Hello and welcome to the CTS EVENTIM Earnings Call Q2 H1 2025. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Let me now hand the floor over to Marco Haeckermann.
Thank you very much.
Welcome everyone to our Q2 H1 2025 Earnings Call today. Your hosts today are Holger Hohrein, CFO of CTS EVENTIM, and myself, Marco Haeckermann. Holger will now present the Q2 results followed by the Q&A session. With this, I hand over to Holger.
Thanks, Marco. Hello everyone. Welcome, also from my end. Let's start right away with the first slide and with the key takeaways. For the first six months of this year, we have seen a solid first six months of this year as expected.
In Ticketing, we have seen growth mainly.
Through acquisitions, but also organically, we have seen both higher revenues and higher EBITDA. In terms of profitability, we have also seen integration costs for our latest acquisitions. Those are only temporary effects in nature. Once the integration is completed, we will benefit from synergies going forward and from a higher margin. In the ticketing segment, in live, we have seen growth year-on-year. For the first six months, especially in the international portfolio, profitability has been a challenge due to continuous cost pressure, especially in the festival portfolio. Therefore, our festival portfolio is under revenue right now. On the other hand, the venue business, which is also part of this segment, is very strong and continues to be a strong contributor. Coming to our guidance, despite this mixed picture, we confirm our guidance for the group KPIs and for ticketing.
Especially when it comes to our live segment, we are somewhat more cautious as profitability in this segment will be a challenge also for the remainder of this year. Let's look at some KPIs for the first six months of this year. On the next slide, group revenue came out just under EUR 1.3 billion, almost 8% increase year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA on previous year level with EUR 200.5 million. Also previously on previous year level, EBIT with EUR 151.4 million. Retail tickets account for almost EUR 79 million, which is an increase of 36.6%. Growth in tickets outside of our home market, outside of Germany, grew even stronger by 56% to EUR 54 million. The 12 months rolling GDV, the gross development value, increased to EUR 8.7 billion, which is a 5.4% increase quarter-on-quarter. Let's compare those group numbers in more detail with the previous year's asset.
Revenue up by 8%, driven primarily by ticketing, well above previous year for both year-on-year as well as for quarter-on-quarter. Segment live slightly above year-on-year but below previous year's quarter. Q2 EBITDA came out at EUR 200.5 million, as already mentioned, on the same level as previous year. As a reminder, we had seen a very strong first six months last year with some major on sales, AC/DC,[ ALDA], which impacted last year's first six months, which we have not seen this year. On the other hand, we have seen some impact of integration efforts and respective costs of our newly acquired businesses and cost inflation in the live entertainment segment as well, and we come to this in a minute. Overall, EBITDA margin subsequently declined somewhat to 15.5%, a level which is within a historic range. Nothing unusual.
On the next chart, this portrays the quarterly view, a little bit more detail on group level. The second quarter is more or less on previous year level, both in terms of revenue and EBITDA. More detail for both segments will follow in a second. Again, as a reminder, in our business we have a very strong and typical seasonality with the strongest quarters still to come, especially in Ticketing. Before jumping into both segments, a few words on the network. Here you can see the bridge from EBITDA to the network for our shareholders, and here you can see the bridge from EBITDA to net result, then the change year-on-year. What spikes out here is the financial results, which came to minus EUR 6 million for the first six months of this year.
This is considerably less than the previous year, and the main effects are listed here on the right-hand side, which is mostly attributable to the FX effects. Last year, we had in the same period a gain of roughly EUR 5 million. This year, we have a loss of around EUR 17 million so far due to the turmoil in the especially U.S. dollar environment. Also, as a reminder, last year same period we had some split on dividends coming from our joint venture Auto Ticket. This was the Cartel project where we got some compensations back in 2023, which then resulted in some dividends being paid out in the first quarter of last year.
As this company is being wound down, we have no more dividends from this joint venture coming, and also we have a different interest environment this year than last year, which results also in lower interest income this year of around EUR 10 million. That's also another effect, slightly lower than EUR 10 million, rather than the mid-single-digit number which is coming from our former qualification or equity participation in France Billet, which is now fully consolidated and therefore shown in the numbers above the financial results. All accounts to the almost EUR 50 million change year-on-year when it comes to the financial results. Now back to the operating business. We will then start with Ticketing. In Ticketing, we have seen the highest revenues for a first half year ever. Revenue grew by 60% year-on-year.
