Ströer Stock

Yes. Thank you very much. Dear investors, dear analysts, welcome to today's Q2 and H1 2026 earnings call. Let us dive straight into the numbers and details.

On the top line, revenues in the first half amounted to EUR 1.037 billion compared to EUR 980 million in the prior year period. On an organic basis, growth accelerated from 0.5% to 2.7%, while on a reported basis, revenue grew by 6%. Moving down the P&L. EBITDA adjusted reached EUR 273 million compared to EUR 266 million last year. This represents a 3% year-on-year increase. On EBIT adjusted, we reported EUR 150 million, up from EUR 109 million in H1 2025. This corresponds to an increase of 6%. Net income adjusted amounted to EUR 56 million compared to EUR 52 million in the prior year period. This translates into a 7% year-on-year increase.

Turning to cash flow. Free cash flow adjusted remained broadly on the prior year level. For the first 6 months, we reported minus EUR 1.9 million compared with minus EUR 1.6 million in H1 2025. Christoph will elaborate on this in detail later in the finance section.

Finally, CapEx before M&A amounted to EUR 51 million, up EUR 12 million versus H1 2025. On market dynamics, first, let us have a look at the news numbers for Q2 of our local German peers in the middle of the chart. As always, please keep in mind that these show gross rate card development and that net revenue growth is on average 6 to 7 percentage points lower. On this gross basis, the German advertising market increased by 1.9% in Q2. OoH grew by 8.8%, clearly outperforming TV at minus 1%, 1.1% print at minus 4.5% and radio at plus 2.9%, while desktop and mobile grew by 15.3%.

Against this market backdrop, our Out-of-Home Media segment delivered reported net revenue growth at 10.3% in the second quarter. Within the segment, DOOH increased by 24.3% and the DOOH subcategory programmatic digital Out-of-Home by 45% -- the half year picture confirms the same structural trend. The German advertising market increased by 1.1% on a gross basis with OoH up 5.6%, ahead of TV at minus 0.3%, print at minus 0.9% and radio at minus 0.5%. Desktop and mobile increased by 10.9%. Our OoH Media segment achieved reported net revenue growth at 8% in H1, while DOOH grew by 18.5% and programmatic was up by 29.3% in the same period.

Driven by the strong development of Ströer, the share of Out-of-Home advertising increased to 10.7% of the German advertising market according to [ Nielsen ].

So far my remarks. And with that, I hand over to Christoph.

Thank you, Udo. A warm welcome also from my side. A very good morning to everybody. Thanks for having me today. Let me immediately start the final section with a quick look at the Q2 2026 P&L.

In total, we delivered a solid set of results for the second quarter. Group revenue increased by 7% to EUR 542 million compared with EUR 505 million in Q2 2025. If we exclude exchange rate and consolidation effects, the organic growth came in at 4.2%, which is an improvement of 6.5 percentage points year-over-year. The adjusted EBITDA amounted EUR 154 million, EUR 4.9 million or 3% higher than the same quarter in 2025. Exceptional items for the quarter were minus EUR 9.5 million compared with minus EUR 3.7 million in the prior year period. The increase results mainly from our internal reorganizations.

Accordingly, the EBITDA was EUR 144 million, stable compared to EUR 145 million of last year. Depreciation and amortization are virtually unchanged at the level of EUR 83 million. EBIT came in at EUR 61 million compared to EUR 62 million previous year. The overall financial result was minus EUR 19 million against minus EUR 16 million in the prior year period due to a higher average debt level compared to the previous year.

Accordingly, earnings before tax came in at EUR 42 million compared to EUR 46 million. The tax rate is unchanged at 29.9% and the tax result amounted to minus EUR 13 million. All in all, reported net income for the quarter came in at EUR 29.7 million compared with EUR 32.3 million in Q2 2025. The total adjustments amount to EUR 8.6 million, mainly reflecting exceptional items and additional reconciliation factors shown on the slide. The adjusted net income increased by 7% to EUR 38.3 million from EUR 36 million.

Let's now switch over to a view on the cash flow. In the first half of 2026, operating cash flow improved to EUR 161 million compared to EUR 146 million in the previous year, primarily due to the better working capital development, which came in at minus EUR 13 million compared to minus EUR 31 million. The positive development overcompensated high tax outflows, which amounted to EUR 36 million compared to EUR 32 million in the previous year. Investment cash flows for the first 6 months amount to EUR 51.2 million compared to EUR 39.6 million. There was an exceptional investment in real estate.

As a result, for free cash flow before M&A, there was EUR 110 million in the first half year of '26 compared to the EUR 106 million of the previous year after lease liability repayment, which slightly increased compared to the corresponding period of the past year. Free cash flow adjusted amounts to minus EUR 1.9 million, in line with the prior year half year figure of minus EUR 1.6 million.

Let's also have a look at the net debt development in the sequential view from end of Q1 2026 to the end of Q2 2026, the financial debt increased by EUR 115 million, including the adjusted free cash flow of plus EUR 7.8 million. Cash out for dividend payments amounted EUR 107 million and the share buyback of EUR 21 million and a EUR 2 million earn-out payment. The remaining difference in the reconciliation of around EUR 7 million relates to a reduction of accrued interest liabilities paid in Q2, representing a cash flow with no effect on net debt.

Net debt year-over-year was up EUR 40 million to EUR 996 million, including accumulated free cash flow over the last 12 months of EUR 106 million cash out for dividend payment of minus EUR 115 million and the share buyback volume of EUR 23 million and EUR 4 million earn-out payment on minor M&A activities.

With that, the -- our bank leverage ratio increased to 2.6x compared to 2.47x at the end of June 2025, reflecting a higher net debt and the slight decline in the earnings contribution used for the calculation. Then let's have a look at the performance of the individual segment. As is customary, let's start with Out-of-Home Media. During the first half of 2026, segment revenue increased by 8.1% on an organic and 8% on a reported basis to EUR 492 million and outperformed the German advertising market significantly, as Udo already pointed out.

As in previous quarters, digital Out-of-Home again was the key growth driver, increasing by 18.5% to a total of EUR 207 million, supported by programmatic demand and also the FIFA World Cup, which took place in June, which accounts for approximately EUR 12 million in this segment. Classic Out-of-Home revenue was 1% lower at EUR 253 million. Services increased by 26.7% to EUR 32 million, driven by the newly won clients, as mentioned in our last call. EBITDA adjusted for the segment increased by 10.3% to EUR 224 million during -- for the first half of the year and EBITDA adjusted margin improved by 0.9 percentage points to 45.6% during this period.

Looking on to the adjusted EBITDA before IFRS 16, this increased overproportionally by 23% to EUR 115 million. The corresponding margin improved 2.9 percentage points to 23.4%. From a Q2 perspective, basically, the same picture emerges. Total revenues in the segment were up 10.3% to EUR 270 million, with digital Out-of-Home as a main growth driver. EBITDA just came in at EUR 128 million compared to EUR 170 million in the prior year period Q2.

Then let's have a look at Digital & Dialog Media segment. The first 6 months, the segment revenue increased by 5.4% on an organic and by 14.4% on a reported basis to EUR 476 million. Digital revenue was up reported by 2.6%, while Dialog revenue increased organically by 8%. On a reported basis, considering the additional revenues coming from AMEVIDA acquisition, you remember last year, Dialogue was up by 25.5%. The adjusted EBITDA declined by 4% or EUR 2 million to EUR 57 million for the first 6 months of the year. The corresponding margin decreased by 2.3 basis points to 11.9%, mainly due to a shift in product mix and higher minimum wages in the very personnel-intensive Dialogue business.

From a Q2 perspective, Digital & Dialog revenue increased by 16.6% to EUR 245 million. Digital revenue grew by 8.3% to EUR 113 million as the strong performance of the programmatic digital Out-of-Home category more than offset the challenging online media market. Dialog revenue increased by 24.9% or 7.4% on an organic basis to a total of EUR 131 million. The adjusted EBITDA of the quarter came in at EUR 30 million, just EUR 1 million lower compared to the previous year period. The corresponding margin was 12.2%.

Last but not least, let's also have a look on the performance of Data as a Service and E-commerce. As expected, the performance in our third segment remained below the prior year level. Segment revenues declined by 11.2% to EUR 156 million. In E-commerce, revenue was down by 10% to EUR 83 million, and it still reflects low consumer spending in Germany in that specific field. Data as a Service revenue was 12.2% below prior year revenue of EUR 82 million and came in with EUR 72 million.

Adjusted for the disposal of Statista Strategy and Consulting unit, which we reported and also negative currency effects, the organic revenue decline amounts 4.4% year-to-date. The adjusted EBITDA was EUR 11.4 million for the first 6 months, down 43% and the corresponding margin logically is also down 7.3%. If we look at Q2, the picture is very similar. Overall segment revenue fell by just under 9% from EUR 85 million to EUR 72 -- EUR 77 million. Data as a Service recorded revenues of EUR 36 million, down 11.6% and E-commerce achieved revenue just under EUR 42 million, a decline of 6%. These downward trends logically also reflect in the performance of the adjusted EBITDA and the adjusted EBITDA margin with EUR 6 million and 7.5%, respectively, at the end of the quarter.

Having given you an overview on the details of the financials, I'd like to hand back to Udo for his remarks.

Thank you, Christoph. Before ending the presentation, let me provide some comments on the outlook for Q3 and the current trading momentum.

For the third quarter, we expect the following developments. For OoH Media, sales should grow in the mid-single-digit percentage range. For Digital & Dialog Media, we expect sales growth broadly in line with the development seen in Q2 2026. For DaaS and E-commerce, we expect sales to continue to decline in the low double-digit percentage range. Against this backdrop, we confirm our full year guidance for 2026.

Let me now close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2026. Our next scheduled reporting date is November 12. On that date, we will publish our Q3 2026 quarterly statement. As always, updates, reports and roadshow presentations can be found on our IR website.

Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.

The first question comes from the line of Annick Maas from Bernstein.

So I have 3 questions today. The first one is on Statista. Can you give us an update on where we are in the business model change that you've been trying to push through in Statista? Can you just tell us where we are, how this is developing?

The second one is you're mentioning at some point that the product mix in Digital & Dialogue is impacting your margin. Can you just elaborate a bit more what was that specifically? And then I guess there's been again some bit speculation around Ströer. Would you be able to comment on it?

So, we are completely in line to what we said 3 months ago. So nothing much changed. We changed the business model from selling seats to volume, and this takes some time because obviously, our clients need to implement company GPT first, then they connect their own data pools and then they decide which third-party data pools they connect as well to their own AI backbone.

But everything is actually unchanged. We're going through a year where we're going to see difficult development on turnover because as we already discussed last time, all the long tail demand where people, whatever private individuals have a question, this is actually declining, obviously. But on the corporate side, things are looking pretty much the same like 3 months ago. So we are in the middle of the process.

So about -- before Christoph answering the second question about speculation, there's nothing new. I think we said everything about that. There are rumors, but there's nothing what we have to add now.

Let me maybe add one more thing on the Statista thing. Udo described that this is a change. We have first B2B customers, which we changed from a pure subscription to a tokenization model as a test, and it turned out that the total revenue with these customers remains about at the same level, which is a very positive signal at this stage. It's a first test with first customers, but I think looking at pure financially, this is a promising first proof of concept.

You've asked about the product mix in the Dialog business. Well, let me split it and Dialog Ranger as well as the call center. Mix in the call center is that you are well aware that we have German activities, and we have a nearshore activities in Southern regions of Europe. Part of the mix changes is that we relocate business there. That is not only on internal purposes, but also on demand. And these things have an effect on individual -- on revenue, but also a little bit on absolute margin. That's part of it.

Second is that in AMEVIDA, we've also seen that with -- in the early stage, we just took over the clients, now we're resorting it. We are rearranging the calls, et cetera, et cetera. I think that also has an effect. So there is -- it's basically driven by internationalization as well as some client changes.

On Ranger, we are still the core business in Germany is on fiber. In Italy, we are working with a lot of energy contracts or electricity, and this is a weak market at this stage given the macroeconomic environment. So these are 2 drivers of the changes that you were mentioning.

The next question comes from the line of James Tate from Goldman Sachs.

It's James Tate from Goldman. I've got 2 questions, please. I guess, firstly, on Out-of-Home, please, could you comment in a bit more detail on current Q3 trends? How much of a benefit is there from the World Cup in July? And how does the order book look for September versus August?

And secondly, on DaaS and E-commerce margins, I think they were down around 3 percentage points year-on-year in Q2. So could you provide some color between the individual performance between Statista and Asambeauty margins? And then how should we think about margins and profitability in the segment into 2027? Do you think you can return to 2025 margin levels if the division returns to growth?

Yes. Thank you, James. So look, we are not focused on -- as we talked about many times on quarters for the full year. If you look back at the end of the year, I think we see that some business from Q2 most likely will have moved to Q2 because of the World Cup. So that's why we explicitly figured out here the EUR 12 million from our expectation was money which normally would have been spent in the second half of the year and was pulled forward to Q2 due to the World Cup.

So I think Q3 looks definitely a bit softer than Q2 because people budget are the budgets. And if you spend in Q2, you cannot spend in Q3 anymore. But for the full year, our expectations are completely intact. If you look to the order book now, then we see a positive development in Q4, a little bit softer Q3. So that's what you are seeing right now.

Can you repeat your second question because I didn't fully get it.

In terms of DaaS and E-commerce margins, I think, have been under pressure through H1. Could you help give some color between the individual margin performance in Statista and Asambeauty, sort of what's driving that segment level margins and how to think about margins in this segment overall into next year into 2027?

Yes. I think as Udo pointed out in Statista, we're changing the model. So what's actually happening there is that we are trying -- the big and long tail market here is the big B2B market. It's not the subscription of small individuals. And we are changing that into a tokenized version versus a kind of a flat fee usage on a monthly basis. As I pointed out, that is not only work in progress, but it's tested with some customers and gives us positive signals.

Overall, the Statista business, as we all understand, is a Software as a Service. So it's highly driven by volume and scale. We have brought down the staff even further, and we are stabilizing on the current level in terms of margin that we've shown in Q2. And I would expect for the next 3 to 4 quarters, a similar level before we hook up again changing the model and having fully established. So I would -- if I would model it, I would say let's stick to the current margin level for the next 3, 4 quarters and then ramp up again, but it's difficult to say how fast the ramp-up is going to be.

On Asambeauty, I mean, giving a bit more color, the business originally, as you're all aware, comes from TV sales. That has come down. The target group is a little bit -- well, it's aging, and they seem to be -- they seem to have bought enough, if I may say it like that. And the now biggest proportion of sales is in e-commerce to a younger target group and also in retail, so which means that we ship to German retailers.

By definition, what are the major margin drivers? Cost of goods are always the same independent from the channel. On retail, we live with a lower margin because high volume but lower margin, and we have to invest into furniture. And we are -- as we are familiar with in like [ Trogerimar ] and Rosmann and these kind of big chains. We're doing well there, but this is a lower margin than typically the TV and the e-commerce sales.

And on e-commerce, we see that the actual conversion for people coming into the website is fine, but bringing in new customers is more expensive. And we talk to our agencies and to other -- and we look at our own online performance activities in T-Online, we see that it's just a fatigue of the consumers in Germany right now. They're a bit slow. On top, we have 35 degrees, which is not really the time to buy beauty products and makeup, which is our key product in that range.

So here, again, I would expect a recovery from the current downtrend in 2027 first half year. And once again, I mean, fixed costs are -- will stay the same. So margin improvement will start step by step in the next, like, I would say, starting Q1 and Q2 step-by-step getting better to -- well, maybe not to the level that we've had 2 years ago, but to a much better level than we have today.

We now have a question from the line of Jérôme Bodin from ODDO BHF.

Three questions on my side. Okay. It seems to have a delay between my line and yours. So let me go through -- so first question on the advertising trend to follow up on the last question. So on the last call, you said that the second half should be stronger. So -- and now you guide for mid-single digit in Q3. So just to understand if your view has changed and H1 has been better, so H2 will be lower? Or should we expect a much stronger Q4? That's my first question.

Second one on the OoH margin. So revenue grew by 10% and cash EBITDA grew by 18%. So should we expect this strong operating leverage to continue in H2? And maybe could you also comment a bit on the rent evolution since the beginning of the year? And last question on the Ad Manager project. So you said earlier that the first test of the platform was going live. So could you give us an update? And what do you see in terms of customer demand and average spend? Any data would be useful.

Yes. Thank you, Jérôme. So the Ad Manager, we are testing, let's say, right now, 3 models, self-service models, but it's not the Ad Manager, the Ad Manager that will not be ready before the end of next year. There was maybe a misunderstanding. So we have now -- we are testing a self-service tool for cultural advertising, for example, is more or less a simple web shop.

And on the other hand, we have a self-service tool for digital Out-of-Home, which we rolled out like 3, 4 weeks ago and where our own sales staff and our customers now collect the first experience. But this actually are, let's say, we test environment has nothing to do with the Ad Manager. So the Ad Manager, we are on track with our coders. We're working hard. We have -- maybe we discussed at one time, we have coding teams in Czech Republic and also New Zealand and Spain. And so this was -- it's a very experienced team, which was working on the SSP for a long time. You might remember, we have our own SSP. And now this team is actually working on Ad Manager. But it will take until the end of next year until we have it really up and running.

Okay. The other questions, you asked advertising trend and that translated in you want to kind of like have a view on current trading again on Q3 and Q4. I mean I think it's perfect -- the current picture for Q3 and Q4 perfectly matches our guidance. The order book for the third quarter and fourth quarter is up from previous year. And we said that we're going to be above 5% growth. And definitely, we see the same trend. So I would just like extrapolate first half of the year, which is I think fair for the rest of the year. We've just had reviews of July, and that proves perfectly fine.

Second question, if I got that right, was your question on revenue to margin impact in Out-of-Home, whether this is a stable one and the 10% to 18% is a fair assumption also for the upcoming quarters. Yes, I would reconfirm that by definition, this business -- I mean, the next extra euro that we take in on existing inventory basically costs only the revenue share or rent and no additional costs either in technology, CapEx or working capital. So step-by-step, it improves with marginal revenues. But I think the current spread is a fair one, which we also internally use for our extrapolation.

And the third one, you've asked about the development of rent. Well, I think it's a bit of a hard question because we are not reviewing rents on a daily basis. We are changing rents with new concessions. And we either invest into technology and discuss that with our landlords or with our concession partners. Overall, our ambition is to bring rent down. And on a nondisclosable contract level, we are very successful there. We see that city governments prefer a bit higher guarantees, but are then ready to let go on their revenue share.

We have seen that in Hamburg, for example, which we recently won, and we have extended our reach there, and we're very successful in the latest auction. So I think overall, the rent will come down. But given the total volume of 300,000 individual advertising locations, you will not see a big step down in a single year.

The next question comes from the line of Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes, first of all, on the financials, I mean, we saw the leverage ratio increased to 2.6. Of course, Q2 is seasonally the highest given the payout -- dividend payout in that quarter. But I'd like to get an idea basically of ideally where you want to see that leverage ratio by year-end.

Secondly, a little bit just more conceptually going forward. Ströer is now investing quite heavily in the rollout of these mega outdoor screens like you have on Page Slide 1 of your presentation. With the 3D dimensions, you've got the Lighthouse in Hamburg and the new one in Cologne, I believe. And I'm just curious if the overall capacity intensity Out-of-Home Media is structurally likely to rise? And if so, how might you consider managing this with regards to your capital structure? And my third question is just briefly, any update you could provide us on the more permanent long-term CFO search?

Thank you, Craig. So CFO search is an advanced stadium. So we should see, let's say, results in the next 4 weeks, I would say, most likely. We have a long process now already, and we are quite happy with the candidates which we have.

So for your second question, there is no risk for the capital structure because we are very happy now that we could launch 3, 4 super screens at the same time or in the same year. But for example, the Whale in Hamburg, it was a 10-year preparation work, Lighthouse also a couple of years. So -- and the capacity of these type of screens are super limited. So there will be no impact on CapEx because if we would be able to install such spectacular screens, let's say, in a bigger number, you do it, but it's not possible in Germany.

Because there's only restrictions, you mean.

