Earnings call transcript: Worldline Q1 2025 reports slight revenue decline

Worldline SA, a leading player in the payment services industry with a market capitalization of €1.8 billion, reported a slight decline in revenue for Q1 2025, with external revenues reaching €1,068 million, marking a 1% organic contraction. The company attributed the downturn to several factors, including merchant terminations and terminal challenges. Despite these setbacks, Worldline’s stock saw a modest increase of 1.42% in after-hours trading, closing at €5.63. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock is currently trading below its Fair Value, suggesting potential upside opportunity.

Key Takeaways

• Q1 2025 external revenues were €1,068 million, reflecting a 1% organic decline.
• Stock price rose by 1.42% in after-hours trading.
• Company launched a €50 million cost-saving initiative.
• Full-year guidance was withdrawn, with reassessment planned for July 30.
• Strategic partnerships extended with KVC and DNB.

Company Performance

Worldline’s performance in Q1 2025 was characterized by a slight decline in organic revenue, driven by merchant terminations and challenges with terminals. The company experienced growth in acquiring and acceptance volumes, with increases of 3.6% and 5.4%, respectively. Despite these positive trends, the overall revenue was impacted by a 1% decline due to a combination of market factors. InvestingPro data reveals the company maintains a solid gross profit margin of 66.1% and a healthy current ratio of 1.05, indicating stable operational efficiency. Subscribers can access 8 additional ProTips and comprehensive financial metrics on the platform.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €1,068 million, a 1% organic decline from the previous year.
• Acquiring volumes increased by 3.6%.
• Acceptance volumes grew by 5.4%.

Outlook & Guidance

Worldline has withdrawn its full-year guidance, citing the need to reassess its outlook at the H1 2025 results announcement on July 30. The company plans to focus on stabilizing priorities, delivering core initiatives, and improving contribution margins. Additionally, there is a potential for portfolio simplification in the coming months. While currently unprofitable over the last twelve months, InvestingPro analysts forecast a return to profitability this year, with an expected EPS of €1.86 for FY2025. The company’s Financial Health Score stands at 2.21, rated as ’FAIR’ by InvestingPro’s comprehensive assessment system.

Executive Commentary

"Our addressable market opportunity is significant," stated CEO Pierre Antoine Vacheron, emphasizing the company’s potential for growth. He also highlighted the importance of growth as an enabler of cash flow generation. Vacheron stressed the need to clarify priorities to ensure team success.

Risks and Challenges

• Merchant terminations and terminal challenges could continue to impact revenue.
• The competitive landscape in the SME segment poses challenges.
• European market fragmentation may present both opportunities and risks.
• Economic uncertainties and digital payment shifts require strategic adaptation.

Worldline’s Q1 2025 performance reflects both challenges and opportunities, with the company focusing on cost-saving measures and strategic partnerships to navigate the evolving market landscape.

Full transcript - Worldline SA (WLN) Q1 2025:

Conference Operator: Good evening, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Worldline Q1 twenty twenty five Revenue Conference Call. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Worldline Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you. Thanks a lot, and good evening, everybody, and thanks a lot for joining this call. Since it’s my first conversation with you before we enter into the presentation on Q1, let me start with a few personal comments. First comment, I must say that I’m extremely happy to have taken the leadership of wireline. Over the last weeks, I’ve been in many locations already and I can confirm that this company has great assets, extended breadth of skills to serve customers in an industry which is really fascinating and where no position is granted.

Having been in this industry for more than fifteen years, I can say that nothing that I’ve been seen so far has been a surprise to me. Issues are acknowledged and the teams are ready to move forward. So in a nutshell, would say that nothing in what is wrong at wireline can be fixed by wireline. Third comment, I have been able as expected to leverage on my knowledge of the industry and of the company to hit the ground running. We’ve been in a position to take early decisions to fix some issues and to make early appointments that will increase our delivery capacity.

Maybe if I can dive a bit into my initial findings and you can follow on the slides, which is on your screen. I have divided my views into four categories, market product, infrastructure and organization. In each case, I see a solid base at Wireline, but then I see to make several improvements. I will summarize each in turn. As far as our addressable market is concerned, we operate in what is still a mid to high single digit growth payment market, faster than GDP, where we have significant scale, specifically in Europe.