The growth, as mentioned, was driven both by organic business and by our latest acquisitions, See Tickets and France Billet. As you know, See Tickets was consolidated since June last year. It's now included for six months instead of just one month last year. France Billet is being consolidated since end of last year. It's seen now in the numbers included for the first time for a first half of a year. EBITDA grew by 7% year-on-year. Again, the starting point was already high last year with a very strong, especially first quarter last year with the on-sales of AC/DC and [ALDA] and the like, which we haven't seen this year in a similar fashion. In addition, we have all the integration efforts for our newly acquired businesses.
While we expect synergies in the future and margin improvements, we now have to bear the costs for all the integration work which has to be done with all integrations or our acquisitions. The work only begins after the deal is closed. Nothing surprising actually here. Now, have a closer look at the value drivers behind our ticketing results. The retail tickets. After 14 million retail tickets in the first quarter, we have now seen 38 million in the second quarter. Similar amount again, the strongest quarter in ticketing yet to come. On the right-hand side, you can see the distribution by regions. The share of international markets has increased and it's continuously increasing as a consequence of our latest acquisition of See Tickets and France Billet. We have seen strong growth outside of Germany while we still see growth within Germany.
Again, we have also seen organic growth for the German market. Let's now move on to the second segment, our segment Live Entertainment. Year on year, we have seen growth in revenue as well. While we have seen a decline in revenues for the second quarter compared to second quarter last year, we have seen strong performance in international portfolio, especially in Italy and in the U.S., and also our venue business is contributing positively to this segment. Although major festivals went well, like [Wing Walker Park] or signature events or signature festivals, other festivals had some challenges and as a consequence of this, our festival portfolio is currently under review. What we hope with the measures taken here in this segment, we will see improvement here for the remainder of the year and also for next year.
As said, venue business continues to be a strong contributor both in terms of revenue as well as for EBITDA. Our venue business is excluded in this segment and this number. Looking at the fit, we can see that we have a challenge here in the second quarter especially, which went down by fit, went down by 26% and 40% for the second quarter especially. There is some ongoing cost pressure here in Live Entertainment in general within our fashionable portfolio. Again, always a measure taken. We are confident to be back on track for the remainder of this year and also for the segment in future. Nevertheless, in terms of guidance, we are somewhat cautious when it comes to profitability in the Live Entertainment segment only for this segment to restate.
Again, for the group as a whole, and especially for the Ticketing segment, we confirm our guidance for the year 2025. With this key message, I hand back and look forward to your questions.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, please press three and star. We kindly ask you to ask a maximum of three questions. Thank you. Please press nine and star to register for your question. One moment for the first question, please. We are coming to the first questioner. It is Gerhard Orgonas from Berenberg. Over to you.
Good afternoon. My first question would be on the integration costs for the new entities. I mean, some of them you've consolidated for a while, such as See Tickets, and it's almost in your portfolio for a year now, and France Billet, also for six months. Why do you have these integration costs now? Can you give us an idea of the amount that you're spending here and the type of integration cost you're having?
Yeah, yeah, you're right. See Tickets has been. The closing was at the beginning of June last year. It's been consolidated for a year now and France Billet since end of last year. Nevertheless, in terms of integration, there are a couple of things to do when it comes to exchanging the ERP system, for instance, exchanging the IT landscape, migrating the ticketing platform.
I mean, from A- Z, there are tons of things to do which typically take a couple of months, if not years. As you know, bankers, and you know this as well, IT resources are scarce and there's always a question of priorities. We also had some acquisitions before in South America. Also, there are ongoing integration projects running. It's always a question of priorities, order of things, and tons of things to do. France Billet, for instance, was part of a bigger group, FNAC Group. They have used tons of systems within the FNAC Group. To carve this out from a large group in terms of purchasing software, accounting software, HR software, all those things need to be handled and this takes. It can't be done within six months. It's not realistic. I would say a more realistic time frame would be 18 to maybe 24 months.
