Worldline SA (OTCPK:WWLNF) Q1 2024 Sales Trading Statement Call May 2, 2024 2:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Gilles Grapinet – CEO
Grégory Lambertie – Group CFO
Marc-Henri Desportes – Deputy CEO & Head of Merchant Services
Conference Call Participants
Frederic Boulan – Bank of America Securities
Mohammed Moawalla – Goldman Sachs
Alexandre Faure – BNP Paribas Exane
Joshua Levin – Bernstein Autonomous
Emmanuel Matot – ODDO BHF
Sandeep Deshpande – J.P. Morgan Chase
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Worldline Q1 2024 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, Gilles Grapinet, Worldline Group CEO. Please go ahead.
Gilles Grapinet
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Let me start with today’s agenda and what we will cover in this presentation. After my introduction on the key highlights of the first quarter 2024, I will come back specifically on the evolution of Worldline governance that the Group announced a few weeks ago. I will then give you an update on our business and commercial dynamics throughout the quarter. Hereafter, Gregory, our Group CFO, will present you in detail our first quarter revenue performance before a wrap-up from myself for the conclusion before opening the Q&A session that we will handle as well with Marc-Henri Desportes, our Group Deputy CEO.
Let’s have a look now at the three main highlights of Q1 2024. First highlight, as planned, we delivered the first quarter fully in line with our full year 2024 outlook with the Q1 organic growth at group level of 2.5%. Gregory will give you the details later, but this performance was mostly driven by Merchant Services, posting an organic growth close to 4%, in line with its anticipated full year trajectory and benefiting from several commercial successes all along the quarter. This was achieved while absorbing the impact of our merchant termination process. Excluding this effect, the underlying growth of Merchant Services came at 6.5% despite the macro and consumption momentum which stayed soft during Q1 as anticipated. Financial Services and MTS are delivering in Q1 as per their anticipated 2024 trajectory, too.
Second highlight, in the meantime, we are in execution mode to deliver all the immediate priority actions announced end of 2023. Regarding the merchant portfolio termination process which is now fully behind us with all merchants concerned having been notified. Thus, our €130 million revenue impact announced is clearly reconfirmed as a maximum. Regarding Power24, its implementation is in full rollout mode in all targeted countries, and I confirm our objective to deliver €200 million run rate cash cost savings minimum in 2025.
Third, we have finalized the creation of our strategic joint venture with the Crédit Agricole Group in France, which will offer soon the best of our two groups to merchants and retailers operating in France. We have received all the necessary approvals, the management team is now in place, and the brand has been launched under the name of CAWL, C-A-W-L. Now we are in the process to obtain the payment institution license from the French regulator, and this process is also fully on track, and we confirm the objective to have the joint venture fully live early 2025, starting to generate revenue for our group.
Finally, Worldline has also announced as planned a renewed Board of Directors to be approved at Worldline next AGM in June 2024. In line with the group commitment, the Board composition would be reduced from 15 to 12 Board Members plus two Employee Directors with a new Chairman and three new directors entry. As announced, Mr. Wilfried Verstraete has recently been coopted as a Director and the Board intends to appoint him as a Chairman following the general meeting to be held on June 13, 2024, at which it will be proposed to ratify his appointment. Mr. Georges Pauget, will remain interim Chairman until Mr. Wilfried Verstraete is elected Chairman in order to facilitate a smooth transition. He will then resign from the Board of Directors.
In addition, three new Directors are expected to join the Board as of the upcoming AGM. Two Independent Directors, Ms. Agnès Park and Ms. Sylvia Steinmann with strong international executive background including respectively, in human resources, IT transformation and finance. One non-independent director, Mr. Olivier Gavalda, Deputy CEO of Crédit Agricole with extensive financial and banking expertise. As part of the proposed changes, three current board members, Ms. Agnès Audier, Mr. Lorenz von Habsburg Lothringen, and Ms. Danielle Lagarde have decided not to renew their mandate. And then two other board members, Ms. Caroline Parot and Mr. Gilles Arditti will resign from their current mandate. This recomposed Board will offer a balanced representation of skills and expertise and the diversity of its members adapted to the next strategic development phase of Worldline.