Regulation, the quest for sovereignty and the remaining fragmentation of the European market gives Wireline a competitive advantage as well as our strong relationship with banks. But clearly, we need to be more selective given the investment required to address innovation and compliance requirements. This will mean exiting from segments or geographies inherited from our acquisitions and that we consider to adjacent. Regarding products, we have a large range of products, which virtually cover the entire payment value chain. We have very strong segments with USPs such as digital, travel.

We have a massive merchant acquiring value proposition and we have advanced expertise to face the evolution of client needs in payments processing. However, we clearly have opportunities to enhance further innovation, customer experience and differentiation. Regarding infrastructure, we have as well aligned the technology stack, which is at scale considering the volumes we process. However, we need to convert our disparate platforms into a more focused number, which have been identified. We should also save at scale the next generation technologies, especially generative AI to assist the convergence, streamline costs and generate greater operational leverage.

All this is already in progress and there are deliverables, but we need to secure and stabilize our priorities. Regarding the organization, this business has a wide talent pool and a track record in offshoring, which is pretty advanced for this industry. However, we need to increase ownership and accountability and to drive talent pool consolidation. Based on this, what are my focus in the coming months? All the approach is about putting the company back on track for robust growth and free cash flow generation.

Logically, the first focus is to stabilize the priorities of the teams. Over the last weeks, spent time, as I said, with the teams in the field, with customers, with partners. And there is an abused basic need to clarify short term priorities, but also to address some gaps in skills resulting from Power24 and to fix a few health issues. The second focus is to deliver our product and project. A lot is happening, but by enhancing clarity and prioritizing what matters most, we increase the efficiency of the organization.

All this with this objective to put the company back on track to robust growth and free cash flow generation. But as I said from my observations so far, I’m confident that there isn’t a single issue we can’t resolve, but it will be progressive. And now when I look at Q1 that Gregory Lamberti will present in detail, two points are important to me looking at full year 2025. The first point regarding our revenue in Q1 is that they are in line with one could expect. But the mix of volumes is unfavorable because it is less margin contributive.

We have soft SME activity, soft specialty retail, more FMCG, more airline. We are facing some issues in our terminal offering delivery and that’s one of the very key things that we need to fix. The same, reversing trends in SME is among our core priorities to generate better margins. So the timing will depend on the velocity of the organization to deliver, which you will understand is difficult for me to assess right now after such a limited number of weeks. The second point regarding our costs, the good news that costs are clearly under control and in line with the expectations.

And on top of that, to preserve our cash flow generations, we have just decided together with the management team to implement an incremental EUR 50,000,000 cash cost saving initiative by the end of the year. Now it is important for me to be reliable in what we do and in what we say. And given my limited capacity to assess at this stage the velocity of our teams to which we should add to some extent the potential impact of global volatility and consumption patterns, we will take the time to reassess our outlook and we will come back to you when we publish the first half year results on July 30, sorry, 2025. But let me hand over to Gregory Lamberti to provide more detail on Q1 performance.

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: Thank you, Pierre Antoine, and good evening, everyone. In this financial update, we will walk you through our performance and key business highlights for Q1. In Q1 twenty twenty five, Wordline delivered external revenues of 1,068,000,000.000 in line with initial expectations with MS decreasing by 1% or down 3.5% on an NNR basis. Adjusted for the leap year revenues remained stable, including merchant terminations. And the lag in NNR versus published revenues was mainly due to merchant and product mix.

FX was down 8.9%, given the well known resourcing in the account payment division. And finally, METS was up around 2%. Looking at MS in more detail for Q1, while MS underlying growth was 3.5%, Published organic growth is minus 1% for the following reasons. Merchant terminations continue to impact performance by around 1%. Challenges with terminals and related software availability weighed on revenue growth by approximately 2.5%.

And finally, the leap year effect, I. E. One day less in Q1 twenty twenty five means roundabout 1% less of growth. Our volumes are progressing by 3.6% on the acquiring front and 5.4% on the acceptance side. Now looking at the main performance highlights by go to market.

In large enterprise, the segment performed well, particularly in global e comm and travel, but also in acquiring an acceptance for the large retail and self-service vertical. As illustrated by the logos on this slide, key enterprise clients such as All Nippon Airways and Lufthansa continued to demonstrate our solid footprint in the airline industry. In parallel, we improved our share of wallet with some existing clients such as Blizzard or Pearson through upselling of additional payment means. Then in the SMB segment, our performance was affected by a drop in terminal sales and an underperformance in some core markets where we have identified some higher churn rate. Lastly, in our JVs, we continue to see solid market share gains in Southern Europe and good traction with our repricing actions initiated in Australia.

