Good afternoon and welcome to the CLIQ Group's full year 2024 results presentation. I'm Sebastian McCoskrie and Head of CLIQ's Investor Relations. As usual, I will be hosting today's earnings call. Luc Voncken, our CEO, will present CLIQ's strategic and operational highlights in 2024. Thereafter, Management Board Member Ben Bos will walk you through the group's financials and outlook. After the results presentation, I will then read out the questions you kindly sent in via email. Ladies and gentlemen, please take note of the disclaimer shown and that this call is being recorded. The visual, audio, and/or transcription of this call may be published, including any of the data arising therefrom. If you have any objection, please disconnect at this time. Let me now hand over to our CEO, who will begin today's results presentation. Luc, the stage is yours.
Thanks, Sebastian, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. In our many years of management experience, Ben and I have encountered various challenges, made numerous tough decisions, and weathered some very difficult storms. Last year was truly a perfect storm for CLIQ and for us, both as leaders and as shareholders. In 2024, we suffered our first sales decline after five strong years of consistent and predominantly double-digit sales growth, as well as our steepest sales drop since 2013. The market conditions changed against us, and our marketing and product strategy needed to be revitalized and adjusted. Accordingly, we had to correct our 2024 full year outlook several times, and our share price came under significant pressure. In a nutshell, we needed to transform our company to face new challenges. Primarily, we needed to clearly focus on our profitability. To do so, we launched our transformation program, Fit for Future.
Fit for Future came at a cost, as you know. We had to let a number of our colleagues go in order to save costs. As a result, our headcount was reduced by 22% from 170 at the end of 2023 to 132 at the year-end 2024. The group-wide transformation incurred also one-off costs that are typically disclosed as so-called special items. Here you can see our normalized earnings development, which resulted in an EBITDA margin of 9% before special items, unfortunately much lower than in the previous years. Admittedly, it would have been great to be able to show faster progress while executing Fit for Future, but it's not an easy nor quick feat to transform CLIQ. We did protect our EBITDA margin as best as possible. However, EBITDA came down significantly, as well as our free cash flow, but we remained debt-free.
To be completely transparent, we need to show our financials also after special items. On a reported non-normalized level, here our generated EBITDA was EUR 10 million with a margin of 4%. That is room for improvement. Bottom line, we were further hit by our situation. The challenging market conditions, as well as the significant decline in 2024 in the group's market value, resulted in a goodwill impairment of EUR 27 million. This led to an overall net loss of EUR 28 million for the group and subsequently a negative EPS of EUR 4.75. At CLIQ, we do not give up easily. We prefer to see a glass half full rather than half empty. Ladies and gentlemen, the news is full of 2025 being a year of economic pressures, geopolitical shifts, and overall rules and uncertainties.
Accordingly, we will navigate this increasingly complex environment with development and refreshed marketing and product strategy, which includes new marketing channels, new digital products, and new monetization models. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now zoom in on our business model and refresh your understanding of who we are and how we do business. We are first and foremost a marketing company. To be specific, a data-driven online performance marketing group that sells digital products to consumers worldwide. And what do we want to do? Build an all-in-one digital content world that people just love. It's as simple as that. No rocket science. How do we do it? In a nutshell, we turn curiosity and interest into sales. We literally monetize eyeballs. To do so, we have, as you can see here, four interlocking strategic pillars in our business model. Customer acquisition is key and the main pillar at CLIQ.
Our strategy is to widen it with the help of our omnichannel approach. This enables us, like a fisherman, to throw out a larger net to catch more and ideally bigger fish customers. We use our content as hooks to attract customers. Of course, we track meticulously our progress and successes to learn from past experience and thus improve our business. In the second place, the digital products or services are also an important pillar in CLIQ 's business model. In addition to our bundled content streaming services, we have been developing new digital products to also help attract new customers and diversify our revenue streams. New and exciting AI-driven services, software tools, and quizzes are just some of the products we are now also selling online. As I just mentioned, attracting eyeballs is key, but also monetizing them is business-critical for us.
