Good morning, this is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Nexi first half 2023 financial results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing Star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Paolo Bertoluzzo, Chief Executive Officer of Nexi. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Welcome to Nexi call for our results for the first half of 2023. I'm here, as usual, with Bernardo Mingrone, our CFO and Deputy General Manager, Stefania Mantegazza, who is leading our investor relations team, and a few other colleagues that are here to help us in case of need. As usual, I will start sharing with you the key messages for the first half of the year. I will briefly comment on volumes and key updates for the Merchant Services business. I will then hand over to Bernardo, that will cover financial results. I will come back for final comments, and then, as usual, we will open to your questions. Let me jump to page three with the key messages of today. First of all, we see continued solid volume growth in the 2Q of the year across all geographies. This is despite a tighter comparison year-on-year due to COVID last year. Reopening summer last year was particularly strong. I would say spring to summer last year was particularly strong as the businesses across geographies were reopening for business in, at full speed, after COVID. Despite that, we had good, strong growth across all geographies in this year. In particular, if you compare to pre-COVID levels, and this is an important check that we always do, you see acceleration across geographies, all of them reaching a 30% growth versus 2019. That this growth is consistent across all product categories that are now converging to more normal levels of growth post all the various COVID effects. Second key message, in the quarter, in the first half of the year, we had a solid financial performance with continuing margin expansion. Revenue growth has been at 8.1% in the first half of the year, with Merchant Solutions growing close to double digit at 9.8%. EBITDA grew 11.6%, with 153 basis points EBITDA margin expansion. As a combination of these elements, plus our very rational approach to non-recurring items and CapEx, EBITDA minus CapEx and non-recurring cash items did grow 18%, a very high level, 18%. Third, and last key message, we continue to progress in creating the European PayTech leader. We are executing the strategy that we have announced at Capital Markets Day back in September last year, and we expect to generate EUR 2.8 billion of organic excess cash in the 3 years, 2023-2025. Based on the M&A outlook for the next 12-18 months, both in and out, we feel comfortable in saying that we plan to allocate at least EUR 1.5 billion for debt reduction, still leaving plenty of room for returning cash to shareholders and very selective, strategic and value creative M&A. Last but not least, we are progressing in our portfolio rationalization, and we are in very advanced talks on Nets DBS. We hope to be able to announce soon something. Overall, based on what we've seen in the first half of the year, we feel comfortable in confirming our 2023 guidance that as key expectations, revenues growing at least 7%, EBITDA growing at least 10%, and cash, excess cash generation at least EUR 600 million. Let me now move to volumes, page 4. As I've anticipated, we see continued volume growth across all geographies. Let me take it one by one. Italy is the one that probably had the toughest comparison with last year as we are going towards the summer. Nevertheless, we still had a solid growth in mid-high single digit. If you look at it, in comparison with pre-COVID, actually, there is an acceleration at 35% compared to pre-COVID levels. When you look at the Nordics, the Nordics have been moving in the double-digit space throughout the quarter, also accelerating at about 30% growth versus pre-COVID. Last but not least, in our DACH region, we also saw a strong double-digit growth across the quarter, and also in this region, actually, volumes are accelerating at 31% versus pre-COVID. If you look at the bigger picture, you see that categories and markets are converging to more normal levels of growth after the various rebounds and effects of COVID, the closing, reopenings, closing and reopenings. Very probably going forward, we we'll consider to reduce the level of detail that we are providing on this page, and also in order to simplify and making the understanding of the business simpler. Let me now move to the key updates for our Merchant Services business that is the largest in our portfolio. First of all, in the SME segment, we've seen in the first half of the year, growth of volume in the order of magnitude of 14%. We have seen continued strong customer base growth across the various geographies, with a particularly strong growth in Italy and Poland. We have added, in terms of terminal base, which is a good proxy of customer base, about 150,000 customers over the last 12 months. Second comment I want to make, we continue to make progress in our software partnerships with ISVs and platform partners, and these are contributing strongly to our sales acceleration across the various geographies. Last but not least, we are more and more rolling out capabilities and best practices across markets, from one market to the other, and we are progressing across all our geographies with the rollout of the SoftPOS proposition, which we believe has a great potential, given the many type of applications and use cases that it can be applied to. Moving to e-commerce. In e-commerce, we've seen an 8% volume growth, with actually a double-digit revenue growth, by the way, an acceleration in the semester. Three points that I want to underline here, also for e-commerce, actually, this is performance of our e-commerce solution in Italy and the Nordics, and our account to account, owned account to account solutions in Poland and Finland. We continue to be strategically focused on the mid-market. That is, we believe, is the one with the biggest potential, and compared to where we were one year ago, we've seen a customer base growth of about 10% at the end of the first half of the year. Second key message, we have developed a strategic partnership with Computop in DACH. Computop is the leading e-commerce provider in Germany. This partnership is strengthening our online and omnichannel proposition, definitely in the DACH region, but also beyond the DACH region, given the capabilities that Computop is bringing to our portfolio. Last message that I want to underline, we continue to strengthen also in e-commerce, our partnership portfolio. For example, we sign a commercial agreement with Shopware