Again, it's a question of priorities and order and maybe sometimes some external constraints which define the order. In terms of amount, as a rule of thumb, I would say for any acquisition, a low to mid-size single-digit percentage of the acquisition cost typically would be integration costs. If I take, for instance, a EUR 300 million acquisition, it wouldn't be a surprise to end up with acquisition or integration costs in the range of somewhere between, what have you, EUR 12 million, EUR 13 million, EUR 14 million, EUR 15 million. Something in this range shouldn't be a surprise and it's certainly not equally distributed. I already said 18 months, but maybe in one quarter a little bit more than in the other. I hope this gives some indication.
Second question on the Live Entertainment portfolio, can you elaborate a little bit what the cost pressures are?
When we talked in Q3 last year there was negative surprise and you had said that See Tickets was a.
Business that made most of its money.
In Q2 with the festival, but we don't really see an effect from that. What's going on with festivals in particular?
Yeah, maybe I start and then Marco can follow on. As part of the CTS EVENTIM transaction or the Vivendi transaction, we have also acquired a number of festivals from Vivendi and there are some which are running well and others are currently loss making or loss making. Last year in general we have currently problems with our live or with our festival portfolio. In total we have 35- 40 festivals in our group and there are big festivals like Wing Walker Park which are very successful. Also this year, especially this year will be 40 years.
Some of the festivals which we have acquired together with this transaction, but also other festivals in our portfolio, are currently loss making and to me it seems we have kind of oversupply in festivals and maybe the demand for festivals is declining a little bit. That's why we are currently reviewing our portfolio and there's a long tail of festivals which maybe not all of them are really profitable and worth continuing. I don't know, Marco, if you want to.
Hi, Gerhard. I think one thing is very important and not to pin this just exclusively to our festivals. This is something we've been seeing for quite some time, that the challenge for festival organizers has been as they were hunting top acts and as, of course, the negotiation power for artists, particularly after COVID, has been strengthened. For artists, the opportunity cost to either attend a festival or to do a show on their own has become significant. Right. Because if they do a show on their own, they know what they can get. On the other side, sharing this with a broader festival is something where, as the festival promoter, you either accept the price you have to pay for a good lineup, and as we all know, artists are the most expensive element in a festival.
Plus, of course, other OpEx having seen some inflation there as well, which is then a challenge, particularly when you run a broad portfolio where the top IP has no problem with those higher costs because they can roll it over onto a higher ticket price. We've seen very good initial feedback after our big franchises concluded this year that right the next day or within the week after that, we already sold a very big chunk of next year's tickets even without having announced a headliner, which is why it is not a sluggish consumer environment or something. On the other side, if you have a long tail of festivals where you see costs going through the roof and which you have sold maybe at 80% or 90% in the past, and now you're only selling 60% of that, this really hits you on the bottom line.
This is why structurally, I would say definitely nothing that is exclusive to CTS, but for the broader industry. On the other hand, top IP won't have a challenge with this as we continue to see ticket price inflation on the large festival tickets. This is a very important last bit. Of course, overall, when we look at these numbers and maybe in general we talk about integration costs, which is obvious that it's a bit more complex than just patching two Excel spreadsheets together. The second thing is, of course, whether it's in ticketing or in live, the timing is the integration costs and ticketing hit us in a seasonally weak quarter. Q2 is the quarter where your organic ticketing revenue is the lowest, which is why it's very hard to hide this impact.
If it would have happened in a Q4, it would become less of an issue.
Of course.
In Live Entertainment, as we continue to restructure the portfolio which we've acquired within See Tickets, we gave it another go. I think this is a very strong, committed business decision to hold on to that instead of just shutting down what you've acquired. For now, it continues to be loss making, which affects the numbers.
Yeah, I think I've got one more question just on the guidance. I think on the last call we talked about 5%- 15% EBITDA growth.
Is that your guidance that you're confirming?
On the range of 5%- 15% is a big range, and we certainly are not guiding closer to the 14%, to the upper end, but rather to the lower end, I would say.
Yeah, that's what I meant. 5% is still the low end of your growth expectation.
No, we cannot change a metric.
Thank you.