With AVOD, advertising-based video on demand, we are adding to our paid subscription monetization model a new way of generating income for CLIQ. In return for watching ads and providing us with their data usage consent, customers will be able to stream our bundled content services also for free. Last but not least, our tech pillar, a foundation which we pride ourselves on and one that will ultimately give us a competitive edge and deep proprietary insights into our customers' behavior and our marketing campaign successes. Altogether, these four strategic pillars form the best possible business model for CLIQ and its future growth. Operationally, CLIQ's value chain works as follows. We license all, not buy or produce, our content from partners to ensure good cost control and maximum flexibility.
We bundle this content into attractive digital products and sell these bundles to our customers with the help of online performance marketing. This type of direct marketing is our forte. Over many years, we have gathered so much experience, know-how, and expertise in performance marketing that it's a clear competitive advantage and one that makes us an expert in this field. Here you can see the different content categories or verticals that predominantly make up our digital products, our bundles. Content is quite essential for us to attract, hook up new customers to our digital products. It needs to be appealing for customers to hit that sign-up button, both for our paid subscription services and our new AVOD model. We always ensure that our content library is constantly refreshed and meets local tastes.
With our software vertical here on the right, we offer a wide and attractive range of programs to support day-to-day work, user productions, and graphic designs, as well as to secure devices, amongst others. To be clear, currently, our main selling point is not the single content category, but the mix, the variety offered in the bundle for both new and existing customers. CLIQ has numerous selling points and competitive advantages but let me pick out just a few here and help demystify some unclarities. Our products target high-intent impulse buyers in a similar way as supermarkets offer candy in the checkout aisles. Who does not succumb to that urge now and then. Our way of marketing our products is direct. We find our customers and not the other way around.
Depending on browsing habits, we can place a compelling shoppable ad banner of our rights in front of a potential and receptive customer's nose. All he or she has to do is hit the sign-up button. Overall, the economics of our business model are pretty sound. Yes, on average, CLIQ customers sign up for a short time period, but nevertheless, we generate EBITDA and operating free cash flow also for less loyal customers. Ladies and gentlemen, as I mentioned earlier on, the core of our strategy is a data-powered and performance-driven approach that positions us for future success. We prioritize conversions, ensuring that every action leads to measurable results. Our outreach extends worldwide, connecting with diverse audiences in 40 countries. Our digital products comprise attractive content, which caters to modern and local consumer tastes.
Our advertising leverages multiple digital channels to maximize our customer engagement and impact, as well as our outreach. Here, by expanding our reach, we can ensure that our content reaches and resonates with a broader mass market audience. Let's move on to the strategic growth, future prospects, and where CLIQ is going. CLIQ's rapid growth over recent years was on the back of a highly successful business model. However, this model was too reliant on one principal sales channel and one main product. In the face of tougher market conditions with greater competition, we needed to recalibrate our strategy, restructure our company, and diversify our sales channels and our product portfolio. What's the way forward at CLIQ? More marketing, more sales channels, more digital products, and more monetization models.
Our Magnificent Seven marketing channels will lead us into a new omnichannel ecosystem where we extend our reach and diversify our sales channels. Given the crowded and highly competitive traditional streaming entertainment market, we decided to further develop and innovate our range of digital products. We always need to be very careful when discussing our new products and services, as there are numerous copycats out there, and we have had our fair share of experience with them. Being copied by them, as the saying goes, imitation is the cheapest form of flattery. Furthermore, we see a great opportunity for monetizing customer data obtained during the sign-up process. Here, the U.S. will be our first market to try out this model. For those of you participants that have been following us for a while, this slide will be quite familiar.
Nevertheless, as a marketing company, our marketing channels are of the utmost importance, and I can't say that often enough. Here you can see the Magnificent Seven sales channels identified to help us become less reliant on display. Until now, search engine advertising and affiliation have proven to be very worthy and high-converting channels. Therefore, we are deploying more resources to build up these channels further. Like in the Western, not all of the Magnificent Seven will survive in the end, and B2B partnerships work best with brands. However, own channels, video, and social media have great growth potential, and we shall deploy them as best we can given our current market situation. With our transformation program, Fit for Future, we helped fix our foundation. The program has reduced our operating expenses significantly.