Coming now to the Q1 business and commercial dynamics, I will start, as usual, with our commercial acquiring MSV development. In Q1 2024, Worldline acquiring MSV is up 4% reaching €110 billion. This development is in line with the trend shown last February, reflecting the current unchanged soft macro context in Europe. MSV was up plus 3% in store and plus 10% in online. Looking at the beginning of the second quarter, the trend observed in Q1 continues with MSV have been the same range of growth, as you can see. In this environment, Worldline commercial activity remains very dynamic as shown in the next slide.
Starting with Merchant Services and first with small and medium businesses go to market, this entity has performed well this quarter in numerous countries, in particular, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. I would like to focus on Italy where we have made a significant development through the new organic win during Q1 2024 of an important strategic partnership with Cassa Centrale Banca. We are particularly pleased and honored to have been selected by a major group like CCB through a competitive tender. It will be a very meaningful step forward for consolidating the Worldline presence in the Italian market and accelerating our commercial momentum in the country. This is also a recognition of our distinctive ability to perform in Italy with a competitive and cutting-edge offerings, but as importantly, with a proven and successful business support and assistance model for our local partnering banks. The partnership with CCB involves a full end-to-end offering for international card networks to circa 60,000 net new merchants generating incremental transacted volumes of circa €6 billion. From 2025, it will allow us to strongly increase our Italian footprint growing our regional MSV by circa 20% and our number of merchant locations in the country by close to 40%. These deals add to the numerous existing distribution partnerships already built in Italy since 2021 with major local financial institutions, including B&L, BNP Paribas Group, Banco Desio, and Banca del Fuji.
Now turning to our enterprise go-to-market. During the quarter, we have secured several wins and signed a number of partnerships relying on our product differentiation and dedicated vertical offerings. Starting first with the enrichment of our online geographical value proposition. We have signed a partnership with the FinTech Lidio in Turkey. It has been approved by Turkey Central Bank, making us the first online payment service authorized by TCB for international payments. The joint Worldline and Lidio solutions streamlines the process of accepting Turkish payment, optimizing time, cost and payment performance of up to plus 25% in approval rate increase compared to a customer produced connection, while ensuring full compliance with the local Turkish regulations. This solution includes the acceptance of the domestic Troy card for international businesses which represents a breakthrough entry for global eCom players willing to expand their activities in this $72 billion market.
On the verticalization and ISV-related distribution front, we have developed our ISV channel, partnering with Tabesto, a major actor in order taking and payment solutions within the restaurant. Together, we will deliver a unique customer experience planned for 36 countries. We will jointly launch the first all-in-one Fox ordering and payment kiosk system using one of our key products SoftPOS Worldline top end mobile technology. During the quarter, we also signed in MS, a number of other important names as you can see on the slide, and we continue to extend the use of our solutions to existing customers to offer new products. Two points that I would like to highlight here, the dedicated solutions for EV charging players continues to have a strong traction with the signing of names such as Electra, Road, or Kempower, allowing us to capture this fast-moving market, thanks to our dedicated vertical solution and specific features. And we have extended our 16-year partnership with ASDA, the UK’s third largest supermarket group to deliver now a full omnichannel payment solution, combining POS, acquiring services and smart transaction routing through the Worldline payment orchestration engine to enhance the customer experience and operational efficiency for approximately 800,000 weekly deliveries.
To conclude on this part, and I say during our full year publication, Worldline Merchant Services is currently developing successfully its strong growth engines with regular opening of new geographic corridors for Global eCom as illustrated today with Turkey, growing its ISV partnership distribution as seen with Tabesto, reinforcing its vertical value proposition, as for example, with the EV charging wins. In combination with our strong and growing distribution network, this product-centric strategy is a core pillar of our next development phase and will be much more detail during our next Capital Market Day.
Regarding our two other business units, Q1 was dynamic in terms of commercial development led by Worldline core products know how. Starting with FS and talking indeed about next-gen core product and value proposition, I would like to highlight the successful go-live of our new target card issuing platform on the German market. We have indeed successfully completed the migration of Consorsbank Visa card portfolio from the existing mainframe solution to our cutting-edge customer-centric new issuing processing section. This is the first successful migration of the scale portfolio towards our new product generation on the German market, following its already successful rollout in the Belgium market. This new card issuing product will bring numerous new features and added value services like, for example, instant card issuing. It also provides, for example, to Consorsbank here, access to our Pan-European economies of scale, and ensure compliance with future market requirements and regulations. In parallel, we have extended several contracts on the issuing side with Luso in Asia Pacific, or BKN in Italy.