However, Germany was impacted by strong comparison base mainly on the terminal front due to a large contract executed last year in H1 and less favorable customer mix evolution. Now turning to FX, the negative performance is primarily due to the re insourcing as well as a low volume base along with a comparison effect due to the signing of some license deals in the first quarter of last year. However, some segments remain dynamics during the first quarter with card based payment processing continuing to show good momentum, supported by our next generation card issuing platform, which grew in the mid single digits. In APAC, we also saw solid performance, mainly driven by expansion initiatives and build activities. Account payment activities are still impacted by the re insourcing as previously mentioned.

Importantly, we also secured several strategic commercial wins and upsells, including the extension of a long term partnership for issuing services with KVC and with DNB, thanks to our Target Instant Payment Settlement solution. These wins not only reinforce our relevance in the market, but also lay the groundwork for future growth. In our Mobility and Etransactional Services segment, we saw two percent two point two percent organic growth in Q1. This performance was supported by strong momentum in Transport and Mobility, especially in France, where we benefited from new mobility projects and ticketing systems, but also in The UK where higher volumes contributed positively. In omni channel interactions, we saw strong volume driven growth, particularly in France with key clients like SNCF and ODF.

However, trusted services showed a mixed picture. Well, was positives in Spain and Belgium as well as Germany. Those weren’t enough to offset the difficult base effect from the prior development of the track and trace solution. On the commercial front, as you can see from the list of names, we achieved a number of wins and rollouts in the Telematics Infrastructure Gateway, a critical initiative that connects all service providers across the German healthcare sector, strengthening our role in digital public services. Looking ahead, the segment is well positioned to build on this momentum.

Now, I hand over to Pierre Antoine to discuss strategic initiatives and conclude this presentation.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you. Thank you, Gregory. So earlier in the presentation, I referred to the three key steps that we have taken as a roadmap to restore robust growth and free cash flow generation potential. Let me reiterate on these steps. The first one is to stabilize the priorities.

And the first point there is to reset expectations internally so that the teams consider themselves empowered and accountable for delivering their priorities going down the road. That goes together with filling the gaps in terms of organizations and to make it happen, we have already initiated a refresh of some of the management teams and we announced some changes today at merchant services level, a new head for SMB, a new leadership for risk and at group level, we have announced a new CTO joining in early July. The good news in those new adds in our management team is that they are all coming from very good and strong brands. Candace, our Group CTO is coming from Vodafone. Joachim Colvertz, who is responsible for the SME segment reporting to Paul, Marriott, Clark is coming from Fiserv and Tim Minol, who will take the responsibility as risk officer for merchant services is coming from PayPal.

And to some extent, that does demonstrate the attractiveness of Wireline as a key player in this payment industry. The second top topic is to deliver on our core initiatives. The first type of initiatives is regarding our product and on fixing our product issues. One example of our focus here includes POS terminals where you have understood that we were struggling in putting on the market next generation terminals. The second topic relating to product is to develop with the right level of priority the features that will ease convergence on our core platforms in our targeted geographies.

The second type of core initiative is related to our portfolio of operations. As you know, we have been assisting all the segments of the business to determine what might be non core. This is what we call our pruning strategy and we are very actively working on it. All those initiatives aim at putting the company back on track for robust growth and cash generation. And I would say that the final objective is to improve our time to market, our customer satisfaction and to enter finally into the virtuous circle that will drive more customer acquisitions, higher contribution margin, enhanced growth potential and at the end, return on capital.

And we will detail our long term strategy during the Capital Market Day that will, as planned, occur in the autumn. Before we move to questions, I would like to summarize my initial take. I do approach this with caution and realism, but it’s important to emphasize that our addressable market opportunity is significant. That Tour Line has strong assets with an established operating model and footprint and that clearly the organization is acknowledging the challenges that we have ahead of us, but we know them and actions are already underway. Thank you very much for your attention, and I’m now ready with Gregory to take your questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. One moment please. And your first question comes from the line of Sandeep Deshpande from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sandeep Deshpande, Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes, hi. Thanks for letting me on. All the best, Pierre Antoine, on your appointment. Just a quick clarification on your goals going ahead. I mean, you’ve talked about growth and free cash flow generation.