Our productivity gains are still to come a bit of a longer way than originally expected, but we know what we have to do to tap into our growth opportunities. Key takeaway, we will still have some quite some challenges ahead of us. That is the good news, we have a plan, and we will get there. On that positive note, let me now hand over to Ben to present the financials.
Thank you, Luc, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. In the past, I have regularly presented stellar full-year financials for CLIQ, which was always very gratifying despite not often being appreciated by the stock market. However, 2024 was a very difficult year. We were under pressure, and we underperformed. 2024 at a glance. EBITDA before special items came in at EUR 21 million, down EUR 29 million or 58% against prior year.
The normalized EBITDA margin was 9%, which was more than 600 basis points lower than in 2023. This was due to the fall in our sales. Year on year, our sales dropped by 26% to EUR 243 million. Why? Because we lost nearly 40% of our customer base. To be clear, both tougher market conditions hit the group sales development. The drop in sales resulted mainly from fewer customers due to a higher churn rate, as well as from our reduction in target customer acquisition cost, the so-called CPA. This we especially initiated to protect and increase our margins again. With lower target CPAs, we bid less for new subscribers who contribute less revenues, but at a healthier margin. By taking this key decision to focus first and foremost on the group's profitability, we were able to stabilize the EBITDA margin development quarter by quarter, despite the sequential sales decline.
I'll show you this in detail on a later slide. As a result of the lower reported EBITDA, our total cash flow came in at -EUR 4 million. That's nearly EUR 10 million lower than last year. In total, we generated EUR 3 million of operating free cash flow in 2024 and ended the year with EUR 12 million in the bank, EUR 4 million less than one year ago. In line with the management decision to focus on and increase profitability, revenue in 2024 in North America declined by 15% and in Europe by 52%. As previously mentioned, the card scheme companies charging customer card rules increased our churn rate across all regions. This resulted in 10% lower average lifetime values, so-called LTVs, everywhere. Our LTV in 2024 was down from EUR 85 -EUR 77.
However, there is a regional variance in the payment flow in the countries in Europe and in North America, which affects both the LTV and conversions in general. Hence, our sales in Europe were impacted to a greater extent than those in North America. Previously, in Europe, we saw customers with an above-average LTV, as European customers are typically willing to spend more on these types of services. In our smallest regions, Latin America and the rest of the world, revenues increased by 10% and 20% respectively, but this did not move the overall sales needle. Ladies and gentlemen, here you can see our income statement with the EBITDA development before and after special items. Since the launch of the Fit for Future in the beginning of 2024, we have incurred higher costs, over EUR 11 million, to be precise, that are attributable to our group-wide transformation program.
These so-called special items include cost of sales, personnel and other operational expenses, as well as temporary costs for consultants and contractors, helping us execute Fit for Future. These temporary costs will be reduced after the transformation program ends, which we expect currently will be in Q1 2025, during the current quarter. The normalized income statement, the before special items seen here, provides a more accurate and transparent presentation of our normal real core performance. Resulting from the annual impairment test, we corrected our goodwill and recognized an impairment loss of EUR 27 million below EBITDA. This goodwill impairment was primarily attributable to the challenging market conditions going forward. Additionally, after useful life of the intangible assets initially developed for the flagship services on the German market, the amortization expenses on intangible assets increased therefore to EUR 6.9 million.
Hence, bottom line, we reported a loss for 2024 of EUR 28 million in total and - EUR 4.75 per share. Despite the group's loss, CLIQ's management and supervisory board proposed to distribute, like last year, a dividend of EUR 0.04 per share for the financial year 2024. The customer acquisition cost. As mentioned earlier, CLIQ's main action to counter the higher churn and the subsequent lower lifetime value of our customers was to align and reduce our target CPA in 2024. This decision was taken to put a stronger focus on our profitability, but also led, on the downside, to less new and higher value customer acquisitions. By lowering the target CPA, we spent 45% less in total on acquiring customers than in the prior year, EUR 75 million to be precise, which of course also resulted in a lower LTVCB, the lifetime value of our customer base.
