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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Edenred Q3 2018 Revenue Conference Call. I now hand over to Mr. Patrick Bataillard, CFO. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2018 Q3 revenue conference call. I will commence the slides of the presentation, which is available on our website in the finance section.First, let's start with a few highlights of the third quarter on Slide 3, just after a short disclaimer on Slide 2. So as expected, following a strong performance in H1, Edenred accelerated again its growth in Q3 in 3 business lines, paving the way for new record full year figures. The 9 months 2018 total income came in at EUR 991 (sic) [ EUR 990 ] million, up 11% like-for-like, of which 13% in Q3. On a reported basis, it is at 3.1%, despite negative currency effects that has been more than compensated by the strong organic topline growth and from slight positive scope effects, mainly linked to the integration of Timex Card in Poland last January and Vasa Slovensko in Slovakia, in October last year. Looking at the organic operating revenue growth, it is growing at double-digits in the first 9 months across all business lines, in Europe and Latin America. In Q3 only, this was 14.6% with an acceleration in both Employee Benefits and Fleet & Mobility solutions. In terms of geographies, the group achieved double-digit growth in Europe and Latin America this quarter. It has been a plus-18% in Europe, a strong performance fueled by the ongoing market penetration of Employee Benefits, particularly, in the SME segments. The digitization of our offer also creates a clear competitive edge. In the Fleet & Mobility solutions, UTA's pan-European expansion strategy starts paying off coupled with the fast start up of mono- and multibrand solutions for Light Fleet in several European countries. In Latin, operating revenues grew by 11.3% organically increased in Q3. Hispanic Latin America, Fleet & Mobility solutions, still underpenetrated, performed well with client wins and successful rollout of innovative corporate expense solutions, such as Empresarial. In Brazil, I'm pleased to highlight that employee benefits registered a positive organic growth for the second quarter in a row. So as you understand that through this strong operating performance across all business lines and origins, Edenred benefits from a unique technological leadership. Our global platform features the most advanced digital means of payments. Therefore, I'm seeing a significantly users, clients and commercial clients, including mobile payments or payments APIs from mobility platforms. In terms of outlook for the full year, the strong performance year-to-year for Edenred helps to confirm our full year targets. We confirm our 2018 EBIT guidance between EUR 440 million and EUR 470 million, and we substantially outperformed our annual medium-term organic growth targets of operating revenue, operating EBIT and FFO of plus 7 -- sorry, plus-7%, plus 9% and plus 10%, respectively. Moving on to Slide 5. Regarding the total income, which is composed of the operating revenue and the other operating income, previously known as the financial revenue. You can see that we accelerated the growth in the Q3, both in reported and like-for-like figures, up 4.8% and 13%, respectively. The growth acceleration reflects a stronger performance in operating revenue and a slight decrease in the other operating income in line with what we have seen since the beginning of the year.Total income for the first 9 months of the year came in at EUR 990 million, registering a double-digit like-for-like growth. On a reported basis, total income is up 3.1%, despite strongly negative exchange rates. Going to the next slide now. Operating revenue amounted to EUR 953 million for the first 9 months of the year and EUR 313 million for the third quarter. On a like-for-like basis, the growth in operating revenue picked up significantly in Q3 coming out at 14.6% for the quarter and 12.6% since the beginning of the year. The growth acceleration reflects the good momentum in core business lines in all regions. In particular, this quarter confirms again the improvement of sales of Employee Benefits in Brazil. We expect these trends will remain in Q4. Looking now at the reported growth figures, takes into account a slightly positive scope effect reflecting acquisitions, mostly Vasa Slovensko in Slovakia and Timex Card in Poland. As expected, the overall currency effect was unfavorable, even more in Q3 than in H1 with the Brazilian currency having a particularly significant impact. Despite this currency impact, and especially thanks to the double-digit organic performance, reported