Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the RTL Group's Half Year Results 2024 conference call. I'm Moritz, your current call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Oliver Fahlbusch. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our analyst call for RTL Group's Half Year Results 2024. The speakers for today's presentation are Thomas Rabe, the Group's CEO; Elmar Heggen, our Deputy CEO and COO; Björn Bauer, our CFO; and Thomas Servatius, Co-CEO of Smartclip. The presentation for this call is available on our corporate website, rtl.com, following the link included in, on our press release under Download. The agenda on slide two shows the areas our management team will cover today. In addition, we will look closer at the partnership between RTL Group's AdTech Business Smartclip and Virtual Minds from ProSiebenSat.1. After the presentation, Thomas, Elmar, and Björn are available to answer your questions. And with this, I will hand over to Thomas Rabe.
Well, many thanks, Oliver, and good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us this Friday morning. Let me share with you the highlights for the six months of 2024, on slide four. We continue to make significant progress in executing our strategy and transforming our businesses by investing, partnering, and cooperating more than ever before. First and foremost, I'm very pleased about the continued dynamic growth in streaming. Paying subscribers for our streaming service in Germany, France, and Hungary were up 25% to 6.3 million year-on-year. Streaming revenues grew by 42% in the first half of the year. RTL+ increased its viewing hours by over 50% across all age groups, and AMC's Prison Front launched successfully with a significant pickup in usage. We're on track to reach our long-term streaming targets and thus profitability by 2026.
TV advertising markets have recovered in the first half of 2024, with Germany up between 2.5% and 3.5% and France up around 6%. TV advertising revenue across the group grew by almost 5%, with RTL Germany outperforming the market. Also, because our German family of channels extended its audience lead over ProSiebenSat.1 and the target group to a new record level for first half. In line with our strategy, we invested EUR 200 million for the acquisitions of Asacha Media Group and Beach House Pictures to further expand our global content business, Fremantle. Our partnerships with Orange Telecom and Sky Deutschland are working well, and the advertising technology partnership with ProSiebenSat.1 will start soon. Thomas Servatius will talk about this, later.
With the planned migration of RTL+ to the Bedrock technology platform, we're creating a true European champion streaming technology while reducing our streaming tech costs. Our financial performance in the first half of 2024 was in line with our expectations, and we confirm our full year outlook. With this, I hand over to Björn, who will take you through our detailed financials.
Yeah. Thank you, Thomas, and good morning, everyone. First, I'd like to make one comment regarding the presentation of our numbers. We announced the envisaged sale of RTL Nederland to DPG Media at the end of December last year. In May 2024, the Dutch Competition Authority, ACM, announced a so-called phase two investigation into the planned transaction. Nevertheless, we remain confident to receive approval and expect the transaction to close around the end of 2024. As a result, the operating segment, RTL Nederland, continues to be classified as a disposal held for sale and is presented as discontinued operations in our consolidated accounts for the first six halves of 2024. In accordance with IFRS 5, discontinued operations are reported separately from continuing operations, and if not indicated otherwise, all figures in this presentation refer to continuing operations, i.e., without RTL Nederland.
Let's start with a look at our key financials on slide six. In the first half of 2024, RTL Group's revenue grew by 2% to EUR 2.9 billion. Adjusted for portfolio changes and at constant exchange rates, group revenue was also up 2% organically. Revenue growth was mainly driven by higher TV advertising revenue and significantly higher streaming revenue. These effects were partly offset by lower content revenue from Fremantle. Our Adjusted EBITDA was slightly down to EUR 172 million due to higher costs for sports programs of approximately EUR 50 million, mainly for the UEFA 2024 matches in Germany and France. Total group profit in the first half of 2024 was up 31% to EUR 173 million, with EUR 110 million coming from continuing operations. Let's turn to slide seven: Adjusted EBITDA.
As mentioned by Thomas, our financial performance in the first half of 2024 was in line with our expectations. First, as you can see on this slide, the slight decrease in Adjusted EBITDA reflects what we presented with our full year guidance in March. Higher underlying operating profits are offset by higher costs for sports programs. Secondly, we guided that 2024 will be another backloaded year in which we will generate the largest part of our Adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the year, in particular in Q4. Moving on to Slide eight and a closer look at the main items below, Adjusted EBITDA down to group profit. The EUR 33 million significant special items mainly reflect cost efficiency measures at RTL Deutschland and Fremantle.