Next up is Olivier Calvet from UBS. Over to you.
Yeah, I just want to follow up on the last one because acoustically I.
Couldn't hear it so well.
You said you confirmed the full range of 5- 15 at group level. I just wanted to confirm that. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah,
sorry, I just want to answer right away. I confirm the term moderate growth means 5%- 15%. This is correct. We stick to our metric, but in terms of guidance, we rather see we are not at the 14%- 15% other end of the range, but rather to the lower end of the range.
Okay, pointing to the low end.
Okay, makes sense.
I wanted to ask on any impact you have from the current arena under construction in Milan. Does that impact at all the Live Entertainment segment profitability, and any thoughts as to your expectation into year end with the launch of that arena?
No, doesn't impact, not at all. Because it's still under contract construction. I mean every CapEx is obviously going into the balance sheet and doesn't impact the P&L at all. AS will be opened end of the year, we won't affect the P&L this year at all.
Okay, thanks, that's clear. Just to follow up, I agree with your comments on festivals. We see mine aren't closing, but I just wanted to get a better sense. You disclose, I think, about 90% of your Live Entertainment sales in the entertainment services, which is wide buckets. How much of that is festivals, and maybe how much of that is your organic portfolio? How much of that is the See Tickets, the Eventim, the acquisition-related festivals?
In general, we have 35- 40 festivals within our group and in terms of revenue, I would say the festivals account for roughly 10% of the Live Entertainment revenues. The contribution of the See Tickets portfolio, was it EUR 13 million, EUR 13 million.
EUR 30 million on a full year basis.
EUR 30 million.
what we acquired.
Right, right. I think we disclosed it also in the press release which we released in summer last year. Yeah, EUR 100 million ticketing and EUR 30 million live portfolio.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
In general, overall 10%, which is around EUR 200 million plus and EUR 30 million of this coming from the live portfolio from GTX.
Okay, just to confirm, organic is EUR 200 million and then EUR 30 million is on top, or is that, is the EUR 30 million included within the EUR 200 million?
No, the latter one, I would say.
Okay, got it.
I just wanted to better understand the organic performance of See Tickets year-over-year in the quarter in Ticketing specifically. If you could go back to that, you know, excluding integration costs, was there some customer losses or anything like this that you would like to point out?
Marco, do you want to?
Generally? Of course.
Let's talk about how those integrations work. I mean, what you basically do.
Is if you try to merge cultures.
Yeah. The complexity, I would say, in the See Tickets transaction, I mean, it's different having an ongoing integration in one country and now adding five other geographies. Which in itself was a project that was working on integrating, for example, their U.S. business and merging it to their U.K. platform. We acquired an ongoing integration and of course this is what we now change to our platform. This is why we have the great synergy potential with this deal and why it fully makes sense for us to strengthen the position in Europe, to expand our product portfolio with great products, whether it's the Paylogic festival solutions which we have acquired, or the full service white label solutions which come out of See. This is something which we can tremendously leverage on the other side.
I mean, when you have markets that operate a little bit differently, for example, like the U.S., when an acquisition like this happens and maybe one or two salespeople decide to leave the company, then you might lose one or the other client temporarily. We've seen this over many years and we can confirm that these are temporary effects because in the end, when the integration is done, we usually win them all back and even get back more because then they are part of our platform and they take advantage of every development which we have. It of course hits hard if we look at it through a very Q2 sharp lens. This is what happens in the beginning because the integration costs, the ballpark numbers Holger referred to.
I would say if we talk about a two-year integration period, 2/3 if not 3/4 of the two expected to be expected cost hit you in the first year. This is really only the integration cost. I would add to that these integration effects that you have some customer fluctuation, not to a meaningful extent. This is nothing to be worried about. The bulk of snow and the mound of snow and maybe a little bit of melting temporarily at its edges and this is what it is.
If I may add, you might also have some severance payments and, you know, change management. Also, just as a reminder, I think, also as has been communicated over the press release last year, we have acquired with France Billet 27 legal entities. It's quite a bit. It's not, you know, just one link. Entities have 27 in a number of countries, and not all of them were on the same ticketing platform. They also have had different ticketing platforms, adding up to the complexity. This has been a bigger acquisition, and there's more work to do for us, which results in higher costs and a little bit more effort.