growth in Q3 accelerated to reach plus 6.5% for the quarter and close to 5% in the year-to-date. I will now comment our figures by business line. Please see the Slide 7. For the first 9 months of the year, the group recorded double-digit organic growth in 3 business lines. Employee Benefits represented in 65% of the group activity are up 11.1% year-to-date far above our annual mid single-digit organic growth target for the business line. I will comment more in depth on that later. In Fleet & Mobility Solutions, operating revenue grew by 17% in line with our double-digit organic growth income target. Lastly, the Complementary Solutions were up 10.5%. As you may know, this business line includes incentive and rewards solutions, public social programs and corporate payments, the [quick and deck] of this activity, this corporate payment activity. Regarding the good deployment of IATA contracts, we are now live in [ 30 ] countries. Let me remind you that IATA agreed to allocate 40 additional countries to be delivered not included in the initial contract, totaling 110 countries to be equipped with Edenred payment solutions ultimately. After a successful pilot phase Foncia contract in France in the real estate industry is now live with a strong adoption in the first week with EUR 1.5 million directed IBAN in place. In addition to the flagship contracts, we have good commercial pipelines of our virtual cards offer in Europe and other territories. I will now comment more in-depth on Employee Benefits figures. Please turn to the next slide.So in the Employee Benefits, as you can see on this chart, the organic operating revenue growth accelerated again in Q3, reaching 13.4%. Year-to-date, growth is up 11.1% like-for-like. The increased penetration remains a strong growth driver, especially, amongst SMEs. Another growth driver is the attractivity of our digital offer continuously intense. We also won some large corporate clients in the past months. In Brazil after being back in positive territory in Q2, the operating revenue grew again in the third quarter, confirming the gradual improvement. Itau partnership in Brazil is not live yet. We are still waiting for the authorization from anti-trust and the Central Bank. It should fuel our growth partly in 2019. Regarding our product and technology innovations, which are key differentiators for Edenred, we keep developing our mobile payment solutions which are now available in 11 countries via 16 programs, of which GooglePay, that has just been signed in France a couple of days ago. In addition to Apple Pay and Foncia pay, that are already live in this country. This payment solution registers strong adoption and engagement with up to 12 transactions per month per user illustrating how our solution seeks to deliver to our customers.On the next slide, which is Slide 9, let me focus once again on Edenred direct payment services offer, one of the key innovations of the group launch in 2018. Thanks to this payment API tackling the fast growing online food-tech segment, our offer supports new usage strength among users and partner merchants and drive significant additional traffic to merchants and new delivery platforms. With 10,000 transactions per week on average, performed mainly by millennials, we increased significantly the stickiness and the average basket, therefore, creating a virtuous ecosystem for platforms, merchants and final users. Let's now turn to Fleet & Mobility Solution, on the next slide. In Fleet & Mobility Solution, which accounts for 26% of the group, we registered a sustained growth across all of our segments. In Fuel & Fleet, the UTA's pan-European expansion strategy starts paying off with more and more value added services deployed in more and more countries. The acquisition of Road Accounts portfolio in Germany for toll payment solutions is a good illustration of UTAs strategy. In the light fleet segment, our mono- and multibrand offers are ramping up. We are pleased to announce the signature new contract with Carrefour in France to process and distribute the Carrefour Fleet cards. In Latin America, we are increasing the Fuel & Fleet market penetration and we are also running off Empresarial, our successful corporate expense solution in several countries in the region. So now let's have a look on the operating performance by geographies, on Slide 11. For the first 9 months of the year, the double-digit organic growth, as seen by business lines, was also recorded across our 2 main regions. It was plus 14.6% in Europe, and plus 10.7% in Latin America. So all in all, a very homogeneous growth across business lines and regions. Let me now give you a focus on our 2 main regions, on Slide 12.Slide 12 is dedicated