This is an improvement compared to the first half of 2023, when the restructuring of RTL Deutschland publishing business resulted in higher one-off costs. The second driver for our higher group profit comes from the line, fair value measurement of investment and remeasurement of earn-out arrangement. As you know, we sold our interest in SpotX to the U.S. ad tech company, Magnite, in April 2021, and received part of the consideration in shares. Magnite's share price increased significantly in the first half of 2024, leading to a remeasurement of the Magnite shares amounting to EUR 44 million. In the first half of 2024, the group's tax expense was EUR 35 million. Given special items and the profit before tax, the effective tax rate was 24% below the normalized tax rate. Moving on to slide nine, with a closer look at our cash flow.
Due to the closing of the planned transaction of RTL Nederland, RTL Group will continue to benefit from our cash flow and profits generated by RTL Nederland. This is why we also present our pro forma figures for our cash flow on this slide. Total net cash from operating activities, including RTL Nederland, increased to EUR 72 million. Cash outflow for acquisitions of EUR 160 million euro, mainly relates to the acquisition of Asacha Media Group. The operating cash conversion rate for continuing operations was 42%, an improvement for the first half of 2024 versus the first half of 2023. At the end of June, RTL Group's net debt increased to EUR 1.1 billion, compared to EUR 291 million at the end of 2023, resulting from the dividend payments and acquisitions.
We do, however, expect our net debt position to improve until the end of the year. For the business review, I will now hand over to Elmar.
Thank you, Björn, and let's look at our three major business units in greater detail. I'll start with RTL Deutschland on Slide 11. In the first half of 2024, RTL Deutschland continued to grow its streaming service, RTL+, dynamically, with paying subscribers up 25% year-on-year at almost 5.6 million. Our German family of channels remained, once again, the clear market leader. RTL Deutschland reported a combined average audience share of 27.4% in the target group of viewers aged 14 to 55-59, extending the lead over our main commercial competitor, ProSiebenSat.1, to 7.6 percentage points, a new record for the first half.
With its strong programming schedule on and 11 of 12 Euro matches broadcast in June, our flagship channel, RTL, was the only commercial channel in Germany with growing audience share. The channel reached 10.4% in the commercial target group of viewers aged 14- 59. Looking now at the financials of RTL Deutschland in the first half of 2024. Total revenue of RTL Deutschland was up 3% to EUR 1.21 billion, driven by higher TV advertising revenue and significantly higher streaming revenue, which were up by almost 45%. These growing revenue streams were partly offset by significantly lower revenue from RTL Deutschland's publishing business, mainly resulting from the disposal and discontinuation of magazine titles in 2023. Adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 23 million.
The positive effects from higher TV advertising revenue and lower streaming startup losses were largely offset by significantly higher content costs for the broadcast of the UEFA Euro matches, as explained before. Moving now to Group M6 on the next slide. The French net TV advertising market was estimated to be up 6% compared to the first half of 2023. Total revenue of Group M6 was also up by 6% to EUR 657 million, mainly due to higher TV advertising and streaming revenue. Adjusted EBITDA decreased to EUR 122 million, also impacted by higher costs for sports rights. The launch of M6+ has been a major success. Since the launch in mid-May, the M6+ app was downloaded 2.2 million times and is now available on all connected TV devices in France.
M6+ enjoys close to 90% awareness rate just weeks after launch, underlying the power of the brand M6. Average monthly users were up 33% in the first half of 2024, while viewing hours grew by 23% in the reporting period. At the end of July, the French media authority, Arcom, announced that the DTT's licenses for the channels W9, Gulli, and Paris Première, are retained for renewal. Let's now turn to Fremantle on Slide 13. In the first half of 2024, the international market for content production was still impacted by the 2023 U.S. writers and actor strikes, and budget cuts of streaming companies and advertising- financed broadcasters. We have seen this over the past weeks, and the figures disclosed, among others, for ITV Studios, Newen Studios, and Banijay Group.
In line with this market development, revenue at Fremantle decreased by 5% to EUR 957 million. The lower revenue across several regions was partly offset by scope effects from the first full-time consolidation of Asacha Media Group. Organically, revenue was down 8%, which compares favorably to many of the Fremantle peers. Fremantle's Adjusted EBITDA remained almost stable at EUR 35 million due to cost control measures. With a strong pipeline for the second half of the year, and the consolidation of Asacha, we remain confident that Fremantle's revenue and adjusted EBITDA will be significantly up for the full year 2024. Thomas will come back to this in a minute. He will now take you through the strategy update before presenting the outlook.