across our geographies, we already live in Italy and in the DACH region, a preferred partnership with Shopify in Poland. Last but not least, our large merchant business that did grow 10% in terms of volumes in the first half of the year. Also here, we continue to see a healthy pipeline of commercial new wins and upselling, cross-selling across multiple verticals and geographies. Just underlying a few of them, omnichannel, retail, hospitality and restaurants, mobility and petrol. Here, as you may remember from our Capital Markets Day presentations and discussions, our focus is more and more on the local and regional LACAs that we believe are offering the best and most profitable opportunities. Let me now hand over to Bernardo for financial results. Thanks, Paolo. Good morning from me as well. On Slide 7, Starting with the top line growth, EBITDA margin expansions, Paolo was saying, I think we had a strong first half of the year, notwithstanding, as we had anticipated, the fact the Q1 was gonna be the strongest, and there was gonna be a reversion towards pre-COVID level growth throughout the geographies in which we operate. We closed the first half with 8% top line growth. In the quarter, it was 7.3%. Again, we gross up for Scheme fees, as we normally show, we add 2 percentage points to this top line growth. Within this context, margin continued to expand. We had, as usual, between 1 and 2 percentage points of margin expansion. It was 153 basis points in the first half, growing the EBITDA margin to 49%, and EBITDA overall grew close to 12% in the first half, and just north of 10% in the Q2. Moving on to Merchant Services, I think a touch lighter than what we might have expected. Still, double-digit top line growth if we gross up for Scheme fees, and this is in the context of sustained growth, the value of transactions throughout the group. I would say that even in Merchant Services, we had sustained the top line growth, notwithstanding the tough comparison compared to the Q2 last year, which is probably going to be the toughest one in the year. Within merchant services, we've just heard from Paolo how SMEs grew 14% faster than LACAs and contributing significantly to top line growth. In addition, I think it's important to call out how we benefit not only from the structural growth in volumes, which we as we've seen throughout the post-COVID years, have continued to volumes have continued to grow significantly, but also thanks to the growth in our customer base. We call out how we added close to 150,000 terminals in the first half, and e-commerce clients growing north of 10%. Slide 9 on Issuing Solutions. It's fair to say, I think we had a first half and a Q2 above expectations, with strong top line growth, which was supported also, and we call this from a one-off, I'd say, contribution of between one and two percentage points in the first half. This comes off the back of an M&A deal we closed at the end of last year. In general, I think focus that we'd like to call out is on upselling, cross-selling of value-added services, and the progress we're continuing to make on Advanced Digital Issuing Solutions also outside of Italy. Digital Banking Solutions, notwithstanding, the negative effect we suffer from banking consolidation, in particular, last year, we lost two client banks through banking mergers. We have a growth in the quarter. The growth, which is driven primarily through volumes, which are strong in EBA CLEARING, this is the network of instant payments and bank transfer we manage across Europe, more than 40% of overall volumes. The growth in network services, also growth in other businesses within DBS have more than compensated the loss of these clients last year. I would say a very good quarter and a very good first half for Digital Banking Solutions. Moving on to the geographical split of performance. On Slide 11, we can see how Italy has grown high single digit, as has the DACH region. We pick up again, those 2 percentage points, grossing up for Scheme fees being double-digit growth and for both geographies. Similar growth in the Q2. Southeastern Europe, it's important to call out, I would say, a couple of factors. The first is through the war in the Ukraine. Last year, we lost a bank in the region, this depressed, let's say, the, the, the core Q2 growth year-on-year from a comp perspective. The other factor to note is how the gross shop of Scheme fees here is much higher. This is due to the higher incidence of, of tourism and the proportionally higher instance of tourism in the geography, in which we operate here, Greece and Croatia, in particular. I would say a good quarter in Southeastern Europe as well. In the Nordics, a little softer here. Margin, margin compression, I would say, in the Nordics is one of the primary drivers. A little phasing on project work on the issuing front is also part of the explanation for the 2.5% growth in the Q2, but mid-single digit for the first half, which is in line with our overall longer term guidance for the region. If we move to Slide 12 on costs, I'd say, as expected, and as anticipated, we have the slowdown on the growth, year-on-year growth on costs. As for the Q1, throughout the year, we will have four primary factors contributing to our cost base. The first one is investment we've made in our people, in our business, which has driven the growth in HR costs, in particular, in the Q1, where it's peaked. The second impact is clearly coming from inflation, and as we have discussed a number of times, we try and I think are successful in managing the impact of inflation over time. Nevertheless, at some point, inflation does hit our cost base, and you see that reflected in 23 numbers. Don't forget that last year we were flat year-on-year on costs. The third is not all our costs are fixed. We have approximately 20% of our cost base, which is driven by volumes, and the volume growth has driven some cost increase as well. Offsetting part of this growth are the synergies which we are on track to deliver in terms of our guidance and help us mitigate this overall impact on our cost line. However, I think the important point is, we peaked in terms of cost growth year-on-year in the Q1, and we're now reverting to more, more normalized, growth level, for the rest of the year, starting from this Q2. Moving on to Slide 13, we continue to invest in our technology stack to support the innovation and the transformation of our IT platforms. Indeed, I think we don't give the details here, but our IT costs, were down year-on-year this year, thanks to these investments we're making in the platforms. We have, closed down overall 5 platforms out of the 25, on track towards our 4 target platform level. We've