Thanks for that.
The next question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein.
Hi there. My first question is again on festivals. If we take the festival portfolio and we exclude anything which came from See Tickets, how many of those festivals that you had before See Tickets were actually profitable? My second one is on the net financial result. If you could give us, I mean you clearly have explained the impacts in the first half, if you could give us an indication of how you think about it for the full year. I guess another one on festivals again. If you take all of the festivals, the top five actually, how much of revenues are they making? I guess this portfolio is very much biased to the top festivals only. If you could give a bit more explanation around the top festivals, what they are making up and the loss making ones. Yeah, thank you.
To be honest, for the last question, I do not have the answer at the top of my mind. I said we have 35- 40 festivals and there's a long term. Obviously, there are a couple of bigger ones and also just for distribution. I mean, in general, it's a portfolio. It's like in a portfolio you always have 2/3 running well and 1/3 with some problems. Maybe you can in parallel look for the numbers here, but I don't know, Marco has some numbers. Maybe we will have to come back to you with this answer because honestly I don't have the distribution in my mind in terms of the net result and what happens below EBITDA. That's basically your question, right? For instance, for the financial results, the U.S. dollar might have an impact. Maybe if you see a reversal this year, I wouldn't expect bigger.
I mean, I cannot predict future, I cannot predict interest rate environment. You cannot predict FX rates, of course, but I do not expect major changes here or bigger changes here. That's why we have shown this one slide here to you, to explain to you that we had some one-off effect actually or some effects last year which we did not see this year, like the dividend disapproval from Teleticket. For the remainder of this year, I do not see, for the moment at least, I do not see bigger impacts in the financial result. Like in the past, we haven't seen big things here. Marco, do you have some levels?
Yeah. While Holger was elaborating on financial results, we had a look at the numbers, and you can say that if you look at the top five festivals of that portfolio, that comes very close to 50% of the festival revenue we were alluding to.
Okay, thank you. Basically, I guess my question, the first one on the loss making part, I guess, you know, when you bought See Tickets, it was pretty clear that [Garo Rock] is probably the only one that is profitable in that mix. The fact that the festivals are loss making was known before, and I'm just a bit surprised. I kind of want to understand the dynamics of what is really dragging it down here in the second quarter. If you have anything for that, that would really be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, I can take this on my desk, of course. When we acquired it and when you look at it from a transactional team, it sounds very easy than when you prepare an integration to say, okay, there are loss making festivals, so let's cut them. Of course, when this integration happens, you hand this over to the people who have much more expertise in that business and our Live Entertainment team, our other festival promoters, you get to know the team a little bit better and you might see the chance that with a little bit tweaks here and there, you might incur another year of losses. Then you can turn it around or work it into a broader routing scheme to cut the losses by continuing with the business.
This is something which is probably easy to say when you're coming out of an M&A transaction and clear the initial path for an integration. When you then hand over the responsibility to the experts, I think this is a decision which can be backed because they are all managing based on the profitability overall. There is incentive to turn this around. The expertise in our company thinks that they can turn it around. This is the situation where you carry on with these things.
Okay, thank you very much.
Coming to the next question, now it is Andreas Riemann from ODDO BHF.
Yes, good afternoon. Two topics, maybe one by one again, on Live Entertainment. Also trying to understand the performance here. How's actually the visibility for the Live Entertainment business? Are there areas within Live Entertainment where you have no real visibility, and, linked to that, was Live Entertainment actually also below your own plans?
Any comment here would be appreciated
for the last question. Definitely for sure to interpret EUR 30 million in six months. Definitely well below our expectations, our plans in terms of visibility. While we have a broad portfolio of promoters and festivals and brands, and in terms of governance, we give a high degree of freedom to those entrepreneurs and those portfolio companies, and we rather have a portfolio view on them. From headquarters, we are not too much or too deeply involved in individual festivals or individual events. In total, within our Live Entertainment segment, we perform more than 10,000 events a year, of which, as he said, 40 festivals are part of them. In total, we run more than 10,000 events a year with more than 20 million visitors.