Regarding METS, our dedicated product for the eHealth vertical has been in the partnership signed with Secunet. This product offers a simplified, secure and digitalized access to digital medicine and health services for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and all health professionals in Germany, leveraging our secured telematic infrastructure gateway. We have a proven track record in this field with more than 350,000 acceptance points already managed. We have as well deployed our payment orchestration and messaging offering with the signing of a contract with a major nationwide rail operator while leveraging our offering for fleet management with a large integrated energy company. Let me now hand over to Grégory to walk you through our detailed Q1 revenue pattern.
Grégory Lambertie
Thank you, Gilles, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with an overview of Q1 revenue performance. First quarter revenues came in at €1.1 billion, representing organic growth of 2.5% in line with the expected full year phasing. Restated for merchant terminations, Group Q1 growth stood at 4.4%. GBL by GBL, Q1 performance is as follows: MS is up 3.9% or 2.9% on a net-net revenue basis, i.e., excluding scheme fees and partner fees. And excluding merchant terminations, underlying growth is at 6.5%, thanks to strong commercial dynamics and good traction in select verticals. Financial Services was down 1.4%, impacted by lower volumes in account payment division despite a good dynamic in card processing. Finally, METS revenue was up 0.7%, in line with expectations. On a net-net revenue basis, group growth stood at 1.7% organically.
Let me now zoom in on performance by business line. Looking at MS in more detail, revenues reached €787 million, up 3.9%. In Commercial Acquiring, underlying growth improved versus Q4 driven by strong commercial momentum in Italy, as explained by Gilles earlier as well as good wins in Switzerland, one of our core markets. Payment Acceptance posted healthy growth led by increased online travel and gaming volumes, which benefited from the ramp-up of contracts like Turkish Airlines signed last year and of an increase in the share of wallet with visit. Last, on digital services, performance was solid in key countries like Germany and Turkey. Looking forward, MS growth profile should continue to improve with a progressive growth reacceleration in H2.
Turning to FS revenues, they reached €225 million in Q1. FS saw increased trends on the cloud processing front in Belgium and in the Netherlands, more than offset by lower volumes in account payments, while digital banking was stable. Looking forward, after stabilization in H1, FS should slow down in the second half with lower volumes on existing contracts and some reinsourcing only partially offset by improving commercial dynamics.
Moving on to METS, revenues stood at €85 million, with good underlying growth in our trusted and transport and mobility services both benefiting from new projects and increased ticketing volumes. This was slightly offset by some project delays in France. Looking forward, METS is expected to improve through 2024 in terms of growth. Overall, group growth in the first quarter came in line with expectations with good momentum in MS and just as a reminder, in terms of phasing, we assumed softer growth in H1 2024 mainly due to merchant terminations in an overall unchanged macro environment. Now let me hand over to Gilles to conclude.
Gilles Grapinet
Many thanks, Gregory. And to conclude indeed, this presentation, let me reemphasize that we are actively executing the necessary transformation actions to strengthen our business and financial performance with a very heavy focus this year on execution, notably on the following drivers: number one, Power24. It is in full execution mode with the transformation process launched in all targeted countries. It will deeply adapt our operating model, but more importantly, we’ll structurally improve our operating leverage for the medium term. Number two, clearly our efforts and priorities are on improving our free cash flow generation supported notably by a fast planned reduction of integration cost that is moving as per plan. We have also deeply adopted our incentive schemes to reflect this priority.
Number three, regarding our Crédit Agricole joint venture, we could successfully meet two major milestones with antitrust approval and closing of the transaction, allowing the new management team and the two parents to actively prepare the go-live early 2025. And in parallel, of course, we maintain our strong investment road map on the product and innovative offering of Worldline to pave the way for future growth acceleration. Moving forward, I confirm that we will hold the Capital Market Day in the second half of 2024 where we will do a deep update on the Worldline future trajectory, product offerings, and competitive differentiators.
