© 2024 Alpha Spread Limited. All Rights Reserved.
www.alphaspread.com is not operated by a broker, a dealer, or a registered investment adviser. Under no circumstances does any information posted on www.alphaspread.com represent a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The information on this site, and in its related newsletters, is not intended to be, nor does it constitute, investment advice or recommendations. The information on this site is in no way guaranteed for completeness, accuracy or in any other way. In no event shall Alpha Spread Limited be liable to any member, guest or third party for any damages of any kind arising out of the use of any content or other material published or available on www.alphaspread.com, or relating to the use of, or inability to use, www.alphaspread.com or any content, including, without limitation, any investment losses, lost profits, lost opportunity, special, incidental, indirect, consequential or punitive damages. Past performance is a poor indicator of future performance.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Intrinsic Value is all-important and is the only logical way to evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
[Audio Gap]
on having a greater impact. And this is all more remarkable that we achieved this in light of, let's call it, additional competition in the country. Now we have great prices, but it's also good to make it easier for consumers to discover those great prices. We launched a tag called Super Cena, which greatly helps consumers find one of the best prices on the website, and we see that it's got a great uptick in the consumer engagement.
Moving to delivery experience on Page 8. So as you recall, we first and foremost focus on using data and software and AI to continuously improve the delivery experience using third-party means, whether it's sellers and carriers. And we're able to sequentially improve the quality of our delivery through such tools, 8 percentage points year-on-year.
Now we also invest in assets, whether it's fulfillment, whether it's own networks. And this targets both adding revenue from the services we provide to sellers but also increase the GMV from the increased conversion provided from faster delivery. And those investments are well on track.
Moving to SMART!. SMART! is nearly -- Page 9. SMART! is nearly 3 years ago -- will be 3 years old. It's -- it will be 3 years in August. And here, we see a continued penetration not only of the Allegro consumer base but also of the Polish population. The great innovation we did in Q1 is the launch of Smart! na Start, SMART! for starters. And very simply, this is a program that is targeted to lower-engaged customers, the type of customers that think subscribing to SMART!, they don't shop enough yet. This is 5 free deliveries for -- that you can use for a year, absolutely no cost. And we've seen a great result in terms of customers trialing this that had not trialed SMART! before and already great conversion from those sellers to paid SMART!.
We also continue to improve the program, the overall SMART! program. What we did in Q1 is focus on improvement on the consumers that are less interested in using pickup and lockers. So we lowered the MOV from EUR 100 to EUR 80. That's about EUR 20. And we also announced that we'll raise to nearly 100% the coverage of courier option on the platform, again, making SMART! as easy to use for courier users than it has been for pickup and lockers.
Lastly, with SMART! growing fast, reaching more consumers, sellers using it to drive increased GMV, we've started monetizing SMART! a little bit. We launched co-financing on lockers. And that allows us to continue to improve the economics of SMART! over time. And we'll cover that, obviously, also on the financials.
Moving to consumer experience and user experience on Slide 10. So we continue to do improvements across the platform. In Q1, we did sequential improvements on the mobile application. We also did sequential improvements in payments. All of these drive conversion uptick, and we reached record conversions in Q1. And when you do all of those improvements on the platform, it's great to see it being recognized by customers. We received for the fourth time running the Customer Service Award. And we see our NPS at over 77, also at record high and also, as you recall, here at the top of the global brands globally, not only Polish scores.
Let's move to monetization on Page 11. So here, we see advertising revenues growing quite a bit faster than marketplace revenues. And this is driven by the investment we've done in ad tech. So as a result, we see more and more merchants using our advertising services. And they also get a better and better ROI as we've improved through machine learning algorithm how we target those advertisements. So in short, it converts more for the sellers, and we can monetize it better, and it also provides more GMV.
If you recall at the time of the IPO, we were at about 0.7, 0.8 advertising revenue out of GMV. It was kind of the North Star aspiration based on what other platforms achieved to be at about 2%. We're well on track on this with over 1% in Q1, and there's still a lot in the road map in ad tech.