The customer acquisition cost for the period, i.e., those costs related to the revenues recognized in 2024, totaled EUR 97 million. This shows how the accounting practice of capitalizing and amortizing the customer acquisition cost over the customer lifecycle is disclosing the actual financial performance of the group. As the amortized contract cost, the EUR 97 million, were considerably higher than the capitalized customer acquisition cost, which came in at EUR 75 million, and finally resulting in a lower valuation on the balance sheet, but more about that later. However, in % of total sales, the customer acquisition cost for the period were pretty stable at 40%. Ladies and gentlemen, our sales decreased quarter by quarter, but earnings before and after special items stabilized. The red across here is our profits first business strategy is working and was good and appropriate to countermeasure to the tougher market conditions we face.
The sequential sales decrease decelerated from - 21% in Q3 to - 11% in the fourth quarter. Let's go to the Fit for Future cost savings. As here, we show cost savings from our Fit for Future transformation program since the outset. In total, operating expenses before special items were successfully reduced by a quarter over the course of the year. Specifically, and broken down on a quarterly basis, personnel expenses went down by 34% between the first and fourth quarter, and the other operating expenses by 37%. This shows that our Fit for Future program has had a positive effect on our cost structures. Ladies and gentlemen, both our free cash flow and generation in 2024 and cash position at the year-end offers some positive news. Despite tax payment that was double the amount of the previous year, cash flow from operating activities came in at EUR 9 million.
The decrease in customer acquisition cost and trade payables had a positive impact on the working capital development. Nonetheless, the year-on-year decrease in operating cash flow was mainly due to the revenue decrease and margin contraction. Cash outflow from investing activities in 2024 was more than half to EUR 5 million due to less payments for investments in platform and technical developments. As a result, we generated operating free cash flow of over EUR 3 million in 2024, which was admittedly EUR 50 million less than last year. Still, the cash outflow from financing activities in 2024 was EUR 7 million and included EUR 6 million in capital return to shareholders via share buybacks and a dividend distribution. At the end of the year, we remained debt-free and our net cash position was EUR 12 million.
With regard to our share buyback program, I'm pleased to say that we successfully completed it on the 3rd of January this year. In total, we bought back 646,000 almost 647,000 CLIQ shares, equivalent to almost 10% of the total share capital issued. Via an independent investment bank, we made the decision on the timing and the amount of the individual Xetra order placements. We paid on average EUR 8.48 per repurchased shares, and in total, it cost us EUR 5.5 million. The repurchased shares will be used to reduce CLIQ's capital through cancellation and/or to meet CLIQ's obligations arising from stock option plans. Currently, the number of CLIQ shares on the market that issued shares, net of treasury shares, is 5.86, so 5.9 million shares. Moving on to the balance sheet.
Year on year, our total assets shrank to EUR 99 million at the end of 2024, and our equity ratio rose to 72%. The biggest asset change was due to the goodwill impairment, but more about it on the next slide. The value of our intangible assets decreased by a third because of higher amortization charges and lesser investments for platform and technical developments, as well as for content licenses. Furthermore, with the target CPAs deliberately reduced, less customer acquisition costs were de facto capitalized, and thus the asset value of the contract cost was nearly halved to EUR 27 million. The increase in trade receivables was largely related to the timing difference in the payments schedule compared to prior year and a higher rolling reserve balance. The sharp decrease in payables reflected mainly the lower total customer acquisition cost, especially at the end of Q4 2024.
As just mentioned, our net cash position at the end of the year was EUR 12 million versus the EUR 16 million we reported the year before. As part of the preparation of our annual 2024 financial statements, the carrying amount of our goodwill was tested for impairment in accordance with IFRS and confirmed by an external valuation specialist and our auditors. Consequently, we had to recognize an impairment loss of EUR 27 million and correct our goodwill value. The goodwill impairment was primarily attributable to the challenging market conditions going forward, as well as the significant decline in group's market value in 2024, as determined by the stock market capitalization. The recognition negatively impacted EBIT and our bottom line. Our LTVCB, the lifetime value of our customer base, represents the future revenue expected to be generated by existing customers over the estimated individual remaining lifetime on the reporting date.
At the end of 2024, this value was down 43% year- on- year to EUR 94 million due to a lower number of paying customers, which resulted on the one hand from the higher churn rate and from the decrease in new customer acquisitions on the other. To conclude today's presentations, a brief word on our outlook. As briefly mentioned and presented, 2024 was a very tough year for us. Given that market conditions in 2025 remain unstable, we need to be very cautious and conservative regarding our outlook. Consequently, we withdrew the all 2025 sales forecast and adjusted it to better reflect the current developments in the business and our business plan.