To close this presentation, we confirm our full year 2024 guidance as follows, we expect to deliver in 2024 top line organic growth of at least 3%. On the adjusted EBITDA level, we expect to achieve at least €117 billion. Finally, we expect free cash flow of at least €230 million. Thank you very much for your attention, and I am now ready with the team, Marc-Henri and Grégory to take your questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We will now take the first question coming from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Frederic Boulan
Hey, good morning Gilles, Grégory, and Marc-Henri. If I can ask two questions on market dynamics, so you showed MSV remaining pretty soft at 4%. If you can break down a little bit what you’re seeing in terms of different components of that, so between consumer spending, move to cash, less payments and market share dynamics, if you can share any detail on how that chart and trend would have looked like excluding merchant terminations? And when we look at this underlying growth of 6%, second question is, to a degree, it’s impacted by pricing. So last year, I think you had this repricing program going, what’s the status here and more broadly, can you comment on the level of competition and competitive dynamics you’re seeing in your key markets, in particular, Germany?
Gilles Grapinet
Yes, sure. Hello Fred, good morning. Thank you for the question. Maybe I will start, Marc-Henri can complete on the MSV front. I think fundamentally, what is still driving MSV dynamic for what we see still primarily consumption trends in Europe, I would say. We have not noticed particular changes in the, I would say, cashless momentum, which I think is still on its healthy solid medium-term development. And there are still meaningful number of cash-based transactions in certain countries in Europe, as you know. I think the main driver stays a soft consumption dynamic here globally across key countries, even if there are some better volumes that we could see in countries that were more affected probably somewhere in the second half of last year. We mentioned that we see indeed a bit better the underlying dynamics in the German market. Maybe Marc-Henri, you want to add a few colors here?
Marc-Henri Desportes
Just a couple of additional elements. The impact of merchant termination is pretty small on this MSV development as they were not representing a significant share of this MSV and we are below the 1% level. So indeed, as you say, it is primarily a consumer spending dynamic that is impacting as we see, and we will see how things evolve throughout the year in the MSV development. Regarding your question on the pricing. On the pricing, what we see is we have regular repricing for part of our portfolio, I mean, the eSMB portfolio. And overall, it allows us to have take rates evolving slightly positively. So it is indeed supportive of the underlying growth and also a good sign that in terms of competitive positioning, our mix of business is not subject to significant price pressure, so it impacts slightly our growth performance, but it’s not the main driver. So just to make a long story short, main driver is more connected to underlying volume developments of number of merchants development of our product activities.
Frederic Boulan
Thank you. And if I may follow up on the free cash flow and EBITDA. So I know it’s not an EBITDA quarter, but you mentioned the restructuring plan is going ahead. Can you maybe share some commentary around phasing of EBITDA and free cash flow this year between H1 and H2 and also if you can confirm some of the free cash flow dynamics that you had discussed for 2025 in terms of restructuring costs and border free cash flow dynamics?
Grégory Lambertie
So first of all, we are completely on target with regards to the free cash flow profile as we mentioned before, and you know our general trajectory, H2 should be much stronger in terms of EBITDA and free cash flow phasing and we are completely in line as well with our overall trajectory in terms of improving free cash flow conversion in 2025 onwards. So completely in line at this stage with, as we said, the bulk of the Power24 costs to be incurred this year, in particular, in H2 once the social processes will be done with regard to Power24.
Frederic Boulan
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take the next question coming from the line of Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Mohammed Moawalla
Thank you. Good morning Gilles, Marc-Henri, and Grégory. Two from me. First, I just wanted to sort of clarify on the impact of the kind of high-risk contracts that was probably a little less than what we were expecting in the quarter. Did I hear you correctly to say that it’s kind of largely done and we should think of the impact in the second quarter and the rest of the year to be even less than what we saw in sort of Q1? And then just related to that, so how should we think of that underlying, I think you called out 6.5% Merchant Services growth, does that accelerate further in the second half or is that still kind of the run rate you expect to sort of hit? And then just coming on to your comments on Financial Services, I sort of sense a slightly more cautionary tone on the second half when you said that the growth would slow, given the easy comps are you thinking more flat growth in Financial Services in the second half or does that still kind of potentially decline? Thank you.