Moving to one of the key launch in Q1, our -- the launch of our B2B platform. The B2B platform is targeted to business buyers. And it aims to provide the number of services that B2B buyers ask for. Those things are net pricing, quality-based discount, bulk deliveries.
Delayed payments.
Delayed payments. Thanks, Jon. I always forget 1 or 2. And what we see here after launching the platform is not only that sellers are adopting those additional tools and features, and it drives an uptick in the buyers using the platform and the engagement. So the amount they spend as a result. So not only the quantum but also the amount each spend. As a result, we've seen an increased GMV acceleration beyond what the core platform grows at.
Moving to Allegro Pay. So here, the scale of the ramp-up of our FinTech business is quite outstanding. We're well in the way of achieving our 2021 growth targets. And we see quarter-on-quarter outstanding progress, both in the loan originated and the loans outstanding. And equally, if not more importantly, this product will be universal by -- during the course of the year.
In terms of ESG, as you know, Allegro is a company that cares deeply about its environment and the stakeholders around us. And here, the 3 developments in Q1 is we joined the UN Global Compact. And here is -- it's a network of tens of thousands of businesses that align on 10 core principles, which we're already aligned on even before we joined the UN Global Compact. But this is to help innovating on those areas. One of the key examples from Q1 is we launched our sustainable packaging for sellers, for example.
If you're not in Poland, you may not have heard of The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity Foundation. This is by far the largest annual fundraising event. And here again, we used the scale of our platform to help deliver more on those projects. We raised over PLN 30 million over Q4 and Q1.
And in terms of charitable donations, I think notably in the current environment, it's key that we find very nimble ways to help, again, the stakeholders around us. At the moment, obviously, the health services need specific help. So where we can help, our nimbleness can make a difference. We use, obviously, our team but also our financial resources to help. We donated PLN 2.5 million in Q1.
I think, that's -- for me, that's all. I'll come back for the summary. Jon, all to you. Thanks.
So thank you very much, Francois, and once again, good morning to everybody. We just had an amazing amount of activity going on in the business. I'm going to take you through how that translates into what is a really strong, really promising set of financial results.
And as usual, I'll start with active buyers and spend per active buyer. Just a reminder, these are both last 12-month metrics that we use. And obviously, what really stands out here is the increased engagement and the increased spending per active buyer. It's up 38.9% year-on-year. We're now standing at Q1 level of almost PLN 2,900 per buyer. And that's really reflecting that really strong execution across the retail basics and also the increased penetration of SMART!, sequentially bringing in more active and more engaged buyers onto the platform. When it comes to active buyers, another good quarter or up to 13.2 million active buyers. That 13.4% growth rate is much higher than it was if you go back looking a couple of years into the past history.
So putting that together and we look at our GMV performance. We grew in the first quarter by 46%, and we're now with a PLN 9.6 billion Q1 GMV result. When I look at that number, I think it's -- I think it pays to think back to the way we were looking at our growth at the time of the IPO when that COVID uncertainties were even more prominent than they are now. And to look between the baseline of 2019 performance and what we might do in 2021, we were looking at CAGR measures across those 2 years. And if you recall, we were targeting, at the time of the IPO, a 30% CAGR from '19 through to 2021. Now what you see with that PLN 9.6 billion and that 46% growth rate is actually a CAGR of 40% across the 2 years. So strongly ahead of what we were predicting earlier.
And even I think more interesting is that we have provided current trading update. We've shown -- we're disclosing our April performance where we were up against much stronger prior comparatives or much more challenging comparatives than at the beginning of the first quarter. 85% growth this time last year because of lockdown-related issues and because of the free SMART! that we were offering at the time. We actually managed to grow. We grew high single digits. And that also translates on a CAGR basis into 40% growth year-on-year. So that is, on my view and in the team's view, a really promising result looking forward into the second quarter.
