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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's Worldline Q1 2019 Revenue Call. [Operator Instructions] I must advise you the conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, the 24th of April 2019. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gilles Grapinet, CEO of the company. Thank you very much. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. This is Gilles Grapinet speaking. Thank you for attending the Worldline conference call today on the first quarter 2019 revenue. I'm going to share this presentation as usual with Marc-Henri Desportes, Deputy CEO; and with Eric Heurtaux, our group CFO. I would start by commenting some highlights of the quarter, then Eric will develop more in detail the revenue performance for Q1. After Eric, Marc-Henri would take the floor to present to you the first quarter commercial developments and the focus on the SIX Payment Services integration and some of our latest market offerings. Finally, I will come back to conclude before starting our Q&A session. Let me first start by underlining our revenue for the first quarter, which was EUR 516 million, which is an organic growth of plus 6.2% at constant scope and exchange rate, fully in line with our objectives for the full year. And it is also one of our very best start of the year since Worldline was IPO-ed in June 2014. Our business momentum is indeed particularly solid with a very strong dynamic of the Commercial Acquiring business in all our countries, in particular for online and e-Payment transactions. I'm pleased also to report that many, many business units have been posting double-digit growth rates this quarter and that we have a real and demonstrated market appetite for our latest innovative offers. Regarding the ongoing transformative merger with SIX Payment Services, integration and synergy plan are progressing extremely well, as Marc-Henri would explain in more detail to you in a minute. Lastly, I am particularly also happy to report that the Atos announcement to deconsolidate Worldline has been very well received by the markets and stakeholders of the payment ecosystem all across Europe. All activities have, of course, started immediately to make Worldline fully stand-alone in the coming quarters from a governance and operational standpoint. This announcement comes absolutely at the right moment to enable Worldline to be fully ready for the second wave of consolidation of payments in Europe, with a greater flexibility to shape M&A transaction structure. With such a solid start of the year fully in line with our objective, we are, of course, in a position to fully confirm the 2019 guidance. The group expects to achieve an organic growth of its revenue at constant scope and exchange rates of between 6% to 8%. In terms of profitability targets, we want to achieve an OMDA margin between 24.8% and 25.8%. And for cash generation, the group has the ambition to generate a free cash flow comprised between EUR 275 million and EUR 290 million, including synergy implementation costs, as you know. Thank you very much. Now, Eric, the floor is yours to comment further on the revenue of this very good quarter.
Thank you, Gilles, and good evening to all of you. Let's start as usual by the main reconciliation items between Q1 2018 reported revenue and Q1 2019 revenue at constant scope and exchange rate. The scope effect of EUR 134.7 million corresponds to the addition of SIX Payment Services revenue for Q1 2018. The amount presented in the exchange rate column correspond mainly to the depreciation of the Argentinian peso, partly compensated by the appreciation of the Swiss Franc. On a comparable basis at constant scope and exchange rate, the revenue for Q1 2018 is at EUR 527.1 million, which is the basis for the analysis of the group's organic performance this quarter. The table on this slide shows the organic growth for the group and for each Global Business Line. Revenue was EUR 559.6 million, representing an organic growth of 6.2% at constant scope and exchange rate compared with the first quarter of 2018. All 3 global business lines contributed to the revenue growth as I will detail on the following slide. In terms of group profile, revenue breakdown for Q1 perfectly represents the new profile of the group after its merger with SIX Payment Services. Merchant Services is now the largest Global Business Line, with more than 45% of the total revenue, followed by Financial Services close to 40% and Mobility & e-Transactional Services with 15%. Let's now move to the review of the operational performance per GBL in more detail. Merchant Services revenue for the quarter reached EUR 261.8 million, improving by EUR 11 million or 4.4% organically, compared to Q1 last year and accelerating after Q4 2018. Merchant Payment Services grew mid-single digits supported by a high single-digit growth in Commercial Acquiring in continental Europe, thanks to