Is there a priority on those growth on those objectives? And then secondly, I mean, is it easier to achieve one or the other? Because I mean, the growth has been a big issue, whereas historically, Worldline has produced free cash flow. So would it be easier to become a much better free cash flow producing company before you can return to growth? And then secondly, is the market itself where you are exposed to as far as you’ve looked at it can grow more than say GDP growth or are there challenges in the growth?

Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you, Sandeep. And it’s good to have you on the call. It’s a great question as usual. Let’s say, we have one break, which is already well known, which is that all the one offs coming from contract terminations, would it be on FS side or on merchants, would be over by the end of Q2. So we won’t have any more of that negative impact.

Now we know the segments in which we are growing pretty well. I already mentioned airlines, digital, some geographies are doing very well, Southern Europe, especially Italy, Eastern Europe is doing well. But what’s really key to me is to grow faster, especially on the SMB front. I think that this is an area where we have to focus because that’s an area which is highly contributive, which is working pretty well with the banks. And so the point for us is to probably to evolve our products so that we are at the right level to grow faster in SME.

And now a final comment on your questions regarding the operating model. I mean, the ultimate target is to generate more cash flow. And that’s at the end of the day, the judge of the performance, the level of cash flow that you generate. But growth is an enabler of cash flow generation. So we need to have growth that would generate qualitative margin.

Maybe a final comment on your questions regarding underlying GDP. I think this business growth I mean, this industry growth still faster than GDP because the shift to digital is not over even if the gap is reduced. The point for us is to grow I mean to have differentiation that brings faster growth than the competition. And that’s what we will be working on in the coming quarters.

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Josh Levin from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Josh Levin, Analyst, Autonomous Research: Hi, good evening and welcome. Based on what you have seen so far, what would you say is Worldline’s key competitive advantage? How does it really differentiate itself from its competitors? And then the second question, as you talk about the need to further innovate on customer experience and bridge gaps in the talent pool, does that mean that you’ll have to ramp up investment for the next few years? Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: So on first question, mean, of my head in terms of competitive advantage, I would say the breadth of skills and expertise in the payment value chain, which is something that is very important in a world where we will assist convergence of payment rails going forward. I would consider that the connection with banks is also a significant advantage. It’s not the fastest segment in terms of growth, but it’s robust and it’s a lower cost go to market. So that’s something which is important. And we have a real know how in managing banks relationship, would it be in financial services or in merchant services.

And I would say the third one is probably our multi local presence. We know that payments remain quite fragmented in Europe. Customers want to have local counterparts. They want to have local payment solutions to serve them. And this is clearly an asset of wireline, which is resulting from our history and that we continue to push and to grow.

Josh Levin, Analyst, Autonomous Research: And further investment?

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Yes, sorry. So on the investments, I mean, will discuss on the investments strategy during the CMD. What I see today that there is a potential to invest at a normal path. I do not anticipate significant cash flow trend for our investments. So really the key topic is the priority.

The priority is to ease convergence of platform that will make us save more money and being able to allocate more resources on the new product.

Josh Levin, Analyst, Autonomous Research: Thank you. Good luck.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Justin Forsyth from UBS. Please go ahead.

Justin Forsyth, Analyst, UBS: Hey, Pierre and Antoine, welcome. And thank you very much for the presentation. Appreciate it. So just a couple here for me. Question number one, in the past you’ve run, it seems like even multiple different brands in individual countries, taking Germany as an example.

Presumably, those are on different technology stacks. Is the idea to decommission legacy technology? And maybe you could give us a sense of the challenges associated with that and what length of time and cost there might be to accomplish it? Second question, I just wanted to ask why you pulled the guidance here. I mean in your position, I probably would have done the same to wipe the slate clean.

However, on the flip side, you had 1Q revenue in line. Understand there’s some macro volatility going forward. But with the performance of the last few years, maybe some want to fear the worst. Is there a floor you are willing to put out there to offset the idea that you might have a precipitous drop in revenue this year starting in 2Q? Thank you very much.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Okay. Thanks a lot, Justin, for your two questions. So today we have identified and that’s the good news, the core platforms on which we are investing. So there is one core platform for merchant acquiring, which is inherited from the six acquisitions. There is one for regional e commerce, which is inherited from Agun that has been completely refactored.

There is one for global commerce, global e commerce, which the global collect platform, which has been refactored. And there is one for in person acceptance, which is what we call access and which has also been refactored. So we have a stack of target platforms, which is of very good quality. Now, obviously, the target is to step by step converge on those four platforms. It’s happening to some extent every day.