Now in terms of what's been happening with COVID just briefly. Unfortunately, the first quarter was by far the worst we've seen in terms of the impact of the pandemic. That did lead to a tailwind at the beginning of the quarter because there were further lockdowns in -- of shopping malls. But as I just described, as we got to the end of the quarter, we started to hit last year's impacts and much stronger lockdown and the impact of the free SMART! for everybody that we did during Q2. And that's now turned into quite a strong headwind for us going forward. Vaccinations are increasing very quickly. Warmer weather is finally arriving. And we're planning for a pretty normal H2, and we're really hoping that there won't be any need for any further lockdowns on the retail industry going forward.
When it comes to revenue, obviously, the standout financial result for the quarter, that 61% year-on-year growth in revenue. It brings us to PLN 1.2 billion, PLN 1.21 billion of revenue in the first quarter. As you've heard, that's partly coming from a really standout performance in advertising, 69% growth, PLN 41 million contribution to the revenue growth in the quarter. Francois has already taken you through the levers that are progressively pushing that advertising faster than the rest of our revenue base, and that's going very strongly.
In terms of take rates, which is obviously the biggest contributor overall along with the GMV growth, we moved up by 112 basis points compared to Q1 a year ago, 10.43% take rate. Now this is mostly the cumulative impact of the various monetization initiatives we've taken around SMART!. SMART! is now nearly 3 years old. We're investing a lot of money in growing that, and the sellers have been getting a lot of benefit in increased sales over the last 3 years. So we have been monetizing, making certain monetizing moves. In particular, we've been co-financing courier since the middle of last year, and we introduced co-financing for lockers at the beginning of January. And those 2 items are the main driver of the delta versus last year.
When it comes to basic commission take rates on transactions realized on the marketplace, they're moving up but they're moving up in that gradual way with very targeted increases. This is, we think, the high-water mark on take rate this year. There are various reasons why it will tick down a little bit over the rest of the year. But certainly, we're going to be looking at much higher levels than we saw in 2020.
Looking at costs. First of all, the different cost elements of cost of sales, really, the key number here is obviously the amount that we're investing in cost of delivery. This is not netted against those co-financing fees. Those co-financing fees are up in revenue. It's 147% growth in cost year-on-year, more SMART! customers, higher engagement over time. Looking at it in terms of cost to revenue, Q-on-Q, we were flat at 21%, which is a very nice result.
When we look at SG&A, the situation looks very good. That 60% growth in revenue translates into a 3-point decrease in our costs of SG&A as a percentage of revenue, so operating leverage. But we are investing heavily across the board. Higher employment, 29% up. 47% more spend on PPC with strong ROIs, all contributing to driving the growth in the business.
Putting that all together, we get to our adjusted EBITDA, which came in at PLN 535.6 million. That's 50.6% higher than Q1 a year earlier. And our margins, obviously, with that strong performance are also moving up. In particular, the adjusted EBITDA to GMV margin, so the second one that you see on the slide there, has moved up 17 basis points compared to Q1 a year ago, 5.58%. And this is the measure that, first and foremost, is most comparable across different e-commerce companies that have different 1P and 3P sales mix. But secondly, it's the KPI that we're targeting in the medium term to stabilize. So this is really a big step in the right direction, and we are moving towards that stabilization over time.
Looking at profits. Net profit up 158% year-on-year to PLN 270 million. We're picking up on the D&A level, where the costs have increased only 6% year-on-year; and also obviously, on financial expenses, where lower leverage, lower cost of borrowing is translating into a 47% improvement in -- or reduction in cost of borrowing.
Okay. Allegro Incentive Plan, I'd just like to touch on this for a second. We've introduced on time our grants of the Allegro Incentive Plan that we flagged during the IPO process. It runs very deep into the organization, into the -- right down through the management layers, top levels of experts. And we're very excited about the strategic benefit we'll get from this in terms of attracting talent and building -- attracting and retaining talent and building the appeal of Allegro as a great place to work even further than it is already.