Yes, yes. It's very conservative in planning the country. It's not Korea or China or America. So Europe is generally very defensive. Look for in France, we get almost nothing still. And in U.K., the most developed market up to now. And so we are ramping up stream by stream, but it's always a hard work. And in administration, the only change step by step the view how you look on that. So the Lighthouse, what you see on the front page is a spectacular screen. And we have another screen at the same square here. And so it's a very exciting launch product, what we call the landmark where you can rent 2 screens plus a square plus space inside of the clubhouse here.

But again, this is an exception. We worked for many years on that. And if we have at the end, 10, 12 iconic screens in Germany, that would be a really good result.

If I may just follow up real quick on that, I'm sorry. Is that -- are you happy with the returns you're seeing on those boards? Or is it more a marketing campaign, if you will, for the digital Out-of-Home medium overall?

No, the return is spectacular. I don't go into details now, but the return is very strong, higher -- much higher than average return on average digital location.

Yes. And if we look at the bookings for the first months of the Whale, we also see that we attract new customers, and we also feel that this innovation is creating more demand. So I think it has also, as you said, has good returns, but it also has a branding effect and the marketing effect for Out-of-Home as such. Maybe also fair to add that we are not planning or including exceptional CapEx for any of those. They are in our basic planning included.

The other question you had was on the debt ratio. I mean, I think the debt ratio by the end of the year will be around 2.35, so a bit higher than previous year. But going down again, I think we're working hard on working capital improvements and the final -- the last digit will depend on how successful we are in the fourth quarter on that.

We now have a question from the line of Julien Roch from Barclays.

On the article in Manager Magazine that had a lot of detail, this is the fourth M&A rumor on Ströer. Last time at the third rumor, I asked you, Udo, and you said, don't believe everything you read in the press. And you answered any question as nothing new. So are you saying don't be -- don't believe what you read in the press? Or is the message different? That's my first question.

On the World Cup in Q2, just to make sure it is EUR 12 million because I thought EUR 12 million was the [ well ]. That's my second question. And then the third one is, can we have a breakdown of Statista 25 revenue between corporate and retail, long tail? And is that the right way to split the business?

Thank you, Julien. So EUR 12 million is the right number for what you see as World Cup effect. But this is not, let's say, on top money. This is money which comes from -- most likely from Q3 to Q2. So people have the budgets. And if there are certain events in the year, they allocate budgets to the events and move it from somewhere else. So that is what we expect. But let's see.

For your first question, I'm sorry to say I can nothing add here. That is -- I can't judge. There's nothing. There's a lot of speculations, but we're doing our job here, and that's all we can say right now. The third question was?

On Statista. Well, we will -- we are not planning to disclose the details and the breakdown because we would have to add lots of definitions on that. So please accept that we will not do that for the time being.

Okay. And then your follow-up question is CapEx was up because you said there was some real estate investment.

We bought some land, which is close to our headquarter, basically in front of our headquarter here in Cologne. We are planning to bring more people back to the center. We are -- we have a spread out real estate or office infrastructure in Cologne as well as Düsseldorf. And midterm and long term, we plan to bring them all together down here. We bought land across the street for EUR 9.8 million.

And so does that mean you're going to also have further CapEx, you basically built a building?

Yes, yes. But building in Germany means you do a pre-question, then you do preplanning, then you do ask for the changes. So we're talking nothing in the next 2 years. But it's safe to have it. And if we run out the long lease contracts in other places, we will review that.

We're not trying to invest in real estate or keep it on the balance sheet over a long time, if that's a question.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

Just a few questions from my side. If you can comment on the progress of the share buyback pace? And is there any plans to accelerate to increase the share buyback? That's the first question.

The second question is on the CapEx. If you could -- I understand that the increased CapEx now is due to the real estate investment, but if you can comment on the CapEx trends across different divisions, if the CapEx is up or down in the e-commerce and in this part? And how much the CapEx spend is now at Out-of-Home and what we should expect going forward, please?

And then the comments on the Q3, you expect mid-single-digit increase in Out-of-Home based on the booking you have right now. So there, there might be still some kind of mixed trends with pulling forward some advertisements because of their World Cup, but still World Cup was ongoing in Q3. So there should be also some support. So what do you see as underlying trends in the Out-of-Home? And what would you expect is underlying, so adjust for all their World Cup events for the Out-of-Home?

Well, let me start with the buyback. We spent so far EUR 21 million, which was close to 690,000 stocks at this level, which is currently for sure, also supported by the speculation, we are not planning to continue, but we have an obligation to have a look at it, but we are not obliged to spend the money.

So, so far, it was EUR 21 million as we reported on our website. And next steps would only be done if the share price was dropped significantly under the current level. For the total year CapEx, we expect a total number of EUR 104 million, which is a remainder of EUR 52 million for the second half of the year, so a similar level as 2025.

Yes. For the underlying trends, I mean, there's, I think, everything said in our statement here, we see unchanged trends, and we are not big fans of analyzing single quarters because I mean, if people are moving campaigns from one quarter to the other, you see directly impact on the quarter, but have nothing to say. The question at the end, you see underlying positive development for Out-of-Home. And I think this is around the world, everywhere in the same situation, slightly up, slightly down in different markets depending on specific development in these areas. But underlying demand is unchanged, positive. I'm not sure if this was the answer you expected, if not.

No, that is fine. Sorry, just to understand on the CapEx trends, what are the trends on the CapEx at the Out-of-Home? Do you expect to increase in the or pretty much stable as last year.

Pretty much stable as in last year. As I said, also, the bigger ones that Udo mentioned, they will be always covered by the existing plans. We take opportunities, but this is a -- the decision on a conversion into digital is not a decision that we can take ourselves and then move on the next day, but we have to discuss, prepare, do technical planning, et cetera, et cetera. So this is why we have a 6 to 12 months road map, which we can perfectly analyze and that says that we will remain on the same level as we were on 2025 and will be on 2026.

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, there are no more questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Udo Müller for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Happy that we could answer all your questions, and we're looking forward to hear you back in November. All the best.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Stroer Q1 Figures 2026 Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Udo Muller, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Yes. Thank you, Sandra. Dear investors, dear analysts, welcome to today's Q1 2026 earnings call. Let us dive straight into the numbers and details. On the top line, revenues in Q1 amounted to EUR 495.6 million, representing an organic growth of 1.1% compared to EUR 475.5 million in Q1 2025. On a reported basis, revenue grew by 4%.

Moving down the P&L. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 119.3 million compared to EUR 117.4 million last year. This represents a stable year-on-year development with EBITDA adjusted remaining essentially flat at the higher margin level. On adjusted EBIT, we reported EUR 41.7 million, up from EUR 39.7 million in Q1 2025. This corresponds to a 5% increase, highlighting that operating efficiency improvements continue to support earnings despite moderate top line momentum. Adjusted net income amounted to EUR 17.6 million compared to EUR 16.2 million in the prior year period. This translates into a 9% year-on-year increase.

Turning to cash flow. Free cash flow adjusted improved significantly. In Q1 2026, we reported an adjusted free cash flow of minus EUR 9.7 million compared to minus EUR 35.1 million in Q1 2025. This represents an improvement of 72% year-on-year. Henning will elaborate on this in detail later in the finance section.

Finally, CapEx before M&A amounted to EUR 16.5 million, down 8% year-on-year from EUR 17.9 million. This level of investment reflects our continued focus on disciplined capital allocation while maintaining the operational flexibility required to support our core activities. All in all, Q1 2026 demonstrates a stable and resilient financial performance. We delivered positive organic revenue growth, protected profitability at both EBITDA and EBIT level, improved net income and achieved a very strong improvement in free cash flow, all while keeping capital expenditure under control.

Let's have a look at the Nielsen numbers in the middle of the chart first. As always, and please keep in mind that those show gross rate card developments and the net revenue is on average 6 to 7 points lower. On a like-for-like and gross basis, the Out-of-Home category is outperforming all other media except for desktop mobile. With a share of around 10%, Out-of-Home maintains its strong position in the German advertising market. Translating the gross Nielsen numbers into net revenue, in Q1 2026, not only that market in total was negative by around minus 5% to minus 6%. At the same time, our total Out-of-Home business was up by more than 5%. DOOH alone delivered 12% growth and programmatic DOOH grew at the same rate.

So far my remarks. And with that, I hand over to Henning.

Thank you, Udo, and a very good morning, everybody. With that, let us start the finance section with a quick look at the Q1 '26 P&L, where Udo already has touched upon the key items. In total, we delivered a decent set of results for the first quarter. Given the good performance of the Out-of-Home sector and the Digital and Dialog segment, we were able to more than offset the comparatively weaker performance of our third segment, Data as a Service and E-Commerce. Overall, these developments enabled us to increase revenue by around 4% to EUR 496 million.

Reported growth includes a net scope effect of approximately 400 basis points support from the acquisition of AMEVIDA in October last year, offset by minus 40 basis points from the disposal of the Statista strategy unit at the beginning of this year and a currency headwind of 50 basis points -- minus 50 basis points, primarily U.S. dollar related at Statista. Excluding these effects, organic growth came in at 1.1%. EBITDA adjusted amounted to EUR 119 million, EUR 2 million or 2% higher compared with Q1 '25. The exceptional items for the quarter were minus EUR 9.2 million after minus EUR 2.5 million in the prior year, mainly due to restructuring measures. Accordingly, reported EBITDA was down by 4% from EUR 115 million to EUR 110 million.

Depreciation and amortization were basically unchanged with EUR 80 million compared to EUR 81 million in Q1 '25. With that, reported EBIT for the quarter came in at EUR 30 million, some EUR 4 million lower compared with Q1 '25. The financial result was minus EUR 17 million after minus EUR 15 million in the prior year period. This is due to currency effects. Accordingly, earnings before tax came in at EUR 13 million compared to EUR 18 million in Q1 of the prior year.

The tax rate was basically unchanged with around 30% in the reporting period. And with that, the tax result follows the development of the EBT. All in all, reported net income for the quarter came in at close to EUR 9 million after EUR 13 million in Q1 '25. Adjustments were up by EUR 5 million, mainly because of higher pretax exceptionals as described before. Accordingly, net income adjusted was EUR 18 million after EUR 16 million in the prior year.

Let us now switch over to the cash flow. Main driver for the cash flow development was working capital, which follows seasonality with an outflow of minus EUR 12 million. This is EUR 26 million better than in last year. While earnings, as we have just seen, were below prior year and IFRS 16 lease repayments were just a notch higher. Cash outs for taxes, others and investments were a notch lower. Cash outs for interest were on prior year level, whereas lower interest rates are being offset by higher debt. So altogether, free cash flow adjusted was minus EUR 10 million after minus EUR 35 million in Q1 '25.

Let me come to the net debt development. In the sequential view from the end of Q4 '25 to the end of Q1 '26, net debt was up by roughly EUR 10 million in accordance with the adjusted free cash flow for the first quarter of minus EUR 10 million. Net debt year-over-year was up by EUR 17 million to EUR 881 million, including adjusted free cash flow of EUR 132 million, our dividend payment last year of almost minus EUR 129 million, dividend payments to minority shareholders of minus EUR 13 million, minor M&A payments of minus EUR 2 million and cash out for the share buyback of minus EUR 2 million.

The remaining difference of minus EUR 3 million is, among others, due to an increase of overpayments from customers, a decrease of accrued interest expenses and lower financial liabilities recognized from profit transfer agreements at companies with minority interest. With that, our leverage ratio increased slightly compared to the prior year period to now 2.33x versus 2.18 in Q1 '25.

Let us now take a look at the performance of the individual operating segments in the past quarter. As is customary, let's start with Out-of-Home Media. In Q1 '26, we were able to increase our revenue by 5.4%. With revenue growth of 12%, Digital Out-of-Home was the key driver, supported by jumpstart of our flagship billboard the Whale in the Hamburg Main Station. While Out-of-Home saw a slight decrease of 0.6%, the services division grew by nearly 17%, mainly owed to newly won clients. Overall, we increased segment revenue from EUR 210 million to EUR 220 million. Adjusted EBITDA grew on a comparable basis from EUR 86 million to EUR 97 million or 12%. The adjusted EBITDA margin followed a similar trend, improving from 41% to nearly 44%. A similar picture emerges when looking at the adjusted EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 effects, our cash EBITDA proxy. This increased by nearly 33% to EUR 44 million, while the margin improvement by over 4 percentage points from just under 16% over 20%.

Lease expenses before IFRS 16 were EUR 65 million, 29.4% of sales, which is less than in last year's quarter, 30.2%. The delta between both EBITDA figures, the effect from IFRS 16 decreased slightly year-over-year. As explained in our last call, owing to recent renewals, we expect a reduced fixed rent exposure going forward.

In the Digital and Dialog segment, revenue increased by 12% from EUR 206 million to EUR 231 million. This positive trend was driven by the Dialog division, which achieved organic revenue growth of over 8%. Taking into account the successful acquisition of AMEVIDA, revenue rose by 26% to EUR 136 million.

Revenue in the Digital segment amounted to EUR 95 million in Q1 '26 as positive programmatic public video performance did not offset or not fully offset lower revenues in the online media. This trend is reflected in adjusted EBITDA and came in at EUR 27 million or 11.6% from a margin perspective due to a revenue-driven earnings reduction at our content business.

As expected, performance in our third segment fell short of the results from the same quarter last year. Revenue declined in both subsegments causing total segment revenues to drop from EUR 91 million to EUR 79 million. Let's take a closer look at this development. Developments in E-Commerce should be viewed in light of the weak consumer environment. At the same time, Asam's online business was migrated to a new platform.

With that, revenue for the quarter came in at EUR 42 million, minus 14% below the prior year. In addition to the sale of Statista strategy and consulting business, Data as a Service was impacted by the weak U.S. dollar, which during the transition from a seat-based to a data and volume-based business model could not yet be offset by growth in Statista's core business. Excluding scope and FX rate development, segment revenue declined organically by minus 9.4%. Adjusted EBITDA came at EUR 6 million compared with EUR 11 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

With that, let me hand you over back to Udo for the outlook and closing remarks.

Thank you, Henning. Before ending the presentation, let me just have some comments on the outlook for Q2 and the current trading momentum. For Q2 2026, we expect a solid performance both as a group, and consequently, on segment levels. For our core Out-of-Home business, we anticipate revenue growth for the second quarter that is around the Q1 level. The same applies with Digital and Dialog segment. Here, too, the trends from the previous quarter are expected to continue largely unchanged. For the Data as a Service and E-Commerce segment, we see a significant improvement compared to the previous quarter. However, in absolute terms, we still anticipate a single-digit percentage decline compared to the same period in 2025.

Let me now close the presentation with a short outlook into our financial calendar for 2026. Our next event will be our Annual General Meeting on June 3, which will be held virtually. Last year figures we will be present on August 13 and Q3 figures we will publish on November 12. And don't forget our webinar on transformation on June 17. As always, updates, reports and road show presentations can be found on the IR website.

Thank you, everyone, and we're now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

My first question is, any comments on the recent rumors of a EUR 2.5 billion bid for the whole company? Udo, would you be willing to step away? Or will you continue to manage the company for the foreseeable future, whomever the owner of the company is? That's my first question.

The second one is for Henning. What was the EUR 9 million of exceptionals in Q1? And how much do you expect for the full year? And then lastly, on the AI seminar on June 17, will we get a qualitative overview? Or will we get some financial targets in terms of at least cost savings?

Yes. So look, we don't comment rumors. Since the thing appeared in the press, there's all the time something new. Most of the time it's nonsense. I'm the CEO of the company and I have no intention to change that in the foreseeable future.

Well, Julien, on the second question, on the level of exceptionals, which were around EUR 9 million, so quite a bit higher than in the prior year. I would say more than 50% of that relates to the mentioned changes in the Management Board and the remainder relates to restructuring measures, some of those in Dialog and some of that in Statista.

Can you repeat the third question, please?

My third question was -- well, first of all, Henning, what number do you expect for the full year in terms of exceptional? And then the third question was on the AI seminar on June 17. Will we only get a qualitative overview of what you intend to do? Or will we get some financial targets, especially in terms of cost savings?

Let me answer the last one first. So it's more a strategic session. But as you know, we have some changes here in the top management and so we have to reorganize ourselves. Let's say, 90% we're going to have the June 17. There's a 10% chance also that we postponed that. But it's about strategy. It's about strategy.

I mean, we clearly see some cost savings because of the -- you saw we had EUR 9 million adjustments because of restructurings in the first quarter already. So what we're doing right now, we try to strengthen our, let's say, processes. We have here, let's say, 4 independent part of the company in the core segment. So we are going to put it together more to one unified media company. But it's a bit too early. And we also don't want to get -- create confusion inside the company earlier as necessary.

So that's why -- we clearly are here in the transformation process, and that is what I already said already reflected in the restructuring cost of the first quarter. So we're going to see more restructuring costs throughout the year.

Yes. We will see more compared to the prior year. I mean, currently, the forecast stands, I would say, EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million as we speak. It's a little bit higher than we had in the prior year.

The next question comes from James Tate from Goldman Sachs.

James Tate from Goldman. I've got 2 questions, please. I guess, firstly, on Out-of-Home, you've given guidance of stable growth around 5% for Q2. But could you help talk about some of the monthly trends within that given the conflict in the Middle East? So how did March and April compare to January and Feb? Did you see a slowdown there? And how is the order book looking for May and June, particularly as the comps should get easier in Q2?

And secondly, could you touch on some of the moving parts to the cost base for 2026, particularly around the exposure to energy costs? What impact are you seeing to the business here? And what measures could you take to offset and protect margins?

Yes, James. So look, energy costs are not a significant impact for us. Plus we have secured energy costs for a midterm period. So we don't expect any impact here for the running year. Trading momentum is actually what we said. We don't track really months. We look at quarters. I mean, right now, clearly, we see a little bit of impact. For example, whatever -- blowUP has lost some EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million or EUR 3 million orders from Middle East travel campaigns, et cetera. But it depends, obviously, for everybody what's going to happen from now on. Nobody knows what is going to happen. So maybe the war is finished, what some say. I'm a bit skeptical if I read what the Iranians are suggesting now. But we all have to wait what's happening.

So that is -- the energy costs have less of an impact to our company, but to the overall economy, obviously. And so maybe you should implement instead of EBITDA, EBITTDA, before interest, taxes and Trump, depreciation, because nobody knows what's going to happen.

But on the company itself, we don't see an impact. Trading momentum right now is, I think, satisfying in the light of the overall intuitiveness what we have. But I think nobody can give a serious forecast what's going to happen during the year, because nobody knows if you have a full-blown war in 4 weeks or if the whole thing is over.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank.

I have 2 questions from my end. The Digital Out-of-Home revenue growth of 12% in Q1, could you maybe give us some color as to what that's been driven by? Is it the national level customers mostly? Or has there been a pickup from the small and medium-sized companies that you have said you'll target going forward?

And on the back of the strong sort of 5% growth in Q1 in Out-of-Home Media, 5% guided for in Q2, are you changing the way you're thinking about the full year outlook as well? I'm aware of all the uncertainty that you just discussed. But could you maybe remind us what you expect for the full year organic revenue for Stroer and how comfortable you think those numbers are? And also on profitability, could you remind us what your 2026 outlook is and whether you're confident this can be reached with all that's going on?

So the 12% growth is mainly driven by national turnover. So this is -- and we expect the trend to continue throughout the year actually. We don't want to change the guidance now because the same reason what I said before. But also don't forget, if I'm talking about insecureness, we don't talk about massive changes. Even if you have a crisis, if you look in the last, whatever, 20 quarters, we talk about 1%, 2%, 3% up and down. But this is something which is clearly difficult to forecast in the current scenario. It's just guessing. So that's why we don't want to adjust the guidance right now. I missed something or...

The next question comes from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

A follow-up on my side on the Out-of-Home. The trading was better than you expected initially. So if you can elaborate a little bit more where the growth comes from and where you see the ongoing positive momentum in terms of the Out-of-Home.

Then on Statista. Q4, there was positive -- little positive like-for-like. Q1, there is a bit of negative like-for-like. So it's a bit volatile. What are your expectations for the coming quarters? And is there any update -- or when should we have any update on what's going on with the business transformation?

And then last question on the Digital. How do you see also the trends going forward? And how can you protect your margins here given the negative impact from decline in Digital?

Yes. We think -- to start with the last question, this is a temporary effect, because last year in first quarter, we had the rare situation that the American election and the German elections both were in the first quarter. So it produced a lot of traffic and traffic always translates in turnover automatically. So we don't see -- we are absolutely optimistic for the full year for our own inventory, especially the online.