higher volume, better sales mix and the success of very specialized market offering as well as solid double-digit growth in online acquiring production volumes. These good performances were nevertheless partly offset by a decrease of Payment Terminal revenue, indeed, despite the product momentum of the new product, the European market remained soft. However, we remain confident in the potential of our new products. Merchant digital services were nearly stable with good volumes increase in Iberia and Benelux in digital retail offset by lower sales of projects in digital kiosks in the U.K. Overall, Merchant Services Q1 organic growth remained strong with good business trends in Commercial Acquiring and omnichannel payment acceptance, revenue organic growth exceeded 7.5%, excluding Payment Terminals, completely in line with Q4 trends, which reflects the fast setup of the new organization and the very intense integration work with SIX Payment Services, the strong growth in the geography where we have high market share as well as in the others, the success of our new vertical market offers which demonstrated that size and quality of the Atos portfolio can help gain market share, as Marc-Henri will explain to you. Moving to Financial Services. Revenue reached EUR 213.2 million, improving organically by EUR 10.8 million or 5.3%. Revenue in the issuing processing division grew high single digit driven by continuous increase of strong authentication transactions and a good project activity. The former SIX Payment Services entities also contributed to this growth. Revenue in account payments were double digit compared to Q1 last year benefiting from good SEPA payment transaction volumes in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands; from the continued growth, 26% volume growth on the Dutch iDeal scheme; from PSD2 and Instant Payment contracts and further onset of the Commerzbank contract. Digital Banking revenue grew strongly as well with vertically double-digit growth, thanks to higher revenue in France, Belgium and Central Europe. Growth was nonetheless partly mitigated by lower acquiring positive revenue due to a high comparison basis in Q1 last year where particularly high project activity was recorded. Overall, we start the year in Financial Services as last year, well in line with our anticipation while absorbing the usual pricing and position impact that we have at the start of the period before getting the benefit of the volume increases. Increased project activity and new contracts should reinforce this growth over the year. We are reporting also very good results this quarter for Mobility & e-Transactional Services with revenue reaching EUR 84.6 million, improving organically by EUR 10.8 million or 14.6% compared to last year, completely in line with Q4 last year and with all 3 business units posting solid double-digit growth this quarter. The strongest contributor to growth were e-Consumer & Mobility, mainly thanks to the continuous increase of contract contact and to 1 last contract renewal for a major service provider. Growth in e-Ticketing was supported by the start of the new Smart Navigo program and by transactional and project revenue related to implementation of the open payment set to use solutions in various French cities. Latin America also contributed to growth. Lastly, Trusted Digitization benefited from the strong momentum with various French government agencies and the ramp-up of contracts aiming at securing profitability and payments of excise of tobacco products. To conclude my presentation, I would like to explain to you the way we are managing the forthcoming distribution of Worldline shares by Atos. As a reminder, Atos will distribute 2 Worldline shares for every 5 Atos shares owned. In coordination with Atos, we are [ via ] 3 banks will advise us and facilitate the education of potential new investors in Worldline. In particular, our adviser asked us to identify top potential sellers, such as index fund, to invest on Atos shareholders interest in holding the Worldline shares they receive and to identify further potential buyers interested in building new position in Worldline or strengthening existing ones. In this respect, we already received numerous meeting requests from long-only funds attracted by the increase of the liquidity of the share. Starting today, we will launch a comprehensive roadshow program across Europe and the U.S. to meet the investors that have been targeted or having already expressed their interest for a meeting. I am also pleased to share with you that the MSCI has officially announced that Worldline should satisfy the size and liquidity criteria to be immediately added to the mid-cap segment to the MSCI Global Standard indexes, which would create significant flows forward at the time of the distribution. Thank you very much for your attention, and I now leave the floor to Marc-Henri for his presentation of the operational performance for Q1.