also decommissioned 11 data centers of the 45 we had, and we have further, obviously, coming in the second half of the year, I think another 5 in the second half of the year. I think it's fair to call out how in the Q2, we had a bit more CapEx spend on terminals. This is clearly directly linked to revenue, so good. We also had some infrastructure related renewals, et cetera, which from a timing difference shifted or actually were booked in the Q2, making the year-on-year comparison a little less favorable than would otherwise have been. Overall, we target still to have a 2 percentage point reduction in CapEx to revenues level for the year, which is on track towards our longer-term target. Slide 14 shows the decrease in integration, transformation costs, in general, non-recurring items. We have a 25% reduction year-on-year in the first half. You know, the target for the year was to reduce by more than 40% this line. If you look at the half-year number, EUR 76 million, I think we are perfectly on track to deliver that reduction compared to 2022. Slide 15, again, going back to Paolo's comment, strong, strong growth in EBITDA's CapEx, close to 20% growth, a very high teen growth. On that front, we also have an 8% growth in a normalized EPS. Slide 16, before we move on to the balance sheet, the cash generation in the first half was strong, EUR 271 million, if for EUR 270.5. If we, if we account for seasonality of certain items, but most importantly, seasonality of earnings, with the second half obviously being stronger than the first half, I think we're well on track to to deliver our goal for the year. Finally, on Slide 17, the balance sheet or leverage, we closed the, the quarter, the first half, at 2.8 times. If you include, if you include synergies or just south of 3.2 times, so continued reduction in, in leverage. This was appreciated or this trend is appreciated by rating agencies. We had an upgrade to BB+ by Fitch. This followed the S&P upgrade, and we're hopeful to continue in this on this trend in the coming months. Well, two more things I'd like to call out. The first is that we've activated the sustainability-linked clause on a term loan. This will help not only save a little money on the interest margin, which is always important, but I think is a strong testament to our commitment to ESG and achieving our targets. Finally, and maybe more importantly, just we have earmarked or identified, or I'd say, highlight how we already have more than sufficient cash on our balance sheet to meet short-term liabilities, both next year and the year after. We call out here how 2024 maturities, so the national notes in April and the April notes in November, will be redeemed or reimbursed using existing cash resources, and this will lead to gross debt reduction, which is a step in the right direction. Paolo? Thank you, Bernardo. Let me just jump to page 19. Based on the start of the year, we confirm the guidance that we gave for the full year. Net revenue is growing at least 7%, EBITDA growing at least 10%, excess cash generation at least EUR 600 million. Net leverage going down on an organic basis at 2.9x the EBITDA by year-end, at 2.6, if you include run rate synergies and normalized EPS more than 10%. Let me close on page 20, reiterating the key messages, continued solid volume growth across all geographies for the quarter. Second message, a solid, strong financial performance with continuing margin expansion. Let me underline again, the growth of 18% of our cash generation, EBITDA, minus CapEx and non-recurring cash items. Last but not least, strong progress in creating European PayTech leader. Here we are adding to our previous comments, the fact that based on the M&A outlook, both in and out for the next 12 to 18 months, we feel comfortable in saying that we plan to allocate at least EUR 1.5 billion for debt reduction, still leaving plenty of room for returning cash to shareholders and very selective, strategic, value creative M&A. Overall, we confirm the guidance for the year. Let us stop there. Let's open to your questions. Excuse me, this is the Chorus Call Conference Operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. The first question comes from James Goodman of Barclays. Oh, great. Morning. Thank you. Yeah, first question for me, just around the merchant volumes, and the outlook for the second half. I see that the volumes softened somewhat as we went through the quarter. I think there's going to be less inflation across, y- your geographies in the second half. I'm just wondering what that run rate means, for, for the merchant business in the second half, and maybe within that, you can comment on, on pricing, whether that's been having an effect or whether you anticipate it to be effect, given, what we've seen in the market. Other question, just around the issuing business, if you could help us understand exactly what the one-offs were around the banks, M&A, and maybe the materiality of that, because more broadly, again, there, there seems to be some, some backdrop challenges in, in signing these, these larger issuing deals, yet your business is remaining very resilient there. Thank you. James l et me take the first, and I will hand over to Bernardo for the second one. Listen, I think the outlook on volumes is something that remains pretty challenging to be forecasted. Based on last year and what we see, we expect, as I said before, the trends in the Q2 to continue into the Q3 because of the very strong comparison with last year, I would say, particularly in Italy, and then potentially reaccelerating on a year-on-year basis in the last quarter of the year. That's the perception and the expectation that we have at this stage. While I think on Italy, the comparison was very tough, and the nominal numbers versus last year may seem a bit lighter than expected, we are actually been surprised by pretty good volumes in DACH and Nordics. There is also, if you like, an effect there on the mix. As far as pricing is concerned, if you look at our net merchant fees, our take rates, if you look at that as the average of the averages, they tend to be pretty stable over time. There is maybe some pressure a little bit in the Nordics, but we see actually good dynamics, for example, in Italy. There is not a one size that fits all, but that's overall, the dynamic, pretty stable, take rates across across across the group. Bernardo, on issuing? Yes, on issuing, I think we called out, I think it was fair to do so, this one-off, it's called project work, but it's related to an acquisition of a book at the end of last year, so we'll name it, but I'm sure you can figure it out. At the same time, the bank that we did this M&A deal with was merging