Today, we expect an EBITDA in 2025 of between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million after incurring between around EUR 50 million -EUR 75 million in total customer acquisition cost on the back of group sales ranging between EUR 180 million and EUR 220 million. Furthermore, given the volatile and challenging market conditions in particular, we have decided to suspend the disclosure of a medium-term outlook. With this measure, CLIQ will avoid adverse valuation effects from market uncertainties and unpredictable results as witnessed in 2024. Although we have fixed our foundation with Fit for Future, delivering positive results as well as a streamlined and fully focused organization, 2025 will be a year where we will do our utmost to stabilize our sales decline and get back on a growth path again. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our presentations today. We shall now commence our Q&A session. Sebastian, our first question, please.
Thank you, Ben. Before we begin, please be aware that we received quite a few of the same questions, so we shall only be answering these once. Our first questions today are from Joachim Huesker and directed to Luc. Luc, what is the status quo of your efforts regarding the Fit for Future transformation program? What significant measures have been initiated to return to a growth path in the future? What is the updated planning for the next three years until the end of 2027 at the CLIQ Group?
Thank you, Joachim. Fit for Future has made us more cost-efficient, which is necessary in times of declining sales. We no longer rely on one main marketing channel or one main product.
Today we have an omnichannel marketing approach, as already explained, our Magnificent Seven , and we have a new digital product on offer and a further monetization model with the AVOD model recently launched. As Ben just also explained, we are fully committed to increase profitability and get CLIQ back on track. We used to be a very fast-growing company, and believe me, we definitely prefer being that again than the company we were in 2024.
Luc, is it possible to adjust the current business model away from short-term customer visits to the platform towards longer-term customer retention, or would this require too much investment that CLIQ would not be able to shoulder?
I think it's already in the question. As a performance marketer or business model, focuses on meeting the short-term consumer needs, and we are not a streaming provider in the traditional sense. We focus on customer acquisition via performance marketing and not necessarily on customer retention. That is a different business model and one that involves way higher content costs.
Joachim's next questions are for Ben. Ben, what investments are planned for 2025 and the two following years? Is a positive free cash flow also expected in the future in 2025 and the following years, despite the slump in sales?
Yeah, thank you for the question, Joachim. As you know, we do not give guidance on cash flow, but cash has been king and stays also in the future important to us. Some of our analysts are of the opinion that we will be cash flow positive in 2025. As you just saw in 2024, we had to scale back our investments into tech and content to also focus on protecting our margins.
Going forward, we aim to increase our total customer acquisition cost quarter by quarter, which could have a negative impact, if you know our model, on our operating free cash flow.
Ben, how do you intend to regain the trust of the capital market after the multiple reductions in revenue earnings? Is the management board prepared to acquire a larger number of shares in CLIQ today, given that the share price is seemingly low?
Currently, your members of CLIQ's management and supervisory board are together the company's principal shareholder with about 9%. As we have said before, also our separate supervisory and management board and myself practice their own portfolio diversifications. Everybody makes his own decision in there.
One last one for Ben. In terms of corporate profits, do you prefer a share buyback or a dividend distribution or a mix of the two?
Yeah, this is a question which pops up quite frequently, of course, but CLIQ is and always has been committed to consistently returning capital to our shareholders. Our capital return strategy foresees returning capital to shareholders either via the dividend distribution or share buyback. The decisive factors thereby are dependent on market volatilities and shareholder preference, like institutions. They typically prefer a buyback, as you know, Joachim, as a capital return measure. Last year's buyback program benefited from the market volatility and CLIQ share price and the performance. For the next AGM, we propose to distribute EUR 0.04 DPS like last year.
Our next questions are from Ove Zybok and directed to Ben. The Fit for Future program was expected to end in Q1. Will there be more special items coming from Fit for Future in Q1? If yes, what is the magnitude of it?
