Good afternoon to you all, and thank you for your attention. Let's start this overview from the analysis of the performance of the trade book market in the first half of the current year. The first six months of 2025 showed a decrease in the book market equal to 5% in value compared to the previous year, a trend that was substantially expected in our forecast and that has been the result of some negative effects. In particular, the replacement of the Form E EPPA 18 with the 2024 fiscal year benefiting from the use of dedicated funds until the end of April, with the culture and merit cards, as well as the publication of fewer hardcovers by most publishers. In particular, following a decrease of 3.7% in the first quarter, the second quarter recorded a further decline of 6.4% overall.
In this context, the Mondadori Group Publishing Brands recorded a 6.6% decline in the first half of 2025 due to a publishing plan with fewer new strong titles compared to the previous year and a slowdown in paperback sales in line with the market. Nevertheless, the Mondadori Group confirmed its national leadership with a market share of 27.4% at June 2025 and ranked three titles in the top 10 of the period under review. As already anticipated, these market trends were in line with our expectations, which continue to project a full-year market broadly stable compared to 2024, thanks to more relevant bestsellers scheduled for the third and fourth quarters, as well as the contribution from the fund dedicated to libraries, which will be reintroduced by the last quarter of the fiscal year.
It should be noted that over the past four weeks, the book market has already shown a reversal trend, recording a growth of around 2%. Our publishing houses have significantly outperformed this, achieving an increase of over 5% thanks to the recent releases. As a result of this performance, the market's overall decline since the beginning of the year has narrowed by 1% point to 4%, and Mondadori is also closing the gap versus the market, now standing at around 5% year-to-date, after having hit the lowest point just two months ago in mid-May, when the year-to-date decline stood at approximately 7.5%. In this market context, our retail operations continued to outperform the overall market, even recording a slight year-over-year increase of 0.5%.
As a result, Mondadori Retail's market share reached 13.4%, plus 70 basis points compared to the first half of the previous year, driven by the contribution of directly managed and franchised stores. These stores, which now hold nearly a 20% market share in the physical retail channel, recorded an increase of 1.7% in book sales in terms of sell-out value. With regards to the sale channel mix, it is worth noting that e-commerce, now representing 35% of the book market, was more affected by the replacement of the EPPA 18 recording a decline in sales of about 9% compared to the first six months of 2024. Moving again to what has happened in the last four weeks, also our retail chain showed a significant increase, with book product sales rising by over 9% year-on-year.
Thanks to this positive trend, the outperformance since the beginning of the year compared to the market has further widened, with a progressive overall increase of 1.6% compared to the previous year. Now, let me highlight and briefly comment the group economic performance in the first half of the current year that typically represents about 40% of our full-year revenue. We recorded stable revenues thanks to a timing effect in the education books due to the early recognition of certain revenues, as we will see later, and retail areas that have more than compensated the weakness of the book market that inevitably impacted the revenues of our trade publishing brands.
Also, the adjusted EBITDA equal to EUR 40.5 million showed a stability compared to the EUR 40.9 million recorded in the same period of 2024, thanks to the education books and media area results that have compensated for the decline registered in the trade books, as we will see in the next slide. EBITDA recorded a decrease of approximately EUR 5 million due to the comparison with the first half of the previous financial year, which has benefited from the lower restructuring costs and from the release of certain risk provisions in the media area, as well as to higher depreciation and amortization recorded during the period, totaling EUR 1.5 million, mainly concentrated in the trade books and corporate areas. In fact, adjusted EBIT net of non-recurring items and PPA came to EUR 13.6 million, less decreasing versus EUR 15.4 million in the first half of 2024.
Net profit amounted to EUR 3.5 million, down from EUR 7.1 million accounted in the first half of 2024, while the adjusted net profit, neutralizing the extraordinary components and amortization resulting from the PPA, would be equal to EUR 7.6 million versus EUR 9 million of the same period of the previous year, mainly due to higher depreciation and amortization and financial charges for EUR 0.6 million, deriving from higher bank interest and a higher average debt. Coming to the breakdown of the top-line trend versus the first half of 2024, in the trade book area, revenues recorded a decrease of 4.5% or a 5% decline on a like-for-like basis, therefore excluding the consolidation of Chelsea Green Publishing and the distribution activity of Star Shops, as well as the impact from the end of the concession related to the Colosseum.