If you look on the overall development and what we already discussed since a couple of quarters, through the LLMs and through the new LLM Google Search, we see a decline in traffic for special interest websites. So this is third-party inventory where we sell advertising for third-party publishers. But the online is the biggest news portal now in Germany, and we are completely unchanged optimistic, that we don't see any decline here. The opposite, we expect also this year a small growth on the online. But again, first quarter was a temporary effect because last year we had a lot of traffic from American and German elections.

Maybe to build on what Udo said earlier, the good Out-of-Home performance, as we understood, was mainly driven by a strong business from the national sales team. If you look further into where is this actually originating from, it's mostly FMCG, retail, food retail, telecommunications and the service sector actually growing nicely above average in the first quarter.

Statista, this is also a little bit unchanged here. I don't think that -- turnover and EBITDA, it's a key valuation metric for Statista going forward. Right now, we see really positive developments traffic-wise, for example, from Perplexity, which is the most important LLM solution here for research. And we are -- Statista Connect is we believe in a very good way. But what I already said a couple of times, I think we need to wait until the fourth quarter until we can show on a wider range of numbers the positive development of Statista.

I think the key point for Statista valuation is, are we able to prove that company GPTs are becoming better with Statista or not. And the moment we can prove that on a wider range of customers, then you immediately have a completely different valuation from Statista. But therefore, obviously, companies need to introduce first their company GPT. And the first thing they're doing then, they integrate their own data. And after this is achieved, they have the company GPT, they integrate their own data, then they start to think about third-party data sources. And this is a process where we are right now in. So we are negotiating and talking with a lot of key clients around the world and we see a positive development. But we need -- I think we need 6 months more until we can prove that on a more reliable broader range.

But I think in the meanwhile, the market accepted the simple formula shit in, shit out. Sorry for that. But you need reliable data, you need trusted data to produce for professional purposes. For private stuff, you can use an LLM also for data, and it's a mix of entertainment and concrete results. But for professional use, you need to be 100% sure that the results are correct. And therefore, you need trusted data. And that's what Statista is delivering. Statista is globally the biggest platform for statistic data, completely unchanged.

And after a phase of, let's say, insecureness from our customer side, we see more and more conviction that our customers are coming back -- the few ones who left us are coming back and signing deals with Statista Connect. So we are positive. But we need at least 6 more months. And again, I don't think that this year turnover and EBITDA, it's really an important figure here. I think if you look at the size of the transformation Statista is going through, because the whole sales strategy is right now going to be transformed, I think it's a very positive result that Statista keeps turnover and results stable.

And don't forget, we expect for this year on cash flow a EUR 10 million better result than last year due to restructurings, which are also taking place in Statista because AI is also allowing us to produce more efficient and cheaper than we did that before. But that is obviously also not the key for future valuation. The key will be clearly to prove that we make LLM company GPT's results better than with Statista, and that is the mission we are on right now.

Okay. Understood. And maybe just a last follow-up question on the margins at Out-of-Home. So there's a considerable jump in margins. Is there something special in the Q1 apart from nice growth? Or what should we expect for the rest of the quarters, the same improvements...

Understood, Anna. First of all, you know that Q1 in terms of the sales volume and also the absolute margin level is usually below the prior year. So you should not read the tick up that we have seen now as an indication for the full year. Q1 was supported by a good development in the service business that I mentioned. Plus, I think if you look at the mix on how we actually -- how we channeled sales to the different parts of the inventory, we had a quite favorable mix in terms of the revenue shares we are, let's say, owing our partners. So I would say we are positive on the margin for the full year, but not to the extent that you have now seen in Q1.

[Operator Instructions] It seems that there are no further questions. Back over to you, Mr. Muller, for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I hope you have a positive summer. And thank you very much for listening, and hope to see you soon. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Goodbye. Take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ströer preliminary figures Q4 '25 Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Udo Müller, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Dear, ladies and gentlemen, the analysts. Let me welcome you to our call on our Q4 and preliminary and unaudited full year results for 2025. We start the call with a short overview of the key numbers and our key strategic achievements in the context of the current market dynamics. Then I will talk about the real game changer for Ströer as recent technologic developments enable us to converge Ströer from advertising space marketer into an AI-driven platform business, something I had in my mind for years. This will be followed by an update on the T-Online and Statista. Henning will then guide you through the figures of fiscal 2025 and Q4. I will close the presentation with the outlook for '26 and open the call for Q&A.

Our total revenues rose slightly increasing by 1% year-over-year from EUR 2.05 billion to EUR 2.08 billion, in line with our expectations and our guidance. Our revenue were up by 4% to EUR 989 million, digital out-of-home by around 8% to EUR 398 million and programmatic digital out-of-home by 12% to EUR 151 million.

EBITDA adjusted ended the year essentially basically unchanged at EUR 626 million. EBIT adjusted declined by 4% to EUR 307 million. Net income adjusted was above EUR 165 million. Free cash flow adjusted came in at roughly EUR 107 million. Our capital expenditures remained stable at around EUR 93 million, virtually unchanged from last year. Adjusted earnings per share came in at EUR 2.70.

Let's change gears here and look forward. On the next chart, I would like to present you the next logical strategic step for Ströer. This step will take Ströer to the next level and mark a decisive milestone in the company's history. It is a path we began over a decade ago with the digitalization of our portfolio and the strategic acquisitions such as [indiscernible] local display, video and native ad rich such as T-Online who significance is only now becoming fully apparent, especially in combination with the [indiscernible]. This also answers the question why now?

The answer is obvious, because only now with a comprehensive set of AI tools, which developed in the last 12 months, we are in the position of transforming Ströer from a marketer of advertising space into an ad-driven platform business. What we described here is the way our business works perfectly well. As you all know, under present day is primarily manual silo-based sales model. Customers have traditionally selected predefined advertising space packages and use them as building blocks for their campaigns. They are buying contracts and reach but the system of the time are offering only limited visibility into the real impact of those campaigns.

Our different product words out-of-home, digital out-of-home and digital ad developed the strong expertise in each area, but they evolve to some extent, on separate technical and organizational tracks. Because of that history, they are marketed primarily independently, and our teams worked extensively across the world to coordinate offers, scheduling and delivery. Much of that work was done through hands-on collaboration with campaign development and follow-up managed directly by our people. But then the present setup automation is limited, and that is true for a good reason. Our business grew quickly and our teams build tailored solution for thousands of customers. That model served us well and created strong customer relationships. But as volume increase, the processes remain highly people driven.

Avenue campaign required detailed coordination and impact measurement often relied on data that came from different systems and time lines. The foundation we built our success on model expertise, personal service and deep market knowledge. And it also shows that the next step in our evolution is so important. By bringing these product worlds together and introducing integrated, automated AI support systems, we can keep strength got us here while unlocking new levels of speed, transparency and scalability for the future.

This chart illustrates the next step we initiated to move from primarily a manual-driven advertising space marketer to a fully integrated AI-powered platform. At the center of this evolution, to be the true manager as said that dynamically generates individualized products for each customer instead of a predefined packages. The platform creates tailored solutions, automatically, based on budget, location, product, industry and location.

The booking experience changes just as significantly. What used to require multiple steps and coordination looks we move to one-click workflow that controls the entire campaign process from start to finish. This will be powered by an AI offer engine that bring our components together, quotation, configuration and delivery in a unified sequence. Alongside the [indiscernible], our public mine analytics tool will become an intelligence layer of the system, and predicts and monitors the impact of campaigns and continuously improves them as a platform keeps learning.

For the first time, we can manage campaigns not only by which, but the expected and measured effectiveness. The system optimizing its sales over time, the economic benefits of this transformation are equally clear, faster cycles, lower management costs and strong margins emerge from naturally from AI-driven model. We gained the ability to introduce true yield management across our inventory and to scale our business without scaling our headcount.

The system can generate and evaluate an unlimited number of offer variants which means we can serve both large natural advertisers and local LMEs with equal efficiency. But this chart ultimately shows is a shift from selling advertising space to delivering complete customer solutions, automated, data-driven and impact oriented. It marks the next step in transforming our company into a platform business that grows faster, operate smarter and strengthens customer relationships with every campaign.

With this chart, I'll give you a short introduction to the first pillar of our transformation, the Ströer ad manager. It will be the engine that will automate all our transactional processes and fundamentally change how we serve customers. The platform generates personalized offers at scale, something that in a traditional setup would require extensive manual work. Instead, the ad manager does this automatically, combining data, rules and contact signals to produce proposals that are tailored to each customer's budget, location and objectives. The workflows themselves review booking, delivery and billing also become fully automated. What used to require multiple handoffs will be controlled end-to-end by the system. This reduces errors, increases speed and lower processing costs. If we make the entire transaction change faster, one of the most important elements shown on the slide will be dynamic pricing. A yield and rules engine will continuously optimize prices and bidding logic so that our inventory will be used as efficiently as possible. This ensures better utilization and creates measure economic benefits for our business. And because the system is AI-driven at campuses and unlimited number of bookings in parallel without increasing headcount. That scalability is essential as we expand our reach to many more local and regional advertisers.

That manages a key strategic feature that enables us to multiply the number of customers we can serve, both locally and nationally without adding proportional costs. As was performance players whose offerings are complementary to product portfolio, have already made several booking, the standard in the digital performance business, AI will enable Ströer to use its extensive digital infrastructure to make customer-specific and target-oriented products easily book a big and a self-service as well.

Let me briefly share our milestone plan for the development and implementation of the Ströer Ad Manager. The plan shows how we will take the Ströer Ad Manager from concept to rollout with roughly 1.5 years. We are now starting with MVP, minimum viable product concept phase where we define the architecture, the infrastructure blueprint, the data catalog and all required systems checks. That works lays the foundation for everything that follows.

Within the second and fourth quarter of 2026, we built a deep data pipeline that powers the platform. This includes all ETL connections, extract, transform load pipeline to our delivery system, data cleanup, the warehouse scheme, our product catalog and the price engine, ensuring we can run the platform on clean, consistent data from day one.

From the third quarter of 2026, the second quarter of 2027, we had agentic AI layer. All 6 or 7 agents become fully functional, guard rails go live and we implement aviation frameworks and prompt regressing tests. This is what gives the systems intelligence to recommend, optimize and execute at scale.

During the overlapping period Q2 2026 to Q3 '27, we built a sales interface and reporting environment. The back office UI, the sales co-pilot interface, [indiscernible] and all dashboards and reporting tools. This ensures the platform integrates clearly into our commercial workflow and give for every team that uses it.

Finally, from Q3 '26 to Q4 '27, we conduct testing and rollout. Internal pilots, feedback loops, change management measures and performance tuning lead directly to the go-live. The final step ensures not just red lines -- readiness of the system, but readiness of the organization to work with at scale.

Our second pillar for our transformational public mind, our AI-based predictive intelligence layer. Its purpose is simple but powerful. For the first time, the impact out-of-home campaign becomes predictable, measurable and fully plannable. The system uses large volumes of mobility and behavioral data to generate precise predictions of how campaign will perform and it feeds those predictions directly into planning and pricing decisions.

This slide also shows our public demand form earning cycle with Ad Manager. Every campaign generates new booking, delivery and performance sickness, in minds interpreted Ströer signals improve the model and sense optimized guidance back into planning, pricing and delivery. The model system runs a smarter becomes continuously raising effectiveness across the portfolio.

Another important point here is a shift from pure performance metric contacts and which to impact transparency. Customers increasingly want to understand the real effect of the spend, not just how many people they reach, Public Mind tackled and optimizes that impact. The strengthens customer confidence and loyalty. Returns were used to be an estimate into a managed variable that can be improved in real time. And our ambition is clear. We want to form an industry-wide standard.

Let me briefly walk you through the Public Mind development pipeline. In the third and fourth quarter of '26, we completed our proof of concept, the core QPIs quality and impact indicators. We selected partners to ensure the impact segments we generate are accurate and reliable in real-world settings. For the first or second quarter of '27, we built MVP with 5 pure QPIs, quality and impact indicators. PDI presence density index, PCS bottleneck coverage share location lift, CHL carry over half life and iROAS incremental return on ad spend. These QPIs form the analytic backbone that allows us to quantify campaigns impact the precision.

The third and fourth quarter of '27 will shift into multi-partner MVP testing and scientific validation. This sales confirms that Public Minds performs consistently across different industries and campaign type before we scale the system. And bringing move into full enterprise rollout, including international expansion. At that point, Public Mind becomes the predictive intelligence layer of our platform, guiding, planning, pricing and delivery across all markets we serve.

The web of this chapter, let me repeat the key message. Drive Manager is a transition engine -- transaction engine. Public Mind is intelligence layer. Together, they transform manual ads sales into a scalable, automated platform business. AI is becoming the operating system tool automating the entire value chain, from planning to booking delivery and impact measurement. The Ströer Ad Manager now acts as our transaction engine, taking over operated steps and enabling scale well beyond mineral processes. Public Mind ad intelligence layer, joining campaigns impact into measurable and continuously optimized viable.

Together, they shift us from a manual ad space business to automated platform. The automated cycle includes data feedback and self-learning optimization, drives faster decisions, more accurate pricing, stronger yield management and better outcomes of our clients. Within long-term reality and more resilient revenue, all of this is anchored in our 4-layer business model.

First, our public infrastructure layer. Second, our transaction layer, the Ad Manager, third, our intelligence layer Public Mind and fourth, our trusted content T-Online. Ströer transforms into a unique AI-driven real-world media platform. With the T-Online as our trusted content layer, the amplifies impact of our nationwide advertising network and increased attractiveness for the German public.

Let me now give you an update on where we stand with the T-Online and Statista. Let's start with T-Online. Over the last 10 years, we have formed the T-Online into undisputed #1 news platform in the market. The data points on this slide makes that unmistakably clear. In terms of net household income, we are reaching the most economically relevant users. Demographic spread data on the chart underscores the Online's strength.

The platform is really strong across all age groups. In addition, the general distribution is very well balanced 50 million male unit users and 40 million female unique users, together, forming one of the largest and most adverse digital news audiences in the German market. But what met your what is today throughout the past decade, we have a sole player that combines highly quality journalism with 3 fully developed distribution channels, desktop, mobile and public video. That market channel approach has allowed us to reach audiences wherever they are and have been centered to establishing the T-Online as Germany's #1 news and advised portal.

Today, across our channels, T-Online reaches 47 million unique users. That scale is matched by a level of trust that has become increasingly important in the edge of AI, their reliable information is one of the most valuable currencies. More and more users not only consume our content, but actively prefer our brand of major competitors. The strength of this model comes from consistency. 10 years of open access to order paywall, 10 years of investment in distribution technology and 10 years of building a brand that people choose to both news and guidance. And we compare reach amongst German-speaking in diets, T-Online issues 43% outperforming the major newsprint in the category. But the most important indicator of advertisers, household managers shows an even clearer picture.

In this segment, T-Online delivers a 42% reach or up to 110% advantage to our key competitors. There is quality of our reach are key, T-Online not only leads an overall audience, it leads, it matters most for brands among key decision makers with strong buying power. This leadership translates directly into higher campaign relevance, stronger advertiser demand and a clear competitive edge in the digital news and information markets.

The next chart, and of course is simple, but it is of bond for advertisers. Trust drives effectiveness. The data shows a clear and positive correlation of 0.85 between media brand trust and advertising systems, acceptance. In other words, the more a user trust platform, the more open they are to advertising and the lower the likelihood of ad avoidance.

Within this framework, T-Online stands out with a trust score of 50 significantly above the 32-point score of another major outlet shown in the chart. The 18-point gap is not just a statistical difference. It directly translates into higher uncertain, stronger campaign performance and better ROI for advertisers who choose our platform.

In times of exploding amount of synthetic content, trust will be one of the most valuable currencies in the digital media and T-Online's leadership in this metric gives us a meaningful competitive advantage in an environment where brand safety, quality and credibility matter more than ever.

In the research in summaries, known as Google Zero rolled out broadly in early 2025, many in the industry expected online platforms to lose, reach and relevance, but our numbers show a very different picture. A year later, T-Online's audience is stable and over time, clearly growing. Paid rules in January 26 were up 10% versus '24. And in February 26, based on reported data, paid rules to up 30% compared with '24.

A key factor in our strong share of direct traffic where reduces our dependency on external referrals and underscores the strength of the T-Online brand. The platform continues to draw a large loyal audiences, supporting advertising relevance and strengthening the long-term quality of our revenue. The data makes it clear even in the share landscape, T-Online remains the destination with stable, reach and strong impact.

With that, over to Statista to give you a follow-up or a deep dive in H1 2025. AI and large language models now dominate almost all areas of business, from research and analysis of strategic decision-making. But the quality of the output is only a data behind it. In the AI system access and verified or near as better to introduce so-called hallucinations. Content that sounds possible but is factually incorrect. The figures on this slide speak for themselves.

According to McKinsey, it's a global economic damage caused by AI hallucinations amounted to EUR 67.4 billion in '24 loan. According to Deloitte, almost half of all enterprise users have already made important decision based on hallucinated information. And Boston Consulting Group estimates efficiency loss due to a minimum verification of AI output at 22%. These are not absolute risks. And probably an example from last year illustrates this impressively. In October 25, it was revealed that Deloitte Australia had produced a $290,000 report for the Australian government with the help of AI. The report was full of fabricated sources, non-existent academic publications, picture book costs. Deloitte had to reimburse part of the cost. It ensures that at real level verified and created data accompanies risk not only poor reports but also fundamental misjudgments with legal, financial and reputational consequences. This is exactly where Statista comes in as a trustworthy verified data source for AI supported workflows.

What makes Statista unique as a data source. First of all, the sheer breath and depth of data, over 1.3 million statistics, 80,000 reports, 30,000 infographics, 10,000 topic pages and around 3 million consumer interviews. About 85% of our data is proprietary or exclusive third-party data, meaning it is created exclusively by Statista.

In addition, we have exclusive partnerships with third-party providers and crucially, our data as trusted verified and editorially classified. What is not changing fundamentally that this data is no longer only available via statista.com. We bring it directly to where our customers work into their own workflows and applications. We do this via our own MCP server for AI agents, we represent state transfer, and via various technical integration solutions that companies can integrate in their own applications.

Particularly important, our data is now also integrated directly into the applications of major partners Capacity, Canvas and Microsoft Copilot. This dramatically expands the user base. It is no longer just power users and analysts who benefit. But effectively, the entire company usage but more accessible because it takes place directly and people already work in the everyday applications. The shift to AI first and the connections to AI application requires a consistent change in 2 dimensions, product and sales.

On the product side, this means first and foremost that we are integrating our data technically into partner applications such as Microsoft Copilot. In other words, core product development with our partners. AI is all fundamentally changing our customers search for data with us, keyword, guided search, in addition, AI enables completely new data formats that can be searched in real time. Here, we are investing heavily in products such as synthetic populations, which allow market research and analysis in real time.

To solve customer-specific problems, we specifically address use cases in various industries, for example, media planning. On the sales side, this results in a new go-to-market approach. Since solutions that are integrated new customer applications and systems are significantly more complex, more solution-based and consulting best approach is needed.

The first step is primarily about convincing customers of the new applications and driving up usage through close integration of sales and customer teams. This also results in new customer segmentation. Small customers are served in safe service with integrated standard solutions, but for large customers, we jointly develop tailor-made solutions that's embedded in the application and processes.

Finally, we expect the pricing model to avoid from a purely seat-based approach to a more consumption-based model. So far, my remarks with that, I hand over to Henning.

Thank you, Udo, and a very good morning, everybody. Udo already elaborated on the key financials for 2025. But please allow me just to add a few remarks. In what, after a strong start to be turned out to be a very challenging year, we delivered all in all, a very robust performance. After a decline in the first 9 months, EBITDA adjusted for the full year was stable, supported by an improvement in the fourth quarter. Exceptional items for the year amounted to EUR 25 million and included costs for our structures program of EUR 2.5 million. Restructuring costs mainly at Statista and expenses for ERP transformation of altogether close to EUR 17 million and costs for the assessment of potential changes of the group's portfolio of roughly EUR 4 million.

With that, reported EBITDA amounted to EUR 601 million up to EUR 605 million in the prior year. Depreciation, amortization increased by 5% to EUR 334 million and included roughly EUR 10 million from the acquisition of RBL Media in 2024. Thus, the underlying increase in D&A was somewhat lower.

