CTT - Correios De Portugal, S.A. (CTTPY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-03-21 20:44:08 ET

CTT - Correios De Portugal, S.A. (CTTPY)

Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call

March 21, 2025 05:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Joao Bento - CEO

Joao Sousa - Member, Board of Directors

Guy Pacheco - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Joao Safara - Banco Santander

Joaquin Garcia-Quiros - JB Capital

Filipe Leite - CaixaBank

Antonio Seladas - AS Independent Research

Presentation

Operator

[Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Mr. Joao Bento, CEO.

Joao Bento

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our 2024 results conference call. It's been a great year that we chose to qualify from transformation to growth.

So starting with Slide #4. Guidance was accomplished with EUR85 million recurring EBIT, but most important than that, with EUR71 million or 38% growth year-on-year for the PAC Logistics and Bank. Logistics, we refer to logistics to the combination of Mail and Express. It was also a year of very strong cash flow, with operating cash flow growing 6.7% to EUR70 million and a year that enables us to keep a very balance sheet flexibility, a very flexible balance sheet with a 1.6% net debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which is well below our own financial policy, which is in itself already conservative. So very good news in that sense, too. It was a special year, given the M&A transactions that we have disclosed at year-end on the 18th and 19th of December, I'm referring to the acquisition of Cacesa and the joint venture with DHL, which enable further diversification and will fuel further growth in Iberia towards we want and we expect Iberian leadership.

And the final initial comments to shareholder remuneration, given that we decided to remain within our stated policy. So with a predictable dividend policy, which accounts for EUR0.70 to be paid, and we remain with the ongoing EUR25 million share buyback. Moving to Slide #5. A more detailed discretion of this results while I would highlight 38% growth on recurring EBIT for logistics and bank, the business areas that we fully control, which beats our own guidance. Given a very strong performance on parcels and the bank and where we've seen a 17% growth on this logistics bank package that converts to a growth on EBIT on the backdrop of a strong fourth quarter.

We have also observed in this last quarter, for the first -- for a long time, we didn't see this a public debt placement normalizing to levels that we were -- we have seen before. Moving to Slide #6. And starting with a bit more detail on the Express & Parcels business area. We've seen record volumes in peak season, again sustaining revenue growth throughout the year. And with the 30.9% quarter-on-quarter, that converted to a 33.7% growth on EBIT which suggests, of course, that we can grow and having the margin also growing....

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