to Europe where operating revenue is up 14.6% like-for-like and a 16.2%, as reported. In France, like-for-like growth in operating revenue came to 10.3% for the 9 months period, of which 12.4% is in Q3. The strong performance reflects good momentum in Employee Benefits and the fast ramp up of Light Fleet solutions. We are number 2 in the French market where we do our mono-brand offer and our users have access to close to 40% of the French gas stations. In the rest of Europe we also recovered a sharp increase in operating revenue in the third quarter with like-for-like growth of 20.6%, building growth for the 9 months period to 16.7% like-for-like. The accelerated growth reflected increased penetration, Employee Benefits across all markets in the region, driven by the innovative nature of the digital offering. Also the region's robust growth reflects a solid performance by EBITDA, which benefits from an end-to-end offer with neutral payment solutions and from its regional expansion strategy. UTA, for example a branch in Slovakia this month, following the expansion of the business in [indiscernible] countries, following in Bulgaria early 2018, especially thanks to the Timex card acquisition. Latin America, in Slide 13. In Latin America, operating revenue is up by 10.7% like-for-like, including the growth of 11.3% in the third quarter. This increase reflects strong performance in the region from all business lines. The Hispanic Latin America, is up about 16% like-for-like, year-to-date. Fleet & Mobility Solutions posted a particularly strong performance in this region. In a relatively untapped market this business line benefits from new client wins and from the commercial development of innovative solutions, such as Empresarial. In Brazil, operating revenue rose 8.8% like-for-like for the first 9 months. This performance reflects the combined effects of continued strong growth in Fleet & Mobility Solutions and the confirmation of the return to growth in Employee Benefits.Following the focus on the operating performance, please let me switch to the other operating income, on the next slide. So as you can see, on this Slide #14, other operating income, what we call in the past financial revenue, came to EUR 37 million in the first 9 months, down 16.8% like-for-like and 26.8% as reported. Although operating income suffered from particularly negative currency effect during the period, even higher in Q3 than in H1, mainly in Latin America. In addition, we are facing lower interest rates and less favorable investment conditions in Europe, for investment reaching maturity. Nevertheless, the H2 decrease versus last year should be less than the one observed in H1. We can now move to the full year 2018 outlook, on Slide 16. The group should continue to deliver strong growth in the fourth quarter, capitalizing on its global technology platform, enpowering it's ecosystem and opening large growth opportunities. In Europe, the Employee Benefits business line will benefit from perks and technology innovations. Growth in this business segment will also be supported by increased penetration of SME market and optimization of the marketing mix. In Fleet & Mobility Solutions, UTA intends to continue its strategy of expanding on a Europewide basis and enhancing its offering by a larger acceptance network and new value-added services. The group is also confident about its capacity to speed up the development of its Light Fleet offering in Europe. In Brazil, in the context of still high unemployment, Employee Benefits operating revenue is expected to continue to grow organically in Q4 and the Fleet & Mobility Solutions business line is expected to report double-digit organic growth in operating revenue. In Hispanic Latin America, the strong momentum is expected to continue in both Employee Benefits and Fleet & Mobility Solutions, thanks notably to the technological innovations, such as mobile payments and to the expansion of new solutions, such as Empresarial in several countries in the region. Lastly, currency effects are expected to remain strongly negative during the fourth quarter, particularly in Latin America. In this context, Edenred confirms its full year 2018 EBIT targets of between EUR 440 million and EUR 470 million. For full year 2018, the group expects to substantially outperform its annual growth target for its key financial metrics, i.e. like-for-like operating revenue growth of more than 7%, like-for-like operating EBIT growth of more than 9% and like-for-like growth in Funds from operations of more than 10%.Thank you for your attention, and I now will open the floor for questions
[Operator Instructions] We have first question from Mr. Simon LeChipre from Raymond James.