EBIT for the full fiscal year was EUR 268 million and the 7% lower than in '24. At the same time, the financial result improved by 13% and amounted to EUR 67 million. The improvement reflects lower rates and some positive currency effects from intra group debt denominated in U.S. dollar more than offsetting higher net debt. Earnings before taxes were EUR 201 million and EUR 9 million below previous year's level, applying a broad sale tax rate and net income for '25 million was EUR 140 million, leading also to an improved equity position in the balance sheet.

Adjustments were slightly higher following the above-mentioned exceptional items. And with that, net income adjusted came in at EUR 165 million, so just a few million euros short against the prior year. While organic growth in Q4 was flat as in the first 9 months, sales growth was 3%, supported mainly by an acquisition of our call center business. The corresponding effect on revenue amounted to around about EUR 20 million. EBIT adjusted improved by EUR 7 million, mainly driven by the contribution from the just described acquisition, around EUR 3 million and improved earnings from out of home media as well as digital dialogue media segments.

Reported EBITDA came in broadly stable. Higher D&A and just a lower EBIT was compensated for by an improved financial result, leading to stable earnings before taxes. Taking into account the higher adjustments, net income adjusted even improved to EUR 79 million for the fourth quarter.

Let us now discuss the cash flow development for the full fiscal year and the fourth quarter. While it is obvious that the full year's development was not in line with our initial expectations at the beginning of last year, Q4 cash flow is capitalized by improved cash conversion based on tight expense and CapEx control. With stable EBITDA in Q4, lower interest and tax payments could compensate for a lower but still positive working capital contribution.

Working capital included roughly EUR 10 million outflows required to finance the activities acquired in the call center area. So excluding that, the working capital contribution to cash flow in Q4 was roughly on the prior year level.

With that, the operating cash flow in Q4 was on prior year's level, representing considerable improvement compared to the development of the first 9 months. Lower cash out for investments and slightly lower cash out for lease liability repayments even led to improved free cash flow adjusted in the fourth quarter, in line with the guidance that we have provided in our Q3 call.

Let us now analyze the net debt development. Net debt year-over-year was up by EUR 33 million, including our free cash flow adjusted of plus EUR 107 million, dividends to shareholders of minus EUR 128 million, dividend payments to minority shareholders of minus EUR 13 million, M&A and transaction costs of around minus EUR 3 million and the remainder of around plus EUR 4 million, lower financial liabilities recognized from profit transfer agreements at companies with minority interest.

Sequentially, so from the end of Q3 to the end of Q4, net debt was reduced by EUR 74 million, including free cash flow adjusted of plus EUR 88 million, M&A expenses of minus EUR 1 million and quite like in Q4 '24 minus EUR 9 million arising from increased customer over payments. With that, our leverage ratio amounted to 2.3x by the end of fiscal year '25, up to 2.1x last year. Compared to the end of Q3, however, and based on good Q4 cash flow generation, our leverage ratio improved by roughly 0.3x, giving us reasonable headroom.

Let us now have a look into the performance of our out-of-home media segment. I trust many of you are aware of the IFRS lease accounting implies for the significance of EBITDA. In order to increase transparency, we would like to share with you the same chart we have discussed already in the last couple of years, now extended for the values of fiscal year 2025.

Looking at the average growth since '22, we see revenue up by close to 8% supported on the one hand by the acquisition of RBL last year, contributing a sales delta of around EUR 19 million. And on the other hand, however, more than compensated for by an exceptionally challenging market environment in '25. EBITDA adjusted, which includes effects from IFRS 16 accounting in the same period showed a slightly higher average growth rate. You also see that IFRS 16 effect increased a little more in '25 compared to the 2 years before, again, partly deriving from the acquisition of RBL.

Now looking at the EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16 effects, so the cash EBITDA, which certainly is a much better cash flow proxy. We see average growth of more than 10% in the period since '22. The main drivers here being the sales outperformance of our high-margin digital products and above-average growth for our large national account business. Including a CapEx-to-sales ratio declining into 2024 and stabilizing in '25, cash contribution average improved considerably by more than 25% on average in the period.

If we now focus more on the development in '25 compared to '24 we see that the EBITDA adjusted margin is improving slightly, while the cash EBITDA margin is flat at 25.5%. The main reason for this being a slightly higher fixed rent exposure compared to the prior year from RBL of roughly EUR 5 million and some EUR 4 million from new contracts at Ströer Polska. Total lease expenses before IFRS 16 amounted to EUR 303 million in '25. In percent of sales, 30.6%, reflecting a slight increase against the prior year due to a sales mix shifting to slightly more expensive inventory and a lower differential between the sales performance of classic and digital than in the previous year, delivering a stable cash EBITDA margin at a slightly higher lease to sales ratio shows also good cost and expense control that we intensified after the ad market were going south in spring last year.

For the current fiscal year 2026, we currently expect declining effects from IFRS 16 after several contracts such as in the cities of Bremen, Frankfurt and Bielefeld have been renewed and will now foresee a significantly lower fixed rent component.

Let us now have a look at the performance of our different segments with a particular focus on the Q4 development. Out-of-home media sales in the fourth quarter grew by almost 2% in a very challenging market, which was characterized by declining TV sales. With that, the performance was in line with the projection provided on our Q3 call. Both our classic and digital products showed moderate growth. EBITDA adjusted was up by roughly EUR 10 million, almost 1/3 of this coming from an exceptionally strong year and performance of our activities in Poland and also supported by higher IFRS 16 effects mentioned earlier.

On top of that, our services business, where we supply nonmedia services to, in particular, smaller clients improved earnings around EUR 2 million. The remainder of improvement also includes continuously tight cost control. Altogether, the performance in fiscal year '25 with around 4% growth and a stainable cash EBITDA margin demonstrates resilience under extreme market conditions.

Supported by our acquisition in the call center space that is recognized in our financials at the beginning of October last year, our segment Digital and Dialog Media showed a strong increase in Q4 revenues of 9%. Organic growth for the segment was 0.7% and thus also improved compared to the development of the first 9 months.

Let me take a moment to repeat the key rationale behind the call center transaction. The acquired assets related to Amavita, which was an established provider in the field of dialogue marketing with a strong focus on sales and sales-related services. We acquired the business in the course of insolvency proceedings for an addigible purchase price. As part of the integration, the acquired business is now operated largely from our existing overhead infrastructure. On top of that, we are optimizing the existing portfolio of locations and renegotiated existing lease contracts. So altogether, we will be able to operate Amavita profitably from day 1.

In terms of customer structure, we will strengthen our position by helping mostly already existing clients in the sales process as opposed to a pure service-related business, this will offer a higher margin potential going forward. The full -- for the full fiscal year '26, we shall have on average more than 1,200 additional FTEs generating more than EUR 70 million in revenue with an expected high single-digit million euro contribution to EBITDA on top of the roughly EUR 3 million recognized in Q4.

Our additional media sales somewhat stabilized towards the end of the year. Revenues of our high-quality owned content portfolio increased and largely compensated for a decline in our third-party portfolio. Q4 EBITDA was up EUR 4 million, largely deriving from the already mentioned transaction and a positive earnings development in digital, which altogether more than compensated for a decline in our door-to-door activities which delivered strong earnings improvement in Q4 of 2024.

Segment revenue in our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment were down by 4%. Sales in Statista were up 3.5% organically, excluding currency effects and thus a little bit better than the development in the first 9 months. On the platform side, inbound sales expected to remain under pressure, while outbound and the ranking business hold up well. By the end of the year, we disposed off a small noncore business unit of Statista, which focused on customized strategic consulting project. This unit generated roughly EUR 8 million of sales in '25 with no relevant earnings contribution.

At Azam, Q4 was challenging for 2 reasons. Firstly, the consumer environment remains under pressure, including a sluggish Christmas business impacting our online channel. Secondly, we faced some teething issues after migrating our updated Webshop infrastructure to a new provider. Initially, insufficient controls led to fraud than purchase orders in which a large number of gas accounts were used, which finally triggered an exceptional -- an extraordinary write-off and receivables of around EUR 2.5 million recognized in our EBITDA adjusted.

With that, let me hand you over back to Udo for the outlook and closing remarks.

Provided that the already significant trade policy and geopolitical uncertainties do not increase further, we are optimistic about the 2026 financial year. Based on the assumptions with you today, we anticipate organic revenue growth in the low to mid-single-digit range. For the cash EBITDA, so the EBITDA before IFRS 16, we expect the development in line with the sales growth.

For adjusted free cash flow before M&A, we see a positive development. For EBITDA adjusted, after IFRS 16, we are expecting a largely stable development compared to the previous year, including lower IFRS 16 effects due to better economic parameters and recently renewed contracts. The shift from fixed and variable rents, negative impact on EBITDA adjusted on the one hand and declining fixed lease obligations on the other hand.

Looking to Q1 2026, out-of-home media sales should come in slightly above last year's level, even against a strong prior year growth of 15.3%, which included the impact from the federal elections in Germany. In Digital Dialog Media, we expect sales growth broadly in line with momentum of the fourth quarter of 2025, which stood at plus 9%. For DaaS and e-commerce, we expect a decline of roughly EUR 9 million including the disposal of Statista Strategy and Consulting unit.

Let me now close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2026. The annual report for 2025, we published on March 23, 2026. On May 12, our Q1 numbers will be released. The half year figures will be presented on August 13, and our Q3 figures will be published on November 12. In order to do justice to significant and complexity of our strategic transformation, we are planning on a webinar in April 2026. A during which we will discuss the topics presented in detail with you and explore them greater depth. We will send you a invitation to webinar in good time. As always, updates, reports and roadshows presentations can be found on our IR website.

Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein.

So my first question is about your AI Ad Manager. Can you just tell us how much investment is needed to develop this platform over the next years? My second one is on the Dialog business. Can you just isolate again, I think it was a bit too quickly earlier of how much of the growth is due to M&A, how much of the growth was coming from Ranger in the Dialog segment, that would be great.

Then you -- on Statista, I think you've already alluded to the usage-based model at the last results. Can you tell us, has this materialized already in some revenues coming from this new model? Or are we still in a full transition? And I'll just add one more. Can you just comment on why your fixed rent payment in the renegotiation has gone down just to expand a little bit more?

Yes. Thank you, Annick. So let's start with the last question. So we are benefiting here from the consolidation of the German market. So we said that already in the last call, one of the other time. January, the rents are shrinking. So that is a result here. It could improve the rents in a couple of contracts in the last year, which were actually signed 15 years ago, then we had 3, sometimes 4 competitors. Now we have a geopolitics situation here with and mainly focused on large cities.

So that's why we have let's say, a very supportive situation, which we already saw in the last years, we see shrinking rents. And that is the result here. IFRS, EBITDA is shrinking when we take fixed rents out. So the variable rents don't impact that solution. But if the fixed rents are growing EBITDA IFRS is rising. I mean the fixed rents are shrinking, the EBITDA goes down. So this is a bit weird if you look on the first view because obviously, we have lower EBITDA because we have a more favorable rent conditions.

So first question, I mean due to the reason there are no developments. It's much cheaper. So we expect maximum around EUR 2 million here CapEx. So it's negligible actually. So it's not the same also for -- clearly something what we -- what is our platform. You can compare it a little bit with whatever Google, for example, doing the Google App manager has 10 more complex than a global thing, et cetera. But at the end here, the big advantage is that we are able to produce automated offers locally and nationally. And this will be a big help, for example, especially also in the local market because today we have 330,000 local customers, and average ticket here is like EUR 7,500.

And the processing costs and also the sale costs are enormous because if you -- you have no possibility if we self-bookings, for example, local customers. While self-booking became the standard now in local sales really, I mean, Google and Amazon, they do like EUR 13 billion turnover in Germany. And almost everything there is self-booking. So we have no self-booking capability and you can only buy or we are selling actually products. We don't sell solutions.

And for example, you have 1,000 local makers and banks in Germany. The ad manager, we are able to produce offers for 1,000 banks in 2 minutes where you have a completely tailored offering across our different advertising platforms with out-of-home as a key offering. So -- and this can be done by our sales force as a managed service or can be done by the customers or agencies, small agencies, which are working for the customer themselves self-booking. So that's why we are -- we strongly believe that we are able to multiply the number of local customers through the Ad Manager because we have this completely tailor-made products for every customer, for every opportunity and for every strategic focus sales.

I remind it's a bit different. We are in talks with all the industry players here because the target is here and the intelligence layer and the development cost around EUR 2 million to get it live process actually initiative by the association there. We are developing it right now. And we are almost finish with the first phase. So here in the future, we can show the impact of the campaign based on these QPIs, which we've talked before. So this will be also a game changer clearly because impact is key in the future for the acceptance of our media -- for any other media. So that's why the combination of the Ad Manager, which is a store development and Public Mind, which is -- which will become an industry-wide initiative is going to change acceptance and also how people look at our media completely.

Annick, on your question reconciling Dialog sales in Q4, you see on Slide 30 that sales are growing by around EUR 23 million, roughly EUR 20 million of this is coming from the acquisition. The underlying growth in the call centers was, I would say, around EUR 5 million. And resales at Ranger roughly down by EUR 2 million. So I think that explains. However, Ranger was quite strong in moving from 23 into 24. So there's a bit of a base effect and also Ranger developed better than we anticipated, like both weeks ago in the fourth quarter.

And on Statista, Annick, we clearly see consumption or usage going up through the changing model. But what we also see is that we have very different results for various clients. So it's not like a home run coming from itself. So we have customers like, for instance, Shopify who have integrated Statista data via the LLM cloud, which is implemented in their internal work process, and they had like 25x the credits now that they originally had planned. So you see that the database model works very well for specific clients, but there are other customers like in the advertising space, Omnicom Group, where you see the changing model in itself has not really driven consumption up so far.

So you need to work with the clients on the activation of the new model, but we clearly see that consumption or usage in general goes up, but still a very diversified profile across all customers, but you see like the customers where it works, you see consumption almost excluding. So we are working on finding out where the levers are for the success cases and then implemented in an activation program across all customers that go for Statista.

Your next question comes from James Tate from Goldman Sachs.

It's James Tate from Goldman. I've got 3 questions, please. Firstly, on the cadence of out-of-home growth through 2026. You mentioned the slight growth in Q1 against a tough pump. So could you give some color on what you're baking in for the rest of the year as part of the group guidance, should we expect an acceleration to mid-single-digit growth for sort of Q2 to Q4? And I guess, secondly, related, have you seen the escalation in the Middle East conflict impact sentiment or forward bookings amongst advertisers? I guess, similar to the -- in any way similar to the impact that you flagged around the trade war last year.

I guess, finally, from a more strategic viewpoint, it was helpful to understand more about Ströer Ad Manager. Will this also help you become more closely integrated with some of the advertising agencies and grow your share of their direct budgets, and you described the Ad Manager as a game changer. Could you quantify how you're thinking about the contribution to out-of-home revenue growth over time.

Thank you, James. Maybe starting with the cadence of out-of-home. I think it's really fair to say that we expect, say, somewhat of an acceleration as far as we move down the year. Q1, as we all know, actually was very strong last year with more than 15%. So we are very positive that there's a good chance that we will see quite a bit of a tick up. And I think unchanged, again, let me let us point out that we feel structurally, there is no limit that outcome -- out-of-home should grow, I'd say, close to 10%. So that our midterm guidance for the business is unchanged.

So the Ad Manager clearly is something which is also let's say, the agencies and the customers because this will allow us -- when we look today, we are the out-of-business in the world, they are selling actually the box, and we are selling reach, and we are selling products. So this is a complete game changer because the customers are asking for impact, not for contacts. We can buy a lot of contacts, but you need to know what is the outcome from that.

And look, we have, for example, today, we have a national sales force of 750 people. That is a big sales force. And there are only like 100 people working with clients and the rest is in back office. And to transform the business in the platform business, is a complete game changer, and I'm 100% convinced that the whole out-of-home industry is going to make this move. We see that we are here ahead of the development, but the reason that we are also ahead in introducing programmatic technologies to our business because of our strong digital business, we are much deeper in this technology development. But if you -- we just got a big study from one of the big consulting companies last week by chance and the -- and we saw that they go exactly the same rule of the industry.

The industry will change. AI is a transition, transforming power for the out-of-home industry. And you see the future will be clearly -- you see the big American performance companies, and you see out-of-home growing and all the other stuff will suffer to print TV, radio the market is changing. And the question is really is AI? Is this driving your development on a new level. And that's what we see here. We are able, first time to really report impact, and we are able to automate our processes, which are super complex because if you have hundreds of thousands of billboards and street furniture pieces around the country, it's a super complex operation from marketing it from building products until the maintenance on the street.

And this is -- AI is complete game changer. And that's -- you would see in the latest 12 to 24 months, the whole industry is going to change in this direction.

Iran, okay, Iran question. Right now, we don't see an impact, but it depends obviously how it develops. So nobody can see that. We saw -- last year, I think -- if you look at the market development, the market, I think, was well to high single-digit down. I think we delivered an excellent result for that look completely different without all these tariff war and stuff. We are in a situation where consumer confidence and also corporate confidence is not very high.

For this background, if you look at the numbers, I think we delivered really strong numbers in our core business, especially if you look on digital growth and digital out-of-home growth and programmatic out-of-home growth. And so I think this is really surprisingly stable. So Q1 is much better than I expected because I always look on 3 years' average growth rates. So last year was an exceptional year in Q1, not only the elections, but also -- you might remember there's a big -- some of the big German retailers this paper leveled out, and they shifted a lot of money in advertising for digital solutions and apps and stuff like that. So this gives also unusual strong Q1.

So I expected a slightly negative development in Q1, but we see growth. I think there's a very good signal into the year. So let's see. I think the second half will be better, that's my expectation, growth wise because we are progressing here in sales and the market, let's say, is stable. But the overall advertising market I think, is not going to change. It is a year with a lot of insecureness. And I think TV will be under pressure, unchanged and print as well.

So I think we see pretty much similarly in the advertising market than last year because the circulates didn't change. And now we have a new war on top. Let's see how this is -- if it's finished in 4 weeks. What we all hope, then I don't see you see an impact if it goes on for the next 6 months. And clearly, we see a global impact.

The next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

I'll start with top line guidance, low to mid-single-digit organic, how do we translate that into absolute revenue? Is there any effect in the M&A? How much does programmatic growth views, the growth? That's my first question.

The second one is coming on your Ad Manager saying AI is completely transforming the business because we were selling basically a number of people, and now we're going to sell an audience I'm not sure why AI is making the difference, selling an audience means you need to understand who goes in front of your billboard, which is more like a measurement. So why is AI allowing you to transform a contact into impact, as you said?

And then last question for Henning. On free cash flow, can we get some help indications, maybe 1 cash interest, 2 cash tax, 3 CapEx and 4, lease requirement?

I think there's a misunderstanding. We don't sell audience. Look, if you look at these QPIs, which I was talking before, like say, KPIs. So the Public Mind is defining KPIs and we track the efficiency of the campaign against these KPIs, for example, mental availability index. So because the idea behind that is look, if you compare -- let me compare it with the football team. By Munich went 3-0 and Hurricane makes 3 goals. And Google says, okay, last cookie wins. So the whole cash goes to Hurricane.

So you would say, okay, I have 10 hurricanes, you win 30-0 instead of 3-0. But everybody knows that's not happening. You need a middle field and the middle field is actually preparing the conversion. If you have a strong middle field or if a stronger brand, then it's much cheaper, but you have to spend in performance. So Hurricane will make more gold. If you have a strong middle field, if there's no middle field, you win maybe 0 goals. But in the middle field, you have different KPIs in football. It's not about making goals, but maybe how many how good you're tackling, how good are you, how accurate are your passes, how much you're running. So we have different KPIs to measure the impact of the middle field, and that's what we are doing here.

We developed, we don't sell, obviously, audience and context, there is still one point. But people want to know what is the outcome. So we developed during the first level, these 5 QPIs which I disclosed before. And we are disclosing the impact of the campaigns based on these 5 KPIs. So that is -- and this is, by the way, exactly what Google or Amazon is doing today.

So the other day, has bought with a guy from the cosmetic industry as he says, if I add what Google and Salesforce are telling me, Google and Amazon are telling me how many units are selling, I have to sell 30% more than I'm selling a reality because at the end, but they deliver impact in relation to self-defined KPIs. So that is the next step. The next step is going from audience to impact.