It did depending on the delivery of the right features on the target platform so that we can decide to finally turn off the legacy platforms, which are not targets. But it takes time. It needs resilience, consistency and right priorities and stable priorities, which is one of my key goals today. But it will happen on a quarterly basis step by step, but it will take some time. It will take a few years, but it’s not a big year.

It’s not a big deal. On your second question, pulling the guidance, I would say that we have quite a few initiatives underway, especially to act on the contribution margin, what we call the contribution margin, to act on the revenue, to act on the cost with this additional savings plan. Obviously, I mean, I just have fifty days behind me having the right feeling about what the teams can deliver at what speed, it’s really changing. So I prefer not to state something that could be too conservative and to say, okay, let’s give us a few one additional quarter to have more visibility. Okay.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: You. Your next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Frederic Boulan, Analyst, Bank of America: Hi, good evening, Francois and Gregory. So maybe first question to you, Francois. I mean, you highlighted a pretty long list of areas where you’re going to focus on. But maybe if you can comment what do you think is the kind of biggest and most important challenge? Is it more on the product side?

Is it the technology? Or is it more simply your existing positions where you have high market share, legacy positions in some markets where you see more competition. So clearly, I think to get your

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: take on

Frederic Boulan, Analyst, Bank of America: that. Second, you flagged poor performance in core markets. So we’d love to hear a bit more about that. If you can discuss what’s going on in Germany, in Switzerland, in Benelux and what’s the outlook there? And then following up on the previous question, I think with the full year guidance, we already had a fairly limited guidance framework.

We moved from free cash flow to unlevered free cash flow, which was a fairly new type of commitment. But is the growth in this unlevered free cash flow also a commitment you think is not something you can back at this stage despite a pretty significant tailwind from working cap and restructuring costs? I mean there’s too much uncertainty on the mix on the margin side. So we’d be keen to hear your thoughts on that level also in a way to kind of underpin and have a bit of a floor in terms of how bad could things go in 2025? Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you. So I will take maybe the first two questions and Gregory will take the third one. I think the main challenge is a delivery issue much more than any technological issue. Obviously, have technological stack, which is a bit diverse. But as I said, our core platforms have been reinvested already in the last years.

So it’s really a question of, I mean, sitting down, having the right priorities again, having the teams empowered and just deliver. But there is no magic behind that. We know what we have to do. We just need to clarify the priorities so that the team consider themselves as being able to be successful. Just to give you one example, when we speak about pushing our regional e commerce platform in various geographies.

That means that we need to have the right solution in France, the right payment method in Germany, the right connections in Switzerland and so on and so forth. And what’s very important today is to say, okay, now your priority for the coming partner is this geography, this payment method and full stop and the rest will wait. And that’s some kind of discipline that we need to reinstill within the company and that will help a lot in terms of engagement from the teams and in terms of delivery. On your second question, obviously, we have very strong positions in some geographies. You mentioned Switzerland, you mentioned Germany, you could mention Benelux.

And when you have such a strong position, you are more attacked than when you are changer. In Italy, we are changer, we are growing very fast. So that’s quite logical. So the challenge for us is to be much more in event in our core geographies so that we can resist and gain market shares when we can gain market shares in some segments typically. And also to be much more proactive and ambitious potentially in the challenger geographies where we can grow faster.

And that’s the case in the Merchant Services, that’s the case in the sales as well. Maybe for the guidance, I will give the floor to Gregory. Hi, Fred,

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: and thank you for your questions. So first, Fred would provide further update on ’25 outlook at the first half results in July. Now our Q1 top line is in line with expectation. The main moving part here is on the contribution margin, while the OpEx are under control. So that’s why we’re launching a cash saving plan without added implementation costs to protect cash flow generation.

So one thing to bear in mind is that all the other parameters of the free cash flow remain unchanged, CapEx, the restructuring and integration, P24 costs. So we’re very much in a stable environment. So here you can easily understand that the only moving part is on profitability. And at this stage, we’d be back to you in H1.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will go to our next question. And your next question comes from the line of Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hannes Leitner, Analyst, Jefferies: Yes, thanks. First of all, all the best, Pierre and Tan. And then I have a couple of questions. The first one was on the contribution margin. Maybe you can drill down where in which segment you’re specifically calling out that issue you had last year, quite a good ramp of METS margins, while clearly Financial Services is suffering from the merchant or the customer ramp down.

