed to achieve our full-year guidance, that I remind it's a growing guidance. We deliver we delivery to be driven by e-commerce execution throughout the rest of the year and tailwinds on financial services.
We expect, as mentioned, our leverage trajectory to improve after DHL closing in May. We started very strongly our second quarter.
We see second semester also with strong fundamentals, but subject to the new regulations. We are preparing according to our scenarios, but will need to adjust according to reality.
We remain very committed to achieve our full-year guidance. With this, I would be ready to take your questions.
Operator
We are now available to take your questions. As a reminder, analysts that wish to place a question should click on the button, raise your hand, and we'll give you access to the microphone.
Analysts dialing from a phone line should press *9 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute yourself. Our first question comes from João Safara.
João, please ask your question.
João Safara
Hi. Good morning.
Thank you, Guy and João, and welcome Joana to the team. I have two questions.
I think they are related. The first one is just if you could, well, help us understand or try to identify the several impacts you mentioned.
You mentioned peak season spillover, volatility, volume volatility, weather. I don't know if there's a way to sort of give us an idea of exactly what are this impacts, what is the contribution of each of this impact?
Also, the question here is also because it seems that, and we've seen that as well in it's true with different perimeter, but we've seen that as well in the first quarter of '25, that there was because of quality some deteriorations of margin. Here, basically, what I wanted to understand is a bit if this is something that we should expect going forward in the first quarter, in the sense that, okay, I understand weather, definitely that is a one-off, but the maybe the other impacts might happen on a recurrent basis.
A bit this is my question, and so I don't know if you can help me understand this a little bit better. Then just on the performance of Cacesa, is it fair to assume that Cacesa did relatively worse than the rest of the business?
The reason why I'm saying this is because we've seen some volume growth in the quarter, which was quite strong, 14%, that should have triggered some operating leverage. Then, I don't know, or maybe it was just that the base for Cacesa's margin in the first quarter '25 was too high.
I don't know if there's something there that could also help me understand a little bit better. That's it.
Thank you.
Guy Pacheco
Thank you, João, for your question. I will start with the first one.
You are right when you see when you say that there is some seasonality effects on the first quarter, and it's easy to explain why. That is the the market is still very exposed to Asian volumes, and and on the first quarter, we have February typically with the Chinese New Year, and normally we have very low volumes around those those those weeks because production in in China stops, and and as such, that implies that impacts the supply chain, and that is the reason by why the first quarter normally has lower margins because it's difficult to just for one week or two adjust capacity to then resume with with significant volumes uplift in in March, and and as such, normally we have lower margins in in the first quarter.
That trend this year was aggravated further by specific impacts. That was the peak and and the war.
That why, because we had in every month, in January, February, and and March, a high volatility, from one to three times the volume week on week, and that poses tremendous challenges in terms of managing capacity because when it's low, you are you are under capacity and having margin loss because of that, and when it grows, you you need to to put extra labor and and hire at hire people at higher costs in order to face to face that extra extra growth. On average, growth was resilient, as you saw, but but with this volatility impacted.
That volatility was driven in January because of of the of the of the spillover of the peak. February normally is slow because of of Chinese New Year, no news there.
When we were expecting a strong recovery after the New Years in China, as every year happens, we we had the Middle Eastern war crisis that impacted all the flows that come through Middle East, and and that took some time to recovery. Luckily, the the supply chains were agile enough, recovering, but we had a a huge amount of volumes coming on the end of March that once again impacted margin.
Good news is the the the business remains strong. We had this volatility that impacted margins temporarily.
As I mentioned, we continue to to protect quality of our customers in order to keep loyalty of them, and that's that's what we see in the long term generating more value, but unfortunately, we had this impacts on on on the quarter margin. In terms of of storms, they were more contained on the Mail & Services impacts, not not on on the on the parcel on the parcel division.
Cacesa, Cacesa, in terms of margin, in terms of top line, we discontinued some some legacy business they had from their past in Iberia. Remember that Cacesa used to be an Iberia division, and they had some handling services that that were non-core and low margin that we discontinued throughout last year.