Grégory Lambertie
Thank you, Mo. So, in terms of the high-risk contracts, what we said is that it’s been completed as of the end of Q1. And we confirm that the €130 million that we announced in the past results is indeed a maximum. So that’s the first part. Going forward, it means that we will be having a tougher comp in Q2 where those contracts were still ongoing in 2023, while the comparable will improve in H2, hence the acceleration we have mentioned in a macroeconomic environment that is unchanged. And with regards to the overall underlying growth in MS, I will let Marc-Henri comment.
Marc-Henri Desportes
On the underlying growth, we see that we are going to accelerate it progressively towards the year. So we’ll have more of this momentum in H2. Maybe just to complete one thing on what Gregory just said, you may remember that we stopped the portfolio of merchants, already some termination occurred middle of last year and there is a base effect and a part of it has been more progressive. And in fact, as Gregory explained, with all termination letters sent by the end of this quarter. So most of the impact now behind us in terms of end of the revenues and a bit of the phasing in front. So MS overall momentum accelerating in H2.
Grégory Lambertie
And finally, on your FS question, we are indeed looking at a stable H1 and an H2 slowdown on the back of lower volumes. This is all factored into our full year 2024 guidance. And what we see is a growth coming back during 2025, with major opportunities coming within the banking sector, whether it be mandatory instant payment implementation by year-end next year or EPI launch in participating countries as well as digital euro where we are well positioned.
Mohammed Moawalla
Alright, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Alexandre Faure from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Alexandre Faure
Good morning, thank you very much. Three questions, if I may, and maybe I missed a few things earlier. So going back to the previous question in terms of the underlying growth in MS over the course of the year, sort of stripping out the new risk management framework. I think you called out 6.5% in Q1. Just wondering if there was a leap day impact in that number and how we should think of an acceleration there sort of adjusting for termination of merchants that you discussed earlier? My second point was, maybe if you could help us understand this extension with ASDA, for instance, in the UK and who you were competing with, how the new relationship compares to what you were doing before with that, that would be interesting? And lastly, going back on one of the commentary earlier in payment acceptance, you called out Turkish Airlines ramping nicely and I think you also mentioned a few wallet share gains. I was wondering if you could elaborate there where you saw commercial success and whether there were also any new logos outside of Turkish Airlines in payment acceptance? Thanks very much.
Grégory Lambertie
So I’ll take the first one. On the underlying MS growth, we indeed see 6.5% in Q1 in underlying. This is — that we see a limited impact of Leap Day. Going forward, what we are anticipating is that this underlying growth should be sustained and therefore, in terms of reported growth, we’d have an acceleration given the comp that is becoming gradually more favorable with the risk policy presentation having started in Q2 last year.
Marc-Henri Desportes
Regarding the wins. So ASDA is an existing relationship, it’s not a new contract, that’s true, but it’s regularly expanding, including the dimension of acquiring, which is in the UK market, a very important element for us. And you may remember, we were granted a license which was also a good sign of the health of relationship with the regulators. So from that point of view, it’s an extension and an increase of the relationship with ASDA. In terms of wins overall, and you were asking about the competition on the UK market, we see the usual players. We see also some newcomers and some more aggressive FinTechs. I’m not going to give the name of my competitors, but they are on this competitive environment. And on this very big retail, we remain a leading competitive edge thanks to the combination of the scale for acquiring platform on the one hand and the scale of our acceptance solution on the other hand. That’s making a good difference.
Gilles Grapinet
And if you allow me just Marc-Henri to step in before you take the question on the acceptance development of Alexandre. I think ASDA is a very good example of a successful product development strategy within an existing account. I mean, because here, of course, we sell also new products coming from the development of the range of products in the MS portfolio. We mentioned in the press release the payment orchestration engine that is supporting delivery for our retailers. And of course, the game is to be standing along with a given merchant and to try to equip them where themselves they develop their own products, their own innovation, their digital transformation, which is clearly the case of a very leading brand like ASDA in the UK, you want to stay at the forefront of the rest of innovation and customer experience.
