Welcome to the FDJ United Third Quarter 2025 Revenue Conference Call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to Pascal Chaffard, CFO, Strategy, and Performance Leader. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good evening or good afternoon according to your time zone. We have just published the press release commenting our nine-month revenue and our fine-tuned full-year outlook. The presentation that I'm going to comment is available online in the investor section of our corporate website or will be available in the coming minutes. I will cover first Q3 and nine-month 2025 revenue, and then our detailed outlook for the end of the year. At the end, we will have a Q&A session. For those who have the slides, we can move directly to slide number four. Before deep diving into the figures, let me share the comment of Stéphane Pallez, our Chairwoman and CEO, that summarized well our high-level message.
She said, "The change in FDJ United's revenue at the end of September reflects a prolonged decrease in our online betting and gaming business in certain markets and the impact of higher taxation on gaming, particularly in France since July 1st. In this context, the group deepens its transformation and performance plan in 2025 and pursues the operational implementation of its strategy in line with the growth objective of its Play Forward 2028 plan." This being said, we can now move on slide five and go on the key highlights. During the third quarter of 2025, our revenue amounted to EUR 864 million, an increase of 29% year-on-year on a reported basis, and a decline of 3% at comparable parameters. Those figures are almost flat, - 1% at constant gaming taxes. The quarter was particularly impacted by the implementation of gaming tax increase in France on July 1st.
This is not new. It was known since the beginning of the year, but was implemented beginning of Q3. There was also an increase in Romanian taxes on August 1st. In addition to those two elements, a tax increase in the Netherlands has been applied since January 1st and still has impact in Q3. You will find in the appendix of this presentation the detailed rates applicable to the various gaming segments. Taxation thus impacted our revenue by EUR 21 million on the quarter, of which EUR 18 million in France. This wiped out more than two points of growth because this taxation is before our revenue. At constant gaming tax, FDJ United's revenue would have been almost flat, as I said previously. On a nine-month basis, at the end of September, our revenue amounted to EUR 2.73 billion, - 2% versus end of September 2024 restated.
We saw good momentum in French Lottery and Retail Sports Betting BU, with revenue up 3% to EUR 1.884 billion. Online Betting & Gaming BU revenue was EUR 675 million, down 13% at comparable parameters. This reflects the fiscal and regulatory impacts in 2025, a high basis for comparison with Euro 2024, and also very unfavorable sporting results for the operator, especially in September. We'll come back to this point later. At the same time, the group is continuing to roll out its proprietary platforms as planned and has launched numerous marketing and commercial initiatives in Q3, and more are coming in Q4. I will also come back to this point in more detail. It's a key point as we are now very close to the turnaround.
For the full year 2025, revenue is now expected over EUR 3.7 billion, with a recurring EBITDA of around EUR 900 million and a recurring EBITDA margin rate over 24%. These forecasts rely on a Q4 revenue in line with the nine-month one, very slightly down, and take into account an amplification of our cost reduction program in 2025. Let's now, in the next slide, deep dive on Q3 and nine months by BU. On this slide, you can see the breakdown of revenue by business unit for the third quarter on the left and at the end of September on the right. I will detail the figures of our two main BUs in the two next slides. In the meantime, on the other two smaller BUs, International Lottery posted revenue of EUR 124 million at the end of September, down 11.5%.
This decline is totally attributable to the perimeter impact with the sale of Sporting Group at the end of 2024, while PLI recorded growth, primarily driven by draw games. Payments and Services BU recorded revenue of EUR 47 million. The dynamic of the payment services, bills paid in our point of sales, is good, as well as the B2B activity. The revenue decrease, -1.7%, is due to the decline of phone prepaid card sales, not strategic for us, and low margin. Let's delve now into our French operations under exclusive rights, namely lottery, both in point of sale and online, as well as sports betting in point of sale. We are in slide number seven. In Q3, revenue stands at EUR 595 million, +2.1%, and 4.5% at constant gaming taxes, as the increased levels weighted EUR 14.14 million on this BU. Lottery revenue amounted to EUR 508 million, up 2.5%.