I will have 3 questions, if I may. First of all, just would like to understand how we can read your performance over the quarter in the context of your EBIT guidance? I mean, I know you confirm your guidance but the like-for-like growth in Q3 is above what The Street was expecting. So I would be interested to know how you see your performance compared to your initial expectations. My second question, regarding Brazil, if you could please give us some details on the level of growth in Employee Benefits in Q3? And if you can also quantify the impact of the [turned out] effect. And my last question and it's going to be an obvious one and I do apologize for this in advance, but you have not yet directed so far on the rumors about your potential interest in Ingenico. I was wondering, if you have any comments to share around this.
Thank you, Simon, for these very interesting questions. When coming back to the guidance, what is important for me to mention is that, yes the truth is that we have a strong organic growth in Q3, that was something we had anticipated in our plan internally. Then what we have to keep in mind is that Q4 is traditionally a very strong quarter in terms of seasonality. Meaning especially that we have to stay a bit cautious about the growth of the products that are well sold at the very end of the year. In fact, we have very huge base effect, even though that Q4 2017 was very high especially. Regarding EBIT guidance, especially, of course, we may still be impacted by currency impacts. As you may know, the most important currency for us is [Brazilian real]. When you look at the recent past, currency effects was pretty favorable, but with the rest, on average we are very close to be in the condition we've done in the middle of the year. So one more time, we have to say questions about this impact. Regarding Employee Benefits business in Brazil. Yes, the truth is that we have a strong impact in terms of working days. We had minus 1 working day in Q3 compared to last year and at least 2 working days in Q2 compared to Q2 2017. So when we make the full calculation, taking into account the number of working days, it is very impactful for this Employee Benefits business. The truth is that the growth reflected in Employee Benefits in Q3 in Brazil is very close to the one we talked about in Q2. We're deeply -- I hope definitely in positive territory for this business in Brazil, but not a big difference between Q3 and Q2. And finally, regarding Ingenico, what I can simply tell you is that we do not comment on the market rumors. Having said that, as you know, Edenred is world leader of transactions and solutions in the world of work and like every player of the payment industry, we're complementing and the strategic coach of opportunities in this industry. That's it. I do not want to make further comments on Ingenico.
Next question from Mr. Josh Levin from Citigroup.
Two questions. It looks like you're gaining traction in Corporate Payments. Are we close to an inflection point, in terms of its revenue and earnings contribution? And then, second question, regarding your Dubai-based C3 business, which has a light banking solution for under banked employees, is that a business you think you can expand and take other regions? .
Okay. Thank you for your questions. Well, regarding Corporate Payments, we're very pleased with the ramp up of the payment solutions contracts, namely [ Agata ] and Foncia. We're developing -- we're doing this contract a bit faster than what we had predicted. And on top of that, as I said, we have some good momentum in time for commercial pipelines. Having said that, we do not dispense the guidance, we don't in the past i.e, the fact that we do less -- the existing size should not represent more than 1% or 2% of the activity in the next couple of years, in fact. Then in the complementary solution, you have to keep in mind, especially, that in terms of Corporate Payments, we have as well, although, adjacent activities such as public social programs and Incentive and Rewards. But coming back to Corporate Payments, we are sharing with you that this should become potentially a big opportunity for Edenred. Meaning especially that in terms of acquisitions, M&A could be a benefit to grow the business additionally in the future. So in a nutshell, ramp up which is very close to what we commented at the beginning, solutions that can be interesting for potential clients and additional growth when those are coming from acquisitions. Regarding C3 card. This is actually a very interesting business. We started at the very beginning, we did quite simple solution that was very useful for our users, a kind of, payroll account, in fact. And on top of this payroll account, we succeeded in developing additional value-added services. In '18, it's a popular product in Dubai. The truth as well is that we're working in a quite untapped segment of the market, a segment which is not considered as interesting for large banks, especially. So we are very happy with the ramp up of this business and that's particularly the reason why we decided to buy buy back the share of the minority shareholder of this company. And for sure, we see additional opportunity to grow this kind of light banking business elsewhere in the world.
Next question from Mr. Paul Sullivan from Barclays.