Marc-Henri Desportes
Coming back to the wins, the current development in terms of order entry of pipe of number of merchants is perfectly in line with expectations. So we have a number of good elements. We mentioned a few of the EV charging ones, which are always a combination of acceptance and acquiring features. And sometimes — sorry, combination. Sometimes it’s primarily focused on acceptance. So if your point is acceptance, but we always try to add the acquiring layer in the line of developing the overall portfolio like Gilles explained. We had wins also in the travel sector, and we see some important customers, not only airlines, but also travel agencies. So these names, when we don’t mention them is because the agreement about communication is not finalized. It’s a customer policy. So we have to stick to these rules. But overall, good developments in this acceptance landscape both in online world and when it has a dimension of physical acceptance and physical platforms. So overall our product stack is showing a very good momentum and health.
Alexandre Faure
That’s great. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Josh Levin from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Joshua Levin
Good morning. I have two questions. First, what should we think is a normalized growth rate for Merchant Services and how do you reach that conclusion, I think the more detail you can provide on this, the more helpful it will be for investors? And then the second question, now that you are a few months into Power24, what do you think might be the biggest risks or hurdles, which could prevent Worldline from delivering on its Power24 objectives? Thank you.
Gilles Grapinet
So I will take the second one, Josh. I’m happy to hear you. Trust you are well. Well, Power24, let me state very clearly that we are in full execution mode. Everything is working absolutely as per plan. And to be frank, we don’t see hurdle that could derail us from delivering at minimum what we announced this €200 million cash cost savings in a run rate for 2025. This is really something that is perfectly on track on all fronts. We, of course, manage a proper social dialogue, I must say, a very high-quality and transparent dialogue not every year that we do such a transformation. But so far, I must say, really so good. All the management team are fully convinced of all the levers that are making the key pillars of the Power24 transformation. You know that we don’t invent anything new here. We are activating proven levers that we know extremely well and that we already ramp up for certain of these at a certain scale already like offshore. And so for us, this is really just making sure we keep the base. The base is the name of this game. And so far, it’s absolutely on track. Medium-term organic growth, I can definitely — I mean, as we said, we see for MS, this normalized, we are absolutely convinced that at minimum, MS will be at minimum high single-digit growth perspective in line with our medium-term projector.
Grégory Lambertie
And indeed, I mean, we have — you can see the 6.5% underlying growth in this current macroeconomic condition as a good basis for normalized growth plus we have upcoming growth levers kicking in fairly soon. We have closed the Crédit Agricole joint venture, CAWL. As we said when we announced it, should be a 1% kicker to organic growth going forward from 2025 onwards. We are also post Power24 spending more and more on new product innovation and platforms and the target by the end of the year is to have around about three quarter of our spend on the new target environment. So these are all positive levers that we see contributing to reach this high single-digit number that Gilles was alluding to.
Gilles Grapinet
And I take your question, Josh, as a very clear invite and be sure we’ll do so to provide a very clear let’s say, growth algorithm for MS at the Capital Market Day. So you can really fully understand indeed the structural components, things linked, for example, to cashless momentum in Europe as we can see, the evolution of the market around but also specific — our company specific growth accelerators that we highlighted for some of this today in certain wins, as you can see with ISV distribution or geographic corridors opening of specific ones that are related like Crédit Agricole or Cassa Centrale.
Joshua Levin
Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Emmanuel Matot from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Emmanuel Matot
Yes. Good morning gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. First, does your sales growth in new markets such as Italy, France starting next year, profitable growth, is it expensive growth in the short term, weighting on your EBITDA margin, so I mean, for Merchant Services? Second, where are you regarding generative AI, is it a transforming technology for Worldline, can it drive positively your sales and your productivity in the medium term? And my last question, maybe, Gilles what do you expect from the next board members with the new Chairman, how can they add to restore confidence with investors? Thank you.
Marc-Henri Desportes
Thank you, Emmanuel. I can answer your first two questions, and we’ll let the third one to Gilles. When it comes to the profitability of the new sales initiative, I can confirm it is very good. In particular, the Italian market is a market where the price levels are very decent. And we are working in this market above global average of Worldline profitability. So obviously, supporting and helpful in terms of overall profitability. And the way the Crédit Agricole deal was structured, is also allowing this initiative to be a support and the development of overall Worldline margin momentum. So it’s — you know that it is the logic of what we are building working and organizing ourselves around profitable growth.
Grégory Lambertie
Regarding — I would even add profitable market share gains in Italy.