And that is what we achieved here through AI technology with all the AI, it's impossible to deliver that. And also, look, also the Ad Manager is only -- this was actually concept a target, which I already followed like 10 years ago. That's why we acquired a local display video and native ad reach. That's why we acquired also [indiscernible] is a reseller for U.S. player performance products. Because my vision was always a moment when the and local newspaper companies are disappearing, and this will be now in 5 to 6 years from what I'm hearing, in 5 to 6 years will be out of business. There's no other local sales force anymore.

But if you -- but we realize if you don't have a technology and a platform which is combining automatically the different products in a customer-specific product. So then it becomes very difficult because you have the silos next silos, and it is quite expensive also to sell EUR 7,500 tickets on average with a people-driven sales force. So to the technical development in the last 12 months, we can now actually realize it was my vision already 10 years ago. And this will be a big change because whatever you can even put a prompt and saying, look, I want to -- I'm a packer in Cologne. I want -- I have EUR 5,000 or EUR 10,000, I want to make a campaign for many new customers, my location is here. And this will give you a directly a tailored product for winning new customers, saying, for example, okay, you invest 50% in outdoor at 20% in local display reach and 30% in Google search.

And then you can -- pushing the button, you can directly book it and also pay it. So we are launching now this week, actually, we're launching our first test platform for cultural advertising because this is really small tickets, really expensive in processing. So it's -- this one is based on actually Shopify technology. And as a local cultural event company. You booked your campaign and you compare it with PayPal or the credit card immediately. So very exciting times. And we see that tests are really promising and we go live in this week and the first city in Germany.

Your question, Julian, on sort of breaking down the sales guidance. As I said in the speech, if you ask ourselves what are, let's say, the nonorganic effects in the sales of 2026, most important thing for sure is the acquisition in the call center space. I said in the speech, we expect more than EUR 70 million sales. compared to the EUR 20 million already recognized, I would say probably EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million additional sales from that in the full fiscal year 2026. And we have to consider minus EUR 8 million from the disposed small strategy consulting unit at Statista. I think these are the major components you need to understand sort of to break down the guidance a little bit.

On free cash flow, I mean just walking you a little bit through the drivers. Currently, we expect, let's say, lower exceptionals for fiscal year of 2026. So that should little bit support free cash flow generation in 2026. In terms of interest, I would say, at this point, probably we expect rather stable cash out for interest payments. Tax will probably go up a little bit. I think we expect a major change in working capital, as you know, which last year has been quite a burden. That turned around a little bit in Q4, and we hope to see also that we will not once again see such a substantiated outflow as we have seen in 2025.

And if you ask me now, probably a target at this point in time is that '26 cash flow should be somewhere between '25 and '24 level, right? And maybe just to add. In terms of CapEx, we expect broadly stable CapEx, maybe a little bit increase in out-of-home, which is offset by the lower CapEx and Statista.

And my last remark to Ad Manager and Public Mind. I mean this is not a cost initiative. But obviously, we expect the processing costs to shrink massively, because every order today is -- goes to 4, 5 or 6 hands. So this is -- in the future is going to be reduced on 1, maximum 2, but this is, let's say, a side effect. I mean we don't speak about cost-cutting strategy here. That is really a side effect is being transforming. And that's what I said before, the whole industry will transform in the next 4 to 8 quarters. Let's say, 4 quarters, it's hard to transform in the next 4 quarters. And I'm convinced that it will transform in the next, let's say, 2 or 3 years to completely.

The next question comes from Marcus Diebel from JPMorgan.

Can you hear me? .

Yes, sir.

Perfect. Two questions. Can you comment a little bit more how this sort of like new model and your approach will impact how the agencies will sell outdoor. I mean, we obviously understand that the structural shift here, but do you see now given this movement, there's an accelerated shift would be interesting to hear sort of like how much longer are you saying the agencies can still push there sort of like old model of selling their sort of like own TV and print inventory and how is that going to change?

And then secondly, we've really touched on this. And the question is indeed also on cost savings due to AI. I fully understand that it's much more exciting on the top line. But nevertheless, the question is yes, what can we expect in terms of supply potential changes because nearly every company in our space talks about more efficiencies, talks there about margin expansion, we don't see this really coming through yet at Ströer. So the question is, is that going to change, yes? And conceptually at least from '27 onwards? How should we think about AI also again on the cost side of things. And again, I understand it's more about the top line, that would be very interesting to hear.

So as you all know, the most of the initiatives that people try to introduce the AI and lower the costs are not really a successful appeal. At least you don't see many successful cases. As I said, there's not a cost-saving activity, but we -- we believe that in the next 5 years, we can save up to EUR 50 million costs if you compare the cost in 5 years is the cost we're going to have driven by AI. So it's a significant impact. But I don't think that in the next 2 years, you'll see here big effect. So that's all over the place. It's not only in our company.

So -- and I also believe that there are many people doing mistakes now because if you introduce AI as really a transformational power in your company, you have to be aware that it is change everything and they change also your processes, your workflows, and it makes no sense like -- it made no sense when the Internet came up and digitalization started to do the same. And if people try to do the same in a digital way what it before a non digital way, I think now maybe make the same mistake again. This is a game changer, this technology.

And I mean, I think from many companies like we were operating a very complex setup of products and processes all over the place, if you don't take it up, there will be a lot of impact on cost and profitability in the next 5 years. But I would guess, if you -- it gives the full potential. It will take 4, maybe 4, maybe 5 years difficult to say, right now is the technology developing so fast that we were discussing now for whatever, 3 months I said, look, we need -- it is a lead to an offer to order process and national sales. We need a tool for our national salespeople so that actually takes over the strategic work in delivering tailor-made strategic planning solutions for our national customers board. At the end, customers want to see how we solve their problems. They don't want us to sell our products.

And now 2 days ago, we introduced a new theology and everybody is totally flavored because nobody expected 4 weeks ago, it would be possible now in the next 12 months. And now it's actually a live since 24 hours. So things are changing very quickly. And that's also why we hired a CTO now, which we announced also today. First time that we have a group CTO, who is focused on the main business and the core business and this is one of the first results of that. So I believe completely at the forefront here technical development.

And -- so up to EUR 50 million in the next 5 years can be also quicker. It's difficult to say from today's point of view because the technology development is much faster than everybody can foresee that right now.

So on the agency side, look, the very simple the agencies are under pressure because in the past, they made money with reselling TV actually and now TV is going down faster than anybody expected. So -- and there's still mid- to high single-digit billion billion of euros in print and TV, which are going either to us or to the Americans. So if it goes to Americans for the agencies, that means 0 income, so there is something where I expect in the next 2 or 3 years that we see support.

So what we're doing right now that we develop joint business plans, midterm joint business plans with agencies. So that is one of the reasons why I'm quite optimistic in midterm. I still think that '26 more dies and the blah, blah will be similarly like '25. But the midterm, this is one of the reasons why we are very optimistic here for our core business because agencies, we are a natural strategic partner for them. But they're also saying, look, we need to report impact to our customers.

The time is over -- time is over, but time is -- look, what we have today, have to convince customers, they do outdoor and then after the copays running, they see it's working. And -- but we are not able to predict impact, so that is really -- but this -- at the same time, we look like Google and Core, they made very smart because they developed from the beginning their own set of KPIs and the reporting success in relation to the KPIs they developed on their own. I mean this is it's not real at the end. That's why I said before this cosmetic example, if you add what Amazon and Google is selling for you, you end up with 130% from what you are selling. But people want to see impact, even if they know it's not 100% correct because nobody, even Google is able to to show 100% reality. But this is something which is clearly a key demand. The said, look, we want to do more outdoor because it's also for us, more profitable to go out or then the money goes to the U.S., but we need to report impact. We need to predict impact. We need to plan impact. So prediction, report and the learning layer. These are -- this is actually what also made the Americas made it as a market standard today. So that is self booking is a market not for local clients became more and more market under and impact prediction reporting an uplift.

So that is -- and that's what we're doing right now here. So we move to the digitization of our infrastructure, it became a part of the future. But now we make the second step. -- makes a second step in how we sell it, how we improve transparency of what is the impact and how we produce our products with a clear customer benefit. So that's actually -- I think these are the keys of what we see in the upcoming quarters. And what I already said, I take everybody that the industry not even in 3 of quarters. The whole industry talks about the same stuff.

Perfect. And when do you think you would be in a position to give a bit more sort of like -- or the potential of incremental revenues at the end of the day? Because obviously, these changes sound intuitively makes a lot of sense. Personally, I find it quite hard to really see what the add-on at the end of the day on revenues will be? And when do you think you will be in a situation to help, I guess, the market to understand it better in terms of the financial impact? .

That's -- we gave a first in, but in local markets. We have 3 million SMEs in Germany, 30,000 customers. So I'm convinced and we do 200 million. So our midterm target when the system is in place up and running, I'm convinced we can serve 100,000 customers instead of 30,000. So I think this is much more easy to calculate in region why because there are no agencies. There's no other sales force. We are the only one visiting customers. There's no competitor at the end.

And today, and the local clients who don't have a defined strategy. It depends also how is convincing your offering. And national is more complex because the customers have a lot of specialists here. They have their own strategies, agency has a strategy. The agency has financial ties and background from kickback deals, et cetera. So that is that goes slower. But I'm -- 30,000 customers at what we are serving now with low profitability because EUR 7,500 a ticket, you can imagine that this is something where you see low profitability. So when you increase that from 30,000 to 100,000 and let's say, 40% of them do it in self-service. It will be one of our KPIs in the future, which you're going to report how much of the turnover is going to be in sales service or not. But then the profitability will obviously explore then you go from if you have 5x -- if you go, for example, the 100,000 customer, you go to EUR 1 billion instead of EUR 200 million turnover and with a very healthy profitability. But we will offer this webinar in April, what was interested, we walk you in more detail about what we are doing there and what we believe was going to happen.

The next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank.

I just have 2 more questions. Just diving into your 2026 outlook in a bit more detail. You are guiding for organic revenue growth, but stable adjusted EBITDA, so where are we seeing some margin pressure in the business if that will happen. Could you maybe give us some color by segment as to where you think margins could improve versus not? And also connected to that, this is the organic EBITDA, I'm assuming that you're guiding towards. So what should we expect for reported EBITDA once the EBITDA from the inorganic businesses or the acquisitions that you've done are included. Some color there would be great. .

And second, on the AI Ad Manager, would just to confirm the EUR 2 million in CapEx you mentioned, is that already in this year's outlook for 2026? Or is it the whole sort of project? And is there anything in OpEx that you've also included? Like do you need to hire more tech people to ensure those layers are created? Some color would be great.

Let me take the last one first. No, there's a total cost up to now that is -- but this is -- here, this cost reflects also the technological development. I don't want to say you can buy it off the shelf, but you are not far away from that. So programming becomes so much cheaper, and there's so much power -- brain power worldwide on this technology, this is happening here a lot. I have to say I was also a surprise when I got the numbers from the team, especially if you look at the impact, which is going to have a major transformation of the whole industry at the end.

We don't think we need to hire more people. We have 100 programmers here which are work in our SSP, which comes not to end, but we see less expenses going forward. So for now, we are pretty much convinced that we have enough people on board to realize that. Because what I said already some minutes ago, these what we call L2 lead to offer to order that is, let's say, the strategic planning work, which our salespeople are doing with national clients. So this is something where we did everything by hand until 3 weeks ago. So the sales guy, we did a client and the client gave some briefing, then the sales went back to the back office, give them a briefing, then a back office started to think what we could offer and how we could argue then it was 3, 4 feedback circles until we have some fix it is today, it looks like 18 century.

I mean there's a new tool, which we introduced just some days ago. This goes in a minute in a different, completely quality and speed that happened up to now. So -- and the costs were 0 because of a product from the shelf.

Nizla, on your question, understanding better, like what is the sort of organic outlook for EBITDA going forward. I think we walked you through already like the technical effects that will arise from lower IFRS 16 effects. So just looking at the underlying cash EBITDA, we believe that should develop in minus with sales more or less. We are positive on the margin outlook for the full year on out-of-home. But it's also fair to assume that at this point in time, we're still cautious on digital as a service and e-commerce. I mean in our guidance for Q1, we already said we expect sales decline to -- by around EUR 9 million, right?

The major positive contribution to EBITDA unorganically, if you will, will come from the call center acquisition and here, I would say, around about EUR 5 million to EUR 7 million will be the additional EBITDA from that acquisition that we expect in the current fiscal year. I hope that answers your question.

The next question comes from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

A few questions on my side. First, quite easy. If we can touch a bit on the one-offs. I understood the one-offs in 2025. What expectations for 2026? Are there any restructuring that required Statista or other divisions? And with the project development that you are looking at, whether it's CapEx should be more OpEx as well? I didn't get that.

And also, do you need them to retrain and to obscure your employees if that is also something you already expected in your guidance for the EBITDA or it's one-offs you will consider? Another question on contract renegotiations that took place now with the input on the EBITDA. Do you see any further contracts upcoming for the renegotiation where we can see the similar things.

And then the last question is on your project with home development? Is it all internal? Or do you work with some external providers. So the amount of just EUR 2 million that really comes as a very efficient product, so to say. So against whom are you competing here because other people could also come up with the similar products? And are you targeting with those products the agencies or the clients? Or what's the idea here? So whom do you think will be the major user. And then you said that you can -- marketing budget across different medias. So you can go to the out-of-home to their online to can go also to your website, but also to Google search, et cetera. But how are you going to do this? So are you going to work directly with Google? I go into the direct the agencies who will sell the Google platforms. So how that is going to look like.

Yes. Let me take the last one first. So Google starts only for local customers and national sales, obviously, we only sell our products. But on local sales, we bought the company many years ago called [indiscernible], who's doing exactly that because the idea was always, look, in the past, in local newspaper companies, they were actually serving something between an agency or a media house because we're selling newspaper ads, radio whatever, a couple of local products, exhibitions and leave labs and whatever.

So now it's a question who is a central source actually, who are serving these local clients. And that's obviously a gap. That's why we developed the local sales force. That's why we acquired because we want to discussed with local client, a solution where we can take over 100% of [indiscernible] budget in reality, that means we can influence that we are able to distribute it in the channels where we have the highest profitability. That is the idea behind that. So that means we have either we sell outdoor or local video display or native ad reach. So that's what we have in our portfolio today with T-Online in the core. So is that clear? Is that the answer?

Yes. Yes. And then in terms of the local clients, you told about the brand owners. I know also about the more local agency with whom you can work together. .

No, no, absolutely. Same service does not mean only that the customer is booking it. There are small local smaller agencies. But today, it's quite complicated because if you want to -- you cannot book it in self-service. You have to talk with our sales first. There's no platform where you can buy something. So you have to ask our salespeople to come in the agency, then they show them pictures about billboards and these and that -- and then you write an offer. And then you get an order different and you have to adjust the order then the sales give it a sales support and sales support, give it to the back office and then the back office gives operations. So that is a very complex -- we did it as efficiently could do it in the past, but this is a very complex process with a lot of handovers and many people involved with relatively small tickets. So there is mission critical in the future that the local agency can go on the Ströer Ad Manager, and they see everything what they need actually for local sales.

And again, even prompt in by voice, what they want to have, and the sister gives them an offer and they can print the button, press a button and the whole thing is done. And ideally, nobody is touching it anymore on our side. I mean this will be the last evolution. But this is, I think, easy to understand that this is a complete game changer, especially in local sales, we have small tickets and very complex portfolio. And that's what we see now in this first test, which is cultural advertising, we were surprised ourselves, but it's how easy that goes. But also these cultural managers are trained or a Google, this advantage. Google trained these people to use Google products and self service.

For them, it's normal now that the book a campaign on the mobile phone. So -- and whatever 2 weeks ago, we are still sending paper back and forth. And -- and this was super complex and expensive. There's another question here who's using the tool. I mean the tool is used first power sales globally and national. So they have manager out to the public in why because at the end, we have to develop a product which solves the problems of our customers. So I saw a lot of customers in the last month, and they said, look, you sell your products to us. But we want solutions, not products. We want you to explain us how you can solvehelp us to achieve our targets.

So this is intellectually, not every sales guy is so super hard that he really develops a telemed fantastic solution, which is for the customers who are convincing because for that, we had to digest and process so many details about the customer. What is doing, what it is in the past, what is the target, what is the budget? What's the location? Where are the shops and all of this stuff. And if you -- and that's also -- I mean, by the way, you can do it even if you have a GPT -- ChatGPT account today, if you train it for 2 weeks and you don't need to invest $1, you get better strategic planning and results, and if somebody does it manually.

So because the technology is able to process so many details, which is very difficult for human. And this -- I mean, media planning and it's very complex. So you have to process a lot of different data, historical data, target data, whatever consumer data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if a standard GPT account, you get much better offers than anybody in our company or any other company is able to produce as a single human person. So that is why it looks so cheap in comparison to what we achieve because it's a little bit -- the LLM technology is like what we say with Statista is like a race car, but it depends what kind of fuel you put in, there is the right data, that is Statista, then it makes results much better. But the technology is developed. So the heart of the thing is the LLM itself. And what we developed now are use cases. Based on this technology, we don't develop the technology. That is a big difference. In the past, whatever, when we programmed our Ströer sales SSP, sales side platform, we invested whatever, over time, EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million because you had to -- there was no technology but you could use, you had to program everything on your own.

So now you have this LLM technology, and the only thing you have to do, you have to put the use case on top. And the costs are a fraction of what we, for example, spend for developing these SSP. But our -- the agencies clearly will work. We work not -- let's say, in local sales. People will work a lot of inside service. But in national sales agencies will work with Public Mind because agencies, they have natural interest to keep as much money as possible in the country because they make more money with that, but they need to prove impact, the impact it's very difficult to move money from A to B. And that's why the agencies are actually -- we made a roadshow now in the last month, a big road show. We saw all the agencies, and the feedback was, okay, this was more than needed. This was more than necessary and why you didn't do it earlier. But we couldn't do it earlier, but technology was not there.

Anna Patrice, on your question on adjustments. In 2026, I think it's fair to say that the impacts we had here from restructuring at Statista, and also from the project that was relating to a potential sale of the core business, here, the stuff is behind us. So that should actually lead to lower adjustments going forward.

On the other hand, based on what Udo explained about ad manager and Public Mind, probably fair to say that adjustment from information costs, in terms of systems will rise a little bit. But net-net, we would anticipate lower adjustments for fiscal 2026 at this stage.

But it means that there's still some restructuring to do and hence adjustments?

Well, first of all, I think it's important to say that the things that are qualified as exceptionals had to relate to a clearly predefined catalog that is also aligned with the auditors. In terms of restructuring, I think in general, we always keep some flexibility when we see there is a measure which will potentially lead to a very strong or short payback, strong return. We are always -- we will always consider what we do doesn't depend on the question whether we can adjust or not, but we do depends on what makes sense economically. And we are prepared if we see potential then we also prepared to implement the corresponding restructuring.

As part of the adjustments budget for the current fiscal year, there's also, I'd say, smaller restructuring measures in some of our content publications units is included already. But from today's perspective, not much included is for, let's say, a larger reduction of the workforce, if you refer to that.

Okay. Understood. And sorry, my last question to Udo. Why do you think the local they will not lose the great platform for what describe is kind of similar now if they want to understand their marketing budgets, how they want to spend it et cetera, why would they use all the existing platforms? .

I think they will go on using Google platform for self-booking performance marketing, but it's -- those plans are so trained on user experience-friendly self-booking tools that they book by pharma out of home directly, if there was the same access to inventory and outcome-oriented tools as in the search area from Google. So I think it's just opening up opportunities where the user experience or the simplicity of approaching the available inventory or the available marketing purpose is comparable to what they are used to in the Google Ad Manager space. And I think that's just we tried to catch up with the best-in-class standard and AI technology and more data just opens up new opportunities here.

So to make it clear, Google is not a business model for us. It's just a service in case a small client want us to handle it. We do it just to underline our approach that we say, we solve your problems. And if you want, we also handle this Google stuff for you, but this will be peanuts. This is not important for our business. It's just, let's say, a marketing move, we show the customers, look, you can book everything out of one hand. But let's say, 99% of the customers for sure book Google like today separately, and they use our platform, Google platform and maybe also Amazon platform. So that will be reality, just, let's say, a marketing move. And what we're also doing today but is regulated is a small business. So I don't know what's the turnover of -- EUR 25 million or something. It is a service whoever wants to use the service. It's a few marketing stuff.