And then maybe just like Pierre Antoine, you talked about airlines having you identified, I think, if I heard it correctly, that you identified there are some issues. But then later on in the presentation, airlines was called out to be one of the success parts. Maybe we can just like square that to better understand that. And then just in terms of those initiatives, I mean, we understand you are providing a Capital Markets Day later this year. But in all this list of initiatives, maybe you can just group them in maybe some low hanging fruits, which should help maybe over the next twelve to eighteen months to study the ship and which one are more long term aspirational?

Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Okay. Maybe so I can answer on airlines and the last questions and I will give the floor to Gregory on the first one. So first on airlines, it’s a sound business that we manage pretty well. We are one of the major acquirers in airlines and transportation and the business is growing fast. Where there is some challenge that I do consider that the level of margins is probably to be improved.

And because you have quite I mean, it’s not exactly the same model. You have significant cross border scheme fees and so on and forth. So that’s where I see we can improve on airlines, but it’s again, it’s a good franchise for our line. On last question, I mean, all the initiatives I’m talking today, there are short term initiatives. So that’s really what we are focusing on in 2025, okay?

So what’s a bit difficult to assess is what will be the impact on 2025 business because it’s to some extent, it’s some long list of initiatives because it are depending on geographies, depending on platforms and so on and forth. But that’s only things on which we are focusing this year to consolidate the foundations for robust growth and cash flow generation going down the road. So the idea is really that when we enter into the CMD, we have something which is robust enough that each of us can build on.

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: And on the Centimeters, Hannes, so what we’re talking about here is really a matter of both, as Pierre Antoine said in his introduction, verticals on the one hand and products on the other. So when you take verticals first, you have more FMCG, so most more fast moving consumer goods, which for us are lower margin and we’re seeing less specialty retail, less Horeca, so more hospitality, restaurants and the likes. And as we alluded to just now, more airlines, which are fast growing, but which are in a lower margin environment. And therefore, that’s what’s weighing on the contribution margin. On the other hand, on the product, we’re seeing less terminal, which are higher margin than acquiring.

And therefore, with that mix on product and the fact that we’re seeing also more domestic consumption rather than international, this is what’s weighing on contribution margin.

Hannes Leitner, Analyst, Jefferies: Maybe just like to squeeze in a quick question. There was some news flow with the prior management that you might rightsize or do a portfolio review. Maybe you can just like give us a little bit of a view, Pia and Tan, in the first couple of months of the portfolio. Is that necessary? Or Yes.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: I mean, I think I said it, but I’m happy to repeat. Clearly, we there is potential to refocus the scope of this company. There are some activities, there are some geographies which are not core to our line. Initiatives have been taken already before I joined on that front and we continue them. And as soon as we have news to share, we will obviously share them, but that’s one of the key priorities of the coming months.

Alexandre Faure, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Mohamed Malwala from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Mohamed Malwala, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Great. Thank you. Hey, Perrant Juan, nice to speak to you again. Hey, Gregory, I had two. Firstly, you talked about a kind of focus around SMB.

And I know you were kind of helpful in giving us a sense of some of the different kind of merchant acquiring platform stacks you have. But platforms is also getting disrupted from sort of non bank players. Some of them who are kind of, say, online native pushing in with more financial services. What’s the strategy? Would you be inclined to kind of develop a brand new platform here from the ground up or potentially, I know you kind of have limited scope to work with here, but look to kind of acquire smaller technology and kind of scale it up.

So just curious to understand how you kind of stay competitive or make inroads in this market. And secondly, coming back on the kind of portfolio simplification, we’ve seen some of The U. S. Players kind of simplifying to kind of pure merchant or issuing place. How far are you willing to go when you look at the business?

Because obviously, you talked a lot about kind of improving the profitability as well. But in terms of the simplification of the business, would you make much more larger scale divestments and essentially slim down the group, so to speak, in order to kind of get to the desired sort of direction? Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: Thank you. So you are already anticipating to the CMD quite a lot. I mean, on the SME front, I mean, I’ve experienced that at scale when I was at BPC. I know what SMEs want in terms of digital journey, in terms of digital onboarding, in terms of portals and so on and forth. It’s not rocket science by far.

It’s something that you can do partially in house, partially by integrating modules. So we are working on that with Joaquin already who has a very deep experience on that segment from his past that EMS Fiserv. So I mean, as soon as we have good concept and good view, we will share with you. But to me, it’s more topic for the CMD than for this quarter. But it all goes in the direction that you identified the digital journey and then adding some value added services that you can buy on the market or that you can produce yourselves.