with another bank, which was our client. As part of the overall agreement, we basically allowed this second client bank to transfer its issuing book to the service model we had with the bank we were buying the merchant book from, and this was project related, let's say, fees plus compensation for the fact that we were losing some cards on one bank and getting them on the other. It's work which happened during the first half of the year and was closed, the beginning of June or so. Sorry, size-wise, I think we haven't given a precise number, but it's between EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million. Understood. Thank you both. You're welcome. The next question is from Justin Forsythe of Credit Suisse. Hello, Bernardo. Good to hear from you. Thanks for having me. Couple questions, if I might. First, just want to talk a little bit about guidance on the EBITDA side. It seems like you had quite a strong 1Q and 2Q. I know you mentioned a little bit, Bernardo, about inflation impacting the cost base in 2H, but maybe you could just talk about the implications behind reiterating the guidance and potential for incremental synergies to make that number appear even slightly more conservative as the Nets integration begins to ramp. A second question, more broader strategic, just want to hit a little bit on PSD3, which I'm sure you saw was recently released, the go forward plans there. PSD2 was clearly a landmark piece of legislation, spurred a ton of innovation in Europe. Looks like the new proposal hinted a little bit at the inequity between non-bank merchant acquirers and bank acquirers, particularly with access to payment systems. Any thoughts on how you could benefit from that would be great, or if there are any other aspects of the proposal that were intriguing to you? Thanks. Good morning, Justin. Thank you for the two questions. I will leave the first one to Bernardo, but let me comment on the second one, that is good to hear this type of question, that is actually something that will stay with us for some time. Listen, there are many, many components on PSD3, and more in general, on the package that was presented, the draft package that was presented by ECB, that was also included in the Digital Europe proposed regulation and, and, and many other things. I, I, I think your high-level comment goes in the right direction. I mean, or at least in line with what we believe. I think that there are measures that are a kind of trying to make the life of customers easier in buying with digital payments, in particular online. This is good. We believe this is just good and will offer us the possibility to offer additional value-added services on that front. I think in general, it will facilitate volume, volume growth, and user experience, customer experience. On the other side, there are rules that make the basically, the requirements for being a player in this space, more stringent, more important from different aspects, starting from technological capabilities, legal commitments, capital commitments, and so on and so forth. While on the one side, this may be creating additional work for us to be done, actually, we welcome it because this requires scale to be able to invest on this front. This requires scale to be able to provide business continuity and perfect security. This is our bread and butter, ultimately. This образом, this is one of the reasons why we are bringing the group together with the way we are bringing it. We make, I think, the entrance into the business to smaller and more marginal players more difficult. I think your general comment is right. Overall, we welcome the direction. Yeah, on EBITDA growth, hi, Justin. It's, I think, I think we stick by our guidance of delivering double-digit growth on EBITDA. We won't, we won't revise that in any way. I think we're the way we closed the first half at 11.6% obviously suggests we have, we have some room to do better. Obviously, we're also facing, you know, inflation, which, you know, has to do with contract renewals and not just automatic impacts on our cost base, which come in the second half. I think synergies, which we are delivering on, will help mitigate this, but we've also made a bit of a step, step up in terms of our capabilities, which have fed through our cost base, which, you know, need to be managed through these synergies. I wouldn't, I wouldn't expect. I wouldn't want to change the, the, the, the guidance and stick to that 10%, knowing that we are in a good position to deliver it. Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. The next question is from Alastair Nolan of Morgan Stanley. Great. Thanks for, thanks for taking my questions. I've got two. Maybe first on the, on the outlook into, into next year. You've mentioned obviously, some tougher comps in the second half. Can you just talk about the levers that you see in front of you in terms of kind of re-accelerating that growth and back towards the 9% implied CAGR that you, you laid out at the, at the Capital Markets Day? Then just secondly, you talked about the EUR 1.5 billion earmarked for debt reduction, that's still leaving some room for capital return. Can you maybe talk a little, in a little bit more detail around what you're thinking on that front? That would be really helpful. Thank you. Good morning, Alastair. Let me try to take both questions. Outlook in 2024 is early to talk about it. Said that, the way you should think about the levers to accelerate top and also bottom line, and also cash generation performance are about these four. I think on the top line, I would definitely mention an acceleration of revenues in Merchant Services in the DACH region. Second, acceleration in e-commerce broadly across geographies. As far as the EBITDA is concerned, clearly, now, a continuing delivery of our cost synergies. As you remember, there is a multi-year plan, and we are delivering according to that plan, and as we said in the past, there might be some more to be done in the longer term. The fourth element that instead would impact cash generation is the trend that Bernardo has been mentioning as well in terms of going gradually down to a more normal level of CapEx spend and non-recurring cash expenditure. The four things together, now, we expect should generate revenue acceleration, EBITDA acceleration, and cash generation acceleration. On the capital allocation, I, I, I, I'm smiling because obviously, when, when we give something, there is always the request for giving something more. As I said, based on the cash generation that we expect to see for the business this year, next year, and the coming two years, and the outlook that we see for M&A, where we see opportunity for disposing