Marc-Henri Desportes
Coming to the Gen AI, definitely, it’s initiative we launched and which I organized the team to have a specific dedicated effort in February last year. So we have one year of work initiative in this domain. The most obvious one is obviously to equip all our developers with assisted Gen AI co-development tools to increase their productivity. That’s the first obvious step. And we are working — not working, but even rolling out now tools and solutions to support our customer service or sales team to gain additional productivity or in topics like answering RFPs with pre combined solutions and enhanced sales leveraging the overall documentation pack of Worldline. So having put all our documents into a dedicated environment, which can be addressed through the latest AI tools, including Open AI ones, but not only, we are testing and leveraging different technology. You know we have also a partnership with Google. So we are not restricting our use of Gen AI one on the engine, and other for customer service. So you have the typical case of augmented agents, so people answering call and having a support of generic tools to answer the more complicated questions allowing Level 1 customer service agents to answer questions that are usually handled by Level 2 or Level 3. Well, that’s typically the kind of things we are doing with the Gen AI technology and rolling out the Worldline portfolio to develop our productivity. It is in our DNA, we are however, an engineered company, it is in our DNA to calculate this technology and to get the benefit of it.
Gilles Grapinet
Hello Emmanuel and for your third question, thank you. I mean I would say that, of course, the new profiles coming into the broad at the moment where the company is actually entering into a new phase of its strategic development. It will certainly be very helpful to bring a fresh eye on what we do, the way we’ve been doing things. There is a very vast and diversified array of skills and competence, starting with the future new Chairman, who’s been very experienced in accompanying financial industry transformation very successfully. New skills coming with [indiscernible] related to technology and in event of enforcement of our HR-related skill with [indiscernible] and of course, Olivier Gavalda bringing an extensive bank and payment expertise coming to the board. So I think it will bring a fresh high, new challenges to the management team and to the way things been doing, while recognizing that the first 10 years of the IPO mandate that was to create scale and reach and critical mass in the fragmented European impairment industry has been very well supported by the current board and the current board members. So it is a new phase, and this pressure will certainly help us to revisit many things and to receive also new challenges, which are always sound and good.
Emmanuel Matot
Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Sandeep Deshpande from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Sandeep Deshpande
Yeah, hi. Good morning everybody. Thanks for having me on. My question is on two topics. Firstly, on the competitive environment, have you seen any changes in the competitive environment in the key markets in Germany or any other markets that you’re competing in and if so, from where have you seen it? And secondly, you bought an asset in platforms a couple of years ago. What are you doing in platforms at this point, have you got any engagement on the platform side?
Gilles Grapinet
Hello Sandeep, good morning. I think I will give the floor to Marc-Henri, and I think you are referring indeed to our investment into OPP. I suppose, indeed, which is dedicated to platform. Marc-Henri?
Marc-Henri Desportes
Yes. Thank you, Sandeep. In terms of competitive landscape, we don’t see major changes as we speak, in terms of players and the well-known players in the market. Still the same players around and the same overall competitive landscape, which is a dynamic, a competitive landscape. What we observed is that the market is evolving more and more towards partnerships, including working more with platforms. And you could see in our communication this quarter that we mentioned what we achieved with Tabesto or with Lidio in international partnership development. So, we are very active on this front and we clearly intend to develop this aspect even more so. And one of the key assets to do this development and to achieve this development will indeed be OPP, this company that on which we invested with a path to control a couple of years ago. And we are — and I’m specifically personally dedicating a significant amount of time on reinforcing the use of OPP to develop our business with platforms, ISVs, and boosting this revenue stream which the potential is very significant because we can develop a fully compliant solution for the European market where we see the situation is still heterogeneous in this market in terms of what’s existing today and which will grant us an opportunity to have a new acceleration layers in our overall MS portfolio. So it is a top priority. We are — OPP, by the way, is developing very well and extending its own go-to-market and jointly with Worldline. A lot of their sales is now happening through the Worldline sales force and we are very confident to make it a great success.
Sandeep Deshpande
Thank you.
Gilles Grapinet
Thank you very much, all of you, for having been with us this morning. It’s time now to close this call. Looking forward to our next interaction together in the coming weeks and the coming roadshows. Have a nice day guys.
Operator
This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