Yeah, many thanks, Elmar and, Björn. Our strategic framework remains unchanged. It's based on three priorities: core, growth, and alliances and partnerships. Core means investing in premium content, strengthening our families of channels, as well as cost and portfolio management. Growth areas are our streaming services, advertising technology, and addressable TV, as well as content production with Fremantle. And alliances and partnerships focus on national and international advertising sales via RTL AdAlliance, joint advertising and streaming technology via Smartclip and Bedrock, and content. Moving on to Slide 16. Let's look at our streaming services in more detail. We are seeing strong growth in paying subscribers, as we mentioned, up 25% compared to the end of June 2023, to around 6.3 million. The first half of 2024 alone, we've added more than 700,000 paying subscribers.
The partnership with Deutsche Telekom remains a strong growth driver, but also the direct-paying subscribers of RTL+ in Germany, our so-called owned and operated, saw the highest growth in absolute figures in the last three years. Importantly, our subscriber growth translates well into our streaming economics. Streaming revenue was up 42% in the first half of 2024, as we increased subscription prices in Germany last year with no significant uptick in churn. We are also seeing a high demand for advertising in our streaming services. For example, advertising revenue for RTL+ in Germany was up 49% in the first half. We've operated our services as hybrid models from day one, and are thus able to respond to this demand.
With continuously increasing subscription and advertising revenue and the expected benefits from the planned migration of RTL+ to the technology platform of Bedrock, we are on track to reach our long-term streaming targets and thus profitability by 2026. Turning to Slide 17 and Fremantle. As you know, one of our strategic priorities is the expansion of our global content business, Fremantle. As part of Fremantle's Boost plan to reach full-year revenue of EUR 3 billion by 2026, Fremantle has grown its portfolio organically and via M&A across all genres and regions, with acquisitions in the US, UK, Italy, the Nordics, Asia, and Australia. As I said in March, the focus is now increasingly on integrating the acquired business into the Fremantle network and improving margins.
We plan to maintain the average growth margin of Fremantle at the current level of approximately 20% and to reduce overhead to approximately 11% of revenue. As a result, Adjusted EBITDA margin, the Adjusted EBITDA margin, will gradually increase towards 9%. We move on to Slide 18. Long-term running formats and IP rights remain the foundation for the success of Fremantle. As you can see, Fremantle has a strong portfolio of established, strong, format brands, on-air in multiple countries. We own significant IP rights to many of the formats, including The Price Is Right, Idols, Got Talent, and Family Feud. In addition, Fremantle produces long-running daily drama series such as Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, Unter uns, Neighbours, and the docuseries Deadliest Catch, which is in its 20th season on the Discovery Channel in the US.
Creating new hit formats and standout successes, such as the Oscar-winning film, Poor Things, confidence the business, and positions Fremantle as the partner of choice for creative talent. Fremantle is a broad revenue mix, production, licensing, and global distribution business, and advertising via YouTube and fast channels. Let's move on to the outlook for 2024 on Slide 19. The impact of the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment on RTL Group's businesses continues to be hard to predict. Giving a slight recovery of the German TV advertising market and broadly stable advertising markets in our other territories in the full year, we continue to expect full-year revenue for 2024 to increase to around EUR 6.6 billion.
Now, this is based on higher revenue from RTL Deutschland, mainly driven by strong growth in streaming revenue, and from Fremantle, mainly driven by recovery in the US market after the strikes and by acquisitions. We continue to expect our Adjusted EBITDA for 2024 to be around EUR 750 million, with a variance of ±50 million, depending on the advertising markets. This Adjusted EBITDA outlook includes three main factors: First, higher content costs of around EUR 65 million, primarily for sports programs, lower non-recurring items, and higher profit contributions from RTL Deutschland and Fremantle. As mentioned in March 2024, 2024 will be another backloaded year, meaning that the second half, and in particular, the fourth quarter, will determine the full-year results. Finally, our dividend policy remains unchanged.