A good performance driven by both draw games and instant games, as well as all distribution channels, point of sales, and digital. Revenue of retail sports betting remains stable, which is good, as on top of the meaningful impact of increased gaming tax, this activity faced tough comps with still some Euro events in July 2024 and a low margin in September, resulting from unfavorable sporting results. At the end of September, what we call LSF, Lottery and Sports Betting Retail BU, revenue amounted to EUR 1.884 billion, up 3.1% and even 3.9% at constant gaming taxes, with lottery up 4.8% to EUR 1.573 billion. This performance of the lottery is attributable to draw games, which grew by 7.3%, and more specifically to EuroMillions, which benefited from 27 draws with jackpots exceeding EUR 130 million, including six draws with jackpots of EUR 250 million.
Instant games also performed well with a 3.2% increase in revenue, with the success of, for example, Maxi Astro, Cash Pocket, or Jeux du Foot. All distribution channels are up, + 3.1% at point of sales and + 14.1% online. With more than 6 million active players on a 12-month rolling period, online lottery revenue amounted to EUR 238 million, representing now more than 15% of total lottery revenue. Retail sports betting revenue amounted to EUR 311 million, down 4.6%. This variation reflects unfavorable sporting results for the operator with a high number of favorites, having won, for example, in France with the very good performance of PSG in Q2 and again in September. In addition, the sporting calendar in 2025 is less attractive. In 2024, we benefited from a Euro in football, football being by far the more important sport in the retail.
It's 2/3 of the total, far more than the part of the football in the online part of our sports betting activities. If now we move to slide eight regarding our online betting and gaming business. Q3 revenue was EUR 209 million, down 15.6%, a change reflecting the impact of, firstly, and it's not new, the regulatory hardening in 2025 in the Netherlands and in the U.K. is still impacting us. No surprise, we continue broadly on Q3 with the same impact that the one we have faced since the beginning of the year, but we will see substantial improvements in Q4 as we will lapse the measures that have been taken last year. Secondly, in Q3, the increased gaming tax in France is now implemented, as I said before, from the 1st of July, as well as an increase in Romania from August 1st.
All this, as mentioned earlier, in addition to the increase in the Netherlands from January 1st. The total impact on Q3 on this BU is EUR 7 million. Again, please refer to the figures in the appendix for more details. In Q3, the revenue would have been down by 12.7% at constant gaming taxes. In addition to that, we have still demanding comps with Euro 2024, whose last two weeks were in July, as I said previously, and sporting results very unfavorable for the operators, not only for us, but I guess for the whole industry. In September, it's more than EUR 10 million impact on this sole month. Lastly, we have a few delays in the implementation of some initiatives. However, it's a question of weeks. I will touch upon that a bit more deeply in the coming minutes.
At the end of September, the BU revenue amounted to EUR 675 million, down 12.9%. Same explanatory factors as the ones on Q3. The decline is mainly attributable to the impacts of the regulation hardening, possibly Netherlands and additional taxes. In Netherlands and in the U.K., despite a significant increase in the number of active players, this thing is important. We have more players than we had last year. The question is the RPU that has fallen. The revenue fell by respectively 45.7% in the Netherlands and 22.9% in the U.K., which is a gradual improvement for the latter. Excluding these two markets, the revenue rose by 2.5% thanks to the performance of other countries, particularly France.
I will tell more about Q4 in two minutes, but it's worth mentioning here that the situation will improve a lot in Q4 because we will lapse the regulatory decision that caused the main drop in Netherlands in October 2024. At the same time, we are also continuing to roll out our proprietary technology platforms, notably KSP, and developing marketing and commercial initiatives, even though we're recording slight delay in some launches or rollout or implementation in Q3. It's a question of a few weeks that will also impact Q4. I will detail our roadmap in the next slide. The transformation plan of our OBG BU, OBG means online betting and gaming, detailed during our June CMD is very well on track. Its most important and notable pillar is the rollout of our proprietary technology platform, Player Account Management (PAM) system, and KSP for online sports betting.
On this topic, after the inaugural migration of Unibet Estonia onto KSP and KPAM at the end of 2024, we successfully migrated 32Red U.K. in Q1 this year. In France, early February, we finalized the separation of player accounts between lottery under exclusive rights and betting gaming open to competition. On June 30th, we reached an important milestone in France also by very successfully merging Paris Sport en Ligne and Zotter Spam. Unibet's offering in Romania and in the U.K. were migrated to KSP in September. Thus, the group's proprietary platforms are now fully deployed in the U.K. We are now entering what I can call the fine-tuning period, getting the full customer base to download the new app and completing the functional coverage to bridge a remaining gap between the previous offer and the new one. Technically, the migration went very well.
The new app is far better than the previous one. You can compare the iOS rating and very few bugs during the migration process. Our product is good, improving every week, and we are now very confident that we are in the right direction. We are also pursuing our marketing and commercial initiative, i.e., in Q3, the launch of 32Red eCasino brand in Romania in late July, the relaunch of Auto Casino in Sweden as part of a multi-license strategy in this market in September. This launch has occurred one month behind schedule due to delays to obtain the license from the regulator, but now it's done. Across our casino offering, a new unique and exclusive cross-market jackpot successfully launched in seven countries in September. At the same time, we are implementing measures to meet the increased requirements of regulators.
It's in this field also a major step for us in terms of compliance, opening a new chapter, notably in the U.K., with the end of the license review. More broadly, overcoming the compliance issues inherited from the past with a customer operations transformation plan. To end this presentation, I'm now going to provide you a detailed outlook for the end of the year. You can move to slide number 11. In Q4, FDJ United anticipates a slight decline in revenue in line with the trend for the first nine months of the financial year.
For the French Lottery and Sports Betting BU, we expect a high level of revenue with commercial and marketing initiatives through the games portfolio, such as the launch of a new draw game called Crescendo in November, but with a slight decline compared to the performance of Q4 2024, which benefited from several exceptional events in draw games that we cannot think that it will be the same this year. For the Online Betting and Gaming BU, business is expected visually stable compared with Q4 2024, given a favorable basis of comparison in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. Thanks to the gradual rollout of commercial and marketing initiatives, even though some record slight delays with the full impact to be recorded by the end of Q4 2025 and not the beginning of Q4, such as the multi-license in Sweden.
I said previously that we had a one-month delay for Auto Casino. We have a one-and-a-half month delay for Unibet, but it is coming by the end of October. Also the end of the license review and the KSP full positive impact in the U.K. with an impact, a full positive impact that will be more in the second part of the Q4 than from the beginning of the Q4. Furthermore, the group is strengthening its action plan to mitigate the impact of the decline in revenue on its profitability and thus anticipate 2025 cost saving far over the EUR 20 million threshold initially expected. More broadly, we are deepening our performance and transformation plan. We are fully in line with the medium-term prospects presented in June during the CMD as part of our Play Forward 2028 strategic plan.
On this basis, FDJ United is now targeting full-year 2025 revenue more than EUR 3.7 billion versus EUR 3.788 billion in 2024 restated, with a recurring EBITDA of EUR 900 million and a recurring EBITDA margin above 24%. This ends this presentation. Thank you very much for listening, and we are now ready to answer our questions, me and as well as Marc Willaume, the IR.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial #KEY5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial #KEY6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hello. I've got three, please. First of all, you spoke about this deepening of the transformation and performance plan. You gave a little bit of color at the end there. If we still could take a step back, obviously, some of the KSP synergies were embedded in Kindred's plan. You then talked to additional bottom-up cost savings within OBG to help offset the impact of taxes over time. This deepening, does that mean further cost savings or just quicker implementation and pulled more into 2025? If so, can you help us quantify how much larger or how much quicker? My second question is on Netherlands and Belgium. One of your peers reported that their volumes had recovered to positive in that market.
Are you seeing a similar dynamic, or how should we think about getting back to flat or getting back to growth across Q4 and Q1 in those two markets? Finally, you've talked about the OBG response or performance being in relation to stricter regulatory implementation and tough comps. Your peers have been referring more to sort of a healthy overall performance with particularly challenging sports results in September. You clarified it was EUR 10 million, which seems like if you add that EUR 10 million back, you'd be broadly where consensus was. Is that something you recognize? Could you perhaps give us your color on sports versus gaming performance to help us understand the underlying base there? Thank you.
Thank you, Ed, for your question. First question was relating to what we call deepening a transformation plan. There are two elements in there. First, we have made additional efforts to meet the target of being at the level of EUR 900 million EBITDA in 2025, even though we are a little bit behind in the revenue. This is more of a short-term element to meet the objective in Q4 for the full year 2025. This is a good tradition or a good commitment that we always do what is needed to get to our targets, and we are continuing to do that in 2025. The other point when we say deepening our transformation plan is that we have now worked very more in detail in the global performance and transformation plan.
We are not in a position today to announce that we will go at a number that is over the ones that we committed on. What we can see is that from the beginning of the year, it was. Now it is going to reality, and we are more and more confident on the fact that we will meet at least those objectives. We know that it is a game changer for us, this transformation plan. If I just take the three main examples in the OBG part of our business, this transformation plan refers to customer operations transformation, which will at the same time lower the cost and make us more able to comply with the different regulations in a better way that is protecting our business. Second is what we are doing in the marketing automation, getting more efficiency from the marketing with less spend.
This is also a big thing that we are working on and that is going to be implemented very soon. The third one is, as you mentioned it, is KSP. KSP is being rolled out according to plan, and we will be for sure in the position to have fully ended those implementations by the end of 2026, getting the full positive impact of this transformation by 2027. This full impact is not only the savings that we will get from the end of the contract with our third party that we use today, but also the possibility to have a real asset advantage in the product. We are working on all that. What has changed from the beginning of the year is our level of confidence and where we are regarding those transformations. This is only for OBG.
There are a lot also of other transformations that have been launched in the lottery part of our business. To mention two or three very quickly, one is referring to the commercial sales force organization. We have just ended the first part of this transformation, reinternalizing every sector in France and internalizing also the margin that was given to the third party we used before. We are entering a new phase that will make it possible to do some more savings in the future along with a better service to our retailers. There is also a transformation of IT that is ongoing and of the marketing with the same kind of things that we are doing in OBG. At the end, if I come back just to 2025, we announced a target of at least EUR 20 million. We are far over this figure.
Far over the figure, it will be at least over EUR 30 million. You had also a question on the Belgium market. The second one you mentioned was.
Netherlands.
Was Netherlands. Maybe beginning by Netherlands. In Netherlands, we are lapping currently the measures that have been put in place last year. Just to recall, the measures have impacted us at two levels. First, in the 1st of October, and then the second level of impact, the beginning of the year 2025, when the regulator made it impossible for the players to self-validate when they wanted to go beyond the limits. We will lapse the first part of the impact in Q4 and the second part of the impact in the beginning of Q1 next year. What we see is that we are stabilizing globally the situation there. Today, we are not yet in a situation to go back to growth. The situation is stabilized, as I said. What is reassuring and promising is the fact that we continue to have more active players than we had before.
For us, it's a positive thing. Now the job that we have to do is to continue to recruit new players. It's working. We are doing that. To work on their RPU because we have a drop by 50% of the average RPU of our customers. This is huge. We are continuing to work on how it is possible to grow a little bit this RPU in the respect of the current regulation. This is globally the situation in the Netherlands. In Belgium, yes, the situation is getting better. We soon think that we will be able to be back to growth in Belgium. You had a third question concerning, yes, it was the impact of the sports betting in September.
In September, and I think it is the case for all the operators in Europe, we had two weeks, very, very bad weeks with results really deferable to the operators. I don't think we are the only one to have that because in the group, we saw that at the same level in the retail sports betting in France and also in the broader OBG BU activity. This is specific to September. What we think is that it is not possible to get back those millions by the end of the year, or maybe, but it's not really a high probability to get that. We factor that in our full-year outlook. In September, this is globally the big element that has not been totally in line with our forecast.
Thanks. Just to follow up on that.
Is that okay for you?
Thank you. Appreciate all of that detail. Just on that very last one, I know you've moved away from talking to stakes, but could you give any idea of volume growth or perhaps, as I said before, perhaps the split roughly between what your sports and your gaming performance looked like? Just to give us an idea of what the underlying might have looked like on OBG on a GGR level. Thanks.
Okay. I will say Joker. We have those figures. I don't have them just here. Maybe during the call, we will find them because they are not very far. You are right, they exist. We don't look at them first, but they exist. We will maybe give you an answer before the end of this call.
Okay, thank you very much.
The next question comes from Estelle Weingrod from JPM. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. I've got a three-question as well. On your cost reduction efforts, specifically, just to clarify, the incremental EUR 10 million cost savings for this year is the one coming from what you said, the three components: IT transformation, marketing, and sales force internalization. Also, on French Lottery and Retail Sports Betting, so far, the momentum has been relatively okay in France. Are you noticing any changes at the moment regarding the French consumer on the back of the political uncertainty and so on? The third one, did you have an idea of where consensus was positioned for this year EBITDA? Thank you.
Okay. First question on the cost saving. To make it very clear, we have a transformation performance program that is a three-year program and is a real program to improve our performance. We have measures of cost cutting that we took to be at the level where we had to be in 2025. The additional measures that have an impact in 2025 are short-term measures. This is fair. It doesn't mean that we are not in a position, we will not be in a position to show you that in the medium term, we have a positive also outlook on that. Clearly, when on the short term, we announced more cost reduction, it's more cost cutting than transformation. The transformation is well ongoing and is well on track. We are quite happy on the fact that everything is going as planned. It's more a medium-term impact.
The short-term impact is cost cutting short term. Second question was around the potential impact on our customers of the political uncertainty. This is a euphemism to say uncertainty in France. We don't see an impact to date. We still always be cautious because we cannot commit totally on the fact that whatever the environment can be, we will never have an impact. We don't see anything in August or September that would be linked to the political situation or to the fact that the French people are globally worried of what is going on in this country. It's not a surprise for us as for the last 30 years, we have never noticed an impact of the economic environment on our activity, nor a positive impact if the economy is going very well and the political situation is very stable, nor a negative impact in the other case.
Two years ago, we had also this, it was not uncertainty, was this inflation problem that we have faced in France and in other countries in Europe. The same answer, we have monitored the impact of inflation on our customers and didn't see any change in their habits. This is one of the strengths of our activity being acyclical globally. We are depending more on our own offering, the level of the jackpots on lottery, on the results of the outcome of the sporting events on the sports betting side. Also, depending highly on the tax and regulation measures, for sure. Happily, not so far, we didn't see that on the political environment. Your third question was.
It's regarding the EBITDA consensus.
Yes.
As of today, if we are looking at either Visible Alpha or Reuters Smart Estimate, we are currently in the water around EUR 910 million for 2027.
Great. Thank you. The next question comes from Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good evening. I've got three questions, if that's okay. The first one is just on the change to guidance. If we could simplify it to the maximum, please. You said a few times, no surprise on any of the tax impact. It sounds like a little bit of extra taxation outside of France and the Netherlands and some negative sports results in France that would walk you from the EUR 3.8 billion to above EUR 3.7 billion. Would that be fair? Is there anything more fundamental? If it's mostly sports results, it sounds a bit high for just sports results. I'm just keen to get a bridge if possible. On your assumptions for Q4, flat group revenue before the tax changes. Can you help us with a bit more direction on lottery? Are we talking low growth or slightly negative given the comps?
On sports betting, once it exits the regulatory review and the regulatory comps are easier, are we talking less negative or could it approach flat towards the end of the year? Just lastly, related to that lottery point on comps in Q4, on a full-year basis, do you think in 2025, the number of long cycles you've had is sustainable? Because you've relaunched those games a couple of years ago. The mechanics are better. They engineer more frequent large jackpots. It's all what you wanted. Is there no problem growing on the 2025 base, or is it a particularly big year and we should expect 2026 to have a little bit of normalization in that number of long cycles?