We put all the detail that you would need on the slide to understand the scheme better. What's, I think, most important from the financial perspective to call out is that the maximum dilution we see at about, well, 0.13% from that first grant, 0.13% of share capital. And the expected cost of that grant over the 3 years of vesting cumulatively is PLN 53 million.
Moving on to capital investments. We did flag 2 months ago that we were increasing our investment program. And you see the first results of this with a 38% increase to PLN 60 million in the first quarter. Most of the increase is centered around the investments we've been making in the software development team. There are projects that are on brand-new functionalities. Major developments to the platform get capitalized, and that's increasing quite strongly. The big investments that we're planning around lockers and around the fulfillment center, those projects are moving on track, as Francois has been saying. The cost is going to start appearing in the CapEx over the next couple of quarters.
Leverage, obviously, with such good results, is still moving down. We ended the quarter at 2.1x leverage, improving steadily.
And that brings me to my final slide, which is to cover the expectations. With these financial results, we've been able to move up our expectations for the full year, right the way across the P&L really, from the GMV down through revenue and adjusted EBITDA. The CapEx remains at the same level of guidance as it was 2 months earlier, PLN 550 million to PLN 600 million.
When it comes to the GMV, we're now targeting high teens, low 20s year-on-year total growth. We're assuming, as I mentioned, no more lockdown. So all the comparatives for the rest of the year are going to be a headwind for us. So I think still a very strong result. SMART! outperformance and retail basics and execution is what's going to drive the numbers for us.
Revenue, because of that slower GMV growth, means that the revenue growth will come down somewhat. But we still moved it up to now above 30% growth for the full year. And that then drops down into a higher adjusted EBITDA target between high teens and low 20s. We have got some money reserved for potential increase in competition from what we've been seeing so far from the new entrants. It's reserved in these numbers. We have to wait and see whether we need to use those reserves or not.
So with those comments, I'll pass it back to Francois and he'll summarize for us.
Thank you, Jon. It's a simple quick summary from me. As you can see, the execution across all the inputs drive a strong start to 2021. This allows us to raise the financial expectation for the full year. We're very pleased with the progress in FinTech and Allegro Pay, which is well on track to be a universal product during the course of the year.
Our investment, both on the software part and the scalable third-party model in delivery experience and our hard asset development, is also well on track to target additional revenue, faster delivery, additional GMV. We see a limited impact from the recent changes in competitive landscape. But obviously here, we keep on using our very detailed KPI culture to relentlessly benchmark and see if there are any evolution.
And obviously, as a high-growth company with a very deep innovation road map, it's ultimately important that we focus on both the quantity and the quality of the people that both joined the company and also grow with us. And this is something that I and the rest of the management team are uniquely focused on.
Without further ado, Michal, I suggest you start helping us through the Q&A, and we'll take and answer your questions. Thank you.
[Operator Instructions] We've received quite a number of questions from you. Thank you for them. Let me try to group them into themes.
We have the first question from Annick Maas from BNP. If you can give an idea how we are planning strategically further monetization and development of the SMART! program.
So obviously, first, the forecast -- the priorities, sorry, on SMART! is the penetration of the Allegro consumer base and the Polish population, right? Whilst the program is nearly 3 years old and it's a tremendous success and we see continuous uptick in the number of new SMART! users, there's still a very sizable majority of the population that is not using SMART!. So we'll continue to do things like Smart! na Start, the improvement on courier, to make sure there is more and more SMART! consumers joining in the platform.
But it is true, as more and more consumers join the platform, as it continues to drive the GMV of our sellers, it drives increased opportunity to monetize. So you'll see better sharing the delivery cost, for example, that we started. We started with courier probably about a year ago. We continued with lockers more recently in Q1. And I'm confident we'll find continuous ways to monetize, but that's a secondary priority. The first priority is clearly to keep on growing these programs because it's such a consumer driver and also seller driver for us.