We do not from headquarters manage on an individual basis, but have entrepreneurs, which typically all have a skin in the game or have participations in our portfolio companies themselves. Therefore, also keen on making the business profitable. They are incentivized accordingly. They are a lot of entrepreneurs themselves.
My second one, I mean reading your press release implies that the difficult macro environment had a negative impact on the Live Entertainment business, but not on the Ticketing business, if I'm not mistaken, if I've read your release properly.
How's that possible?
Maybe you can provide any insight here.
Not sure if I got the trips correct. First to leave. What did you think?
Yeah, in the Live Entertainment section it was mentioned that macro in a few countries is a bit more challenging. That was in the Live Entertainment part, but it was not mentioned in Ticketing. I just wonder whether you experienced macro headwinds in Live Entertainment, but it was not mentioned in Ticketing.
I just wanted to hear your.
Your thoughts on macro and how it affects both segments.
I'm not sure if we refer to the same thing here, Marco. Maybe we wanted to express that we see some challenges with regards or when it comes to the festival environment. As mentioned earlier, it seems there's a little bit of oversupply in terms of festivals. We have seen two years coming out of the pandemic. We've seen strong demand also for festivals. Nowadays it looks a little bit that the demand is not there anymore, at least not for an increasing number of festivals. The number of festivals is still increasing industry wide and there seems to be a change in environment in this regard. Marco gave a little bit more insights in the economics of the festival earlier. I think the comment in this section in our press release refers to this effect, and therefore it's relatively independent to the ticketing segment.
In Ticketing, of course, you have a much broader diversification of the content you're selling. Right. I mean, when we compare a single show and you could sell a relatively high price ticket and let's say you have 20,000 tickets there, yeah, looks good. On the other side, on the ticketing side, you continue to sell a glory portfolio of, say, exhibition where you have something that is now in the city of Hamburg for eight months. You set up the ticketing platform, you continue to sell, you market it, and then once Hamburg is done, it moves to, whatever, to Munich. Yeah. Although the ticket price might be less, over the entire cycle of that tour, of that exhibition, yeah, it's a very lucrative business. This is, of course, something where, for example, from the live entertainment side, we barely have, literally, no exposure at all. No meaningful.
Yeah,
okay.
Thank you very much. Now we have time for our last questioner and it is [Craig Abbott] from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes.
Hi, good afternoon. Also from my side.
Yeah.
Okay, I'll follow three more from my side as well. First of all, turning to Ticketing, could you maybe give us an update on your pipeline for the remainder of the year for on sales, particularly in the all-important Q4, and here obviously with you looking ahead to next year. I'll come to my two questions after that. Thank you.
Hi Craig, it's Marco. I think, I mean of course if we would now start announcing which on sale date we would see for which act, everyone will go crazy. Anyway, I think what underlines it best is that we are reiterating our outlook for the full year. Yeah, and that we, as we've said, this year is a year which finally brought seasonality back to a normal pattern with no weird outliers in a Q1 or Q2 as we might have seen over.
The last couple of years.
This year will be properly year end loaded, as it has always with good content coming through and as well with decent shows for next year which we're going to be selling in Q3 and Q4. Underlining that, the reiteration of our guidance and ticketing is the statement that combines basically what you want to see there.
Okay, thank you. I wasn't expecting, obviously, specific axa. I just meant overall, in general.
Second question.
Sorry to come back on Live Entertainment yet again. I do hope of course that you do swiftly and pretty forcefully in terms of consolidating your festival portfolio because I think it's clear that a lot of this is there is an oversupply in Europe in the mid-sized festival space. A lot of this is more structural rather than some in-house issues. You also mentioned in the presentation that you see Live Entertainment already getting back on track the rest of the year, which is encouraging. I was wondering if maybe you could elaborate on this, please. Then I have my third question. Thank you.
Yeah, back on track. As said, the revenue of the Live Entertainment or the flexible portfolio is already well underway. We have already discussions, we do already the review. We have already actually taken some position for next year's festival portfolio. There are already decisions be made. Will this have P&L impact already this year? Yes, partially, of course. We do not expect the same week, second or half year for the remainder of this year than we have seen in the first half year. Back on track then referred more to next year where we hope with a streamlined festival portfolio, we will then be back on track in terms of profitability for the remainder of this year. The first measures will be then also have impact already in Q3 and Q4.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, my third question again, just kind of.