Thank you, Eric, and good evening to you all. I will start this presentation with a few words about the excellent start of the SPS integration. We already shared with you that the first day start with the new organization in place was in itself a success. After now a full quarter of solid joint work we can observe as the newly formed team works smoothly and seamlessly together. We did prove that we are able to enter intense integration program in parallel with solid delivery of business results using the Worldline processes and more and more office internal tools. Our integration tracks our operational, and we are already progressing very well on all of KPIs strengthening the achievement of the synergies. To go beyond the usual number reporting, I share here some qualitative results that show that business actions are materializing well. First is the 2019 product portfolio rationalization is already behind us and securing the related synergies. Second, Saferpay e-commerce solution, the former SPS solution for SMEs, was launched in Belgium and Netherlands with our first customer win. Third, a major new 3D Secure/ACS contract was secured in Switzerland and Austria. And fourth, the combined product road map in commercial acquiring was defined and put on tracks. You may remember that the major part of equensWorldline synergies was related to IT delivery optimization and sovereign near-shoring. All of this is applied for the integration of SIX Payment Services as well. We first impact secured, of which is for us low-hanging fruits. Finally, we did not wait to start working on the co-platform conversions as the joined teams are created and operational. All these elements secured by our tight and comprehensive integration monitoring allow us to fully confirm the circa EUR 110 million OMDA savings targets in 2022, of which circa 25% to be delivered this year in 2019. Let me now comment some of the key deals and achievements during the first quarter, and let me start with Merchant Services. First, it is a very good signal that we start the year with plus 12% growth in acquired transactions, which is very good, with a very good contribution of the former SIX Payment Services geographies and markets and overall growth in all of our geographies. Even if it's a business with hundreds of thousands of customers, I would like to highlight here some particularly representative deals of the quarter. The top 1 is that we signed the e-commerce Pan-European commercial acquiring contract with American Express Global Business Travel covering 16 European countries plus Hong Kong. It's a 3-years contract and this contract, I think, is a very good proof point of the quality of our multi-country offer and of the global reach of our e-comm services. We also signed large contract with a Swedish company, Speed Services, to equip photo booth, lockers, vending and ticketing machines showing that our bet on the vending machine business is materializing well. And then we also started to materialize revenue synergies with SIX Payment Services who, at payment collecting solution developed with Citibank and equensWorldline for Shell in Germany to handle the payment its retail network without having for Shell to get a payment license. Let me now switch to Financial Services. So there, beyond sustained volumes, in particular, are in new payments. We experienced an intense activity to adapt to the new PSD2 online security requirement. As you know, that in September of '19, it is an important deadline here with the new rules on phone customer authentication entering into force. On top of the delivery of previously signed business, we did register the signature of a large contract for online payment dual-factor authentication with a large organization in the DACH region. We also sold our fraud management solution to one of the largest Nordic banks, continuing our development in this region. And we won as well several new contracts with PSD2-compliant third-party providers to develop account information services and payment initiation services. Beyond the wins of the quarter in Financial Services, it is important to note that the discussion of strategic deal in this division is developing well on the back of the Commerzbank success. For MeTS. In e-Ticketing, 2 new Open Payment contracts were signed in France. And that evidence the good momentum of our Tap-2-Use product suit. We won the bid of the mobility pass combining public transport, car sharing and biking. We also won the bid of a new Open Payment service for shuttle buses connecting airports to cities and town. In the field of Trusted Digitization, Worldline Track & Trace solution continued its very successful journey and was retained by 4 governments in the frame of the European Tobacco Directive to enable the correct collection of payment and excises of tax. We also renewed 2 Issuing Processing contracts for major German health insurance cards. In general, MeTS is experiencing a very solid growth in Q1, but even more important, from my point of view, this growth is primarily driven by the ramp-up of previous year's project around our core assets with more and more reuse and focus on the key solutions, which is important for the improvement of the profitability. Now as Merchant Services is now our largest business line after SPS acquisition, I would like to highlight an important work of reorganization and the refocus we did as part of the SPS integration. After a review of the strengths of both SPS and Worldline market positions including of course our unique European coverage of physical acceptance and the potential of combining our Merchant Solutions and product portfolio, we decided to bring all our major customers under the steer of 1 global sales teams organized and focused on 6 global verticals in order to better match our offerings with those of customers and -- with customers' global needs and expectations. For each of these verticals, we have grouped our sales resource under 1 strong leader, defined our core value proposition and selected our global solutions, all this in sync with our current portfolio and investment road maps. Let me take 2 examples to make it clear. For petrol, we are able to provide one-stop-shop solution from the fuel pump integration to the ending of specific payment solutions like a month reservation depending on global and local schemes, down to the ending of international fuel cards or delivering fully integrated mobile wallet applications. We are also able to advise our customer on the best solution to optimize their financials, thanks to specialized data analysis consulting. In fact, as an example of hospitality vertical where we benefit from the very strong market and products offering of the former SIX Payment Services in physical acceptance including the rich portfolio of integrations with partner solutions. And this is combined with the Worldline online offerings best threads for international schemes own dynamic currency conversion solutions and broad offerings of travelers' languages and currencies. This vertical is really best positioned to meet the needs of the global hospitality companies and continue on the wins we're experiencing during the previous months. In summary, by putting together our key account experts and industry verticals specialists in the core global teams, we are definitely creating a strong growth platforms to increase our share of the global customer payment needs and boost our future revenue acceleration. I will now give the floor back to Gilles for the conclusion.