Then we have a few questions about advertising. Miriam Adisa from Morgan Stanley is asking for additional color. What is driving the penetration uptick of merchants today? And a bit more color about the revenue mix from advertising. She's also asking, can you remind her how many paid slots home -- sorry...
Yes. No, I can do the question.
Generally, it's about how we're progressing with strategy to get more ad revenue from brands as well, yes.
So if you recall, our ad tech business is reasonably recent, right? It was launched about 3 years, 3 years a bit ago. One of the more recent things we did with that business, which I believe we did across the business, is realign the leadership around what we call core business units. So we realigned. We have an ad tech -- we have an ad leader and we have an ad tech leader. And what this did, that led a much deeper focus on what the merchants need in terms of tool kits and also renewed investments in the -- notably tech headcount we provide for that business.
So -- and also, if you look at our IPO time, we said, hey, this is about 0.7% of GMV. We believe it can be about 2%. So that drive -- drove a reprioritization of the resource and the road map. And what we see now is the continued progress on that road map.
So let's be a little bit more specific, right? So the type of UX you get as a center when you want to use our advertising platform, you have an ad express platform for the sellers that are not deeply engaged, not deep specialists, and that helps them to drive their sales through very simple tools, allocating their money. And then for the more engaged sellers, we're providing more, how do you say, type tools for them to monetize in different spaces, whether it's display. Also, we provide them tools to monetize outside of Allegro. And all of this is driving a very deep penetration of merchants of our advertising tools. I probably dramatically didn't construct the sentence the right way, but I think it was clear.
And one of the parts that when you have those point of entry that you [ edge to ] stores you provide is how do you better allocate the pixel, right? You call it, I think, the number of slots. So before -- and I think we covered that last time. Before we increase the number of slots, it's very important, first, for the consumer experience that do slots are as well targeted as possible. Targeting can be -- can actually add value if it's very well targeted to the consumer rather than spamming them and, how do you say, removing conversion.
So here, if you recall, about now 1.5 years ago, we repivoted our data team under a new CEO. And we invested deeply in machine learning, AI scientists. And we see the impact of this in the continued progress we do in the targeting of those ads. That drives incremental conversion. That drives incremental sales for the sellers, better experience for the consumer. And obviously, it drives better monetization for us. And there, again, the road map ahead is quite significant.
So maybe to wrap up, I think we have about 2 slots, if I recall, on the search page. I know we developed some additional carousel type also features that are working very well in terms of both the customer reaction and the monetization. We're also continuously probably improving display and the monetization of display. All in all, maybe to summarize, so we're above 1%. We still believe that over time, that 2% North Star is deeply achievable.
Another question from BNP. The number of merchants rose double digits. How has that trend changed since the entry of Amazon? And we can link that to a number of questions asking for an update on the competitive landscape in the recent months.
So here -- some of these questions are probably better directed at Amazon than to us. And please, if you have more specific points, totally happy to cover. But really, we see limited changes so far from the competitive landscape. It's something we obviously take deeply humbly. We're a very KPI-focused organization. So we look at the selection, at delivery, at price competitiveness, at traffic, a number of metrics, both on the inputs and mid-input metrics to make sure we're not missing anything. And we're a very nimble company. So if ever we see something that we're missing, we pivot very quickly to correct it. But that really has not been the case so far, but we keep on taking this very humbly.
And now a question from Goldman Sachs, Maxim Nekrasov. What were the key drivers of the guidance upgrade? And what made you incrementally more positive over the last 2 months?
Yes. So I think the key was what I was going through there. As we've moved into this phase where we're now facing these much tougher comparatives, the business is doing very, very well. And that's driven by all the things that Francois has been talking about in his part of the presentation. He has said the execution on the retail basics are extremely strong. Growth in SMART!, extremely strong. So all the levers are there to keep good growth going forward.