RTL will continue to pay out at least 80% of the adjusted full-year net result, while maintaining balance between investing in the transformation of our businesses, while paying, paying attractive cash returns to our shareholders. As Björn said earlier, we remain confident to receive approval for the envisaged sale of RTL Nederland to DPG Media, and to close the transaction around the end of 2024. The capital gain from the transaction will be largely tax-exempt, and will amount to approximately EUR 800 million. RTL Group's shareholders will benefit from the transaction in line with the dividend policy I just stated. This brings us to the end of our regular presentation. I now hand over to Thomas Servatius, to present the partnership between RTL Group's AdTech business, Smartclip, and Virtual Minds of ProSieben. Thomas, over to you.
Thank you very much, Thomas, and hello, everyone. Thank you for listening. I'm Thomas Servatius, co-CEO of Smartclip, the home for RTL Group's advertising technology activities. Today, I want to give you a deeper insight into our advertising technology partnership with Virtual Minds, an AdTech venture from ProSiebenSat.1. The advertising landscape is changing significantly. We see a structural shift. Linear TV viewership is still massive, but continues to decrease, in particular among younger target groups. At the same time, non-linear streaming services for TV consumptions are on the rise. This transformation creates new opportunities for broadcasters. Total video consumption in Germany, for example, is above the level of 2012, and younger target groups can now be reached again through streaming services. These shifts, and the inherent fragmentation that comes with it, are also substantial challenges for advertisers and media agencies.
For them, it has become more difficult to plan and optimize their budgets for video advertising. The key reason, as of today, there is no technical approach to unify all these different consumption channels. Instead, Linear TV buying is still following the classic model, predominantly relied on panel data, while digital TV mostly follows digital buying projects. We are convinced that the market needs a technology that unifies these two approaches into a single solution for buying advertising inventories. A solution that optimizes budgets across all the various fragmented TV channels. Especially for RTL, with the growing usage of RTL+, we need technology that optimizes both Linear TV and Streaming TV. This is what we aim to deliver together with Virtual Minds. Let's look at what is planned on the next slide.
In a nutshell, the key goal of our partnership with Virtual Minds is to create a holistic TV advertising and technology solution that merges the worlds of linear TV and streaming TV. To this end, we will utilize each other's strengths, which are quite complementary. RTL has focused on developing technology solutions for digital TV, specifically for addressable TV, online video, and connected TV or CTV. Virtual Minds, on the other hand, has developed innovative approaches for the digitization of linear TV advertising. The combined solution developed by this partnership will follow the latest paradigms of digital advertising. First, it will be data-driven. We will use panel data, which has been the standard for classical TV, and enrich this with anonymized behavioral data from millions of smart TVs in Germany. Second, we will employ the auction-driven approach across the whole TV universe.
This is fundamental to programmatic advertising sales and an efficient market mechanism to optimize the value of inventory for both advertisers and media companies. Third, all solutions will be driven by AI and machine learning technologies. This, in combination with more data points, will allow for superior ad decisioning algorithms. Fourth, we will use real-time optimization for digital TV and for the Linear TV ecosystem, which is the true revolution. As a result, we will have technology solutions for both the buy and supply sides. That means those that want to buy advertising and those providing the advertising inventories. On the buy side, we are aiming for strong standardization, unification, and simplified buying across the entire TV universe. On the supply side, we will also use unified technologies, where the solution for Linear TV will be provided by the Media Manager from Virtual Minds.
The one-to-one digital advertising solutions shared across ProSiebenSat.1 and RTL will be provided by Smartclip and our server-side ad insertion solution, Yospace. These solutions cover the entire linear TV and digital TV universe of both RTL Seven and ProSiebenSat.1. This means there is a truly unified set of technologies for every aspect of AdTech, providing a unified and standardized approach for buying and selling on both broadcasters' inventory. Let me give you an example of how this new portfolio of technologies can change TV advertising. In the past, linear TV advertising was mostly based purely on ex-post panel data used for ex-ante planning of TV campaigns up to months and days in advance. In the new universe, we use real-time data from smart TVs to monitor the real target group coverage of linear TV seconds before a linear TV ad break is broadcasted.
This data is used to check if the actual TV viewership corresponds to the expected TV audience when the TV ad break was planned. If we find a strong difference between expected and actual target audience, we are adjusting the linear TV ad break by selecting ads which better match the actual viewership demographics. This happens only a few seconds before the linear TV ad break is played out, which allows us to optimize the linear TV target group matching in near real time. At the same time, through our measurement technologies, digital TV usage is also monitored and evaluated. If we find that a target group can be more efficiently reached on digital assets, we are switching the budgets there. To summarize, we are not only optimizing for linear TV, but are also capable of providing optimized ad decision-making across both linear and digital TV.