In March, the Spanish the Spain customs authority was the first in Europe to introduce a new EU regulation that is G4, and that posed a number of problems in the Madrid Airport, not only for for us, but to to every customs broker in the market, with with the inability to clear volumes that by due to mainly constraints on on on the customs authority side in IT that was unable to respond to the clearance requests. That had a double impact on margin in in revenues and in margin because we had more costs of storage in the airport side of of due to that.
Since then, things are are improving, as normality within with tax tax authority resumed, and and we are seeing things going back to normality.
João Safara
All clear. Thank you very much.
Operator
Our next question comes from Filipe Leite at CaixaBank. Filipe, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Filipe Leite
Yes. Hello.
Can you hear me now?
Guy Pacheco
We can.
Filipe Leite
Yes. Good morning.
Perfect. Good morning, everyone.
I have four questions, if I may. First one is regarding DHL, the joint venture with DHL, because you, as you mentioned, it's expected to be closed this month, just to confirm what will be the net proceeds, the final net proceeds for CTT, and also if we can already assume that DHL will not take any stake in Cacesa.
Second question on e-commerce solutions, because you mentioned profitability improvement in April, and Guy was just explaining that, but in terms of numbers, can we assume that the EBIT margin in April stood already close to the almost 10% reported in second quarter of last year, or the sequential improvement, as you mentioned in the presentation, means that probably in second quarter we will still have an EBIT margin for this division below the close to 10% reported last year? Third question also on e-commerce, and is actually a clarification, because you mentioned new regulation affecting parcel volumes, but just to confirm that this new regulation will be implemented only in June or July, right?
My question is just to understand how this regulation that will be implemented only before summer already impacted the volumes in first quarter. Last, a clarification on Banco CTT and on recent news that apparently you hire a financial advisor to evaluate your options on the bank, just to confirm how is the process and if there is any official process open to divest part or the entire stake that you have in the bank.
Thank you.
Guy Pacheco
Filipe, thank you for your question. Starting on DHL JV, it will be closing on the next weeks.
We still cannot confirm the the the final number, although we are not expecting material differences from the number we announced. We announced a number that is a non-debt basis, and we will have a cash adjustment according to the accounts of April.
We are still finalizing that number, it's still, but we are not expecting a material adjustment due to that. Regarding the margin, we see a sequential improvement.
The last quarter margin was was close to 10%. We see convergence to that number, still early days to commit to to a specific number, but we see signs of normalization.
In terms of the bank, I won't comment news, but I can say that we didn't hire any advisor at this point, nothing else to comment on that. On regulation, you are right to ask that clarification.
From 1st of July onwards, we'll have the de minimis removal, but that is that is encompassed in a in the what EU calls the European Union tax reform, where there are several changes. Those changes are not material in terms of taxation or any kind of levy charged to the goods like it will be from 1st of July onwards, but there are changes in the amount of information exchanged between the the the the platform, the e-commerce platform, and the tax authority.
That is increasing materially because one of of the aims of tax of European Union is also to increase transparency and what arrives and enters the European space, and as such, the number of information collected increased materially, and that's what driven the the chokes on on on the IT systems from customs side because the number of information increased by almost 100 times per per parcel. Those throughput issues posed temporarily issues on Cacesa business in Spain, that is, as the the big chunk of of Cacesa numbers and and profitability.
Filipe Leite
Just if I may a follow-up on DHL.
Guy Pacheco
On Cacesa, right? I forgot to mention that.
Cacesa will not be on the perimeter.
Filipe Leite
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
We continue available to take questions. Analysts that wish to place a question should click on the button to to to raise your hand, and we'll give access to the microphone.
Analysts dialing from a phone should press *9 to raise your hand and *6 to unmute yourselves. As we don't have any other questions at this point, I will turn now the call back to our CEO, Guy Pacheco, for additional and closing remarks.
Guy Pacheco
Thank you for attending. We have a new management team in place.
We are very excited to take on this new challenge. We see encouraging signs of recovery and an encouraging start of this quarter with our April numbers, and we remain very committed to deliver all our commitments to the market.
Thank you all, and see you next time.
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