Yeah, as just presented to us and as of today, we have made significant progress with Fit for Future program. As a result, special items related to it are expected to be lower in 2025 compared to 2024. That said, we remain committed to further optimizing efficiency, and we will continue to evaluate opportunities to strengthen our operation.
Ben, when do we see a turnaround return to growth in customers and then in EBITDA?
This is quite a specific question. With our 2025 guidance, we expect to improve our EBITDA margin to range between 4.5% and nearly 8.5%. All our strategic measures to expand our sales channels, introduce more appealing new digital products, and operate new monetization models are geared to increase our new customer acquisitions. Of course, always with a clear focus on profitability here.
We are cautious with regards to timing, as we also had expected faster progress in 2024, which in the end did not materialize. With our product strategy, I think we are on a good path.
Another one, Ben. How did the first weeks in the new year evolve? Do we see early signs of recovery?
Y eah, sorry, Ove, but we typically do not comment on current trading. As you know, we are communicating with the market, and we will be presenting our Q1 results on the 8th of May.
Ben, how much marketing spend and at which ROMI, return on marketing investment, is planned for the coming months and quarters?
Yeah, the marketing spend is what we call total customer acquisition cost. We plan to spend between EUR 50 million and EUR 75 million for marketing 2025. That is, let me calculate, about 20% less than last year. Our Fit for Future program has made us more cost-efficient, and our Magnificent Seven provide considerably more channels to do our marketing, also to a certain extent to a better price. Regarding your question on return on marketing investments, ROMI, yeah, we prioritize profitability and maintain a disciplined approach to balancing LTV, so the lifetime value, and the CPA. That's more important than just focus on the CPA or specifically on the lifetime value. It's the balance between that. While we do not provide specific ROMI targets, our focus remains on stabilizing margins. Of course, there where we can increase margins. This ensuring that every euro spent on marketing contributes meaningfully to EBITDA growth.
Our next questions are from Andreas Massek. Andreas asks Luc, for a year and a half, the KPIs have been falling sharply every quarter. The management board speaks of difficult market conditions as the cause. What exactly are the difficult market conditions?
First and foremost, the most challenging marketing condition we faced was the drop in customer numbers. The negative effects resulting from the card scheme companies increased the churn rate of our customer base across all regions. This resulted in a lower average lifetime value. In order to protect our margins, we also have to align our target cost per acquisition to this lower lifetime value to assure the profitability on new acquired customers. This in turn reduced our marketing spend and also resulted in less new customer acquisitions.
Andreas asks Luc further. The forecast for the current year predicts a renewed continuation of the negative trend. Against this background, it must be questioned whether the business model of CLIQ Digital still works at all, particularly in Europe. Why is the marketing strategy, as it was until 2023, no longer successful? With which alternative marketing tools should a turnaround be achieved, and by when?
W e acknowledge that the forecast reflects ongoing challenges, but we remain confident in the adaptability and long-term viability of CLIQ's business model. There will always be and there will be always a sale. One key factor in the lower forecast is that our customer base at the start of the year is smaller than in the previous years, which naturally leads to lower recurring revenue from existing customers. This means that even as we work to accelerate new customer acquisitions, the impact on revenue takes time.
Our previous marketing strategy, which had been highly effective for years, has faced increasing limitations due to the rising customer acquisition costs, intensified competition, and changes in the digital advertising landscape that have influenced the reach and efficiency of performance marketing campaigns. As a result, we have had to adjust our approach to mitigate the declining sales. The most important driver is our omnichannel marketing approach. The Magnificent Seven , we significantly broadened our customer acquisition strategy. Instead of relying on a single primary channel, we are now leveraging search engine advertising and partnering with top-tier affiliate networks, social media, video ads, and email marketing. As for timing, we expect gradual improvements throughout 2025, with some increases in new customer acquisitions. While market conditions have changed, our strategy is evolving with them. By expanding our region, optimizing our marketing mix, we believe CLIQ's business model is still relevant and working.
Bernd Kiesling has a question for Luc. When can we expect to be able to present a resilient, profitable business concept that offers growth opportunities?