non-strategic assets, and we see honestly limited opportunities of high value additional M&A, and by the way, of limited size. Today, today, we feel comfortable in saying that we'll be allocating at least EUR 1.5 billion to debt reduction, which is already a clear indication of direction on the back of our Capital Markets Day strategy announcement. As we said, now, this leaves plenty of room or maneuver, which is the 1.3 remaining out of the 2.8, to do both, basically, cash, returning cash to shareholders and doing net M&A. As I said again, you should look at M&A as net, because the EUR 2.8 billion we are generating are organic, are coming from the current business. As we go forward, now, probably we'll be able to provide even more detail on this, but for today, this is where we want to stop. On- Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you. The next question is from Sandeep Deshpande of JP Morgan. Hello? Yes, good morning. Yeah, hi. My question is regarding the growth. I mean, when we compare the growth between the different regions, we see, you know, Italian growth is 10% in volume, but Nordic growth is some, low single digit. Clearly there is difference in volume, but in revenue, are you seeing these sort of growth differences as well? Sorry, Sandeep. Okay, you are talking about the different growth rates in... Yeah, it's what I was probably also mentioning a little before, the one region that is a bit an outlier there, that despite good volumes, I would say, on strong volumes, is actually running lower than the volume growth on top line, is actually the Nordics region. There are two reasons for that. The first one is that on Issuing Solutions, we are broadly speaking, flat or 2, with a low single digit growth, while in Issuing Solutions, most of the accelerated growth is coming from Italy. Let me underline the fact that, in issuing, despite the one-off that Bernardo has been commenting on, growth is pretty strong, also net of that. While, still in the Nordics on Merchant Services, we are more around mid-single digit. These mid-single digit is still a bit below volume dynamic for basically two reasons. I think, in the first half of the year, we had a bit less in-person sales compared to last year, this year, so there is a little bit of phasing probably there. Second, there is a little bit of a margin pressure, mostly due to product mix, in the Nordics. We expect, however, Nordics to re-accelerate in the second half of the year, at least for the outlook that we see. Let me underline the fact that on the fourth region, Central, Southern, Eastern Europe, also there, you see a number that for top line growth, that is not as strong as revenues are. If you look at it, in terms of, in terms of Merchant Services, actually, Merchant Services are in the double-digit space, and therefore, these, these, lower number for the total is mainly driven by what Bernardo was saying before, a little bit of, the effect of last year, Russian thing, plus a specific, agreed topic on, a customer care business that was, a bit negative, and that, is, finishing. Another question quickly on your growth into the second half of the year. You've had fairly good growth here now in the Q2, when the comps were much more difficult in Q2 of 2022, given the reopening. Then by the Q4 of 2022, as you know, that your growth did slow down. The comps become easier later in the year. Do you expect your growth to accelerate now into the Q4, for instance? Yes, it's a little bit what I said before. Again, it's very difficult because the reality is that when you see it from the macro data, I mean, the, the, the outlook for the European economy across different countries is still a little bit unstable and uncertain. Said that, when we look at our current plans, we expect to have a Q3 pretty much in line with the Q2, because, again, especially when you compare it to pre-COVID, the Q3 last year, with the summer in the middle, it was very, very strong, especially in Italy, that is driving a lot of the volumes and the revenues for the group. While volume-wise, we may have easier comps in the Q4. What you're saying, sounds very much in line with our belief. Thank you so much. The next question is from Joshua Levin of Autonomous Research. Hi, good morning. Two questions from me. Banks in the UK, or one in particular, are exploring options for their payment businesses. Is the UK a payments market that Nexi would consider doing a deal in, whether it's a JV or an asset purchase? The second question is, I was in Italy not too long ago, and I noticed it was possible to pay using a card just about everywhere, regardless of how small the purchase, no cash was necessary. I know this is just limited personal experience as a tourist, but if you think about Italy's cash to card transition, how far along do you think it is? Thank you. Good morning, Joshua. Thank you for the question. Let me start from the second one that I love, because it's really based on personal experience. You are right. I, I don't know which part of Italy you were, which which area, but the reality is that if you look at the metropolitan areas of the country, is very much the way you have experienced. Personally, I, I, I've not been using cash for the last many, many, many weeks. It's probably left for tips and and for small gifts on the street. The reality, however, is that as soon as you go outside the metropolitan areas, there is still a lot of cash payments around, but also in the metropolitan cities. Again, talking about personal experience, I, I love to go to the local market in Milan, on Saturday mornings, doing my own grocery shopping. The reality is that I still see a lot of people, normally, you know, a bit older people that pay cash, which is a nonsense for me, but it's really what is happening, because probably they feel comfortable like that. If you look at the overall penetration of digital payments in Italy, is probably today in the low, mid 30s now, which is still very much behind what you see in the rest of Europe, in particular the UK, France, Benelux, the Nordics. I think there is a long, long run in front of us in terms of cash to digital payments conversion. It's happening, it's good it's happening, but there is a long, long way to go. On the UK front, to be honest with you, we are really, really focused on our organic plans. We believe that our organic plans do have a lot of value, and we are focused, obviously, in making sure that we, we get the most of the acquisitions, the recent acquisition we have done, and we are preparing, as you can imagine, very strongly for Spain to come into the portfolio. At the moment, we are not looking at the UK. We have other priorities, and that's not