We don't want to restart anything to make it clear. We want to sell our own products as a reseller is always not interesting, really there's -- that's why it's a pure service offering for the customers in case we believe that it gives us an advantage to do that.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Obviously, most of my questions have been answered in the meantime. But first of all, just to be clear, I mean, I guess, this webinar in April, I assume you will walk us through some very clear examples on just exactly how the impact of the autumn ad campaigns are generated. That would be my first question. I have other quick questions. .

Yes. We're showing the logic, showing the plan, showing the desired outcome by means of what's the range of business impact midterm.

And also make transfer and again, what a difference to where we're standing today to give you a better idea what is the outcome of that. There's obviously partly deep in operations. But I think it's easy to understand if you compare status quo with what we are going to achieve.

Okay. Second question, just do you have any major concession contract renewals coming up that we should be aware of, in particular, I'm thinking about the Deutsche Bank contract. And also, as these roll over, and I think the previous colleague was starting to ask this question as well is whether we might expect more structural changes also in the nature of these contracts, i.e., with a lower fixed component and a higher variable component for the IFRS 16 of these costs. But also just on a broader perspective, are there major contract renewals we should be aware of? .

No, no Deutsche Bank is running for a long time until the 2030s. We are beyond that. And there's -- we have no significant contracts which are impacting there's every month a tender. That is an ongoing process. The biggest 1 which come up is Hamburg. This is clearly an upside because we lost a lot of money in this contract, because there was time where we have still like 3 players in Germany with wall decor and us that was before the COVID overall, and it was a fierce battle in these days. So that is something clearly positive, but doesn't impact the P&L. So there is nothing, nothing what we see. And by the way, the reduction of fixed rent here doesn't mean we pay more variable rent. We lowered the fixed rent and the variable rent in each of these cases, because now the tenders are coming now are 15 years old, and this was a different market situation 15 years ago, where we had much more competition in Germany.

Okay. So I mean -- but if I understand that correctly, then this gradually over time, as these contracts are renewed and presumably successfully from your perspective, we could expect the rents coming down. So I might optically look less positive for the operational EBITDA, but from a cash perspective, perhaps be quite positive. And hence, the focus would probably reship back to a traditional EBITDA on a cash basis, I would assume, correct?

Yes.

Okay. And my final question is just getting back to the CapEx. I have hanging if I understood you correctly. I think you were saying in out-of-home, you thought it might even be a little bit higher this year. I'm just a little surprised, I thought actually we might see that coming down a bit because of the digital out of home national network being now largely already installed. So if you could maybe be a little more specific on what you're kind of expecting on CapEx, that would be helpful. .

Well, Craig, as you know, we usually don't provide breakdown of the group CapEx. When I said out of home, we expect it to rise a little bit. You should not think like that is 10 million or so. So I there's a moderate increase that we foresee at this point in time. And on the other hand, we will have decreasing in other parts of the group, that there's no change to the general idea that the CapEx to sales ratio for out-of-home is clearly going down over time because largely, the digital portfolio is built. Still, we have things to do, right? I mean you have seen the fantastic well that we launched in December, I can only invite everybody to have a look. Obviously, that doesn't come for free. And needs also to be accommodated for like in the CapEx budget. But in general, the story is completely unchanged.

We have a follow-up question from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

Yes. Could you elaborate a little bit more, please, on your digital business? So you touched base on the T-Online highlighting how important the content is there that the numbers are not declining. What about the other portfolio of your website that you own and that you managed to also see in your own site stable traffic? Or do you see it declining? And what are your expectations for development here? .

I mean, the key is T-Online. This is also from the profitability side. I mean we have some smaller also special interest portals where we see everywhere impact on traffic. But commercially, this is not really impacting the whole thing. T-Online as well as the asset which is key for growth and profitability in all other players, I think that it clearly depends what the courts are going to decide, but I think that the special interest portals which are mostly quite small out of the third-party branch, which we are selling. I think that they lose traffic clearly not only to Google, but also to LLMs because many of them are also used for checking specific information. So I mean, we are very happy about the development of T-Online because, obviously, when the whole thing started, and everybody discusses Google is zero fear. We didn't know what's going to happen. So if you look at the rich development from T-Online, I think, a strong proof for the stability of the brand and our confident. And don't forget T-Online is the only worldwide news portal, which is desktop, mobile and on digital out-of-home. And this also gives us a strong stability for our direct traffic because if you count it as advertising spend, what we do on digital out-of-home, where we show branded content to your online content every day if you would pay it, it's hundreds of millions of advertising for the online brand every year. And this is clearly also one of the reasons, why T-Online is developing even after Google rollout is AI stuff in last year, May was finished. I think this is -- and there was a lot of questions also last year about that, also for investors. I think this is a very encouraging data point.

All right. But if I look at the EBITDA of the Digital and Dialog, roughly EUR 150 million, I thought that's probably round about EUR 80 million would be from the digital and the rest kind of EUR 70 million from Dialog, and then out of the digital on the -- maybe from T-Online now? Or like how important is the EBITDA contribution of T-Online versus the rest? Because if the rest were down, what is the risk overall?

Well, Anna Patrice, I think as we all know, the margin in our T-Online business is probably one of the best margins we have all across the group. You can think about margin in terms of being 50%. So to explain is definitely key that we do everything we can to keep that stable or even have been growing slightly. The margins that we generate from selling third-party inventories, if you will, as a wholesaler, are very tiny, right? .

So if sales are going down there, that is not too much of an issue. But as you know, we are not providing these numbers individually as part of our constant reporting. So we would leave the comments there.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Udo Müller for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everybody. I hope we could trust us some interesting information, very interesting times. We are very excited here. And I hope you could excite you also a little bit. Thank you much, and have a nice day. .

Thank you. Bye.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ströer Q3 Figures 2025 Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded.

[Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christian Schmalzl. Please go ahead, sir.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear investors and analysts, welcome to our Q3 call. Let's jump straight into the presentation and give you a brief overview of the developments in the first 9 months of fiscal year 2025 and introduce you to some of our news and topics from the last 3 months. Henning will then comment on the developments and effects of our Q3 figures in more detail. This will be followed by remarks on what we expect for the fourth quarter and the year 2025. As always, we are looking forward to your questions after our presentation.

With that, let us start the call with a short overview of our 9 months 2025 developments. Before we look at the main KPIs, a brief introductory remark. After a very solid first quarter with revenue growth of around 5% at group level, second quarter of 2025 with revenue declining slightly against a very strong prior year figures due to the UEFA European Championships 2024 in Germany, our third quarter development is a continuation of the previous quarter's development in an environment characterized by political and economic uncertainty. The developments in the first 9 months of the year should be viewed and interpreted against this environment.

Overall, revenues in the period January to September rose by around 1% to EUR 1.47 billion. Organic growth for the period was minus 0.4%. Adjusted EBITDA came in at around EUR 414 million compared to EUR 420 million in the same period 2024. Compared with the previous year's figure, EBIT adjusted declined by around 9% due to an increase in D&A compared with the prior year period. Net income adjusted declined on a comparable scale by 10% to EUR 86 million. 9 months 2024 was EUR 96 million.

Free cash flow adjusted for the reporting period was EUR 19.1 million, 9 months 2024, EUR 78.3 million, mainly due to higher working capital requirements especially in out-of-home as well as in Dialog and Statista. Henning will come back on this in detail in his comments. In line with our communicated CapEx strategy, which includes a more focused expansion of our digital out-of-home network and to further optimize the utilization of our digital outdoor advertising media, CapEx remained on a comparably low level, slightly higher compared to the 9 months period in 2024. In total, CapEx was EUR 67 million compared to EUR 62 million, including the investments in our new flagship screen, The Whale, with 342 square meter, the largest screen in Germany in Hamburg main station.

Let's have a look at the market dynamics for the first 9 months. Major digital platforms continue to perform strongly. Meta has reported 22% growth, while Alphabet including YouTube is up 14%, with YouTube alone contributing 13%. These figures underscore the sustained strength of digital advertising on a global scale.

Turning to the German market, the picture is more nuanced. As always, please keep in mind that the Nielsen numbers in the middle of this chart show gross rate card developments, and the net revenue, including all discounts is on average 6 to 7 points lower. The overall advertising market in Germany has remained flat, showing 0% growth again. Traditional media continued to face headwinds. TV advertising is down 4%, while print and radio have seen modest gains on a gross level of 2% and 1%, respectively. Desktop and mobile advertising grew on a gross level by 2%, indicating a slow but steady digital shift.

However, out-of-home advertising or out-of-home stands out with a 10% increase, demonstrating its resilience and relevance in the today's media mix.

Now let's look at Ströer's performance. Our digital out-of-home, DOOH segment, has grown by 10%, in line with the broader out-of-home market. More importantly, our programmatic digital out-of-home, PDOOH offering, has outpaced the market, delivering 13% growth. This reflects the increasing demand for data-driven automated ad solutions and validates our strategic investments in this area. When we combine digital out-of-home and traditional out-of-home, Ströer's core business has achieved solid 5% growth, outperforming many local peers and traditional channels.

As forementioned, it is important to note that the figures for the German market are based on gross numbers, which tend to be, as said, inflated by approximately 6 to 7 percentage points compared to net revenues. Our reporting is based on net numbers, ensuring transparency and comparability.

If we isolate the same exercise for Q3, the following picture emerges. The major U.S. players were able to slightly accelerate their growth in the third quarter. However, developments in the German advertising market reflect weaker consumer sentiment and a weak macroeconomic environment. The overall advertising market remains at its low level of minus 2% compared to the same period in Q3. Print category declined slightly compared to the previous quarter and TV marked the low point of this year so far with minus 6% on a gross level.

The out-of-home category reports 0 growth. However, if we take into account the discounts, we can continue to expand both the category's market share and its share against the largest advertising category, TV, a trend you've seen in the last quarters.

Let me briefly show you 2 examples, which exemplary describe the mechanism as well as the efficiency of out-of-home. In the surrounding of cold season, Danone implemented an eye-catching digital out-of-home campaign for Actimel at train stations, specifically during rush hours when large numbers of people gather and the risk of infection is particularly high. The aim was to highlight the relevance of Actimel as a support for the immune system at exactly the right moment and in the right place. The results speak for themselves. Purchase intent for Actimel increased significantly to 38%. Equally impressive is the recommendation rate with an index of 238. Aided advertising recall reached 55% during the survey period, and Actimel clearly moved to the top of mind of the target group. The market research shows that the combination of relevant content, precise time targeting and placement at the point of infection ensures a significant uplift along the entire marketing funnel from advertising recall to purchase intent.

San Pellegrino Lemonade is the second out-of-home campaign we want to highlight. San Pellegrino focused on out-of-home advertising to increase the visibility and awareness of its lemonade products. The communication focused on the natural ingredients of the original lemonade and the full flavor of the zero variety. With its first ever relevant out-of-home campaign in Germany, San Pellegrino has significantly strengthened brand perception and awareness in the lemonade segment. The strong creative implementation, clear communication and high visibility in public spaces formed an excellent basis for further growth and the sustainable establishment of the brand in the German lemonade market.

These 2 examples clearly show that outdoor advertising enhanced with special targeting features not only increases reach but also reinforces the advertising message, significantly increasing purchase intent and recommendation rate. These features not only convince already established customers and out-of-home fans, but also rapidly win over new customers. As a result, we now have 2 new important customers in our top 10 digital out-of-home ranking, Lindt and Unilever.

Continuous development of our digital out-of-home products is part of our DNA but also an important driver of the success. With the impact booster, we've taken another step forward in our development. The data is clear. Digital out-of-home advertising is a true game changer and a powerful impact booster within the media mix. When we combine TV with digital out-of-home, the effectiveness of the campaign increases significantly.

For example, with just 2 TV contacts, adding one digital out-of-home contact raises aided advertising recall from 69% to 76%. Similarly, with 4 TV contacts supplementing with 2 digital out-of-home contacts lifts recall from 80 to an impressive 90%. The impact indices, IX 110 and IX 113 underscore this uplift, demonstrating that the synergy between TV and digital out-of-home delivers a higher return on media investment than TV stand-alone.

In essence, TV alone cannot achieve the same level of impact as the combination of TV and digital out-of-home. For analysts and investors, this means that integrating digital out-of-home into the media strategy is not just an option, but a necessity for maximizing campaign effectiveness, driving measurable results.

With Social Pulse, we have another example for innovation. It turns public video into an open stage for social pulses, curated by brands and enlivened by authentic community dialogue. Through a seamless one-stop shop process, Social Pulse enables brands to translate the dynamic energy of social media into the physical world. Community-oriented brand messages can now reach target groups even outside the traditional social media bubble.

The impact is clear. Social Pulse bridges the gap between digital engagement and real-world presence. It empowers brands to amplify their relevance, foster genuine community interaction and extend their reach far beyond online platforms.

Public Video City Urban represents significant leap forward in urban advertising with over 1,190 full motion video screens installed across 21 major cities in Germany, we offer brands a unique and highly visible stage for their messages right in the heart of urban life. These eye-catching screens are strategically placed near points of interest, ensuring that advertising messages are not only seen but also contextually relevant. The use of striking passe-partouts maximizes visibility, making each campaign standout in the bustling city environment. Public Video City Urban is an excellent example for merging advertising in real-world context, delivering maximum impact and engagement.

So far on my remarks, and with that, over to Henning.

Thank you, Christian, and a very good morning, everybody. Let us start the finance section, as usual, with a review of the Q3 '25 P&L. In total and against a continuously challenging market context with impaired visibility, the performance of the group in Q3 was characterized by sequential moderation compared to development of the first 6 months. Compared to Q2, however, organic growth was not deaccelerating further. Revenue for the quarter was down by minus 1%. This includes 120 basis points support from nonorganic effects, such as the acquisition of RBL Media. Excluding this effect, organic growth came in at minus 2.1% or 0.2 percentage points better than in the second quarter.

EBITDA adjusted amounted to EUR 147 million compared to EUR 156 million in Q3 '24. The exceptional items for the quarter were minus EUR 3.1 million, EUR 0.5 million lower as in Q3 '24. The exceptional items essentially comprise three components: EUR 1.6 million for restructuring measures, especially at the Dialog business, EUR 1.2 million for ERP transformation and EUR 0.2 million transactional exchange rate effects, mainly as the U.S. dollar developed against Statista in Q3 '25.

Accordingly, reported EBITDA was EUR 144 million after EUR 153 million last year. Depreciation and amortization increased from EUR 81 million to EUR 84 million or by 4%, broadly in line with the development in the preceding quarters. With that, reported EBIT for the quarter came in at EUR 60 million, some EUR 12 million lower compared with Q3 '24. The financial results slightly improved against the same period '24 to now EUR 17.6 million. For the first 9 months, the financial result has improved by around EUR 6 million, excluding some noncash effects mainly from U.S. dollar-dominated internal financing at Statista, the underlying improvement is a little less. Nevertheless, lower rates are still, to some extent, compensated for by around EUR 100 million higher average net debt year-over-year.

Earnings before tax decreased to EUR 43 million after EUR 54 million in Q3 of the prior year. The tax rate was basically unchanged with around 30% in the reporting period. And with that, the tax result follows the development of EBT. All in all, reported net income for the quarter came in at EUR 30 million after EUR 38 million in Q3 '24. Adjustments were slightly up by EUR 0.8 million as the increased PPA adjustments due to RBL acquisition exceeded the lower EBITDA adjustments. Accordingly, net income adjusted was EUR 34 million after EUR 41 million in the prior year.

Let us now switch over to the cash flow. Our cash flow in the third quarter this year compares against a strong development in the same period in prior year. Last year, almost every line item presented considerable improvements on the back of strong growth supported by the effects of major sports events. Looking at the working capital, the first thing we should remember is that out-of-home media is structurally a negative working capital business. Strong sales growth throughout the first 9 months last year also implied good working capital improvements.

This year, now with the business basically turning in flat sales in Q2 and Q3, this effect is unwinding. More than 2/3 of the delta of EUR 35 million comparing the working capital outflow of the first 9 months year-over-year is attributable to the out-of-home media segment. The remainder stems primarily from the expansion of our Dialog business and from Statista, where deteriorating inbound subscription sales year-over-year led to lower deferred income. Based on our outlook for Q4, we think that regarding working capital, the worst is behind us, and we shall see some stabilization going forward.

EBITDA and working capital developments explain the development of Q3 operating cash flow for the most part. On top in Q3, we saw a EUR 6 million higher investments year-over-year resulting from the out-of-home segment. For Q4, we are currently expecting an increase of more or less the same amount.

Let me come to the net debt development. In the sequential view from the end of the second quarter to the end of the third quarter '25, net debt was down by roughly EUR 11 million, including the adjusted free cash flow for the third quarter of plus EUR 21 million and cash out from minority dividends of minus EUR 8 million. The remainder of around minus EUR 2 million mainly relates to the net effect of higher debt for accrued interest and lower debt for financial liabilities recognized from profit transfer agreements at companies with minority interests.

Net debt year-over-year was up by EUR 150 million to EUR 945 million, including the accumulated free cash flow over the last 12 months of EUR 99 million, cash-out for the acquisition of RBL Media amounting to minus EUR 106 million, cash-out for dividend payments of minus EUR 128 million and cash-out of minus EUR 13 million for minority dividends. The remaining difference of minus EUR 2 million is, among others, due to an increase of overpayments from customers, plus EUR 2 million, and a decrease of accrued interest expenses, minus EUR 3 million.

With that, our leverage ratio in the third quarter amounted to 2.53x after 2.1x at the end of prior year's Q3. Sequentially, from Q2 to Q3, the leverage ratio was broadly stable.

Let us now take a look at the performance of the individual operating segments in the past quarter, starting with our core segment, out-of-home media. Out-of-home media, against a continuously challenging market context, turned in broadly stable sales. Compared to the second quarter, where growth was around 1%, not a big change and in line with our outlook for the third quarter. At the same time, though, prior year comps were much easier for Q3, but also the market deteriorated further, in particular, if we exclude online and considering industry-wide higher discounts. So all in all, in Q3, we continued to gain share from legacy media outlets in a declining ad market.

With that, sales for the quarter came in at EUR 236 million, including a contribution of EUR 5 million from RBL. Our Classic business grew slightly from EUR 131 million to EUR 132 million, while digital out-of-home sales declined slightly by EUR 0.6 million. Digital out-of-home continues to account for more than 40% of outdoor advertising sales if we exclude the services. For the cumulative period, digital out-of-home grew significantly by more than 10%, while classic outdoor advertising showed solid growth of 1.4% in the first 9 months. EBITDA adjusted for the quarter was down by EUR 1 million and includes tight cost control established via a comprehensive cost and hiring freeze in place since late July.

Q3 revenue for Digital and Dialog Media amounted to EUR 206 million after EUR 212 million in the prior year period. Digital media came in at EUR 103 million compared to EUR 112 million in Q3 '24. Within Digital media, sales from our owned assets, such as programmatic public video and owned Internet content, including T-Online, were almost stable. Revenues from selling ads on third-party assets, however, declined. Dialog Media showed a sales increase of 3.4% from EUR 100 million to EUR 103 million.

However, the two Dialog activities, call center and direct marketing, showed still different sales dynamics in the quarter. Our call center activities grew by as much as 12% and thus more than overcompensated for the sales decline in the door-to-door business, where Q3 revenue was still down, albeit showing some stabilization compared to a very challenging first half. In total, the segment EBITDA adjusted for the third quarter came in at EUR 32 million.

Let me take a moment to explain a few topics about our last acquisition in the call center space. Effective from the beginning of October, we will consolidate the activities of AMEVIDA. AMEVIDA is an established provider in the field of dialog marketing with a strong focus on sales and sales-related services. We acquired the business in the course of insolvency proceedings for an eligible purchase price. As part of the integration, the acquired business in the future be operated largely from our existing overhead infrastructure.

On top of that, we optimize the existing portfolio of locations and renegotiate existing lease contracts so that altogether, we will be able to operate AMEVIDA profitably from day 1 without incurring any relevant one-off costs. For the full year '26, we shall have more than 1,300 additional FTEs, generating more than EUR 60 million in revenue with an expected mid-single-digit million euro contribution to EBITDA. In terms of customer structure with that acquisition, we will strengthen our position, helping mostly already existing clients in their sales process. As opposed to a pure service-related business, this will offer a higher margin potential going forward.