This allows us to optimize incremental reach for advertisers or to avoid reach duplication between the different consumption channels. Our partnerships come with benefits for both advertisers and sales houses, an important aspect to making this work and accepted in the market. For advertisers and media agencies, the new portfolio of solutions will allow for much more unified and simplified access to both digital and linear TV inventory through a single access point. The combined technologies allow for cross-channel measurement and optimization of both reach and ROI for any marketing investments. For the sales houses, it has been proven that through the broader usage of data for the optimization of linear TV, the monetization of this area of TV inventories is improving. With the unified technology universe between linear TV and digital TV, we can develop new advertising solutions for our advertising clients.
For example, incremental reach optimization across different TV consumption channels. Which, with the simplified and digital-like TV buying experiences, we are regaining access to those digital native advertisers who have grown their brands exclusively on competing services such as YouTube or Facebook, by being able to provide a similar buying experience and digital KPIs in real time. As you can see on the next slide, we are in the middle of implementing this project. Currently, we are working on the implementation and integration of the different technology aspects. By next year, we will start enabling further use cases through the combined set of technologies, one by one. Our long-term vision is to create a European TV ecosystem that offers the same benefits for advertisers and broadcasters on a European scale, not just in Germany.
The new solution adds digital features to Linear TV and represents a true innovation of the TV ecosystem as a whole. In fact, that two competing broadcasters are choosing to collaborate on the technology side to gain the necessary scale and assets to compete with the big U.S. platforms, is an important signal to the European market. We believe alliances and partnerships are a key element to build a competitive TV landscape across Europe. And with that, I'm handing back to Thomas. Thank you very much for your attention.
Well, many thanks, Thomas, and thank you for your attention. We'll now take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. And the first question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is, can you give us some indication of advertising trends in your main market? And then, the second question is on, on page 21. Thank you very much for the data. Could we get the linear data on that page so we can do the split using the total number? And then, second question on, on page 21. Can we have the same data for RTL, maybe, first half 2023 and first half 2024, in Germany, as M6 already give us, give us France? Thank you.
All right. Well, first on the trends. I mean, we provided all data for the first half of the year, including the data on the significant advertising market share gains in Germany, driven by strong audience performance. We currently have visibility on the third quarter, and frankly, primarily on August and a bit on September, not so much on Q4. So, the month of July was relatively weak. It was down single digit in Germany. The month of August will be down double digit, probably minus 12 in Germany, primarily driven by the Olympic Games and the audience on public broadcasters. But we see an uptick in September. We're currently positive on September.
We think that in September, advertising revenue in Germany will be up. And that means that in Q3, advertising revenue will be down, combined all three months, together, compared to prior year. But we are confident and hopeful, based on market indications, that Q4 will be up. And all this means, based, and at least our outlook, is that we think that the German market will be up slightly, with us outperforming the market as we did in the first half, and the other markets to be broadly flat or slightly up.
And if that is the case, combined with, you know, efficient cost control and uptick of the Fremantle profits, we should be able to reach our EUR 750 million EBITDA target and guidance for the year. On the additional numbers on page 21, you referred to, Jan?
I think it's the minutes-
Yeah.
Right?
Well, I think, you know, maybe we don't do this now, if that's okay with you, Julien. We'll provide these numbers to you and to the colleagues. We can include them in the slides, which we put on our website. And if you have any further questions on the data, please let us know. Okay?
Yeah.
Yeah, these are the linear and non-linear viewing hours, right?
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
Yep, absolutely.
For, for the market and for you.
We'll get you that.
In Germany.
We'll get you that.
Great. Thank you.
... The next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great, thank you. I have two from my end. Firstly, thank you for giving us an update on the RTL Netherlands transaction. I just wanted to maybe get some color from you as to what backs your confidence that the transaction would go through by the end of this year. Some additional color, on how you're thinking about it would be great. My second question is on the price increases in streaming. How does the price of RTL+ now compare to peers or other competitive offerings in the market, in Germany? And do you think there's more scope for further price increases to come? So how should we think about, you know, how you're thinking about pricing? Is it gonna be a more for more kind of strategy, going forward? Yes, some color would be great. Thank you.