necessarily a market that we consider for us attractive. Thank you very much. The next question is from Sebastien Sztabowicz of Kepler Cheuvreux. Yeah, hello, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. Can you please make an update on the integration process of SIA, and its, what have been done over the past few months? What are the key, I would say, point of focus for the coming months, and where the synergies have ended at the end of each one? The second one is more on the M&A front, because we have seen more private equity gradually coming back to the payment market, bringing some kind of inflation on the multiple in the market. Is this something that you are seeing as well? Is, is it something that could slow a little bit your M&A opportunity in the coming months? Thank you. Good morning, Sebastian. I think the integration process is progressing exactly according to our plans. Again, we do not provide any longer detailed numbers for a very simple reason, because since the 1st of January of this year, we are running the company as one company, and therefore giving reliable numbers becomes de facto impossible because we are operating as a group, and therefore, everything we are doing right now could be considered a synergy. Said that, we're progressing according to our plan. I think if anything, this year, we may be over-delivering a little bit on technology synergies, we have more for next year. Again, as I said, so far, so good. As you can imagine, Sebastien, you have certain initiatives that are doing better than expected, certain others that are going a bit slower, which, by the way, leaves room for doing better in the coming years, but all in, we are in line or slightly better than expected. Listen, on, on, on, on M&A, I, I, I guess you're referring to, in particular, to the US, you know, Worldpay, deal. I think in general, we welcome interest from in general, investors and private equities as well in in the sector that I think is by the way, underline the fact that the multiples that we see around these days are probably far too low, given the potential value generation of of the sector. Said that, we're not particularly worried about private equities coming in and, you know, inflating prices and so on and so forth, because honestly, buying additional assets is not our priority. lective on what we are looking at, and currently, we're looking at a very, very small number of potential small opportunities, where honestly, we don't see private equities around. Thank you. The next question is from Hannes Leitner of Jefferies. Yes, good morning. Thanks for letting me on. I have 2 questions. The first one is, you mentioned here 2 data points around platform and data center decommissioning. Could you remind us how many platforms and data centers you have currently running, and what is the target here? The second one is on issuing services. You spoke around a very strong market environment that is a little bit against some other competitors. Maybe you could break that down in a little bit, let's say, leading market activity, ramp up, and then, let's say, existing businesses and renewal business. Thank you. Let me maybe take the second one. I will hand over to Bernardo to complete the comments he was making on platform and data center consolidation. Vision or issuing service, I think that in a nutshell, the dynamic is the following: We have Italy that is growing very strongly. Even besides the one that we were talking about, is growing high single digit. That's really well supported by a continued rollout of new products and services, international debit in particular, but more and more of those in the licensing model that we have in Italy, where basically, now we own the product, and we can do product innovation and customer management. We see more and more engagement with the banks, also supporting them to upsell and cross-sell these products and services. A core part of the strategy for us is to export this model that we call Advanced Digital Issuing across the different geographies. We also see a solid performance outside of Italy that is mainly driven by processing business. Again, the processing business, as I commented in the past, we see good support for volumes, and so there is a volume growth that is supporting growth. We have a few smaller new deals here and there, but most importantly, upselling and cross-selling on the customer base of additional value-added services. This is more than rebalancing, same price pressure that we see, here and there, that continues to be, around or negotiations, so on and so forth, even if, much, much lower than what it was, in the past. That's the overall dynamic that we see, at this stage. On the platforms, we had 25 platforms issuing, acquiring, e-commerce, and so on and so forth. We have closed, as of the first half, this year, 5 of them, so we were at 20. There's a plan to close another 5 in the second half of the year, so further reducing towards our target, which is 4 in the longer term. On the data center consolidation, we had 45 at the time of the announcement. We are planning to reduce that to 15. We have closed, 11 of them, and there's another 2 for year-end. Obviously, numbers don't necessarily correlate directly and proportionately to costs on data centers. It's really the square meters you close down that impacts the cost of the number of data centers. I think it's a good proxy towards achieving our overall synergy target. Just a final reminder of, of something I mentioned during during the, the, the results. You know, I think we're progressing very well on, on the synergies. We haven't given you the full cash synergies for the year. I think on the, in, in the first half, on the cost front, we had sufficient synergies, especially in IT, to make it such that overall our IT costs are actually coming down, the P&L IT costs. Yeah. Thanks. Just a, a little follow-up here to Paolo. You didn't speak now about... Could you remind us around the activity in terms of, lead times to projects? Is there a vibrant market in the banking space at this point compared to maybe the pandemic? Well, there, there is not, one says, that, that it also, I would say. We see a good project activity around, but I will not consider it neither higher than normal nor lower than normal. We consider it more or less in line with what, what it was pre-pandemic. I think there is a broader, long-term, trend that, that, that we see on another front, which is connected to the fact that as payments become more complex, more important for customers. And also, now we just discussed a few minutes ago, a new regulation coming in, making things a bit more complex, not to think about new products and services