Morning. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome. Thank you for joining the RTL Group full year results call. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may do so by pressing star then one. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. It's my pleasure. I would now like to turn the conference over to Oliver Fahlbusch. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our analyst call for RTL Group's full year results 2022. The speakers for today's presentation are Thomas Rabe, the Group CEO, Elmar Heggen, our Deputy CEO and COO, and Björn Bauer, our CFO. The presentation for this call is available on our corporate website, rtl.com, following the link included in our press release under Download. The agenda on slide two shows the areas our management team will cover today. With this, I now hand over to Thomas.
Yeah. Thank you, Oliver, good morning from me as well. In addition to our full year results in 2022 and the outlook for 2023, we'll give you an update on our strategy and growth plans. After that, we're happy to take your questions. Let's start on slide four under Highlights. 2022 was a strong year for RTL Group despite numerous external challenges. Our family of TV channels in Germany, France, and the Netherlands continued to generate high operating profit. As did our global content business, Fremantle, which achieved its highest ever adjusted EBITDA. I think both businesses, streaming and content, progressed significantly in 2022. By the end of 2022, we had a total of 5.5 million paying subscribers to RTL+ in Germany and Hungary, Videoland in the Netherlands, meaning that our subscriber base grew by 40% year-on-year.
In summer 2021, we announced that we will accelerate the expansion of Fremantle, both organically and via M&A, targeting full year revenue of EUR 3 billion by 2025. We've made a big step towards this goal in 2022. Our revenue from our global content business grew by 23% to over EUR 2.3 billion. In total, Fremantle completed eight acquisitions and step-ups, all in major territories and across all genres. To compete with the broader streaming services, we remain convinced that market consolidation is necessary and that it will happen in the European TV market sooner or later. Although our larger consolidation moves were blocked by the regulator, we continue to work on scaling up our TV and streaming businesses via small acquisitions, alliances, and partnerships. I'll come back to this later.
The strong results enabled us to pay once again an attractive dividend of 4 EUR shares to our shareholders. I now hand you over to Björn, who will take you through the Group's financial results in more detail.
Yeah. Thanks, Thomas. Good morning, everyone. In my presentation on the financial results, I will focus on two key points. First, our solid financial performance despite challenging TV advertising markets since March 2022. Second, our active portfolio management and our investment in streaming and Fremantle impacted our income statement and cash flow statement for the financial year 2022. Let's start with a quick look at our key financials on slide six. In 2022, RTL Group's revenue increased by 8.8% to a record level of EUR 7.2 billion, exceeding EUR 7 billion for the first time in the group's history. Revenue growth was driven by Streaming at RTL Deutschland and higher revenue from Fremantle and RTL Nederland.
Due to the strong performance of Fremantle and RTL Nederland, group revenue was up by 1.6% organically, and this despite lower TV advertising revenue from our two largest broadcasting operations in Germany and France, which demonstrates the resilience and diversification of our portfolio. Our full year adjusted EBITDA increased by 6% to EUR 1.08 billion. This was mainly due to higher streaming startup losses, which increased from EUR 166 million in 2021 to EUR 223 million in 2022. When you look at our underlying profitability before streaming, our adjusted EBITDA before streaming startup losses remained stable on the same record level as last year.
Group profit was EUR 766 million after reaching the extraordinary record level of EUR 1.45 billion in 2021, which was significantly impacted by the technical gain from the sale of SpotX. Let's continue on slide seven. Here you see the development of RTL Group's total and TV advertising revenue on a quarterly basis. RTL Group started dynamically into 2022, with group revenue and TV advertising revenue both up by 11% compared to the first quarter of 2021. This is an important context when we speak about the outlook for the full year of 2023. Since March, the European TV advertising market softened, resulting in a 3% decrease to RTL Group's TV advertising revenue in the second quarter and a decrease of 10% in both Q3 and Q4.
In total, our TV advertising revenue was down by 4% for the full year 2022, still approximately in line with the pre-COVID levels from the year 2019. In 2022, the overall decrease in TV advertising revenue was more than offset by the strong performances from Fremantle and RTL Nederland, StreamElements, and positive FX effects. RTL Group's total revenue was up in every quarter of 2022. Moving on to slide eight, that puts our operating profit in a longer-term perspective. When you look at our underlying profitability, the significantly higher streaming startup losses, our adjusted EBITDA before streaming startup losses was EUR 1.36 billion on prior year target level. 2021, 2022 was the peak year in terms of streaming startup losses. The adjusted EBITDA margin before streaming startup losses was 18.9%.