On the second question, which is regarding the scope, again, that’s something that we will assess. There are clearly some businesses that we know which are not directly payments related and which are at stake. Some others are more clearly payments related, but made of some kind of wide basket of product and offering. And it might be that we select what we want to keep and to grow and what we want to divest. But again, allow me to take some time to have a sound view.

Industry is moving fast. You have the convergence of rail, you have tokenization, you have development of wallet. So the vision that we had when merchant acquiring was just card and growing fast, much faster than FS is a bit different today. So we need to take the time to assess what we should do.

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: Great. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Antonin Baldry from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline0: Yes. Good evening, and welcome on my side, Pierre Antoine, and good luck. My question is about the portfolio, the contract, the partnership review. Which percentage of all that did you review already? And did you see any risk of termination of provision on some partnerships of contracts that the company may have signed in the past?

Yes. Thank you.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: So I mean, it’s a difficult question. I mean, to give you some color, I have been spending time in France, obviously, in Italy, in Germany, in Switzerland, in The Netherlands, both on the global collect side and processing side. So it’s already significant chunk. We’ve done deep reviews on our various businesses. I’m not aware of any other team elements today on any segment.

And so this is where I can be reasonably comfortable on the status of the business, which to me is under control. So yes, that’s the answer I would make.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline0: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now take our final question for today. And our final question comes from the line of Alexandre Faure from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Alexandre Faure, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Hi, good evening. Thanks for squeezing me in and it’s good to hear your voice again, gentlemen. A couple of questions from me on SMEs again, I’m afraid. You talked a little bit about facing some market share pressure in that segment. Should we understand that this is mostly a function of having some product gaps that you called out very clearly?

Or you think there’s also something changing in that segment and perhaps you’re now facing stronger competitors than maybe eighteen or twenty four months ago? So that would be my first question. Then second question still on SME is on gross product gaps you talked about. So terminals is one. I think you also mentioned in the Q and A session digital onboarding, digital journey, and you said that none of that is rocket science.

But I mean, surely, digital onboarding is something you supposedly addressed through Bembora, and I’m not sure it ever worked. So I guess my question is, it’s not rocket science, but it hasn’t been done. So how long do you think you need to get this ready? Thank you. Okay.

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: So on SME, I mean, yes, clearly, the the market is changing. We know that. There is this slow I mean, in Europe expansion of ISVs, more embedded solutions, which is something that on which we are pretty good at in some geographies like Italy, for instance, less advanced in some other geographies. So we need to address that and all what we’re doing, what we are doing in terms of digital journeys goes into that direction in terms of compliance, in terms of setup. We have the right setup in some of our platforms to work with IV, so it’s not the issue.

And the good news is that banks are pretty well resisting and ambitious in terms of growth in all geographies. Would you take Germany? I was with the savings banks and I can tell you they are very ambitious and hungry to grow on their market. So I’m not that concerned about any drastic market shift from banks to ASVs. Banks still have significant appetite and significant growth in Europe.

And I can tell you that also from my best experience at BPC, we are managing to grow. But we need to have the right solutions and you’re right, digital onboarding and so forth. We have the good solution with Momoa, which has a bit vanished. That’s right. But we are putting the right focus today with you, Joaquin, on that.

And that’s clearly one of the key priorities. It should not take too long. Obviously, it’s a question of quarters, not on all the geographies, but step by step. And I’m quite confident that based on my experience, that’s something that we can deliver in pretty smooth mode.

Gregory Lamberti, CFO, Worldline: So I

Pierre Antoine Vacheron, Group CEO, Worldline: think we are done with thank you, Alex. We are done with the questions. So thanks a lot. I’m very happy to resume the dialogue with some of you from the past. Just to summarize, I mean, are clearly in an addressable market, which is growing where there is opportunity because of the constant change in market, because of the regulation, because of the quest for sovereignty, because of evolution of payment means and we could talk a lot around that.

The size of wireline is a key asset for that. We have an established operating model. We have a very dense and spread footprint in Europe, which is a very key advantage. And we know the challenges that we have ahead that we have to fix and actions are clearly already underway. So that’s the view that I have today.

That’s the consensus I share with the teams and we are clearly on it and the situation is clearly under control. Thanks a lot and have a great evening.

Conference Operator: Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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