to be managed, such as the digital euro, API, and other things. It's very, very clear that banks reconsider their strategies, and in general, you know, they look for partnerships, you know, in order to have the support that is needed from payment specialists that have a scale, investments, competence, to support them into this, into this journey, into this evolution. It's not necessarily connected to a pandemic, but it's more around the long-term evolution of the industry. From this point of view, we are, we are having everyday conversations with medium and large-sized banks about their strategic evolution. Excellent. Thank you. The next question is from Aditya Bhutoria of Bank of America. Hey, morning, Paolo, Bernardo. Thanks for taking my question. Just a few from my side. Firstly, could you just comment on the, some of the trends you're seeing across different geographies and markets in terms of demand or maybe just consumption trends, how travel is faring and, you know, maybe what you've seen in July as well? Second, you mentioned that the Nets DBS asset is in advance talks. Could you just comment on Ratepay and, you know, I, I think the decision around, around that. Finally, I think, I think Paolo also mentioned that, in terms of use of cash, you also, you know, scope, think about disposes outside of these two. Is there... Can you just comment on that? Are there any other assets which you, you know, might look at as being slightly less non-core, going forward? Good morning, Adi. Let me take the first and the last, and then I will hand over to Bernardo for the second. No, listen, as I commented before, we start to see categories converging to similar growth rates. I think Italy is particularly telling because it's a large market, and our numbers are a good proxy to the overall numbers. That's where you see year-on-year growth rates are coming down at the same time to more normal levels. Said that, it is important to say that in general, we've seen a good recovery of travel, and we continue to see a good recovery of travel. As today, travel, just let me give you 2 numbers. Today, travel, I'm gonna say travel, I literally mean, you know, airlines, transportation, travel agencies. It's not the traditional, it's not including restaurants and stuff like that. Is up about 30% compared to pre-COVID. Also, the Nordics is up double digits compared to pre-COVID. Our perception is that that recovery is now coming to completion, more or less. I think going forward, the, the macro environment will become, will become more important, as people rebalance the way they spend their money in the context of inflationary pressures that are on a nominal level starting to go down when we look at the cost spending. For example, food and beverages, groceries and stuff like that, are still at very high levels, with, by the way, other expenditures, such as, for example, loans, cost of loans, going, going, going up. We believe we will see, going forward, a more normal dynamic. On, on disposals, again, we talk about what we do when we do it, but you may remember that at the Capital Markets Day, we said that over time, we've been looking at further opportunities for focusing, rationalizing our DBS portfolio, besides the Nets DBS business that we put as asset for sale. Again, for us, it's all about having the ability to focus our energies and resources to the business that are more core and for our company with a stronger growth potential. At the same time, allowing the other businesses to have their growth opportunity and capture their well-deserved investments with other owners. On Nets DBS, Bernardo? Yeah, and, and Ratepay, I think. Sorry. Nets DBS, basically, we, you know, we're actually, we're in advanced talks with buyers, as we have said in the past. On the 29th of June, unfortunately or fortunately, European draft directive impacting EU Digital Identity Wallets throughout Europe was published ahead of plan. This needs to be evaluated by the bidders in the context of this process. This is slightly delayed the timing. I would say that, however, we are in a very good position to close the transaction in the coming weeks or at most months, given the summer period. With regards to Ratepay, there it's a different market. Obviously, we've spoken to that point in the past. It's not the most ideal market to sell a, a consumer finance business. We are, even in this front, engaged in discussions, articulating discussions, I would say surrounding a multifaceted deal, which would entail more than just one agreement being struck. A little complicated and taking a little time. In any event, I always like to remind us that we always have a kind of put option on Ratepay, which is switching it off, bringing up between EUR 100 million and EUR 150 million of indebtedness. That, you know, we have that option, which is in our hands as a backstop. Great. Thanks a lot, Bernardo. Just maybe one follow-up. I think on the point on banks looking for partnerships as the payments business becomes more complex. I mean, can you talk about, I mean, again, your, you know, willingness to do those sort of partnerships and where you see maybe some opportunities around that, any particular markets, which you think might be attractive? Listen, I, I think that, we're having these conversations both, with, customers that are already with us, and we're discussing with them on how to evolve the partnership, in, to the benefit of both. Also we have, conversations in markets and, starting with, with, banks and geographies where we're not necessarily yet, the core, the core, the core partner. I think, this is happening, in several different places, and we see more, of these, coming, out, going, going, going forward. We are not talking necessarily about, books. I want to be clear. We're not talking about necessarily M&A. Here, we're talking about having industrial projects, co-funded industrial projects, especially for the large banks, where, you know, we evolve towards, we have them evolving towards a more advanced products and services and next generation platforms. That's, I would say, what we see, what we see around. Understood. Thanks a lot. The next question is from Antoine Hachette of UBS. Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is on transformational CapEx. It was EUR 78 million in H1, could you give us maybe an update on your expectation for 2023, and do you expect that to trend in 2024 and 2025 afterwards? The second question is on Ratepay. I think you are managing, like, the decline of the business in 2022 to trim, like, your excess burner. Could you give us an idea, maybe, of what growth was like for Ratepay on revenue trends in the first half of the year? Good morning, Antoine. Let me hand over to Bernardo for both. Yeah. Transformational CapEx, remind you that we entered the year with approximately EUR 130 million to be spent in 2023, 2024. Most of it would be spent, I expect, this year. If you look at the, at the, at the target, if you think of the target we've given to, to be just south of EUR 500 million in terms of total CapEx and what we've spent in the first half in terms of transformation, I think most of that 130 would be spent during the course of 2023. The second question on Ratepay, I mean, we're not gonna disclose numbers on Ratepay, but I would say the core business of Ratepay is, is growing and is expected to grow. If you exclude the Otto Group, which is the original parent company of Ratepay, from which, you know, Ratepay has been separated entirely into including business volumes coming from Otto Group, which were legacy. The core business is growing, you know, healthily, notwithstanding the fact that we are not, or we're limiting onboarding of new customers in light of the M&A process. The bottom line, obviously suffering from this growth, which isn't as strong as it could be, and therefore, you know, the cost base is what it is. Therefore, last year we managed to generate a very small profit. This year, we're likely, bottom line profit, this year we're likely to generate a small bottom line loss. Okay. Thank you very much. Sure. The next question is from Simonetta Chiriotti of Mediobanca. Thank you. Good morning, all. Just one question on competition. How do you see competition changing in Italy after the agreement announced by Banco BPM and BCC Pay, and which could be the possible impacts for Nexi from this from this new JV? Thank you. Good morning, Simonetta. Listen, Italy is a competitive market, has always been a competitive market, and will continue to be a competitive market. Honestly, we, we, we don't know exactly what to expect from these new players. I think it would be fair to ask them and Banco. The only thing that I underline consistent with what I said before, is that if you want to compete at scale in this market, you must have capabilities and ability to invest at scale. This is what we have, and obviously, we'll continue to do everything we can to continue to win and grow in Italy, regardless the last competitor appearing appearing in the market. Let's see, there is, for us, no major new news compared to the past. Thank you. The next question is from Alberto Villa of Intermonte SIM. Yes, good morning. Just coming back to the previous question, can you give us an idea of what was the, let's say, revenues and EBITDA generated by Banco BPM in first half 2023 for the group? If you think you will be able to retain part of the business in the future, out of this, let's say, new deal, they're announcing. Secondly, again, on M&A, among the non-core asset disposal, there has been rumors about this Rete Nazionale Interbancaria in Italy, potentially an asset you could dispose. Can you give us an idea what would be your idea on that asset? Thank you. Good morning, Alberto. I, I, I think on Banco is a bit early to say. I think the size of the business, we never give size of individual contracts or or products and so on, so forth. What we have read around is broadly speaking, going in the right direction. The the impact for us, and we are working through our plans, as you can imagine, will be definitely zero this year and probably very marginal next year. What the impact will be going forward, we really depend on the ability of this new player to to migrate customers, develop technology, develop products, be competitive, and so on and so forth. Our ability and actions to defend customers that over the last many, many years have been used to Nexi products and propositions that are quite advanced for Italian standards and quality of service. I think over time that will be the the the the the key element to be to be watched. Again, no impact this year, and you expect marginal to no impact next year as well. On the network thing, as you can imagine, again, we don't comment on rumors, but I go back to what I did answer a few moments ago, I think, to the question from Adi. the area of DBS was an area, as we announced at Capital Markets Day, that we would have been considering for potential rationalization and further focusing of the business Thank you. The next question is from Mohammed Moawalla of Goldman Sachs. Great, thank you. Morning, Paolo, Bernardo. Just a quick one from me. How, how would you sort of rate your visibility into the second half of the year? Obviously, you know, our card digital payments going quite well. I know there was some sort of one-time benefits in there. On the kind of Merchant Services side, and particularly as you kind of move into next year, as we consider some of the kind of, you know, the macro concerns out there. Do you feel this is now a kind of sustainable growth rate that you're at in the kind of high single digits? That's great. Thank you. Morning, Mo, I think we are closing with a very difficult question, I think, here. Let me try to answer to you in 2 different ways. First of all, we have the visibility that is sufficient for us to confirm our guidance as we are doing today. At the same time, I, I think it's fair to say that the visibility on the second half of the year is a bit lower than what it used to be in the past, probably at least pre-COVID, no? Of the many macro elements that are mixing up in the various geographies. We had a good visibility of what we do and not the things that we can control when it comes to initiatives, projects, cost management, CapEx management, and all of that. But when it comes to volumes, it's a bit more difficult than over the last several years. Again, it's good enough to confirm the guidance. That's great. Thank you. Thank you. For any further questions, please press star and one on your touchtone telephone. Mr. Bertoluzzo, there are no more questions registered at this time, sir. Thank you. Again, thank you for joining our call this morning. We'll see some of you over the next few days in conference calls and the likes, and we plan to see many of you, many more of you, right after the summer break. Let us stop for the moment here. Solid, very solid results for the quarter and for the first half of the year. Confirmed guidance for the full year and further clarity on directional travel of a capital allocation going forward with a clear priority in debt reduction, but also plenty of room of maneuver to return cash to shareholders and for the limited M&A that we can see in front of us over the next 12 to 18 months. Enjoy the summer and see you soon. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.