A few questions for me. Firstly, in Europe, could you give a sense of the volume face value trends that are underpinning the acceleration you're seeing across the board there? And in terms of client opportunities and the penetrations, especially, you're seeing, the sustainability of that growth into the fourth quarter and into next year and the sort of pipeline opportunities that you're seeing there. Could you also perhaps give us a split from Employee Benefits and FNM growth in Europe too? And then finally, just coming to these sort of M&A. Can you just remind us of your M&A priorities and your financial fire power that you believe you have? And also, if I'm correct, you've never really seen yourself as a technology company per se or seen technology as a USP. But has that changed?
Can you rephrase your last question, Paul?
Just trying to talk about M&A without mentioning Ingenico. I mean, in terms of your -- could you remind us of your M&A priorities and financial fire power? And also you've never really seen yourself as a technology company per se or you've never seen technology as a USP, but has that changed?
Okay. Well, regarding Europe, I think that the main driver for growth is really the innovation. We can bring more and more thanks to our digital platform to the final deal in fact. It creates a difference against competitors. It creates some stickiness with the clients and it can open some doors through user manipulation in the future. But on top of that, we are -- we have quite a good momentum in Europe where overall economics is not that bad in many countries. And in some countries, from a year to another, we may have the opportunity of increasing the segment benefits. So it was the case in 2 countries recently. It was the case in Spain, for an approximate plus 22% and it was the case in Turkey as well recently. Regarding penetration, as you know, we're working a lot on how to increase penetration in the SME segments. This is probably the segments which is most under-penetrated in the market and clearly digital -- digitalization is a clear opportunity to target more and to target better. To take a quite simple example, we're selling a huge -- we're signing a huge amount of contracts with very small companies. [ You believe simply a sound ] solution, for instance, which was clearly not the case in the past. So all the efforts, we're doing in that way. All the best practices we can [indiscernible] using more and more common solutions throughout the world makes us quite confident about the fact that this trend should continue. And on top of that, let me remind you the fact that in Brazil, we're very happy with the the contract -- the distribution contract we have seen essentially with Itau. Itau will be -- it would be a big opportunity for us to target better the small and medium enterprises in these very large countries like Brazil, especially to the fact that we'll have access through this partnership, to the capillary banking network of this big institution in Brazil, in fact. Regarding where does the growth come from in Europe? Employee Benefits we are -- we did more than double-digit growth in Q3, which is above our guidances. And this came from many countries that, especially, the big ones, France and Italy. And this is really, mainly explained by the 2 factors I've mentioned before, i.e. innovation in our products, meaning digitalization -- growing digitalization especially and better targeting of the SME segments. Regarding Fleet & Mobility, we have also positive EBIT growth at UTA. And we're very pleased with the fact that we're -- the integration of UTA and the commercial efforts that are -- starts paying off especially they are extending their network in part of fewer. And then, we are more and more developing Light Fleet solutions, using the UTA network but using as well the other access to local networks that they have in different countries. And clearly the fact that we can on the one hand, benefit from the UTAs know-how, the UTA network but on top of that the commercial strength we have in the legacy Edenred subsidiaries in many countries in Europe is a huge opportunity. Regarding M&A, what I'd like to remind you is that we've seen that the overall fire power of the company is between EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion depending, of course, of the companies we may acquire. We may continue to make some bolt-on acquisitions in order to gain market share locally in the Employee Benefits business and this is the reason why we bought Vasa Slovenska in Slovakia and Efectibono in Peru recently. And this is as well the case for Fleet & Mobility and that was particularly the reason why we acquired the Road Account customer portfolio, in Europe, mostly in Germany and Austria. In the fast growing multi-local and fragmented Fleet & Mobility markets, we may look at a more sizable acquisition, like we did in the past with Embratec in Brazil and VPA in Europe and there is probably some opportunity in that field. It's difficult to expect the fact that for sure, we'll make such an acquisition every year, but what I can tell you is that we are looking at many opportunities in Fleet & Mobility. And then regarding corporate payments, as I just said before, we now better understand this market. And we may confirm that we have some interesting expansion in this business line. All in all, regarding technology, the truth is that we are a technological company. We're a payment company. We want to continue to grow in specific ecosystems when we do not want to become a general purpose payment company. We want to continue to create added value in 5 dedicated ecosystems when we come to think of the operation because [ we believe in the know-how ] of the company, [ filtering ] meaning respecting some local rules, some local laws like in the case for employee benefits in order to benefit from a tax-cut general, but obviously the country is considered in that case or when it comes to fleet up the operation because it is a decision made by the client like in the case that you Fleet and mobility when the objective consists of directing the operation and selected member of [ the association, for instance ].