The competition indeed has had a limited impact across the board on those KPIs, including the merchant one, reaching back to the previous question. So with all that in mind, we're feeling obviously more confident that we can hit the numbers, and that's why we were able to move up the guidance.
And a question from BofA, Cesar Tiron. Can you share some trends observed in April and May given the tougher comps? There were quite a few similar questions from some other analysts.
Yes. So I think I covered April pretty extensively. Maybe I'll just go into that slightly more detail. If you think back to the original lockdown that happened in March through May of last year, so the whole of April, it was very similar to the one that's been going on in the U.K. until very recently in that all the off-line stores that were nonessential, i.e., not supermarkets, not chemists, everything was shut during that period a year ago.
In the more recent lockdowns, the government hasn't gone that far. They've only shut down shopping malls, right, which is only a fraction of offline retail, yes? So that lockdown that we're now lapping is much stronger than the one that we -- the ones that have been giving us tailwinds in Q1. And on top of that, because it was such a dire situation a year ago for the consumer, we offered everybody SMART! for free during that period.
And the combination of the 2 drove the growth as high as 85% in April last year. But we've just finished April, and we actually still managed to top that figure and continue to grow. We grew high single digits in April which meant that when you take that '19 to '21 perspective, it was CAGR of 40%, just like we achieved in Q1 with that small tailwind. So that is very, very promising.
When it comes to May, we -- it's very early in May, and the lockdown finished only a week ago. So it's too early really for us to give you any further insight at this point in time. I wouldn't want to say something that doesn't stack up after a few more days of trading. We need more data.
Then another block of questions is about the take rate. I think there are 2 main questions. So firstly, why the take rates are expected to come lower in the next quarters this year. And we also have questions about the longer-term outlook of the take rate.
Okay. So first of all, focusing on this year. As I said in my comments, we see that Q1 number as being a high-water mark for the take rate over the course of the year. There's a couple of reasons for that. First of all, there's a baked in seasonality. If you look historically, our take rates tend to be higher in Q1. That's because there's certain elements of spending which don't move exactly proportional to GMV. Not everything is a percentage of GMV. And therefore, when you get to the later quarters, and particularly Q4, that tends to bring down the take rate because that spending doesn't grow in line with GMV. So that's one aspect. That's just a natural trend.
The other one is that from the co-financing, we're also funding refunds to our merchants if they're able to pick and pack fast enough that they can promise and they can provide next-day delivery. And we see that the merchants are adjusting to that, and they're realizing that they can get some of the co-financing money back if they do that. And as that gains traction, it will reduce that monetization slightly but bring more next-day delivery into our numbers. The -- yes, and that's really the main aspects.
In terms of increases in take rates going forward, for this year, we're not really planning to do any major moves as well, which is why it will tick down slightly. We are continuing these little targeted surgical moves on the prices where we think there's space. But in the big scheme of things, that's fairly immaterial on the -- in terms of impact.
And then we have a question about the locker network rollout, including a question whether it would indeed look like the one we've put on Slide 8.
Sorry, I need to look at the picture again.
It's the green locker.
That's -- how do you say, we haven't rolled one. The branding is still a question mark. There is indeed a desire to make them, how do you say, very well integrated, not only physically pleasing. So they're respectful of their environment, not only the urban setting, and also eco-friendly. So there's a number of innovations around that. But I don't want to share too much because obviously, we love to keep those to -- for press announcements and the consumers first.
But overall, the program is working well. As you know, we've identified the providers. We -- equally importantly, if not more, the team ramp-up in terms of capabilities and leadership is well underway. The first sites have been identified. The software, thanks to the Opennet acquisition, which is the leading software provider for these lockers in the country, is also progressing well. So all on track, and we'll see the first ones reasonably shortly.
Then we have questions about FinTech, Allegro Pay. Firstly, from Citi, Catherine O'Neill. Can we provide any more detail on how many users this is now available to and any data on default rates?
So the number of users is not something we share. I think the data we've shared is I think we're at about 50% penetration.
We're still under but growing strongly.