Get back to this whole issue of the integration costs.
I'm just.
I apologize. There's a little bit more than just one question. Please give me a moment to split this up. I'm just wondering, first of all, why since you introduced adjusted EBITDA reporting last year, you wouldn't break these out so that we on the capital markets side can see how much is related to integration costs and what the underlying business is actually doing.
Yeah.
Okay, I realize it's not a perfect timeline. You said it. Priorities being shifted. If you kind of give us a feel for when you really expect to start seeing the benefits from these integration measures coming through at See Tickets and France Billet.
Thank you.
Maybe I start off and then Holger can take over with the integration cost. I would rather classify it as integration effects, as we've been talking about the fact that you might budget for some costs which initially you see at a level that is below what we would qualify as adjustable because there are clear rules from which scale and scope we can basically apply this. This is how we started. Particularly if you look at, for example, business commitment, as we've discussed it, towards the acquired festivals within See Tickets, where you now further are willing to incur some losses temporarily, this does not qualify as integration costs, but it's more like an integration effect or a consolidation effect. The same is, of course, that when you might lose one or the other customer on the other side, this is nothing.
I mean, it's a revenue effect which is nothing. You would then qualify as clear integration costs. All the integration effects which have burdened basically the Q2 results a little bit, they're all temporary. It's not like that. It's just advisor fees. Although advisors would love to bill us that way, which we just book as an expense item. It's a combination of different factors. Of course, when you have revenue impacts or continue to incur losses because you give it a chance, because you see the potential for the midterm and long term, this is nothing which we would then adjust.
Yeah. Referring to the rule Marco was just mentioning, when we introduced the concept of adjusted EBITDA, we gave us a guide and, you know, aligned with the auditor. Only effects which are bigger than 1% of the previous year's EBITDA can be adjusted. Every single effect would then have to be bigger than 1% of the previous year, which means we have 542, which means EUR 5.4 million. Every effect would have to be bigger than EUR 5.4 million, which is, you know, it's not always the case when it comes to, I don't know, severance payments there and, I don't know, lots of customer in our country and all those things. We don't want to introduce a second tier accounting bookkeeping.
Okay, I appreciate that. The last part of that question was in terms of how we can kind of expect the synergy effects to kind of flow through. I know there's not going to be like a perfect timeline, but if you can just kind of give us a feel.
I mean, I would think again, as I mentioned earlier, I would say 18- 24 months is a reasonable time frame for integration. On the other hand, we have also other priorities and a lot of priorities always. Our resources are always scarce. We have projects running for LA28, for instance, where ticketing will start beginning of next year. It might be that one or the other project will take a little bit longer, other things can be a little bit faster. It's not easy to say when the integration will be as of today, when the integration will be fully completed yet. The plan is to have this completed within the 18 months time frame and then the synergies will then play out and hopefully then result in the equity margin improvement.
Yeah, looking at this as a spreadsheet task, of course, as we try to underline that we are now really in the midst of that part of the integration where you cannot really cover the cost with Q4 ticketing revenues and where it was very visible to that. I mean year-over-year you can be sure that you have laid some very low basis for next year. When we look at where we are from end of June here, the costs will still be there throughout Q3, but they will fade. The impact on an increasing business volume in Q3 and Q4 in ticketing will reduce the significance of this topic as we've seen it in Q2. The second thing is then towards the end of the year you will partially see synergies coming through and ideally you add a net level.
The remaining costs there will be covered by early synergies before then towards next year and towards particularly the end of next year, the second half you will see the synergies swinging through because, A, there are no integration costs anymore. When you then look at these acquired entities year-over-year, of course you compare it to the basis which we are discussing today.
Yeah,
right.
Okay.
Okay, thank you both.
Thank you very much. We come to the end of the Q& A. We thank you very much for your attendance and wish you a good rest of the day.
Thank you very much everyone, and let's continue when we put out our Q3 numbers.
Thank you, bye.
The recording has been stopped.