Q3-23 revenues at €2.8bn, up 3.6% y/y (+6.8% y/y to €8.9bn in 9m-23):
• q3-23 mail, parcel & distribution revenues at €860m, up 1.9% compared to q3-22 (+4.0% y/y to €2.8bn in 9m-23), thanks to increasing parcel volumes, mail tariffs repricing and a favourable business mix.
• q3-23 financial services gross revenues to €1.4bn, down 3.1% y/y (+3.9% y/y to €4.5bn in 9m-23), with a strong increase in nii.
• q3-23 insurance revenues to €371m, up 6.5% (-0.1% y/y to €1.1bn in 9m-23), with positive net flows in life and a resiliently low lapse rate – less than half the market rate – in a challenging environment. non-life net revenues were up 27% in the quarter, supported by higher gwp in protection and net insurance consolidation.
• q3-23 payments and mobile revenues to €405m, +36.6% y/y (+44.2% y/y to €1.1bn in 9m-23), driven by strong performance from all business lines and benefitting from the lis consolidation.
• q3-23 total costs to €2.3 billion, increasing by 10.5% y/y (+8.5% y/y to €6.8bn in 9m-23), including a €90m one-off employee bonus, with a continued focus on cost control in the current inflationary environment, while supporting business growth. ordinary hr costs[1] for the period were equal to €1.3 billion, increasing by 3.4% (+3.4% y/y to €4.0bn in 9m-23), with ongoing fte reduction offsetting the planned salary increase. q3-23 non-hr costs1 to €1.0bn, up 13.0% y/y (+14.3% y/y to €3.1bn in 9m-23), while embedding €45m m&a effect.
• q3-23 ebit to €539m, -18.0% y/y (+1.5% y/y to €2.1bn in 9m-23), with a one-off employee bonus payment of €90m.
• q3-23 net profit at €382m, -15.9% y/y (+5.8% y/y to €1.5bn in 9m-23).
• tfas reached €580bn, up €4bn from december 2022[2], supported by a positive performance effect of €5.7bn. positive net inflows of €0.8bn in 9m-23 in saving and investment products[3] with strong net flows into target maturity fixed income funds and positive inflows in insurance in a challenging environment, mitigating headwinds in postal savings.
strong capital position: bancoposta total capital ratio at 24.2% (of which cet1 ratio at 20.7%), leverage ratio at 3.2% and poste vita group solvency ii ratio at 252%, above managerial ambition.
Matteo Del Fante, Poste Italiane Chief Executive Officer and General Manager commented: “We are over-delivering against our strategic plan into the nine months of 2023, with revenues up 7% year-on-year to close to 9 billion euros and EBIT reaching 2.1 billion euros. All of this has been also achieved thanks to our continuous cost discipline in this inflationary environment.
These solid results have been possible thanks to the dedication and resilience of our people, who work tirelessly to help Italians achieve their goals with a constant focus on innovation and improved customer experience. We are therefore pleased to be able to pay a one-off bonus of €1,000 for all employees, which was agreed in August and will be paid in November. This bonus has been granted also to mitigate the inflationary pressures within the period covered by the current collective agreement. In the meantime, negotiations for the new 2024-26 labour agreement are underway.
In Mail, Parcel and Distribution, all segments contributed to the division’s top line growth thanks to mail tariffs repricing and a favourable business mix, as well as parcel volumes pick-up. In light of these strong results, we are expecting Mail, Parcel and Distribution full year 2023 EBIT to be ahead of our guidance and therefore at break-even.
Favourable interest rates bolstered recurring NII, contributing to the sustained resilience of our Financial Services revenues’ trend.
Positive net inflows in Insurance are outpacing the market and coupled with a lapse rate less than half the market rate, contributing to the success of our Insurance business in this challenging environment. P&C continues to grow, also thanks to the Net Insurance consolidation, representing an enabler to accelerate the growth of the Protection business.
Payments and Mobile continue to deliver double-digit growth benefitting from our eCommerce leadership as well as increased usage of our cards thanks to the structural cash to card shift and the LIS consolidation. Our PosteEnergia offer has been enthusiastically embraced, with over four hundred thousand contracts signed to date, more than the original plan we had envisaged for year-end 2023.
Thanks to our proven business model that leverages on diversification, we constantly deliver financial overperformance driven by commercial results and cost discipline. On the basis of these solid results, we feel very comfortable in upgrading our 2023 EBIT guidance from the original target of €2.5 billion to €2.6 billion.
We continue to invest to further improve our capabilities across technology, products and people, while preserving our solid balance sheet.
On November 22, we will be paying our interim dividend of 24 cents per share for a total of €307 million, which is up 13% from last year.
We are working on our new strategic plan that we will present to the market next year, along with our 2023 full year results. With this new plan, we will lay out the strategy underpinning the transformation of our logistics business and the evolution of our service model aimed at maximising the value of our platform.
It’s fair to say that we are reassuringly consistent in our delivery and will continue to be so.”