Still under but growing strongly. And our goal this year is to make this a universal product for Allegro shoppers. And we're well on track in doing that.
Yes. When we're talking about the penetration, this is availability of a credit limit to a customer who is, therefore, either interested and signs up for it or less so. We've got a lot of active buyers using Allegro Pay. It's growing very quickly, which is why you see the growth in the amount of loans being written growing very quickly also.
The second part of the question was about NPLs. Nothing to report there versus Q4. We're still well within the limits that we were expecting from the program. I think it was about just over 2% at Q4, if I recall correctly. And this quarter is very similar.
And Miriam from Morgan Stanley is asking for an update on external financing by year-end for Allegro Pay. Is that target still on track?
Yes. We made a lot of progress in terms of identifying the best solutions over the first quarter, and we're in detailed discussions with those potential providers. So we're hopeful that we'll have something to announce before the end of the year.
Then we have a question from Trigon, Dominik Niszcz. You reduced ratio of payment charges to GMV very significantly year-on-year. Is first quarter '21 a good reference quarter going forward?
Payment charges.
Yes, cost...
Payment.
Yes. If you recall, we had that discussion. I think we didn't have it last quarter, but we definitely did have it in the IPO. The way our cost of payments is structured, we have several provider. One of them -- of our key partner is PayU, which was part of Allegro Group 3, 4 -- well, maybe more, 5 years ago, when we went through the separation.
5 years.
5 years ago. And as a result of the separation, there was kind of a sweetheart deal where we committed for some innovation and also some slightly higher than market rate. We've agreed with PayU to reduce those rates to be at market rate or better as this contract runs out...
Middle of next year.
Middle of next year. So it's getting closer and closer to the -- to what you can expect. That's the end rate, but there is still a bit of rate compression in that contract over the next few months and quarters.
Yes. Also, those rates that we're paying are partly volume driven. And obviously, volumes are growing very quickly. So we're successively breaching those levels and getting bigger discount.
Another question from Catherine O'Neill from Citi. What's the latest on proposed digital advertising tax and likelihood and timing of it being passed in law?
Yes. That's a good question. I would say that not really much has happened since the government published their first draft. There was obviously a lot of pushback not only from industry but also from politicians right across the political spectrum. I think the waters are getting more and more muddied with the different initiatives going on at the OECD level and at the EU level, which makes it very difficult to predict if anyone will actually implement anything specific. So we're continuing to highlight that it's out there. But right now, it's not progressing at this point in time.
And we have acquired a number of questions on the topic of international expansion. Let me quote the question from Miriam Adisa from Morgan Stanley, which I think captures most of those questions. "In light of recent press reports, could you comment on your international expansion plans? Should we see this as a near-term or medium-term priority? What factors are you considering when thinking about international expansion?"
Okay. I'll take that one. In terms of international expansion, we made it clear that this is rather a near-term priority. It's actually something that is well underway when we talk about inbound internalization. So right about probably 1.5 years, if not 2 years, we started redesigning the inbound side of the platform, the seller side of the platform, to be a multilingual -- first English but multilingual over time tool. And all the toolkits that sellers use to manage themselves from onboarding to post-transaction customer service can be now accessible for sellers that do not reside, speak or understand Polish. And this is ramping very well.
Now obviously, on the outbound side, we're well underway and doing a number of organic things on the platform. Here, again, I want to keep some of those for when we actually launch them. But within the course of the year, it will become increasingly more easy for international shoppers to interact with Allegro.
Then in terms of -- the second part of the question was more around what -- the parameters we look at. So we want to -- if you look at the relative size of Poland to the rest of Europe, I can't remember the ratio, but 1 to...
GDP-wise, it's probably something like 1:20 or more, I think.
1:20 or greater. So there's obviously a huge amount of consumers out there in Europe that we can sell to. We don't need to take, how do you say, a majority share. But by just enabling those international shoppers to shop in Allegro, it's already an opportunity. And then we'll look at separate countries where online penetration could be lower, where we believe our toolkit in terms of seller and consumer can add quite a lot of value. And we may invest a little bit deeper in those countries to get to a higher market segment share.