Bernd, 2024 was a very difficult year for us. Our previously very resilient business model was hit by external factors out of our control. We reached to these as fast as we could. Nevertheless, we suffered a major drop in sales, and our countermeasures took longer than expected to produce meaningful productivity gains. We have optimized and refreshed our marketing and product strategy with a lot of time in that. We have set the course for new digital products and monetization models. We have made inroads in streamlining the organization for cost efficiency. Now it is just a question of time before we can return to our growth path again. We need to be patient.
Our next questions were from Ralf at Quirin for Ben. Personnel expenses amounted to EUR 26.4 million in 2024. This figure may have included severance payments and one-offs. Approximately how high should personnel expenses be in 2025?
Thank you, Ralf, for your question. You are right that the staff expenses in 2024 included severance payments and one-offs, which we indicated as special items in our presentation. As communicated, we've seen a drop in our operational expenses before special items of 25% in 2024. Quite significant, I think.
In 2024, business in North America was relatively robust, with sales down by only 15% year over year, while decline in Europe was approximately 52%. What does this mean for the strategic direction of the business? Wouldn't it make sense to focus only on North America?
Ralf, North America is our main geographic sales focus, as you know, and it will remain so. Our European sales traditionally have higher LTVs, and therefore this is a region where we still want to have a meaningful footprint generating decent earnings.
Another one for you, Ben. Your cash flow from investing activities amounted to EUR 5.3 million in 2024. Which CapEx do you expect for the current business year? Do you plan to exceed the 2024 free cash flow of EUR 3.4 million in the current business year?
As you know, we are cautious, and also in respect to capital expenditures, we do expect that they come in lower than in 2024. Some of last year's investments, particularly in platform development, were related to specific projects. If you look to the free cash flow, the FCF, our goal remains to generate positive free cash flow also in 2025.
Of course, the exact level will depend on market condition, customer acquisition trends, and our investment priorities throughout the year.
Our next questions are from Fiona at Edison for Ben. What assumptions on customer numbers and LTV are you making in reaching the EUR 180 million-EUR 220 million full year 2025 revenue range? When do you anticipate the inflection point on customer numbers to be reached? Is the current CPA higher or lower than that in Q4 2024?
T hank you, Fiona, for your questions. For CLIQ, it is not just about customer numbers or LTV in isolation, as I just also explained in one of the previous questions, but rather the balance between this LTV, lifetime value, and the cost per acquisition that drives our marketing strategy and profitability.
Our key focus is ensuring that each new customer contributes positively to our EBITDA by maintaining a healthy margin between this LTV and CPA. This is a very disciplined approach, and it will ensure that every euro spent contributes meaningfully to our bottom line. This disciplined approach was practiced in 2024 and also the years before when we decreased our target CPAs to be in line with the lower LTV resulting from the higher churn and to protect our margin.
Fiona has further questions for Luc. Do you anticipate that the increase in product set to include software will make the offering more sticky? What has been the experience so far with the AVOD model? Of your Magnificent Seven sales channels, which are outperforming and which are underperforming your internal expectations?
Thanks for those questions, Fiona. Software foremost offers a great customer acquisition hookup. Our software offering caters to all tastes and requirements, and also a different audience. Lots of people do need to secure devices, design graphics, and lots more. If we go to the AVOD, it's still early days, you know, to say anything meaningful about it. Regarding the Magnificent Seven , what I said already, search engine advertising and affiliation have in the meantime become very good sales channels again. Video and social media still need to be further developed. B2B, business-to-business partnerships are best used for branded marketing campaigns, which currently is not in our focus.
Our last question for today is for Luc and was sent in by Fernando Alonso Lamberti. Please understand that shareholders have an absolute lack of trust in managers. The objectives are modified recurrently and in less time and with more intensity. I would like you to inform us about the company's best possible prospects.
Thank you, Fernando. We understand that the recent performance and adjustments to our outlook have led to concerns among shareholders. Of course, we take this feedback very seriously. 2024 was a challenging year. While we had to adapt to evolving market conditions, our strategic direction is clear. We are focused on stabilizing the business, optimizing our marketing and product strategy, and expanding our monetization models. We remain fully committed to rebuilding shareholder confidence.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was our last question for this afternoon. Please, should you have any further questions, get in touch with Sebastian. Thank you for your kind attention and joining our full year 2024 earnings call today. Have a great day further on and all the best for now. Thank you.