One of the main reasons for the margin decrease was the first-time full year consolidation of Gruner + Jahr Production business, which was impacted by lower print advertising revenue and significantly higher costs for energy and paper. In addition, Fremantle gained higher share in the RTL Group businesses. Moving on to slide nine. Now let's have a look at the items below EBITDA down to group profit. In April 2021, RTL Group sold its interest in SpotX to the U.S. AdTech company, Magnite. In the accounts for financial year 2021, the capital gain from the disposal of SpotX was a key driver for last year's record group profit. With Magnite share price decreasing in 2022, the effect on the remeasurement of the 12.37 million Magnite shares at the RTL Group of -2.7 million EUR.
This effect is reflected in the line, fair value measurement of investment. In total, RTL Group recorded capital gains of EUR 107 million in 2022, mainly relating to the disposal of RTL Belgium and RTL Croatia. The group tax charge came in at EUR 156 million. The significantly higher tax charge in 2021 was due to the taxable capital gains from the disposal of SpotX. The reported tax rate in 2022 of 18% was positively impacted by the recognition of deferred tax assets. Looking now at the next slide, the cash flow statement. Our operating free cash flow was EUR 565 million, while the operating cash conversion rate was 54% in 2022.
The lower operating cash conversion rate was due to investment in Fremantle and our streaming business, as well as timing differences and non-cash items positively impacting our adjusted EBITDA. We continue to actively manage our portfolio. This is reflected in various lines of the cash flow statement. The line acquisition disposal of subsidiaries mainly reflects the cash received as part of the disposal of RTL Belgium, RTL Croatia, and the cash paid out in Fremantle acquisition, pictures. The Element Pictures, Seventy-two Films, and Wildstar Films. The cash received from the sale of Super RTL is reflected in the line acquisition disposal of other investments, financial assets. The cash effect from the acquisition of Gruner + Jahr , net of cash acquired, is shown in the line acquisitions of companies under common control.
Keep in mind that EUR 210 million for the acquisition of Gruner + Jahr were already paid at the end of 2021. The cash flow, cash outflow for the step-up of 200% in Nurita, Fremantle acquisition, is reflected in the line transactions with non-controlling interest. To summarize, with a lower operating free cash flow, and most importantly, the dividend payment, the net cash increased in 2022 by EUR 29 million. At the end of December 2022, RTL Group continued to be in a net cash position of EUR 108 million. On the next slide, I will go through the dividend proposal. Our dividend policy is based on the group's full year profit attributable to RTL Group shareholders and adjusted for any material non-cash impacts. As you know, we target a payout ratio of at least 80%.
In line with our dividend policy, our board has proposed a dividend of EUR 4 per share for 2022, of which EUR 3.50 represent a dividend of ordinary activity, while the remaining EUR 0.50 relate to the disposals of RTL Belgium and RTL Croatia. Ordinary dividend is thus favored with last year and demonstrates our intent for dividend continuity. The total proposed dividend of EUR 4 per share for 2022 results in a dividend payout ratio of 94%. Based on the average share price for 2022, this translates into a dividend yield of 9.5%. For the business review, I will now hand over to Elmar.
Thank you, Björn, and good morning from my side as well. For the business review, I will start with RTL Deutschland on Slide 13. In 2022, our largest unit, RTL Deutschland, continued the dynamic growth of its streaming service, RTL+. The number of paying subscribers was up 48% year-on-year to more than 2 million at the end of December. The strategic partnership with Vodafone's GigaTV and the diverse range of programming on RTL+ contributed significantly to the growth. In terms of audiences, RTL Deutschland reported a combined average audience share of 26.8% in the target group of viewers aged 14 years- 59 years, which was up 4.5%.
That means our German family of channels increased its lead over its main commercial competitor, ProSiebenSat.1, from 6.5 percentage points- 6.5 percentage points. Our main channel, RTL, remains the leading commercial channel in the target group 14 years- 59 years, while VOX became third amongst commercial channels in both the 14 years- 59 years and 14 years- 49 years age groups, overtaking TF1 for the first time on a full year basis. Now to financials of RTL Deutschland in 2022. In the reporting period, the German net TV advertising market was estimated to be down between 8% and 10%, with RTL Deutschland performing in line with the market.
Total revenue of RTL Deutschland was up 14.1% to EUR 2.77 billion, driven by the acquisition of Gruner + Jahr and SuperRTL, as well as the streaming service, RTL+. Adjusted EBITDA was down 15.2% to EUR 459 million, mainly due to higher streaming startup losses and lower TV advertising revenue. For the decreasing print advertising market and increased prices for energy and paper, the acquired publishing business from Gruner + Jahr did not contribute notably to RTL Deutschland's adjusted EBITDA in 2022. As a result, RTL Deutschland's adjusted EBITDA margin decreased to 17%. Thomas will provide more detail on the reorganization of the German publishing business in the strategy update. Let's now move to Group M6 on the next slide.