Thank you very much, Marc-Henri, and let me now present to you the key takeaway of this quarter, one of our very best ever. Indeed, we are at the start of the year fully in line for our -- all our 3 business lines, which are themselves, each of them, very well in motion throughout the expected acceleration through the year, notably thanks to solid double-digit performances in many of our business units. Consequently, we confirm all our full year 2019 objectives. Then, as Marc-Henri showed, the integration of SIX Payment Services is perfectly on track with already first tangible results in terms of cost optimization, but also maybe even more importantly commercial synergies. Of course, over the past 3 months, we have actively prepared the company for its newcoming stand-alone status with the design of a reshaped governance including the proposed appointment of the new independent board members to replace the reduction of the 1 representing Atos, with also the setup of the Atos Worldline alliance on an online basis to foster sales, R&D, HR and procurement synergies between the 2 group after the separation. And with the preparation of the reinforced company, ourselves, notably on the support function and corporate IT systems. With all that in hand and given the very fast transformation of the European and global payment industry, M&A and European consolidation is more than ever the top priority focus for Worldline management team for the quarters to come, supported of course by the post-separation increased strategic flexibility and full financial autonomy of the company. And thanks to the major evolution decided by Atos, Worldline is more than ever at the center of this consolidation momentum. Last, we are eager with Marc-Henri and Eric to start interacting with many new investors that have expressed a high level of interest for our story, thanks to the increased liquidity. And we thank you all in advance for contributing to this investor and market education regarding Worldline, the market potential and its expertise. Thank you very much for your attention, and I am now ready with the team to take your questions.
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Gerardus Vos of Barclays.
A couple of questions. First of all, on the AMEX contract. Congratulations on the win there. Could you help me a bit on sizing that? And then how that -- how are you going to, kind of, onboard that over time? Then secondly, on the terminals. I thought the terminals were doing around 120 million plus or so per annum, and I calculated that the impact worsened throughout Q1. I thought there was already an easy comp in Q1 last year on my kind of number. So I was wondering if you could kind of help me understand why this business continues to weaken sequentially. And then finally, just clarification. How big is online now for the MS business? And then what is the growth in that business?
Gerardus, thanks for the question. Maybe Marc-Henri will give you some more colors regarding the AMEX contract, but as you know, these things are covered by commercial confidentiality and...
Yes. I'm not in a position to give a specific number on the contract. As usual, in this domain, there is a progressive ramp-up, but you know the business of Merchant Services is based on the large number of contracts that are contributing to the overall group momentum. So bear in mind that it is part of our more global activity on these sort of contract, so no numbers to be given on this specific one. On the terminals numbers just, I think maybe, Eric, you can emphasize one thing.
Yes, sure. So indeed, our terminal business represent the largest part of our Merchant Services. We are not, as you've seen, on the Commercial Acquiring, as you know. This being said, it's true to say that we are in the low range of our expectation for the terminal business for this Q1, still penalized by the soft European market that is not probably a surprise for almost a few as it's a market trend. You know most of our outfit are in Europe for one end of the world and for MS in terminals in particular. So we do believe that we are now at the kind of weak point and we do not believe that the situation should worsen again. We have more ambitious -- ambition for the future with our new products picking up, you know our new online-based products [ bear in mind ] and [ new me ] that will progressively support the better perfectly for this subdivision.
Gerardus, if I'm correct your third question was about the size of the online?
Yes. The online business in the -- within MS. Yes.
So what we usually comment on this is that it represents something like a 15-plus percent of our revenue. So it obviously is growing faster than the rest of the MS business, which is...
10% on this quarter, that is the order of magnitude.
Of the growth rate. Yes, indeed, Marc-Henri. So more and more, this online business is taking a bigger share of the Merchant Services.