And sorry, I know -- in the rumors, so I'm not obviously going to comment on rumors normally on the M&A, which is something as a public company and also our own policy, we don't comment on. But we have a long track record of looking tactically and strategically at M&A to see whether it improves, how do you say, the speed to getting to the GMV, the EBITDA, the consumer reach, the seller pull effect, so how it accelerates our flywheel and ultimately how it adds shareholder value. So that's the parameters, and we have an absolutely great internal core and M&A team that helps us evaluate on its merits deals that are ahead of us.
Thank you. And now we have a few questions from [ Cartagena Budryk ]. How do you see the timing and structure of CapEx this year? What biggest investments will we see next quarters? And do you see any delays?
Yes, sure. So as I said, we're holding the guidance at the level we announced back in March. So we do indeed expect a ramp-up in CapEx over the next couple of quarters. What's coming at the moment, we've just got the keys basically to the new warehouse for fulfillment. All the equipment is going in during the course of this quarter. So that will come through in our CapEx. Lots of investment going on in terms of preparing for the software that's going to drive the fulfillment engine. That's going on in parallel. And that will also get capitalized over time.
On the locker side, as Francois said, the first deliveries of the lockers will start to come in over the next couple of quarters, be ramping up significantly over time. So there, we'll also start to see some numbers coming through in the next quarters getting successively larger. But in terms of total spend, we're comfortable with the level that we projected.
And then another question from [ Cartagena ] about our hiring plans for this year. Are they still unchanged? And is this still reflected -- are the associated staff costs still reflected in our revised guidance?
I can start, and then on the staff cost evolution, you can cover. So yes, very much that keeps on being our target. I think in Q1, we hired across the group about 300 employees. Our total full year is something around 1,500 recruited. So you can see where -- actually, that's one of the things we're focusing on, the early ramp-up. While it's significant when you look at how many headcount we used to recruit, it's a little bit below the throughput we would like to have.
But here, ultimately, the quality is extremely important. It's what we focus on first. But we're also -- we've made in Q1 also some changes, both in process, in recruitment team to try to catch up on the number of headcount we welcome to the team. We don't see any impact so far on our innovation road map. But that's something we're focused on in terms of cost, yes.
Yes. I mean in terms of the guidance, we are still planning that, that run rate of recruitment is going to accelerate. We're very sure it will. I mean we're adding obviously lots of people to work in those fulfillment centers as well as the core tech teams and constantly increasing customer care support as well as we grow. So that money is still reserved in the plans. We continue to invest, as I was saying, also in marketing and other elements of SG&A. So they are very important drivers to keep the GMV growing and keeping the EBITDA moving up sequentially. But we have the money reserved in the guidance and the expectations, I should say.
And then we have a question from Elena Jouronova from JPMorgan. Trying to reconcile the guidance for Allegro Incentive Plan, which was provided during the IPO without today's communication. So previously, it was PLN 40 million for 2021 and PLN 110 million per annum going forward. Now we said about PLN 23 million in '21 and PLN 53 million in '24. Is it coming on top of the scheme presented during the IPO? Or is it part of that scheme?
Yes. The -- this is all within the same scheme that we presented at IPO. The way the scheme works is very much in line with what was described at the IPO and was approved by the shareholders as the scheme structure. Yes, the cost numbers right now are coming out a bit lower than the ones that we guided to at the time of the IPO. What should happen is that there will be an annual grant issued each year. And -- but as they're spread over 3 years of vesting, the cost will build gradually over time.
Thank you. And that concludes our Q&A session. If anything was unclear or unanswered, please reach out to us. Back to you, Francois.
Well, thank you, Jon, too. And thank you, everybody, for joining. An absolute pleasure and looking forward to seeing you in a few months and stay safe and healthy.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye.