Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today in Lagardère SA Q3 2022 Revenue Conference Call. I'm Emmanuel Rapin, Head of Investor Relations. I will be guiding you through this presentation. This morning, we have with us Arnaud Lagardère, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lagardère SA. Sophie Stabile, Group CFO. Fabrice Bakhouche, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Hachette Livre. Dag Rasmussen, Chairman and CEO of Lagardère Travel Retail. This morning, we will be presenting the Q3 2022 revenue on this conference call, and it will end up with a Q&A session. To ask a question, please click on our website on the Ask Question tab at the top right of the screen. Your question will be then read to the participants during the Q&A. Please note that I will be reading only questions from financial analysts to be answered.
Now I leave the floor to Arnaud Lagardère.
Thank you very much, and good morning to all of you. You've seen the press release. It speaks for itself. We are very happy to demonstrate that LTR, Lagardère Travel Retail is back due to the market, certainly, but also to the efforts that have been done for the past years, cutting costs, being very cautious. You don't see it in the sales, but you will see it at the end of the year, I hope. Very high growth coming from Lagardère Travel Retail. Publishing, also very resilient in a market that is quite difficult. Not as fast-growing as it was in 2021 and 2022, for example.
still, we are doing a lot of efforts that again, you don't see in the sales, but that you will see by the end of the year on the costs that are growing very fast, as you know, paper cost and so on. As it is said in the press release, we are fighting hard to keep or to be around 11% of margin. We will obviously answer to all of your questions later on, and I will leave the floor right away to Sophie, please, to give us the details of Q3. Sophie, go ahead.
Thank you, Arnaud. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Lagardère Q3 revenue presentation. I will take you through the highlights of the company's performance for the third quarter of 2022. Lagardère Group followed a strong growth trajectory. Over the first nine months, revenue is up +4.1% like-for-like. For the third quarter, revenue grew by 27.7%. First, the growth of Lagardère Publishing up +3.6% like-for-like, lifted by the success of new titles and its international footprint. Second, Lagardère Travel Retail continues strong recovery, up +53.8% like-for-like on the back of very good summer tourist season. Last, a slight business decrease by 1.3% like-for-like in our other activities. Let's see how this performance shifts.
Group revenue grew to EUR 1.9 billion, which represent a +EUR 518 million increase versus last year, and a 35.5% reported growth. Growth is driven by the exceptional increase in the Travel Retail business, the red block on the slide, and the continued high levels of Lagardère Publishing's activities. The difference between like-for-like and reported growth is due to the positive EUR 81 million currency effect, mainly of course, the impact of the rising dollar and the + EUR 33 million scope effect following M&A acquisition for Lagardère Publishing and Dubai's Creative Table Holdings acquisition by Lagardère Travel Retail in 2022. Now, let's focus on our divisions' performances. Lagardère Publishing is up +3.6% versus last year on a like-for-like basis, benefiting from its international diversified network.
On a reported basis, the growth was up +12%, benefiting from a positive EUR 31 million scope effect due to the acquisition of the U.S. publisher, Workman Publishing, last year, and the acquisition of Paperblanks, the world number two in premium notebooks, in January this year. Digging into geography, growth was particularly strong in the U.S., up +4.7%, and in the U.K., up +8.6%, where the U.K. publishing market is only slightly growing. Spain and Mexico achieved an excellent +10.5% performance, with Spain benefiting from the effect of the school reform. In France, after a non-spending performance last year, the activity was still up +1% despite slower market conditions, -1% over the third quarter according to GfK figures.
Overall, the division recorded a strong momentum in the adult trade segment across our different geographies. Moving on to the performance by segment. On the first nine months, sales remain high and up +0.8% versus 2021. The business was driven by ongoing demand for young adults, lifted by the popularity of some titles in social networks like TikTok, such as Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis, and positive impact on the net price effect. Bestsellers driving our revenue in key geographies with key success of L'Inconnue de la Seine, Guillaume Musso, and Virginie Despentes in France, Olivia Owens in the UK, or Colleen Hoover in the US and the UK. However, the education sector in France performed more modestly than last year due to decrease in public funding for primary and secondary textbooks because of budgetary arbitration by local authorities.
I will now move on to Lagardère Travel Retail's performance by geography. In Q3 2022, Lagardère Travel Retail's revenue kept improving on the back of air traffic recovery at EUR 1.1 billion of leisure sales, very close to that of 2019 in reported figures. This represents an outstanding +63.8% like-for-like growth versus last year and up 61.3% in reported figures. This performance was mainly driven by a very dynamic intra-European, African, and Middle Eastern market on the back of the summer performance. France revenue increased by +63% versus Q3 2021, benefiting from the domestic intra-European and trans-Atlantic flights during the summer. EMEA, excluding France, also increased by +54% with a strong performance in Italy, Belgium, and the UK.
Traffic growth is also strong in North America, with the US reaching the 2019 level of sales and a strong rebound in Canada. Nevertheless, we continue to observe a slower growth in North Asia while the zero-COVID policy prevents the restart of domestic and international traffic of Chinese passengers. Moving on to the performance by segment. Globally speaking, this quarter confirmed the dynamic recovery initiated at the beginning of 2022. Revenues are now just 3.1% behind the level of Q3 2019 on a like-for-like basis. This shows the acceleration of Lagardère Travel Retail recovery, thanks to its well-exposed international footprint and operational excellence. Our global presence, especially in the US and in Europe, enabled us to further widen the gap in the actual global traffic figures, which remain affected by China.
Benefiting from the massive return of intra-European travelers and trans-Atlantic flights, especially from the US to Europe, duty-free and food service segments experienced strong growth. Moving on to other activity on slide nine. For the third quarter, other activities revenue slightly declined by 1.3% on a comparable basis. The advertising business is dynamic with an improvement performance versus Q3 2021. However, Lagardère News sales were down 6.6% due to a slower advertising market. This trend negatively impacts our radio, press, and Elle licensing activity performance. Let's check at our outlook. Given Lagardère Travel Retail's performance, the group is slightly improving its overall outlook for 2022. For Lagardère Publishing, as you remember, revenues are set to be stable versus 2022, yet profitability will probably be affected by less favorable market condition in the context of cost inflation.
Therefore, we expect 2022 operating margin to be close to 11% when we anticipate it will be slightly above 11%. This doesn't affect our global guidance, which is slightly improved when combined with Lagardère Travel Retail's upgraded performance. Because we keep adjusting operational capacity to the pace of recovery and striving towards operational excellence. In this context, our outlook target is improved with a slightly smaller range between 5%-10% versus a 10%-15% range previously. Regarding corporate, we maintain our efforts on cost reduction and expect to save another EUR 10 million, thus reaching EUR 35 million in 2022 as per our plan. To conclude, I would like to stress that in an environment that sees significant uncertainty, we showcase our efforts to secure the profitability of our various businesses. I would like to thank you for your attention.
We are now available to answer your questions.
Yes, we are opening the Q&A session, and we have four questions from Christophe Cherblanc from Société Générale. I will read the four questions. The first one is: Travel Retail, do you have visibility on how much of the 100 million EUR of the midterm action plan you could effectively retain given the inflation? Second question: Is it fair to expect that for full year 2023 for Travel Retail, you see a pre-COVID EBITDA level? Third question. Again, on travel retail. Working capital, how does travel retail recovery impact the working capital normalization? And the last one is about book publishing. If Simon & Schuster acquisition by Penguin is blocked by the DOJ, would you be interested?
Dag, you can start.
Yes, I'll start. So regarding the LEAP project, EUR 100 million is the objective at 2019 volumes. We maintain this objective of EUR 100 million. It's true that inflation might eat part of it, but an increase in rent as well. I mean, it's really something which contributes to an improvement in results. It's really fair to expect that 2023 we'll see more than a return to pre-COVID levels. Working cap, we've worked a lot on inventory and on all components of working cap. Inventories are down, really well managed.
We are in a favorable working cap position, which means that when sales increase, if it's at iso mix compared to the present mix, it's cash generation. Regarding Lagardère Travel Retail, we definitely plan to have a favorable working cap and inflow both for FY 2022. Obviously this is work in progress and subject to the usual legals, disclaimers like inflation, geopolitical environment and so on. I would say that our central scenario is very positive.
Okay. Thank you, Dag. As far as Simon & Schuster is concerned, there's a big if. If the if happens, meaning that it is coming back for sale, which would mean that, one, the DOJ blocked the sale to Random House, and two, Paramount is wishing to sell it again. Actually there are two if. We would be interested, obviously. If it happens before Brussels gives a green light to the sale of Editis and open a new era for Lagardère, meaning that Vivendi has definitely a controlling interest. If it happens before, we wouldn't be able to do it as a team with Vivendi, but we have the ability to do it by ourselves. The answer is definitely again, yes.
If it happens after Vivendi gets the green light by Brussels, we would also do it, I mean, as a team with Arnaud de Puyfontaine and his team, which would give us maybe a little plus. We know that Vivendi is behind us anyway. Even if they cannot help us, they are behind us anyway. We take the assumption that Brussels will give a green light, whether it's right away or in little more time. Assuming that Brussels will give at the end a go, we will have the facility to get Vivendi behind us after the deal is made. I mean, definitely we are interested as we were before.
We were not able to give a price because it was in the middle of the COVID and it was a difficult time for us. Now as you can see on the press release, the company has recovered mostly and will continue to grow. It's a great time for us finally, and then hopefully it's a great time for us to be able to cut a deal. There will be competition, we know that, but we are ready to face that competition. We are still optimistic. Again, there are two ifs, so let's not, you know, be too optimistic. We'll see what happens in the coming months, maybe coming weeks, we don't know exactly.
It will happen, I think, very quickly, probably by the end of the year. Yes or no, we'll see what happens. Next question?
Thank you, Arnaud. In fact, we are waiting for a few seconds to see if there are any more questions, because right now we have answered the four that was on the list.
Okay, sure. Let's wait a little bit.
Okay. I think we are good. Arnaud, maybe if you want to close this presentation.
No, there's not much to say, you know. Again, as I said in the introduction, the press release speaks for itself. We have still a lot to do on the cost. There are a lot of opportunities not only on the publishing side, but also on the travel retail side, because the market is consolidating in this area, as you saw with what happened couple of months ago with Dufry and Autogrill. We expect more movements and we will also, as we do it for publishing, be part of them so that both divisions can have the ability to grow. Again, that's a blessing that we have Vivendi with us and more and more with us.
I'm really expecting the answer from Brussels with hope and as fast as possible. It would clarify a lot of things for us. Again, it's a very positive thing that happens to our company. I would like to thank, to conclude all the teams in travel retail especially, for the incredible job they've done and also in publishing, because I know I wouldn't say it's a hard time because you've seen, I mean, the growth is very little, but it's still there. But the market is very difficult and they know it and they are fighting back, especially on the cost.
I hope that at the end of the year we will be able to present a very nice result and a very nice margin also on that side. Thank you very much to all of you and talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Thank you.