Thank you, Jaafar. To touch upon your first point, which is what is the bridge globally from the initial guidance to the more than EUR 3.7 billion? We have a small impact on the lottery and sports betting in France, mostly on the sports betting part because we will be slightly below zero at the end of the year on sports betting retail. It's a small impact compared to what we had in our forecast. This impact is mostly due to the fact that we have a more important level of payouts. Globally, on the lottery, in the full year, there is no change over our outlook. This means that when we say that we forecast a slight decrease in lottery and sports betting in the last quarter, it's true. It was forecasted like that from the beginning. It's not new for us.
Last year, in the same quarter, we had the concentration of most of our long cycles that we had in 2024. I will touch upon the other question, but I can just now answer the question, is it sustainable to have this level of high jackpots? For sure, 2026 will not be exactly as 2025 as we had most of those jackpots concentrated end of Q1, end of Q2, and beginning of August. Next year, I cannot promise that it will be at the same moment in the year. When we look at the year globally, we are not in a good year compared to some years where we were behind the average level, but we are not in that exceptional year. It's a good year, not that exceptional, but we will have some elements that will change in the different quarters in 2026.
Another element on that, and it's a little bit too soon to say too much about that, but we are working on a relaunch of EuroMillions that will occur not in 2026, but in 2027 to continue to drive more growth on this product. You raise a fair point, how do we continue with the whole EuroMillions community to drive growth on this product? We have relaunched EuroMillions in 2020. Now it's time to relaunch it again to get another step ahead on this product. For example, with a new ceiling on the maximum jackpot that will not be EUR 250 million, but more than EUR 250 million. Other changes in the game will drive more capacity of growing and more capacity also of adding, same idea, more jackpots at a very high level. I have not answered completely to your question on the chain to guidance.
We have a small impact on LSF, mainly on sports betting. We have a small impact globally on our smaller BUs, mainly because we had a payout issue in PLI in Q1. We are recovering from this issue, but in the full year, we'll be a little bit behind our outlook, even if we are back to the level of the forecast, of the initial forecast of the budget from Q2. The impact that we had in Q1 is hard to totally compensate on one year. No problem going forward on that. The main drop that we have that explains why we are not exactly at the level that has been forecasted is on OBG. In OBG, we have complementary tax issues that have occurred notably in Romania, as you know.
We are a little bit behind what we thought we would be in France, but we now are stabilizing the situation. Thirdly, what I explained, but I can be clearer on that, is that all the initiatives that were put in place to occur in Q3 and Q4 are there. We are doing that, but with some weeks of delays. It has an impact in the last part of the year. I took during my speech some examples, but to be very clear on that, multi-license in Sweden on the brand Unibet, we get the okay from the regulator one and a half months after the time that was forecasted. We'll launch it by the end of October, but it should have been launched by the beginning of September. We have some weeks of delay.
It doesn't change anything in our forecast medium term, even 2026, but it's some weeks of delay. Regarding the KSP launch in the U.K., it was a really good launch. I know that part of you have seen that directly looking at the Unibet app. We had still some elements to complement to have a full coverage on the functionality that was there with Cambly, notably in play. It will be fully, the gap will be fully closed in the coming weeks, but it's not totally fully closed. We had a little bit of delay here. Lastly, we said that we would be able to, at the end of the license review by the end of September. We are coming to the end. There will be probably by next week communication that will act the end of this license review.
The time for us to make some adaptations to our system, we will be able to meet the industry code more by the beginning of December than before. It means that it's too late, too much delay versus our forecast. You see, there is a number of things that are not, it's not catastrophic, just some weeks. As it is referring to a quarter, it is important. The last point is what happened in the sports betting area in September, which is quite material also. Does it make it clearer for you?
It makes it clear that it's about EUR 70 million worse, but it's seven things. I think it makes it clear that it's about EUR 70 million worse, but it's seven things. There isn't one big thing.
Yeah, there's not one big thing, just a combination of several small delays. The fact is that they've all been piling up at the end of the year, which is why you have this. What makes us not worried is that there is nothing, when you see all the elements that have been commented, that is substantially structural. The question of it is coming, the question of a week.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial #KEY5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Matthew E. Spiegelman from LWC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. My question is sort of a bigger picture question, which is, ever since we did the acquisition, we've run into a lot of pressure, pressure from taxes, pressure from sort of getting the operations in line. A lot of these issues that you cited, they appear to be matters of weeks. That's kind of how you describe them. What we'd like to do is get to a point where we've turned the corner. You talk about the fourth quarter getting to revenue almost or roughly flat in OBG. My first question is, can you give us the bridge and your source of confidence that we get there, given that the OBG number this quarter is actually a steeper decline than last quarter?
My second question, beyond that bridge to the fourth quarter, is as you look to 2026, you guys gave some growth figures at the capital market day. Help us understand how you think about growth for OBG looking ahead, at least in general terms.
Yes. If I have well understood your question, is how can we give you some comfort in the fact that we will actually be at something like close to flat in the OBG side of our activity in Q4? I think the first major element is the lapping of the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, globally, we are, as I said in the speech, something like 45% behind. The measure that has been taken in the Netherlands has begun to impact us on the 1st of October. This is for sure. This is mathematically sure that we will have a better comp. It's also the case in the U.K., even if it will be gradually better as we are implementing the different measures that I touch upon. If you recall what I said during the speech, if you look at the OBG without U.K. and Netherlands, we are growing.
We are growing. If the problems that we had in the U.K. and the Netherlands are lapped and we get better on those two countries, it is quite obvious that we will be able to be in the Q4 at zero. Globally, it's the sum of comp that will be far better in Q4 and the result of the continuing improvements that we are making and the launch of the different things that we are doing. Last thing is the continuous success and positive performance of our offering in France, which is also having a positive impact, driving up the whole OBG. When you take all those elements, you are coming to the same conclusion as the one that I am presenting you, is that we will have something that will be on par, broadly on par by Q4. What will happen in 2026?
In 2026, we will continue to implement our new functionalities, our new offer, etc. As we will have lapped all those elements, we will be able to be back to growth in the OBG world. What I can say, if it's a little bit too early to draw a precise 2026 guidance, but I can reiterate clearly what we said during the CMD, is that on the OBG world, beginning 2025 to 2028, on average, it's a yearly high single-digit growth. We are completely in line with that. We are continuing to believe that we will be able to achieve that when we will have passed our last moments, difficult moments that we. For that, we have not changed. There is no reason for us to change our mind.
Everything is in structurally, we are doing all what we think is good to get back to this growth and to be able to benefit from also the market growth. In average, what we said is that in this period, the average market growth in the market that we are in is more than 6%. We aim for high single digits to do a little bit more than this average growth of the natural growth of the market. It is not three times the level of the market growth. For us, no change on our medium-term prospects. Again, we are doing all the in-depth work to be able to deliver that.
Okay, it sounds like four Qs should be back to flat, and we should look forward to growth next year. I appreciate it and thank you.
Thank you.
We have one last question. Please, can you identify yourself?
Hi. Good afternoon. It's Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank. Just one quick question, please. I think in your half year, you guided net debt down EUR 150 million by the end of the year. Clearly, you're guiding EBITDA down by about EUR 10 million. I was just wondering, is there anything else we should be thinking about in terms of net debt forecast for this year? Will there be any sort of further savings? Is now essentially your guidance that net debt will be down at EUR 140 million? Thank you.
If there's any changes to this reduction in the full-year debt, it will not be really material. I mean, no reason to think that the overall, I would say, big picture regarding this point is changing.
Yeah, no material change.
Great. Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much for having joined us today. Our next scheduled financial communication will be for our full-year 2025 results, scheduled Tuesday, 19th of February, before trading. Goodbye and have a good end of day.