Okay. Well, start with, let's start with RTL Netherlands. We are continuing to be confident that the transaction will be approved, quite simply based on the market definitions or definitions of relevant markets which the authorities have brought in the past. We look at DPG, and DPG is active in multiple media business in the Netherlands, but not in TV. So by definition, they don't have a market share in TV, and by buying RTL Netherlands, they don't increase their market share. They just acquire the market share of RTL Netherlands. So based on the competition doctrine of the competition authorities in Europe, which define a TV market, define the entire market as relevant markets, it's difficult to see how this transaction could raise any concerns.
The authorities are looking at a number of aspects of the transaction, all of which are well understood. The conglomerate effect, plurality of media and journalistic services. As I said, we're cooperating with the authorities. We are making, or we, that is the buyer, DPG, making the data available as necessary to come to a final assessment, and as I said, are confident that based on the existing competition doctrine of the authorities in Europe, the deal will be green lit before the end of the year, end of the year.
On the price increases, I mean, the main service or product of RTL, the premium product, which is a video product, which is at EUR 6.99, we increased the price from EUR 4.99 last year with hardly any additional churn, which shows that our offer is attractive and people don't want to live without it. We think there's significant potential for further price increases as we continue to invest in the product, in content in particular, but also in the user experience. The 699 compares very well with prices of other services. I mean, the Netflix standard rate in Germany is EUR 13.99. So that's almost twice what we are charging.
We'll be looking at price increases in the next month or so. We'll do proper analysis on the market, on price elasticity of demand, and we'll then take the appropriate actions. The EUR 6.99 product is a video product only. The Max product, which includes other media categories in audio and text, is at EUR 9.99, and this product is also picking up nicely. What we're seeing is that the consumer better understands the concept of the multipurpose app. Those users who subscribe to the multipurpose app or the Max app, they use the app more than the video-only users, and the churn rates are lower. I said EUR 9.99 is the price.
That's the current price or the price for the first month. The regular price is EUR 12.99, which kicks in, I believe, after three months. So that's where we stand. So we think we have price potential, and we are confident on RTL Nederland.
Thank you. Very helpful.
So, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and 1 at this time. So it seems there are no further questions. That's... one moment. There is one question coming up from Annick Maas, from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Good morning. My question is just around Fremantle. I mean, what you've seen, some others seem to have seen this pressure on trends. Can you just talk us about your 2026 guidance? I know quite a bit of it is due to M&A, but just, you know, can you maybe give us an idea of how much it's gonna be organic versus non-organic of that guidance? Thank you.
Yeah, well, I mean, Fremantle, as other production companies, is in a, in, I would say, a transition year, with the knock-on effects of the US situation last year, i.e., the actors and the writers strike, which Emma referred to. But also, the buying behavior of some of our customers, both networks and streamers who are under some cost pressure, as you know. So it's not just a matter of how much they buy, but also the terms at which they buy. Fremantle, we believe, is well-placed, given the very strong performance we have that perform well on the broadcasters and networks and on the streamers.
We expect this year's revenue to be around EUR 2.5 billion. We expect the market-
Acquisition.
And that's that includes acquisitions, absolutely, on a full year basis. So we've pro forma the Asacha and Beach House acquisition, that would lead to EUR 2.5 billion. So EUR 500 million to go to the EUR 3 billion target, but we come from EUR 1.5 billion, so we've made some progress already, I'd say. We think that the market will return to a normalized growth rate of 4.25%, I think is the guidance you're also getting from other production companies, including ITV Studios. We've made significant progress on reducing our overheads already, and that's why I'm confident that our overhead ratio will go down to approximately 11% by 2026.
The gross margin, which I referred to, of 20%, is the gross margin which corresponds to our current business mix, and that's a margin which we've achieved in the last years. So, that's where we are. So EUR 2.5 billion this year, assumed 4%-5% growth rate organically in 2025 and 2026, would bring us to approximately EUR 2.7 billion. Apply 20% gross margin on this and 11% overheads, and you come to an EBIT margin, which is just below 9%. So that's, in very simple terms, the mathematics underlying our guidance for Fremantle.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Oliver Fahlbusch for any closing remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much for your interest in RTL Group's interim results for the first half of 2024. If there are further questions during the day, Irina and myself, we will be available to answer the questions. Apart from that, we all wish you a good weekend already and a good summer.
Yep.
All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Conference Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.