The French net TV advertising market is estimated to be down 2% compared to 2021. Total revenue of Group M6 was slightly down by 2.4% to EUR 1.36 billion, mainly due to the decrease in advertising revenue. Accordingly, adjusted EBITDA decreased by 7.6% to EUR 304 million. The adjusted EBITDA margin remained high at 22%. The audience of our French family of free-to-air channels in the commercial target group was 22.3%, slightly down by 2.5%. By the audience share of the main channel M6 was down in the commercial target group, our free-to-air channel sports the best audience performance ever in the most important primetime slot.
Following the planned merger with TF1, M6 will invest significantly to accelerate the growth of its advertising-funded streaming service, 6play. Turning now to RTL Netherlands on Slide 15. The Dutch net TV advertising market was estimated to be up by 8.7% in 2022. RTL Netherlands' total revenue increased by 10.6% to EUR 636 million, driven by significantly higher TV advertising revenue and growing streaming revenue. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 161 million, up 50% at zero from 2021. The adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 19% to 25%. The combined Dutch family of channels delivered an audience share of 34.7%, up 2.5 percentage points year-on-year.
This audience growth was again driven by the main channel RTL 4, which scored high ratings with shows such as The Masked Singer, De Verraders, and Kopen Zonder Kijken. The increase in audience share was also thanks to RTL 4's current affairs programs in early primetime and the main evening news show. RTL Nederland streaming service, Videoland, recorded a subscriber growth of 5% compared to the end of December 2021. Turning now to our global content business, Fremantle. Fremantle reported record results in 2022. Revenue was up 22% to EUR 2.35 billion, thanks to scope effects from acquisitions in 2021 and 2022, positive foreign exchange rate effects, and organic revenue growth, which was at 7.8%. Accordingly, adjusted EBITDA was up 15% to EUR 152 million.
One year ago, Fremantle CEO, Jennifer Mullin, presented the boost plan for Fremantle to become a EUR 3 billion company by 2025 to you. In 2022, Fremantle delivered over 100 scripted productions, including high-end series, mega dramas, and 17 films. As a result, Fremantle generated 35% of its total revenue in 2022 from drama and film productions, up from 23% in 2019. I will hand back to Thomas, who will take you through the strategy updates before presenting the outlook.
Many thanks, Elmar, let me turn to Slide 18 and strategic framework, which 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. The alliances and partnerships span from advertising sales and content production to technology and data. Moving on to Slide 19. Over the past years, we have transformed the portfolio of RTL Group. We've divested a series of small and non-core assets for significant value gains, boosted Fremantle, and built national streaming champions with RTL+ and Videoland. Unfortunately, we did not succeed with two larger consolidation movements planned in the Netherlands.
In both countries, the competition authorities did not take into account the speed and extent of the changes in European media landscape and the impact of these changes on local media companies. Overall, we see these as missed opportunities for us and the European media industry. We will remain convinced that market consolidation is necessary to compete with global tech platforms, and thus we remain committed to scaling up our TV and streaming businesses. There are other ways to scale, not in one big step as in mission contemplated, but a series of smaller steps, in particular small acquisitions, such as the full acquisition of in Germany and partnerships and alliances across the areas shown on the slide, and that is advertising space and technology, streaming distribution technology, content creation and distribution, as well as data.
An important development over the last years has been increased demand from advertisers and agencies with global ad buying opportunities. To respond to this demand, we combined RTL AdConnect, Gruner + Jahr i|MS, and the media division of Smartclip to create RTL AdAlliance, an international advertising sales champion. RTL AdAlliance is the only European sales house that offers international cross-media campaigns. Its portfolio comprises RTL Group's TV channels, streaming services, radio stations, and digital publishing, complemented by the advertising inventory of high-quality partners such as ITV in the U.K., RAI in Italy, or NBCUniversal in the U.S. Another example is advertising technology. Here we have created an AdTech platform based on the technology developed at Smartclip, which is used by most RTL companies and a series of third parties.
The third example in Germany is the distribution partnership we built with TicCom, which has helped accelerate the growth of RTL+. Moving on to Slide 20. The current macroeconomic environment has put the publishing business under particular pressure, with decreasing advertising and circulation revenue and higher costs for energy and paper. To further strength RTL Deutschland's leading position and journalistic relevance, we thoroughly reviewed our publishing business and portfolio. Following the review, we decided to focus on core brands such as Stern, Geo, Capital, Brigitte, and Gala, which account for around 70% of RTL Deutschland's publishing revenue and circulation. All other brands and line extensions will be sold or discontinued. With the reorganization, costs will be reduced by EUR 70 million in all areas, especially in corporate functions, IT, and facility management.