It's a positive momentum, but more important to me, is the pipe will be it with the global sales team and the recent signature I mentioned, AMEX, and they are others that we're not in a position to give names about it right now. Very also confident that the accelerations towards the year on this 3-year plan is indeed backed by this momentum of pipe and commercial developments. This is a visibility that we get now in particular with the combination of physical acceptance and the online capability that was also was in particularly achieved to big names such as AMEX is now making a difference and attracting much more attention from the customer. So this is the number we intend to grow and the one that's just given by Eric.
Your next question comes from the line of Hannes Leitner of UBS London.
I got also a couple of questions. The first question is are there any restrictions in place by the current shareholders in terms of potential dilution by entering another shared capital increase similar structure than SIX? And then regarding the financial services, could you elaborate on the ramp-up of the Commerzbank deal and as Q1 performance was slightly lower than last year and you are facing now some sort of tougher comps? And lastly, in terms of the terminal business, do you expect that you can be positive contribution -- achieve a positive contribution for the full year as you are facing now easier comps in the remaining quarters?
I will take the first one. I guess Marc-Henri and Eric maybe can comment on the second one regarding in the Commerzbank. And more generally, I understand that the profile of FS over the year and also Eric maybe the third one I believe you can take it.
Yes, on the terminal?
Yes. So on the first one, I mean I thought I made very clear that, one, the distribution will have been approved by the general meeting of their shareholders, then the participation within Worldline will be treated as a financial investment. And to a certain extent in the same way than our shareholders also for -- from SIX group have been looking at shaping the transaction. So there is no particular upfront limitation to replicating a SIX-type of deal structure moving forward. As a matter of fact, I believe this one has been resonating extremely well in the European payment ecosystem. If I judged by the numerous interactions, we've been around the transaction with many participants. It will be judged only on the merit of the financial value creation by all our shareholders and for all our shareholders and there is, I believe, nothing else to say. It is really, a real new strategic flexibility the fact that Atos is -- has decided that the consolidation was no longer a must-have for them and that consequently reopening, indeed, this phenomenal possibility for us to shape equity deal if there is enough value-creation thanks to what we can do with this payment assets on our bigger platform. Maybe Marc-Henri?
Yes. On the Commerzbank, it's really evolving as far as planned. The first step was really to transition the application management of the former systems of Commerzbank from the bank to us, and this is behind us. So, this is done, and we are now in control and now we are setting up the new target platforms in particular for the eastern payments. And this is a work which will be spreading beyond the end of this year as well, and we progressively ramping up the volume of the target platform. So we are in line. That is, of course, part of the visibility we have on the business this year and part of the element that makes us confident that financial services should develop well and grows at 5% as we shared in this year's Investor Day and so that's overall the situation of Commerzbank. Regarding the terminals, it is, as Eric say now, we are facing -- bear in mind that we are observed working for the vast majority in the EMEA and in Europe, in particular, selling more directly to merchants and the market is soft and as I said, more in the low range of our expectations. Our new products are developing well so that makes us more confident toward the stabilization in the future. I think it's a bit soon to say about the positive contributions for the full year.
But indeed, you're right as the comp will become easier down the year due to the performance of last year. That's for sure.
That's a fact.
[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Tammy Qiu of Berenberg.
So firstly, you mentioned a lot of your PSD2 opportunity. I'm just wondering, you know, as we move closer to the deadline of September, do you have any early indication about how big from a revenue or from TAM perspective the opportunities can bring you? And also, the follow-up is on the margin for Merchant Services because you are now seeing more e-commerce business, which potentially going to be higher margin compared to offline business. Should we actually expect a positive movement from a margin perspective for the Merchant Services going forward?