This performance was further affected during the months under review, in addition to what has already been commented on regarding the sell-out market trend by the absence of a commercial operation carried out in the first quarter of 2024 on the Star Comics brand. The education books business recorded revenues up by EUR 8.7 million compared to the previous year, a positive variation entirely driven by the advanced scheduling of supply delivery to all sales, so a performance that is not indicative of the trend for the full year. The retail area recorded a 2.1% growth net of the revenues from Star Shop retail activities and a negative impact estimated at around EUR 1.5 million of the temporary closure for the full restyling of Rizzoli Bookstore in Milan, reopening in May. Organic growth would have reached 2.9% despite the weakness of the book market trend during the first half of the year.
The digital activities of the media area delivered an improvement of about 13% or 8% like-for-like, mainly thanks to the positive performance of the MarTech segment and to the excellent results of the activity of the social agencies, while the media print has recorded a decrease close to 8% due to the structural decline in circulation and add-ons revenues. The overall media business unit presented positive growth of 1%, given that the increase in the digital segment has more than compensated for the decline in print activities. The adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the current year, amounting to EUR 40.5 million, resulted to be flat year-on-year compared to the EUR 40.9 million recorded in the same period of 2024. In this performance, we estimate a purely time-related positive impact of approximately EUR 4.5 million, resulting from the anticipated deliveries and, consequently, revenues in the school business.
Net of this effect, the adjusted EBITDA for the period would reflect a decline of around EUR 5 million, driven by two distinct factors of equal value. The first impact is mainly due to the top-line trend of the trade books area, deriving from the weak market trend as previously described. This decline, equal to EUR 3.5 million, is expected to be progressively recovered in the first half of the year. Conversely, the other business showed an overall growth in adjusted EBITDA of approximately EUR 1 million. The second impact is associated with some non-recurring business effects, among which the most relevant are, on the positive side, higher grants in the media print business that have been accounted for in the first six months of the current year for EUR 1.6 million.
On the negative side, the conclusion at the end of April 2024 of the multi-year consortium of ticketing activities and services regarding the Roman archaeological area of the Colosseum and the commercial operation by the publishers Star Comics that has been carried out in the first quarter of 2024 in the trade books area. In addition, we must take into account the approximately four-month closure of our Rizzoli Milano store due to the renovation works. The combined effect resulting from these factors had negatively impacted EBITDA for approximately EUR 4.0 million in the first half compared to the previous year. As already seen, the stable profitability versus the first half of 2024 comes mainly from the fact that the decline recorded in the trade books segment was more than offset by the anticipated revenues from the school business.
In particular, the trade books decreased by EUR 7 million in the first half, of which approximately half is attributable to the non-recurring events that took place in 2024, as described in the previous slide, and the other half to the decline in revenues during the period affecting both print and digital products. The education books recorded an improvement of EUR 5.4 million compared to the same period of 2024, almost entirely driven by the early stocking of all sales, particularly concentrated in the higher margin segments. The retail area recorded a slight improvement compared to the same period in 2024, confirming the positive trend that has been ongoing for several years in a row, despite the negative impact from the closure of the Rizzoli Bookstore in Milan. The media area reported a result up by EUR 2.3 million, or about 23% compared to the previous year.
This improvement was driven primarily by the print segment, plus EUR 1.7 million, which benefited from higher grants and ongoing cost structure optimization that we expect to maintain throughout the entire fiscal year. The corporate and shared services recorded a worse margin compared to the previous year due to increased expenses related to various innovation initiatives, including the migration of all group information systems to the cloud. The intercompany margin declined by EUR 0.6 million, mainly as a result of a higher value of group publishing products held in the inventory at the retail store, partly driven by new store openings during the last 12 months. Moving on to the cash position, we can see that the group confirmed a strong cash flow generation. The cash flow generated in the last 12 months by ordinary operations amounts to EUR 64 million, confirming the group's capacity to self-finance its M&A and development plans.