Finally, some comments on our Data as a Service and E-Commerce segment with Statista and Asam. Q3 revenue was stable for the segment, thereby a decline in Statista was compensated by moderate growth at Asam. Statista's revenue development in the third quarter was slightly up on a currency-adjusted basis. While we are making encouraging progress on the API integration with clients, we're still facing considerable pressure on the inbound platform sales. This is now amplified by impaired visibility on Google following the reduction of Statista content available without paywall restrictions and changed user search behavior in the context of AI search.

The focus remains on driving demand through efficient and intelligent integration via our API interface. We have already developed a seamless connection between a large number of customer-owned databases and Statista via MCP servers. Blue-chip Statista clients moved to our new solution, Connect, such as leading payment and e-commerce players. Statista will further develop its existing customer base and new clients towards these new solutions. Feedback so far is positive, and we are working on a comprehensive pipeline of upcoming integrations.

At the same time, we are also intensely working on improving our internal efficiency in producing our stats content. Based on the adoption of comprehensive AI tooling, we will adjust our staff by around 80 employees. For this measure, we will recognize around EUR 3 million restructuring costs qualifying as adjustments in Q4. From this measure alone, we shall see PEX improving recurrently by around EUR 4 million.

Let us now have a look on how Asam performed in Q3. And total revenues for the quarter came in at EUR 46 million or EUR 1 million higher when compared with the same period in '24. This development was mainly driven by good growth in our business with drugstore retailers, more than offsetting declining online and TV sales. Looking at the cumulative period from January to September, the development altogether still reflects weak consumer sentiment, and we do not expect this to change in Q4. Q3 earnings for the segment came in at EUR 10 million.

And with that, let me hand you over back to Christian for the outlook and some closing remarks.

Before ending the presentation, let me just have some comments on the outlook for Q4 and full year 2025 and the current trading momentum. So what do we expect for Q4 and the remainder of the year? Based on current order book, we expect out-of-home media in a low to mid-single-digit area. So what we see at the moment is a slight acceleration again versus Q3. Digital and Dialog Media with revenue development ahead of Q3 growth rate. DaaS and E-Commerce revenue growth rate broadly in line with the first 9 months. The guidance for 2025, therefore updated on September 18, 2025, remains unchanged, and mid-long term, we continue to expect double-digit top line growth on average in our core out-of-home business.

With that, let me now close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2026, which are the presentation of our preliminary figures for the 2025 financial year on March 5, 2026, the publication of the 2025 Annual Report and other financial statements on March 26, followed by the Q1 report, which we will publish on May 12. We will present the development for the second quarter and the first half of the year 2026 on August 13. Last but not least, we've scheduled the figures for the third quarter for November 12. As always, updates, reports and roadshow presentations can be found on our IR website.

Thank you, everyone, and we are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein.

So my first question is, I think in the press release, you're saying that your conversations with clients suggest that 2026 would see an acceleration of out-of-home growth. So my question is, how much of your order book is concerned with these conversations? How far are they going out? If you can give us a bit more details about that comment.

My second question is around Statista. A couple of questions there. First of all, can you tell us how much of your Statista traffic is direct? And then secondly, I think you've been timing various different new monetization avenues for Statista. If you could give us a little bit of an update there.

And then my third one is on the working capital change, you've said that the worst is behind us. What does that mean? If you can give us a bit further clarification. What you're expecting for working capital change in the fourth quarter?

Annick, the first question was about '26, right? I didn't hear it 100%.

Absolutely. It was about '26. The comment that you made in the press release to give us a bit more detail around that.

So the same expression, like for the free cash flow is for order intake. The worst behind us. We saw a really significant crisis this year, which you can only compare from the impact of the world financial crisis or the corona pandemic. So this trade war really created a lot of uncertainty. I mean, this was discussed a million of times, but we could see that our customers actually reacted to that. And we see now that we had a lot of conversations now in the last weeks and our customers, I mean, the agencies, they all already had the conversation with the customers for next year.

And we see clearly that the trade momentum is coming -- I would say, coming back to normal. So we would expect in the overall market to see a slight growth next year. And I mean, if you look back to '24 and '23, even if the market is flat, it should be enough for us to grow our core business, like we've said here in the guidance, by double digit. So that is actually how we expect the development right now. So for now, this trade war crisis is over. Uncertainty is reducing. And overall, the agencies are looking with much more confidence in the next year.

I think on your second question, Statista, well, direct traffic in general probably less than 25%. So most of the traffic is from the ultimate traffic on statista.com and subsites in the different countries is coming via organic search. But the business model ultimately is not driven by traffic. So what we sell is access to the database or the access now more and more via Statista Connect to the data volume via direct APIs. So the traffic of Statista has no direct link back to revenue development because it's not like a classic publisher where traffic defines ultimately the eyeballs, and the eyeballs ultimately define the monetization potential.

Nevertheless, and I think that's something we've highlighted last quarter, that organic search traffic via Google is going down and a lot of potential new users have their first contact with the website. So the kind of inbound potential on the sales side for the product and for the ultimate monetization case has clearly gone down. Also we have to say, I think, historically, we've been converting less than 0.5% of the overall traffic and new users into paying customers. So I think it's one feature of the business model but not the crucial one. The key point is, is the database and what we have there, not proprietary, but unsubstitutable. So on the long run, corporates will want the access to the database no matter if it's happening directly or via LLMs.

On your last question, Annick, on working capital. I mean, first of all, let's remind us that Q4 is just for seasonality reasons, our strongest cash flow quarter always. In terms of working capital, I think there's a few positives that should support working capital traction in Q4 compared to what we've seen in the first 9 months, and this is, of course, I think our more constructive outlook on out-of-home sales right now. At the same time, there will be still a few detractors. One of them will be Statista, where I think we should continuously expect pressure on inbound sales and the slower sales of subscriptions that will continuously hurt the deferred income position.

And I talked about AMEVIDA now joining the group, which will also lead to, I'd say, some buildup of working capital requirement in the fourth quarter. Net-net, I think, I would say our internal target is to come as close as possible to the prior year free cash flow in the fourth quarter. Ultimately, obviously, it will depend how the business maps out, but this is the internal target to get as close as possible to prior year Q4 cash flow.

The next question comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Well, actually, my first question was also going to be on more visibility on free cash flow in Q4, but you just answered that. Two questions. One on out-of-home media. You talked about it accelerating in '26. Could you maybe just talk us around a little bit to what extent you're taking the strong Q1 comp into account? Because, obviously, it will still be quite tough.

And sticking with out-of-home media, you saw flattish digital sales actually in Q3. I assume this is primarily temporary due to the very weak conditions in Q3 overall. But if you could just give us some reassurance here on what you're seeing in terms of pickup in the growth rate in digital out-of-home.

And the third question is moving over to the Digital and Dialog division, you talked clearly about the weakness in third-party ad trading in Q3. Do you think this is primarily just cyclical weakness? Or are you concerned that it may be more structural?

Look, the digital out-of-home development in Q3 reflects actually the crisis because our customers were really tactical on the spending side. So that ended up in a curious situation that analog out-of-home was growing stronger than digital out-of-home. I think this is maybe the last time you're going to see that in the next 5 years because we have a very strong -- but this is more short term. You can book it actually whatever in real-time. And in analog, you need a couple of weeks lead time.

And this reflects perfectly this extraordinary situation what we had this year. And it was, for us and for everybody, a weird crisis because normally, the crisis starts with a big bang, and we know the crisis. And these crisis start step by step by step, with the famous Liberation Day of Donald Trump, when nobody knew what's going to happen because it was first time experienced, the trade war between the U.S. and the European Union. Nobody ever had experience with that. And this is exactly -- you put the finger on the right point, is reflecting this crisis situation.

So on full year, I mean, Christian already reported the numbers for the full year already looks different. And we see now strong demand on digital on Q4 for Christmas, et cetera. And this is, from our point of view, clearly, a one-off, what I already said, reflected the special situation we had in this year. So I mean, what I already said for '26, we have no doubt that our growth profile comes back to normal, because the trade war is finished and, therefore, confidence is back in the media market. I mean, the overall market, I already said we're not going to see explosion next year.

But if the market is flat or slightly growing, it's enough for us to grow double digit because there's a big positive momentum for out-of-home, also driven by the fact that linear TV reach is going constantly down and people are looking for alternative solutions in the upper funnel. So print is obviously going down quite fast. Linear TV now is under pressure already for the third consecutive year in a row. And our advertisers are reconsidering their strategy throughout the funnel. I mean, performance is strong, obviously. So the American platform, they have a strong business. But in the upper funnel, we are getting stronger and stronger, driven especially by digital out-of-home. And this is a development what we are expecting not only for next year, but also for the next, whatever, 5 to 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years.

It's a long-term development. It's underlying structural growth.

I mean, maybe building on what Udo just said, Craig, I think also if you think about Q1 and Q2 next year, obviously, I think it's fair to say that the difference of the base is quite significant, right? So we had like 15% growth in Q1 and then basically moved to flat or 1% in the second quarter. So I think it's fair to say that looking at the first half, development will be somewhat back-end loaded, right?

And on your question on third-party sales on online media in general, on the one hand, yes, you're right that when we look at our total digital business within Digital and Dialog, we clearly see that our own portal, especially T-Online is performing, I would say, well in that environment and quite robust. I would say the parts that are more challenging is the inventory that we have from third-party publishers. Again, that's, I think, about 25% to 30% of the profit within that overall business. I think it's more driven there by higher volatility in the traffic of our third-party publishers.

But before that, and I think that's the most important point, and just reflecting what Udo said, I think the macro environment at the moment is absolutely unique and outstanding. The fact that classic out-of-home has a better growth rate than digital out-of-home says something in itself. That's why I would say what you see at the moment in the digital media is like 80% cyclical, and 20% is more like structurally softer traffic development on the third-party publishing side. That's also something -- Google is updating the algorithm at the moment relatively often. So it's not an AI impact. It's just normal volatility in traffic development of some of the verticals that we've integrated from third-party publishers.

And by the way, Craig, I mean if you look on 2025, I think it's not what we wanted originally before Trump started this trade war. But I mean, if you look at the crisis, the performance is quite solid. I mean, the overall market, nobody knows exactly because there's no data. But we guess that is, in fact, should be down around 10% on overall year. So -- and that's what we see also in the last years. So we are outperforming the market by 10 percentage -- 10 to 15 percentage points, and we are outperforming TV by 12 to 15 percentage points. And this is, for us, the most important KPI to understand that this structural growth, what we have is very intact even in the crisis.

The next question comes from Marcus Diebel from JPMorgan.

I think most of my questions have been asked. But nevertheless, Henning, on the cash flow again. I mean, you made it very clear where the working capital effects come from and that it gets better very soon. This investment line before M&A, the EUR 27.7 million, can you just explain a bit more what that actually is? The other components, I think I understand of the free cash flow.

And then again, I think more on the broader advertising environment and the debate, what happened to digital. I mean, do you see at least a sort of like higher pickup also at the smaller clients? You obviously get very excited about the smaller screens that you basically place in shop windows. Is that really the sort of like push of digital also happening at the SMEs? I still struggle a little bit to see the development of digital versus analog in Q3. I obviously heard your comments. But to me, it's not really clear why we should assume it should get much better in '26.

Because, Marcus, we have the conversations right now. So we talk -- the clients and the agencies for the clients, they are now planning '26. So in all the big corporates, the budget for next year is now clear or clear in the next 3 or 4 days. So we are in talks to all our customers, all our big customers, all the agencies, so -- and we are negotiating all the commitments for '26. So every agency, we have a number on the table, and that's why we are convinced it's going to change because it's different. So that's the only thing we can say. There's no hope that is...

There's no optimism, basically.

No, no optimism. That's what we're discussing. If somebody says, look, next year, we spend EUR 20 million more. It's not optimism. I mean, we are fixing all the deals. So every media company knows, let's say, in the latest 4 or 6 weeks from now, has a very, very clear indication of what is happening next year. I mean, media budgets are not allocated from big corporates overnight.

There is a yearly budgeting process. And otherwise also, the agencies, in the next 4 or 5 weeks, let's say, latest until mid of -- end of January, that is already super late. The agencies close all the commitments for '26. So this is a process we are right now in. But the key point is this uncertainty is over. The uncertainty is over, and that's what I tried to express, and Christian as well.

I mean, look, the digital, you can book it overnight. And in the situation -- the uncertainty situation, like we had a unique uncertainty in Q2 and Q3, people have budgets but they're waiting what's happening until they spend. And then they decide on Wednesday, if they spend it next week. And in this circumstance, people didn't spend. They just had a meeting last week with one of the two biggest agencies in Germany and said, we lost EUR 100 million in the summer, unexpected because people didn't spend.

But that's more probably sort of like national clients. My question was more in regards to the sort of like the SMEs and their willingness to adopt digital even more.

Yes, but I think...

Does that make sense?

Yes, absolutely. I think just the share of SMEs in total within our out-of-home portfolios, like if you really look at the small clients, I don't know, it's 10%, 15%, roughly. And because they focus on the location nearby their stores, they go for the next best location. So that does not need to be necessarily a digital one. So it does makes sense for them to, I don't know, focus on digital if the screen is just not close enough to their store. That's why the adoption to digital is less driven by their willingness to do so and more based on the rollout. Do we have more and more inventory close to them? And that's, I think, the point that Udo made.

We are moving smaller formats into the inner cities, which just bring smaller screens, less CapEx closer to SMEs so that they also have the opportunity because before that, there was no digital screen because it was not possible to bring those large formats close to the stores.

Look, there is something between roadside and retail at the end. So as you all know, that retail is very much a fashion. That's also our move into retail that we go in the shop windows of smaller screens because, first, we come in areas where we have nothing to offer right now. And second, we create a new offer. For example, pharmacy shop windows are very attractive to pharmaceutical companies. And this is something where we -- and the development is quite promising, where we expect to create a new market segment, by targeting locations which we couldn't target up to now, which we couldn't offer to our customers up to now.

Marcus, on your question on the cash flow from investments, what is in that? It's basically all cash investments before M&A. However, there's not much. There's nearly almost no M&A that we need to talk about. The only thing which it doesn't include would be addition to fixed assets from additional leasing contracts. So that, I think, is a very pure cash flow number. The increase in the quarter stems from the out-of-home business, as I said in the speech. We talked about things like The Whale, the huge billboard in Hamburg, one that we talked about, let's say, this public city window.

So there's a bit more, let's say, focused investment now after the first 2 quarters, we were more moving like sideways. And also in Q3, I think we had, I think, a low single-digit million euro in out-of-home for the renewal of the software license that is supporting the digital out-of-home technology. So that is another point.

Looking at the breakdown, you can assume that more or less half of the investment cash-out is for out-of-home and the remainder would be like the remainder would be 1/3 Digital and Dialog and 2/3 on Data as a Service and E-Commerce. And within Data as a Service, I think you guys all know that we do also capitalize our stat content and depreciate it. So also those costs have actually then capitalized on the balance sheet and written down. I hope that answers your question.

By the way, The Whale is for us a really landmark project, and we're working 10 years on that. And we're going to expect more turnover from The Whale than most of our city contracts. So it's the biggest screen in Europe from this type of screens. And Hamburg is with 500,000 people per day, the most frequented area, place, whatever, in Germany by far. So the Frankfurt Airport has 170,000. And Frankfurt Airport and Hamburg Railway Station has 500,000. So we're going to launch it now in December 1. And that is only one screen, but it's a big project for us and gives also more visibility to out-of-home in Germany.

Okay. I just want to know what it is.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

My first question is on Statista, to try to understand the change in the business model. So maybe can you tell us how many paying subscribers do you have at Statista? How many are large and what could potentially move to having your data incorporated in the LLM? How many have already moved and are paying you? And if they are paying, what is the revenue versus the own model? That's number one.

Then number two, on Asam. I know current trading are not great, but any update on disposal? And then on AMEVIDA, Henning, did you say 15 or 50 in terms of revenue in 2026? And for Udo, why do you like the Dialog business so much? Because I would think that is one of the reasons why your multiple is so low, is the diversified nature of your company.

Yes. Thank you. I don't like the Dialog business so much. I mean, we made the deal to make an exit more likely because this is -- I mean, originally, we started a Dialog business because we wanted to sell. And this is a while ago and because of the Data Protection Act, we're not able to sell on the phone, really, except if you have a double opt-in. But now we have 50-50 sales and service. And I think this makes it much more likely that we are going to find an exit sooner or later. I mean, we clearly focus on our core business.

But we are very, let's say, opportunistic in terms of if there's a window of opportunity, then we're clearly going to exit the noncore business, what we always said. But that's unchanged. But we cannot influence circumstances that is out of our control. But we think this -- I mean, we bought here for EUR 250,000, EUR 60 million turnover with EUR 5 million profit and moved the service to sales from, let's say, 70-30 to 50-50. So it's a much more attractive profile now of the company.

And we are very optimistic that delivers a good cash flow next year. But we are -- what I already said, this is noncore, and there is no strategic area. We discussed it for a while, if we do the acquisition or not, because, obviously, it was a question how would that perceived in the capital market. But it was really value accretive to this call center business, and that's why we finally did it.

Well, building on that and coming back to the numbers, what I said is we expect for full fiscal '26 that we will have more than 1,300 additional FTEs, mostly agents, right? Those shall generate more than EUR 60 million, 6-0, in sales, and we expect a mid-single-digit million euro amount in terms of EBITDA contribution. For now, this current fiscal year, probably it's fair to assume that we expect, let's say, probably around about EUR 15 million sales from AMEVIDA, so more or less EUR 5 million each and every month now.

What also you should bear in mind what I said about the working capital, we would expect a working capital requirement now, additionally working capital requirement from AMEVIDA in the mid-single-digit million euro range for Q4. I hope that explains your question.

Back on your Statista question about client structure and the changing business model and Statista Connect, I'm just reading out from the sales reporting, the opportunities that we've been working on over the last 5 to 6 months and then the one opportunities. So from May to September, opportunities in May 27, in June 24, in July 31, in August 39 and September 17. So you see ongoing interactions with clients that we actively see where and how we can integrate in their LLMs.

One opportunities from May to September 5, 5, 6, 8, 17. So we meanwhile have roughly 30 corporates globally on that new model and accelerating both opportunities as well as one client. And if you look at the profile of the customers at the moment, you have as the first movers, large consultancies in the range of companies like McKinsey or Boston Consulting. You have larger agencies like companies as WPP or Omnicom. We have a lot of digital clients that do a lot of analytics, so also companies like Google and PayPal are on that list, also other classic industry companies like Volkswagen or Telekom.

So I think it's across the range, but the profile of a typical customer of Statista Connect with an own LLM that should have access to the database is clearly large global multinational corporates.

It's all about execution now. I think the underlying thesis now is clear to everybody who used or collect experience of LLMs in the last months and quarters. I mean, if the database is bad, the answers are c***. And this is, I think, totally transparent now to everybody. So that's why we see clearly a different way how we're going to distribute our data, what Christian just described.

But there's no doubt that there is a big opportunity for Statista and an important role because if you don't have access to reliable data, your LLM is not creating anything. So that's all about execution now. We have to connect with this company GPTs, and we have to find the best possible billing systems and pricing strategy. And that's the process we are right now in.

And just following up. So you're saying, if I understood correctly, you already have 30 clients that have signed on Statista Connect, right? And they're all large global multinationals. So maybe if you could remind us how many total clients you have at Statista and then how many kind of large multinational that could potentially take Statista Connect. So we have an idea of the kind of opportunity.

And then lastly, if you've signed 30 clients, can we get an idea of the subscription before and after? I mean, is it the same price? Is it more expensive, is it cheaper?

That's what I tried to describe before. We are in a transition period. And this transition period has for me two levels. One is the strategic level. It's, let's say, to make it very simple, is Statista needed an LLM-driven future. And let's say, 18 months ago, nobody could deliver a reliable answer. Now we can say 100% yes. And this is, for Statista value creation, the key and most important factor.

So the second is more, let's say, technical, operational level. What is the pricing system? I have to say we don't know yet because, look, we are connecting now and it takes always -- I mean, it's a very complicated technical thing to connect Statista to a company GPT, which are right now developing. And now we collect the first. We have now agreed on pricing, let's say, EUR 0.50 per take, which I think is far too expensive because we expect the traffic to explode.