Hello, Tammy. I believe -- thank you, Tammy. Maybe I can say a few words, not very numerical, but I think it's right what you say that on the PSD2, there'll be in particular for the element of strong customer authentication where there are some compulsory rules that will come into force at -- from the autumn. We expect this to sustain revenue developments. How fast exactly it will be? It will largely depend not only on the bank's compliance, but also on the merchant's readiness. It's important that all participants, meaning schemes, [Foreign Language], maintains the deadline so that we have the proper impact. For the moment, it seems to be the case in France, in some other geographies it's a bit more a question like it could be a more distributed ramp up, so we think it will be something that you will see in our revenues, but we are not in a position to give a precise growth curve for this events starting after September 2019. The rest of the activity around account initiations, third-party, TPP payments, instant payments, I think yields or volumes are more as a ramp up is a bit more of a question mark, and the project activity is the one that is supporting our top line. So I expect the volumes to come first from the strong authentication requirements. Coming to the margin for Merchant Services, maybe Eric will complement. For sure, the development of online services is a positive in particular when we derive online acquiring from it, but the main contributor onto the Merchant Services margin improvement this year will for sure be the synergy of integrating together our SIX Payment Services activities with our former Worldline activities. And we are talking about a massive merger where the 2 components were of similar size to combine to EUR 1 billion revenue of business. So as I said, combining the road map of project, not duplicating activities, optimizing all the customer services, the proper IT delivery according to a practice, the support function, all this is will be the main margin contributor. I don't know if you had something.
No, definitely, I think that's what we have in our plan. You remember that we have very ambitious margin improvement plan on MS, similar to what we have delivered on FS with -- by the end of the 3-year plan leveraging the synergies, but of course also the mix that you highlighted, to a more online. We should be able to be in the upper part of the 20s percentage points in terms of profitability for this division, which represent a massive improvement.
Okay. And last one. From a mix perspective, based on your current pipeline from online margin in the mix, where should we be thinking about from a percentage contribution perspective going forward based on your current pipeline, i.e., what percentage will your Merchant Services business come from online versus off-line?
So that's a bit of a precise question, Tammy. I would suggest you do yourself the math, leveraging the few data points we provide you. Now we start with circa 15% of our Merchant Services based online. You add to this double-digit growth to this starting point when the rest of the Merchant Services, of the overall Merchant Services will be more in the high single digit. So based on this, you can probably get quite accurately where we should land our online business by the end of our 3-year plan. I'm sorry, I do not provide more precise figure, but with this level of information, you should be able to build your own model and probably David will be able to guide you further if need be.
And your next question comes from the line of [ Nusheen N'Jati ] of Deutsche Bank.
I have 2 quick ones if I may. So first on the backlog. Can you give us some comments of why did your backlog decline? And you have renewed your contract for the issuing processing of 2 -- from the medi and health insurance sides. Do you expect a major renewal cycle to come here in 2019/2020? [indiscernible] upgrades in Germany or is this...
Sorry, but the line is extremely bad. You are breaking up, and it is very, very hard to understand your second question. I understood the first one was related to the backlog I guess. Eric, you can?
Yes.
Was it the backlog and the evolution of the backlog?
Yes, exactly. So the backlog [indiscernible]
Okay. Sorry, really the line is very bad, so maybe, Eric, you can answer from the backlog.
I can answer the question on the backlog. In the meantime, if you can try to be in a quieter location, that will help for the second question. In terms of backlog, I will talk about stability because we have to think here about big figures, like it's EUR 3.4 billion, it's really a stabilization versus the previous quarter, when you're right it was at EUR 3.5 billion going to more rounding depending on the exact level of order entry that had been booked over the quarter. You know that the order entry is very volatile in the -- from the quarter to be aware, so that's why I think we should really look at it as really a stable backlog with a good commercial activity not only highlighted a few deals. True that we did not get any very large deal during this quarter. Hopefully, we'll have more in the coming one, but we are very satisfied with the backlog, which currently represents more than 1.5 year of revenue and which is again very much stable.
Okay. Next question maybe and if you find a quieter place, do not hesitate to come back.
Your next question comes from the line of Vivek Arya of Bank of America. I'm sorry, gentlemen, there is no response from Vivek's line. [Operator Instructions] And we do have the question coming in from Vivek of Bank of America.
It seems like the Mobility & e-Transactional Services have been quite strong. Are there any one-off factors like you mentioned, the contract renewal, or stuff like that? Is there any structural changes in the market which will enable you to grow at faster pace than before for longer period?
Yes. Thank you for the question. Indeed, MeTS has been posting a very strong performance, and it is fundamentally new business but it has nothing to do with particularly renewal. It is really I think the result of a very successful series of investments in a highly specialized market segment but I will let Marc-Henri comment further. But really this is I think the result of a huge transformation of the business, its industrialization and its ability to focus on areas in the market where we have strong synergies between the co-payment activities and the MeTS positioning. Marc-Henri, maybe you can...
