Welcome to North Media's interim report for Q2, 2023. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded, and I will now hand it over to the speakers. Please begin.
Hello, welcome to the presentation of our business and financial results for Q2 2023. My name is Lasse Brodt, I'm Group CEO. With me today is Group CFO, Kåre Wigh. We start with an overview of some of our main business activities in the quarter. Stay tuned for the financial development a little later. FK Distribution implemented a solar cell system at the terminal in Taastrup one year ago, and another system is on its way in Tilst. The solar cells will be connected to batteries to store the produced electricity, and we have decided to double the capacity of these batteries. We do it because we want to use more of the electricity ourself, and it enable us to make commercial use of the batteries.
In early 2022, BoligPortal acquired 51% of BoligManager, with an option to buy the rest by 2027. We decided to do it already now because we want to speed up the product development. In Ofir, we launched our new website in April. We want to improve the user experience and to perform better in the search engines, we wanted to make it easier for companies to upload their job ads. Far, the results looked promising. Bekey also presented a new website. A key factor for Bekey to growth is to increase the awareness of the company and to have a site that generates more traffic than the old one. With this, I hand over to Kåre to talk about our financial performance.
Thank you, Lasse. There are quite a few numbers on this slide. I will focus on the Q2 development. The results in Q2 were in line with expectations. Revenue and earnings came in lower compared to the same period last year, mainly due to lower income in FK Distribution, while BoligPortal continued improving their performance. I'll come back to that in a minute. Cash flow from operations and free cash flow decreased following the lower activity level, mainly in FK Distribution. In the quarter, we benefited from 27% return on our securities, therefore, capital resources increased. Earlier, Lasse mentioned new investments in the green transition of society in the form of increased battery capacity. In Q2, we also increased our investments in funds owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, also known as CIP.
The funds focus on off and onshore wind, solar energy, and storage technologies. For now we have committed to a EUR 4 million investment. So far, we have paid EUR 0.75 million. Lasse, let's go on with the performance of the businesses.
Thank you, Kåre. Let's start with FK Distribution. FK's results were as expected. Revenue was down 9.9% compared to last year, a development that remains impacted by macroeconomic challenges, as well as structural and market change. There were also positive signs in the quarter. Selected Mail continued developing growth, and customers within electronics tested the impact of leaflets on sales, and based on the results, they have decided to expand their leaflet distribution in the second half of 2023. Paper prices have dropped by around 30%, and Kåre will now take us through the development in digital services. Let's start with BoligPortal.
BoligPortal reported record high revenues again, delivering 16% growth. The primary reason was increased income from advertising fees from landlords, while some of the other revenue streams in the platform grew less than anticipated. In Sweden, for example, we now have our commercial organization in place, but it takes longer than expected to increase the number of own rental units. Earnings grew by 54% from the revenue increase and lower capacity costs. As briefly mentioned by Lasse, we decided to acquire the remaining 49% of BoligManager already now, because we wish to accelerate product development. It also means that the provision for contingent considerations is eliminated. All in all, another solid performance by BoligPortal. The job portal, Ofir, saw a lower number of job ads in the quarter, particularly from the private sector, but also from the public sector.
We also see that customers select smaller advertising packages compared to previous quarters. These trends impacted revenue, which declined 27%. EBIT was impacted accordingly. Please remember that the same period last year was still characterized by a very large number of new job ads. In addition to the new website, we also increased the use of data and AI on our platform to make it easier and faster for companies to write job ads. All measures to improve and optimize our customer offering. Bekey recorded lower revenue this quarter, where growth in recurring license and service fees and in the small distributor segment was offset by decreasing hardware sales to municipalities. This development, combined with higher fixed cost, impacted margins.
To strengthen their business going forward, Bekey started to standardize and automate more internal processes. In addition, we started building a new strong IT development team to have in-house competencies in this field. This summary leads us to the full year outlook for 2023. Overall, results for first half of 2023 were in line with expectations, and that leads us to narrowing our guided revenue and earnings ranges. We are just our revenue range to DKK 935 million-DKK 970 million. The main reason is that we now have improved visibility for the development in FK Distribution for the rest of the year, and this means that we can lift the lower end of the range. We have also reduced the upper level of the range, mainly due to expected lower revenue in Ofir.
The earnings range is adjusted, reflecting the better visibility in FK Distribution. Something that is not visible from this overview is that within digital services, we raise revenue and earnings expectations in BoligPortal due to higher advertising income, and because payment of the contingent considerations related to the acquisition of BoligManager was settled just now in June. In general, it is still important to highlight that we continue to see a number of uncertainties in our markets that may impact our businesses negatively. Back to you, Lasse, for a status on the strategic priorities this year.
Thank you, Kåre, now, halfway through the year, we are largely on track with our strategic priorities. At group level, we maintain our ambition to ensure a strong capital structure to explore opportunities to grow. This is a part of setting a clear strategic direction for the entire group. In FK Distribution, the selected mail segment is performing well, and we also expect Minetilbud to grow. When it comes to BoligPortal, the business has generated higher revenue from advertising fees from landlords than expected. At the same time, the other parts of the business are not growing as fast as we have expected, and we are looking into how to change that development. In OFIR, the new platform is successfully launched, and data collection and analysis are an integral part of this step.
Partnerships and collaboration with large companies is not developing as planned, mainly due to the trends Kåre mentioned before. Bekey has started a number of initiatives, which we have already covered, but progress is too slow. With this, I think we have covered the highlights of the quarter and the first half year, so let's go to the Q&A. Operator, please go ahead.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again, you may do so by pressing five star again. We will have a brief pause while questions are being registered. If you wish to ask a question, please press five star now. It does not seem like anybody has any questions from the conference call, so I will hand it back to the speakers.
Thank you so much. We will thank you for listening today, and we will be back with Q3 results the first of November, and by that, we wish you a nice day. Thank you for listening.