The consolidated net financial position before IFRS 16 amounts to about EUR 219 million, slightly increasing compared to the figure at June 2024. It's worth remembering that the June figures reflect the quarterly peak in the group's net debt, resulting from the seasonal patterns of the school business. Analyzing the change in the group's net debt between June 2024 and June 2025, we observe lower CapEx versus fiscal year 2024, but less favorable working capital dynamics driven primarily by the education books area due to the previously mentioned early revenue recognition that have not yet translated into cash flow, and by the media area reflecting the accounting of receivables linked to the paper contribution and the change in scope observed over the last 12 months. Cash out related to tax and financial charges amounted to EUR 20.3 million.
Extraordinary cash flow was negative by EUR 30 million and includes cash out for M&A of about EUR 14 million, primarily consisting of the purchase of 51% of Fatto in casa da Benedetta for about EUR 12 million, including the relative call option and then the earnout. Restructuring costs for EUR 4 million and the renovation of the quarter of around EUR 6 million. Consequently, the LTM free cash flow was positive for about EUR 34 million, confirming the group ability to increasingly reward shareholders while maintaining the group's financial solidity.
Let's now end our brief presentation with the confirmation of the outlook of the full year 2025, which reflects an overall weakness in the book market during the first half of the year compared to the previous one, even if smaller than the actual one, and the expectation of a gradual and full recovery over the second half of the year in both the market environment and the group-related performance. Supporting this expected performance, it is important to highlight the strength of our editorial plan for the second half of the year. In particular, over the past months, we have released four titles that have consequently ranked in the top 10 in recent weeks. Among them are a romance novel, a highly successful segment, and the latest work of Gianluca Gotto and Roberto Saviano.
In the coming months, we will also launch two major new releases: a new title by Dan Brown for Rizzoli, which marks his return to publishing after seven years, and a new one by Ken Follett for Mondadori. In addition to this, we have a strong pipeline of titles by highly successful authors such as Grisham, Federico Rampini, Viola Arbone, Vespa, and Sveva Casati Modignani for Sterlin & Kufer. In addition to the strong editorial pipeline, we look with confidence to the second half of the year, also in terms of sales channels. We expect that the recovery of the e-commerce channel, already evident in July, will continue to support the reversal trend in the book market, together with the strengthening of the physical channel. This latter will benefit from the announced reintroduction in the last quarter of the year of the library bonus, worth approximately EUR 25 million.
Regarding our group's activities in the school publishing sector, we are pleased to anticipate that the adoption campaign has yielded very positive results, with an expected increase in overall market share, the best in the last five years. In particular, although based on non-previsional data, we expect growth in the market share as follows: in the secondary school segment, market share is expected to rise to approximately 34.5%, and in the primary school segment, growth is significant, with an increase of 3 percentage points to over 20% of the market. This leads to an overall increase of about 70 basis points. This performance comes in the market context that should show a substantially stable trend compared to the previous year, resulting from two opposite dynamics that are expected to balance each other out. The estimated demographic decline is leading to an overall reduction of about 2% in the student population.
The average price increase, which in both primary and secondary school segments has settled at 1.8%, is roughly in line with the 2025 inflection rate. Even more important, from a forward-looking perspective, we will have a positive impact on a multi-year basis. The group indeed believes it can confirm the previously announced guidance for the 2025 full year. Therefore, we are expecting a low single-digit growth in revenues and in adjusted EBITDA, with a group profitability stable at 17%. We also confirm the cash generation capacity, and therefore expect the ordinary cash flow to stay on average around EUR 70 million or slightly less this year due to a different scheduling of the publishing plan in the trade book area. This fiscal year may, in fact, experience a partial shift of some receivable cash in from the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026.
The group's financial net debt is expected to stand at EUR 1 million adjusted EBITDA by the end of the fiscal year 2025, down from EUR 1.1 million at 2024 year-end, or to EUR 0.5 million adjusted EBITDA, not IFRS 16. Thank you all for your attention.