No, indeed. A very positive arrangement. As I said is we are seeing here the ramping up of the platform we installed in the previous period that are really sustaining the strong growth we are observing. Of course, we also have some dimension of project activities and -- but overall, this good momentum is -- seems to have a good embedded element sign to it. That being said, our long-term growth expectation as we shared in the Investor Day, it's in the range of 6% to 8%, but of course we are starting the year on a better trend, and we think many of them that have good visibility because as I said, it's [ strong ] activities of long-term contract that we're embedding on the core platforms. So overall, the core offers like that to you as I had mentioned in mixing payments and transportation, all the customer are omnichannel interactions we are deriving for a big organizations into under secure transactions.
Particularly with banks.
Particularly with banks are experiencing good successes and a very good pipe development as well. The Track and Trace solution is really great. And the fact that we are doing that on the core platforms and products is also giving us good visibility on the profitability improvements. So overall, I would say primarily long-lasting entrenched and embedded business more than one-off projects are today in the Q1 results.
[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Antonin Baudry of HSBC.
Yes. Two questions. The first one is about the minority interest in equensWorldline. Is it possible to have an update on what you expect on that in Q2 or Q3 2019, probably the valuation of the production you have and how you will fund your -- what you want to do with this minority interest? The second question is about the M&A. Of course, Worldline appear as, yes, a consolidator in Europe. You did the SIX Payments last year. When do you expect to come back on the M&A level in terms of management time, in terms of your capacity to integrate further acquisitions?
Antonin, thanks for the question. On the first one, I'm going to frustrate you because -- I mean and you know why. All that is, of course, deeply covered by commercial and the usual M&A confidentiality. But let's be very clear, it's an important event for us in 2019 and indeed, it can last -- as per our shareholder agreement there is a process and there are various steps and stages, it can last actually a few months. It will depend on the dynamic of the exercise of this process as per the shareholder agreement. And of course, we are duly prepared to address this important topic in due time and in the full respect of the calendar set forth in our agreement. For the rest, I mean I'm sorry we will come back in front of you in due time when things will have been properly processed. And to your second question, as a matter of, fact let me be very clear. Indeed, SIX Payment Services transaction, and Marc-Henri already mentioned it, is of real magnitude, but, you know, guys, the way we work, and we do exactly what we say. We have been really using at the maximum level of efficiency the time period between the signing and the closing, basically 5 months, to get the company fully ready to start being in execution mode at day 1, at day 1 of the closing. And Marc-Henri had been very clear giving you many examples of the fact that we start already to harvest the fruits of this very thorough and detailed preparation. So for us, let me be very clear. Now it is execution. It takes time. It takes discipline, but fundamentally we know how to do it. On the financial services front, as you know, the equensWorldline integration is largely behind us. What remains are usual stuff that we need to do on the platform and some software migration, nothing of particular complexity. There also just being monitored as we do everything extremely carefully. So long answer in the end to tell you that we are absolutely focusing right now on potential new opportunities and it would be a pity not to do so because, first, the Atos announcement that was made end of January has been having a very powerful resonating impact in the entire European payments ecosystem. It is clearly giving a signal that Worldline is the consolidator of reference for any significant transaction. And of course, it has triggered many, many activities from M&A bankers, from soft parties interested into understanding what could be done in the European payments. So we don't consider at all that we are in any type of standstill. In any case, you know that these deals are complex, they can be long sometime. So basically, we are extremely well positioned to, at the same time, advance properly and securely the integration work while being, of course, fully attentive to capture any potential large-magnitude opportunities that may be available for Worldline in the current very strong consolidation dynamics that we observe everywhere in Europe. So when I say we are the center of the game it is exactly the truth. Worldline is more than ever at the center of the consolidation momentum in Europe.
There are no further questions, sir. Please continue.
Okay, guys. I understand there may be no further questions, which is in all fairness we are grateful for because we are a bit in a rush to get the trains to be available for roadshows. So thank you again for having been with us tonight. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Looking forward for all that you can do to actually help us to communicate the story to the wider market. It is for us an important mobilization in the coming weeks. We want really to make sure that everyone has got clear and crisp the Worldline story, and of course, looking forward, our next interaction. Thank you, guys. Bye.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Would the speakers please stand by?