I'll give an example, a big, let's say, consulting company, global consulting company. Up to now, we sold 1,500 seats. But in the future, there are 20,000 consultants having access to Statista. So nobody knows now if the traffic is 10x, 100x, 5x, 500x because the company GPT will decide if they need access to Statista data, yes or no. So now we agreed on this, let's say, test environment for a certain budget on EUR 0.50 per take. I think we're going to end up on a lower price per take because the access, the traffic will explode because we have 1,500 specialists up to now. And now we have everybody who has access to Statista.

And so that's why we agree -- both sides agreed in this case on a certain budget, let's say, whatever, EUR 100,000. And then we collect experience and then we're going to reprice it. So that's why I said it's all about execution right now. But the most important question was, is there a need for Statista? And we can say now there is 100%, yes, plus LLMs will make Statista more valuable at the end because of the huge amount of data, it became more and more difficult to navigate through Statista data and you need to be really a specialist. And no CEO could use Statista data. You have to ask somebody who ask somebody who is really specialist and how to use it.

The future, and now what we're doing now means everybody has access without even realizing it because a part of the company knowledge management system. And we have now, whatever, a big waiting line, but every one of our customer who is building a company knowledge management system wants to do the same, sign up for Connect and connect Statista data into your LLM environment. So that's -- but it's execution now. I mean, the key point was the strategic point. And this, I have to say, we are very confident or 100% convinced that the importance of Statista for our clients is not going to shrink at all through the introduction of LLM in any company environment.

And then on Asam?

I think we already said everything. So Asam, I mean, if I look back, we made a mistake to talk about the exit of Asam, while it's clearly noncore, we want to exit it. Our bank said, don't start the process now because it is the wrong environment. And we're saying, but our shareholders want us to exit it. So we have the discussion every 3 months. There's always a trade-off between are we waiting because we believe we get EUR 100 million more, or do we exit now because we believe the effect of exiting it on the stock price is bigger than the loss we have in the sales price. And so that is -- but I think we made perfectly clear, and I also want to report that today, we focus on our core business, and we are also working on possible restructuring of the organization, of the group to reflect that more clear to the outside. The core business is clearly what we are focusing. This is, let's say, a financial investment at the end now for us, so yes, it's like a venture for us. So that's, at the moment, we see a good compromise between a reasonable sales price and the impact of the share price, we're going to exit it.

I mean, if you look at the performance, is -- if you look on the overall market, I think the performance is very solid. But it's not growing this year because, I mean, overall, not only in the advertising market, we saw, I think, a big uncertainty also on the consumer side because in Germany, I mean, 40% of the jobs are based on exports. So the first trade war ever with our biggest friend, I think, was a shock for everybody here. And everybody is really happy that things are now coming to an end here and we can look -- and we can handle the achieved agreement, if you like them or not, but that's what we always said.

I mean, the problem is not if you pay 50% tax or not. The problem is that if you don't know what's going to happen, it means people are not spending because they are waiting. And this is what I already said. Now that's what you saw in digital ad spend. Everything was short term, people were reluctant to spend, keeps the money in. If you talk to the agencies now, they say, okay, the money is coming back. We have a clear indication of our customers that the money we lost is coming back, and that's what gives us strong confidence in our core business.

The next question comes from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

Just follow-up questions from my side, please. First, I understand the volatility in digital out-of-home. But could you explain why the classic out-of-home has increased so much in Q3? That's one question.

And the second question is on the margins in their Digital and Dialog. My understanding is that your online portals are performing well, but this is a high margin basis. So then why overall margin has declined in this segment in Q3?

Anna Patrice, it was virtually impossible to understand the question. Maybe can you repeat it like in the short form.

Sorry, sorry. Can you hear me well?

Now better.

Now better.

Okay, sorry. So the first question is about the out-of-home in Q3. I understand why digital was volatile. I couldn't understand why classical or classic out-of-home has increased because, here, you have longer lead time. So how could you increase all of a sudden by so much? And then in the Q4, what are the trends? Do you see again a decline in digital and increase in classical? Or do you have increase in classic and also in the digital? And hence, overall, you have low to mid-single-digit increase in Q4 this year. That's on the out-of-home.

And then on the Digital and Dialog, my understanding is that your own online portals were performing better, and that's where you have higher margins. So why then overall margin has declined in Q3 in the Digital and Dialog?

Okay. Maybe on the out-of-home business, I think just referring back to what Udo said, I think the logics of digital out-of-home or digital media in general is that the lead times are rather short. So if there is a normal budget process, then clients book also throughout the quarter. And at the end or in the second half of the quarter, all the money goes to the short-term bookable media, the ones with the short lead times. That's online media but also digital out-of-home.

So what we've seen in that uncertainty is that additional spend that comes throughout the quarter or the kind of spot market was extremely soft because clients didn't spend that still available money and kept it. So the media that suffered the most from that development are the ones with the short lead times that normally are the ones that only benefit from that money. Classic out-of-home has lead times of normally 6 to 8 weeks. And a lot of clients book it already 6 to 8 months in advance to make sure that they get exactly what they want.

So there are no -- like the extra spend on classic out-of-home for the second half of a quarter in the second half quarter is really limited. So there is nothing that you could lose short term. The loss that you have short term is in the short-lead media if that kind of extra money throughout the quarter doesn't come and if clients are holding back budgets. So I think that explains why surprisingly, classic is suddenly a little bit better than digital out-of-home in that specific quarter, which is really a unique situation. We haven't seen something like that.

I think the last time where I saw classic outperforming digital was in the pandemic because it was possible to cancel digital faster than classic because of the shorter lead times.

On your question on Digital and Dialog, I mean, your assumption is right, right, that the sales performance in the actually highest margin area of that segment was relatively stable, as we said in the call. So the earnings deviation is not coming from, I would say, the sales performance on the owned content. The earnings decline more or less entirely relates to the lost business, let's say, on third-party ads and also, to some extent, on -- for the quarter now slower programmatic public video performance. I think this is the two drivers. So there's one weaker spot in the own content, which comes by way of programmatic public video, plus the earnings pressure from losing sales on third-party inventory sales.

The next question comes from Miro Zuzak from JMS Investment.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, yes. Very well.

I have a couple of questions. The first one for Udo. You mentioned that you can see an acceleration in Q4 versus Q3. You elaborated on the crisis which you mentioned from the tariff war. Are we back to normal already in Germany? Or do you still see an impact from this crisis?

I think we are in the recovery phase. So I have a strong feeling there for '26, we are back to normal. But for the full year. I mean, first quarter last year was very strong because we had elections also. But for the full year, I think we are back to normal. And in Q4, let's say, for the last 7 weeks, we are 6 weeks above previous year. And so we will see in 4 weeks if we're really back to normal. But business growing stronger than Q3, and we see that this uncertainty stuff is out of the market right now.

So now we -- what Christian also said before, this is a completely unique situation that, I mean, we expect analog to grow also, but low single digit, and the growth will come mostly from digital out-of-home. And I think what I already said in the beginning, the difficulty with the crisis was that nobody -- there was no clear start with a big bang or something. It came step by step by step, but like everything for next -- which never happened before. We had in the last 4, 5 years now two first-time crisis, one pandemic and one trade war with our strongest partner.

So this is -- I mean, I'm 30 years in business. It never happened before. But in case it happens again, now we see -- now we know that there is a strong impact. If I compare with the last 30 years, and I have to say the trade war crisis, you can only compare it with the World Financial Crisis in 2008 and '09 and the pandemic. This is in the last 30 years, 1 of the 3 biggest crisis, and this is actually reflected in the spending. And now we see confidence coming back. And I would say we are -- what I already said, for next year, we are expecting a normalized trading environment.

We expect the overall market to be flat, maybe growing 1% or 2%, maybe 3%, something like this. But this is enough for us to grow the business double digit. And that what you -- if you look back in '24 and '23, GDP was down minus 0.5%, minus 0.3%. The market was even slightly shrinking, and we could grow the business double digit or even 12% in '24. So because this underlying structural growth that I already described before, if you look on the upper funnel, brand building that is out-of-home is strongly located in the upper funnel. Our main competitors is TV and print. And linear TV is losing share, losing reach constantly. And by losing reach, you lose ad dollars.

So that's -- we have a lot of discussions with customers, they say, okay, we need to find new solutions for the upper funnel, and we are absolutely interested in developing new solutions. At the same time, we have to realize that the media market is very conservative. And we have still EUR 200 million spend in yellow pages and nobody saw a yellow pages in the last 20 years. So generally, people are doing the same split next year what we did last year, and then you can adjust gradually. And so that's why the market is also super stable. Don't forget, we show a clear growth this year in one of the worst environments in the last 30 years. I mean, this is also a very strong sign for the underlying structural growth.

But to come back to one sentence, again, '26, we expect a normalized trading environment.

Okay. Cool. And the second one for Henning regarding the exceptionals that you booked. I mean, it's a very constant number since 2023. Can we expect these exceptionals and these adjustments to continue? Or is the baseline principally 0 every year? And then if there is something you book it as exceptional?

Well, I think, Miro, first, if you take like a wider perspective or I think up until '23, we have seen a consistent decline of those adjustments. One major impact last year was obviously the cost that arose from working on the transaction on the core business. Moreover, I think the point is, I mean, there will always be, I would say, restructuring in a group looking at the portfolio that has our size. So I think there should always be some sort of base level. I mean, think about what I said -- told you about Statista.

But that's it, right? So I think it's probably fair to say that overall, we would feel more comfortable level way below EUR 15 million for a year. Sometimes there's stuff which is special. But I think we shouldn't expect that this number is going to grow up big time. Will it ever be 0? Probably not if the portfolio -- at least the portfolio remains as complex as it is. So as I said, there's always sort of restructuring initiatives that we're working on.

Yes. We had, in 2018, '19, I think we had like the peak after a lot of acquisitions, the 4 -- 5, 6 years before. I think at that time, adjustments were 5.5%, even 6% of EBITDA. I think at the moment, we are, as Henning said, 15% as a normal run rate is like 2%, 2.5% of what we do. So that's why I think it's -- the long-term trend shows that there will be always something, but it's a minor item in the low single-digit percentage range of EBITDA.

However, for the current fiscal year, I think we're probably more close to 20 than to 50.

Okay. Cool. And the last one, share price of EUR 36, given basically your free cash flow profile, wouldn't it make sense to take opportunity to basically buy some shares at this level?

It's definitely an opportunity. We are thinking about it, but there's no decision up to now. The share price obviously includes, for the moment, a very big skepticism of the capital markets for what's happening. That's also why we want to send today a clear message here. And I mean if I look back, it's maybe the worst share price ever in comparison to what we produce in cash. So we are thinking about it, but there's no decision up to now. But clearly, that is an option which is also interesting to our shareholders.

We have a follow-up question from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Sorry, I just want to come back on Statista again. I mean, you gave us quite a bit of insight. And the transition that's taking place with your large customers over Statista Connect. And I fully appreciate that you don't have the visibility yet yourself. As you just said, you think the data consumption will be quite significant. Therefore, the revenue potential over time could be quite significant.

But as we're mapping out over the next couple of quarters, and we're thinking about the declines in inbound versus this transition taking place with the larger customers to the LLMs, I mean, just should we be thinking in terms of net-net impact on revenues for the next couple of quarters? Should we be thinking sort of in the dimension of what we saw in Q3, i.e. a modest decline? I'm just -- yes, if you could maybe just give us some insights into your thinking there, that would be very helpful.

Well, I think in general, on an annual basis, I think the Statista business will go forward. I think that specific quarter is probably -- and it's not typical for the development given the special context, but we don't know how much and how quickly and how strongly it goes forward there. And I think that's going back to the point that Udo said, we see good adoption to the new business model. We see that we only have penetrated a small share of our customers, and that's not driven because all the large clients don't want. But no, it takes time to adapt them to the new model and do the integration work. And then we'll find out with the growing number of customers what the underlying volume is there. And I think that is crucial to define then what the growth potential going forward is. So we are in that intermediate phase.

I think it's probably fair to say that we still have consistent pressure on the inbound clients, on the smaller ones. That is not going to go away soon. At the same time, we keep on selling also the classical product which is growing. But then, I mean, the third thing, obviously, is how fast can we build up monetization based on the different business model, where we are basically paid upon let's say, API calls, if you will. So that -- I think probably we talk about -- this is not a question of a quarter, probably it would take some more time.

Look, the inbound business is that. Inbound means there were private individuals, small companies. They also, for entertainment reasons, they were looking for stuff. And if you check for entertainment reasons, you go to LLM. You don't mind if it's wrong or almost right or you could guess what it is. So that is -- on the other side, this is also not a -- it will never -- it was always an add-on for us. It was never a strategic development area. I mean Statista is the only global platform for statistic data. And this is here on the valuation side, all or nothing. Either you need it to get better results in an LLM environment or you don't need it anymore.

So this is completely black or white. And that is the only thing which is important for us because we are 100% convinced that the answer to that is white and not black. And 18 months ago, we were hoping it would be like that, but we didn't know. Now we know. And that is, I think, the key difference now. We know that Statista creates added value for all our clients, and they know it as well. But the clients need to also fix their systems. I mean, to build up a company GPT is a big thing. That is not done overnight. And we clearly have to wait until the customers have a complete system up and running, and then they need to be able to connect us.

I mean we signed, for example, contracts with Microsoft, I mean, since 6 months, they're not able to connect us. You would guess that these big tech giants, they do it overnight, but they need now more than 6 months to connect us. It's everywhere the same. This AI world is developing very fast. But a lot what you read in the news is expectations about the future. The reality is that you have to build it up. You have to make it safe. You need to keep it running, and you need to be able to integrate a lot of different stuff. And that's exactly where we are staying right now.

But again, this is, for us, that is execution. This is not a question anymore is Statista a bright future or not?

Okay. Just one quick technical to wrap it up, please. Can you kind of give us an idea of what the share still at the moment of this, say, low-value ad inbound traffic is? I mean we're talking about 15%, 20% of revenues?

Out of the platform business, which by far is the largest segment of Statista, it's probably around 15%, rapidly declining, unfortunately, at the moment.

15% of the platform business. The platform business is probably, what, 80% -- 70% to 80%?

Platform is probably something like 65%, 70% of the entire Statista business.

That's why even if you lose 1/3 on the inbound business, you talk about like 5 percentage points. So if your outbound business in general also on the classic business is still growing, you're on the existing business model, are okay also going forward. But the key focus of the company is now on Statista Connect, on the connecting the clients. So our business -- our focus of the salespeople is not, can we sell more seats to McKinsey on the existing contract.

It's all about full focus on getting the adoption to connect as quickly as possible, interacting with how it's doing, what we can change but the data volume is, how many tokens they want to buy and so on credit. So that's the focus. And I think I understand your point that this doesn't translate in revenue directly and you need some kind of projections. But that's a tricky part. And that business part moves the needle going forward.

That's the point. Look, if I have EUR 10 million or EUR 20 million or even EUR 30 million more or less inbound traffic doesn't move the needle. Statista is a EUR 1 billion business or it's worth EUR 50 million. And the difference makes only if there is a significant value for our global clients and connecting Statista to their knowledge management systems. This is actually -- that is a key point, which drives the value. This inbound traffic, up or down, doesn't change anything in Statista's valuation.

And also the turnover is actually insignificant, if you want my opinion. I mean, the question is what is what -- if we improve on a global scale, knowledge management system of 1% or 2%, then you have a big ticket on the valuation. And the turnover, if it's EUR 20 million or EUR 30 million more or less, it's -- I don't think we talk here about EBITDA multiples or something right now. We talk only, are we able to make transparent what is that there's an advantage in an LLM-driven world through Statista, yes or no.

We have a follow-up question from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Excellent.

Perfect. A follow-up question on the out-of-home segment. So what trends do you see now in the digital out-of-home? So it has been declining in Q3. Do you see that it is already back to growth in Q4? The first question.

And a more strategic question on the digital out-of-home. How do you see its growth going forward? Is it because of the rollout of the new subsegments, so to say, the retail one? Is it -- so is it driven by increase in number of screens? Or you see also increase in the utilization rate?

And could you remind us -- I'm sorry.

It can happen. What was the last one?

What is driving the growth in out-of-home? Is it like expansion...

Yes, sorry. So on the digital out-of-home, is it increasing utilization or increase in the number of screens?

I think we got the question, Anna Patrice.

By the way, congratulations, Statista needs more paying subscribers on the planet. Just the first question, Q4, do we see digital out-of-home back to growth? Yes. And source of growth in general, I think it's fair to say that 80% and more will come from better utilization. Up to 20% will come from further expansion of new products. And it depends on how many new screens we deploy per year.

I mean, something like what we mentioned before, a huge screen more than 340 square meters has, of course, an impact with one individual location, a completely new product category like city windows that we've mentioned before or retail media can open up completely new revenue streams. But I think in general, that strategic shift, especially from TV clients to TV plus digital out-of-home is ultimately driving the utilization of our core public video product in train stations, shopping malls and public transportation systems and roadside.

Every question is answered.

The next question comes from Jerome Bodin from ODDO BHF.

I just have two quick follow-ups on the Outdoor. First of all, can you be a bit more granular in terms of costs in Q3 and Q4? What has moved up in Q3 and should move up in Q4? And have you taken any cost measures to mitigate the top line situation in Q3? That's my first question.

And secondly, still on 2026. Just to be sure, when you are referring to encouraging talk for 2026, does it refer to January and February booking, for example? Or is it more a general comment for 2026?

Jerome, on the cost side of things, I mean now look, we have seen now in out-of-home 2 quarters with more or less moving sideways in terms of sales at a time where we still have, let's say, regular cost inflation on PEX, on maintenance and stuff like that. I think in that context, earnings held up quite well. So I think it's fair to assume that there's quite a bit of cost savings that are materializing in the P&L. And I would expect this to continue also in the fourth quarter.

Already, when we realize that the market is going sour and there was this heightened uncertainty around the tariff discussion, that was at some point in summer, we decided to actually move in a fairly strict cost freeze. So we look at all individual cost positions, all the discretionary spend, so what we can hold. And also at this point in time, we are not necessarily rehiring if there's attrition in the workforce. Exception is obviously when it comes to sales, so everything which is facing the clients, I think we're not cutting all the rest. It's subject to a very strong freeze still up until we realize that really things are improving.

So I mean one big topic here in cost saving for the next years is clearly AI because we have a lot of repetitive activities here like any other companies. So we have a hire freeze and the target is clearly that we introduce more and more AI solutions in our value chain. And in the next 5 years, actually to give you an impression, we believe that we are able to save up to EUR 50 million in costs and, obviously, depending on that we are able to deploy these AI-driven solutions, which would make us faster and improve our quality and many processes. But cost is clearly driven through this AI options, a key topic for the next 5 years.

On the question with the turnover, I mean, we talk about the whole year now because right now, we are on the budget level discussion. I mean, we also talk about concrete campaigns in January, February, et cetera, already a lot. But now is the time to fix budgets and to strike commitments, and customers are not on this so granular now by booking. I mean, obviously, they have already bookings for January because it's only 6 weeks ahead. But we see the positive uplift for the full year. And we never talk about quarters in advance because you never know if the campaign is coming in February or April or January or whatever. So it makes no sense.

I mean, for the full year, what I already said, we are absolutely confident that we go back to normal trading. We're going to -- we have strong interest for Q1. Do we see a strong growth? It's by far too early on a quarterly level. It has also nothing to say. I mean we always look on the full year. And then actually, we look always on a 3 years' average. For us, it's important that we can show the growth rates we're expecting on 3 years' average because we have always also on a yearly basis, exceptional situations. Like last year, we had the European Football in Germany and the Olympics next door in Paris.

So this is -- and this was an exceptional situation last year. And that's why we always look on the 3 years average because we are very long-term orientated. And when I -- when we bought Deutsche Städte Medien in 2004, out-of-home was at 2.7%. Now we peaked at 10.4%, and we believe that this is going to grow to at least 15%, maybe 20% in the upcoming years. So this is for us key that we see that the structural growth trend is intact and that we outperform the market double digit. And that is what happened last year and where we are very confident also going to happen next year.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Christian Schmalzl for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for your time and your questions. Just double check, officially, we meet back in March next year, but I hope we catch up earlier. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Take care.

Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call.