That is very helpful. And just following up, your firepower -- in terms of your firepower comment, the EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion, for the right deal, would you be prepared to issue equity?
In fact, my feeling about that is that we can further leverage the balance sheet of the company. What's important for us is to keep an investment grade rating from Standard & Poor's. So how do you get that, without acquiring any additional EBITDA, which is of course theoretical. We can easily put on the table, let's say, EUR 800 million that when it comes, of course, like why existing companies have a certain level of profitability, using the average multiple we use when it comes to make an acquisition in our historical business lines. We cannot make that by integrating additional EBITDA, the firepower one more time could grow to EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion, depending on the quality and the profitability of the acquired company. This is done without additional equity. Additional equity could be a further opportunity. But we may consider that only for transforming deals.
Next question from Mr. Julien Richer from Kepler.
Two questions from me, please. The first one, I would like to have your view on the take-up rate evolution for the Employee Benefits segment. If we look to further penetration on this in Europe, is it fair to expect the take-up rate in Europe to continue to improve slightly and with the recovery of Brazil to have a positive geographical mix impact? And second question on financial revenue. Do you still expect financial revenue to bottom in 2018 and to have something flat in '19 and beyond?
Thank you, Julien. Well regarding take-up rate for the Employee Benefits, as you know, it is a very important objective for us [indiscernible] and even improving the take-up rate in the future. You've see what we have succeeded in doing in 2017 -- in 2016 and in 2017 we had another slight increase in take-up rate for Employee Benefits. Of course, the fact of sending innovative products, quickly added value services for the type of clients, will definitely help us in increasing the take-up rate, especially because on top of the traditional commission we can get from the clients, we may increase the commission that we get from the merchant. In case we succeed in demonstrating to them that we are not only a payment lead, but we're really a traffic generator. And in that matter, specifically, what we're -- the business we are growing with the new delivery platform is a very good example of that, in fact. And on top of that, of course, we have a huge opportunity in terms of final user manipulation. We are at the beginning. But all in all, we consider that there is room for improvement. So eventually, we're optimistic about the fact that, yes, we should succeed in increasing the take-up rate. Regarding the fact that in Employee Benefits, Brazil is back, and we feel the positive impact as well because as we previously mentioned we give what we call, mix. As you may understand Brazil remains a very profitable business and it remained a very profitable business even during the crisis. So all in all, the fact that Brazil is moving again in a positive growth territory should have a positive impact on the average Employee Benefits take-up rate. Total income. Well, we had a very strong negative impact in what we call the financial revenue in fact in 2018. As I said before, my best view is that the difference between 2018 and 2017 should not be higher in H2 than in H1 in 2018. And I'm convinced that we are at the bottom block of the other financial revenue. Having said that, let me remind you that this revenue is explained by the investment interest that we get on the floats, which is managed in Europe and this represents the force of the overall floats. We have seen very, very negative territory and it will take some time to ramp up the interest, we can get this money even if the float itself continues to grow quite easily in Europe, in fact. So we have a user base, with interest that remains very, very low. We don't pay negative interest on that, but it has remained very low for some time now. And then on top of that, the rest is mainly explained by the floats managed in Brazil and in Mexico. We're benefiting from a very high interest rate for the moment. In fact, I suspect that this will remain the case in the next couple of years. But of course, this is a negative impact.
Thank you. Just one additional one, when we look to digitization in Europe, especially, do you see any change in regulation going forward in France or Italy, for example, that will accelerate the digitization path in the region?
Unfortunately, we don't see that trend for the time being. We would love to have so, but we don't participate in any major change in that manner.
Next question from Najet El Kassir from Berenberg.
Just 2 questions please for me. The first one is if you can provide a breakdown of the like-for-like in Europe, i.e, by new solution, new clients and new geography? And then, secondly, could you please quantify the Fleet & Mobility growth in Brazil?
Well, regarding like-for-like growth in Europe, we've no impact, or almost no impact in terms of geography. We've just opened up the Moldavian operation but it's very, very small for the time being. So let's say it's completely insignificant. Clearly, the most important drivers and it's -- I can attempt to give some averages to you. The net impact comes from innovation and the fact that we're selling new positions to small and medium enterprises we can manage. We have well succeeding in selling to large companies that we can move from existing solutions, not especially in new ventures because we can do the same thing to the card. Let me remind you that was partly the fact with SNCF last year, for instance. So client wins is probably the most important driver. And then, like I said before, we are also benefiting from local increases in size [ venue ], like it was the case in Turkey and Spain because we arrived in countries last year such as Romania where there was currency impact. Let me tell you as well we've had very good performance and when I've mentioned previously that we're more and more innovative, this means that we don't need to bring additional value -- added value services to the legacy [indiscernible] as well quickly in the market new Employee Benefits solutions. And Welfare is a very good example in terms of impact, the ramp-up of welfare is quite a strong impact. Mobility, in Brazil. Well, Fleet & Mobility in Brazil, you will remember that we invested a lot, especially, when we make the [indiscernible] in 2016 because we consider that Brazilian market gives an [indiscernible] market. And on top of that, we're convinced that the kind of solutions we are selling to the clients are then better managing their fleet costs. And then during the crisis, the crisis effects [ by Brazil ] over the last couple of years in fact. So the fact is that we've succeeded. we've seen regularly double-digit growth in Brazil. But for the case 2016, 2017 and that was the case in Q3 2018 especially. No big difference with what we've seen in the last couple of calls.
Just to follow up. It seems like oil price, the gasoline price, average price in Brazil has increased by 20% year-on-year. Should you assume 20% like-for-like growth in your Fuel & Mobility solution in Brazil region?
So I cannot disclose this kind of information. Clearly in Brazil, we're somewhat more exposed to the fuel price than in other parts of the world. UTA, for instance, in Europe is very less dependent on the fuel price. So the fact that the fuel price did, increase quite a lot in Brazil has created good momentum for us. Having said that, it's very difficult to give you a single figure because you know that we are present in the 2 segments of the market in Brazil. Light fleet, when we're #1 and heavy fleet when we're #2. And at least for heavy fleet, for instance, the trucks are not choosing 1 single oil in fact. So they use diesel or they use local fuel in fact. But overall, yes, we're quite exposed to the fuel price in Brazil and very positive impact recorded in the growth, [ especially in the business in Brazil ].
Thank you. We don't have any more questions. Back to you for the conclusions, sir.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your attention. Maybe, just a few words in conclusion. This Q3 was really strong. Edenred accelerated again its growth in all business lines, paving the way for a new record year. Despite [indiscernible] business in Q3, effects we are confident to post robust growth in Q4, which is an important quarter for our business with big seasonality especially. We're pleased to confirm our 2018 EBIT guidance between EUR 440 million and EUR 470 million. And as you understand, in fact for our strategy is taking off and providing growth company. As such, we work daily to push acceleration always on the edge of competition and we are continuously investing in our global technology platform to empower our ecosystem and doing more than [ new to every other stakeholder ]. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.