By 2025, we'll invest around EUR 80 million in the transformation of our strong publishing brands, primarily in paid digital content and services. Looking at the combination of RTL Deutschland's TV, streaming, and publishing businesses more generally, there's a data that creates significant value in the form of synergies of around EUR 75 million per annum in areas such as content creation, advertising space, second data, and corporate functions. Moving on to Slide 21 with some more color on streaming, which remains a growth business for us and where we set these prime ambitious targets. With 5.5 million paying subscribers, at the end of December 2022, our subscriber base grew by 32% year-on-year, mainly through RTL+ in Germany. For the first time, we've included the number of paying subscribers to RTL+ in Hungary.
Streaming revenue grew by 20% to EUR 267 million. As you can see on the slide, we increased our content spend by 45% to EUR 304 million in 2022, which translates into streaming startup losses of EUR 233 million. As mentioned by Björn , 2022 was a peak year in terms of streaming startup losses. This year we expect startup losses of just below EUR 200 million, and I'll come back to this in a minute with our expectations. In Germany, we are gradually expanding our cross-media offer. In August 2022, RTL Deutschland launched the RTL+ Music app. In addition to video content, RTL+ users now have access to more than 90 million songs from Deezer, one of the world's leading music streaming services.
More recently, we added podcasts to RTL+ Musik, followed by a growing selection of audiobooks. Ultimately, we aim to bundle our entertainment offers in one multimedia app to provide to our customers a personalized state-of-the-art experience. We plan to launch this multimedia app in the course of 2026. Overall, RTL is well on track to reach its ambitious streaming targets. By 2026, we plan to double our annual content spend to around EUR 600 million in comparison to 2022. On this basis, we aim to grow the number of paying subscribers across the RTL+ and Videoland to 10 million, increase our streaming revenue to EUR 1 billion, and to reach profitability in 2026. Moving on to the global content business, Fremantle, on Slide 22.
In 2022, Fremantle completed eight acquisitions and pickups in all major territories and across all genres, from the Italian high-quality fiction produced by Lux Vide, the award-winning German drama produced by Element Pictures, and the documentaries were produced with Seventy-two Films of Wildstar Films. Working with world-class storytellers and partnering with international directors and actors such as Angelina Jolie, Edward Berger, Salma Hayek Pinault, and Richard Brown is key to the success of Fremantle. In the last years, Fremantle has become an even stronger, more creative and diverse global content powerhouse, both in terms of geographic footprint and output across entertainment, drama, film as well as documentaries. While continuing to look for acquisitions and partnerships, we're now increasingly focused on the integration of TV companies, Fremantle, in the Fremantle network and on lifting the margins.
Today I will now take you through the group's outlook statement. The geopolitical and macroeconomic environment remain volatile, and the impact on our group's businesses is hard to predict. As of today, we expect moderately decrease in key advertising market and continued strong growth in streaming and content. On this basis, we expect our full year revenue to increase between EUR 0.13 billion and EUR 7.4 billion in 2023. Our adjusted EBITDA for 2023 to be between EUR 1 billion and EUR 1.05 billion. RTL+ startup losses to be just below EUR 200 million and consequently our Adjusted EBITDA before RTL+ startup losses to be between EUR 1.2 billion and EUR 1.25 billion.
As mentioned by John earlier, our dividend policy remained unchanged, which means the group can pay out at least 80% of the adjusted full year net results. Based on our current projections, this would result in a normal dividend paid in 2024 and 2025. For the financial years 2022 and 2024, approximately EUR 3.50 per share, in line with the 2022 and 2021 level. This brings us to the end of our presentation. Thank you for your attention, and we are now happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. one moment for the first question, please. We have the first question from Julien Roch from Barclays. Your question please.
Yes. Good morning. It's Julien Roch from Barclays. My first question is, could you give us some indication of Q1 ad trends by country? And when you said double-digit plans for new market for 2023, is it for your three main countries or different parts? That's the first question. The second one is I couldn't find a total viewing in Germany, which you were giving previously. Could you give that for us for 2022? It was 20 billion 663 minutes total last year and 541 million for non-linear views, if you could have those two numbers. That's my second question. And then the third one is Fremantle revenues in 2023.
You raised your target, maybe perform from the, what's left of M&A contribution from last year. Again, these are my three questions. Thank you.
Great. Let me start with Q1 advertising trends for our three main territories, Germany, France and the Netherlands. The German market is particularly weak. We see a decline in advertising coming from products, but also from the small and medium-sized enterprises in Germany. Our current expectation is for advertising, the advertising market, TV advertising market, Q1 to be down by 15%-20%. The situation is better in France. We expect a slight decline and looking better in the Netherlands, where we expect slight growth in the first quarter. A completely mixed picture. You take the German TV advertising market compared with 2019, it's actually down by 30%. Frankly, there's no good reasons for that.
We believe there's a significant catch-up potential going forward. We expect the situation in Germany to improve over the course of the year. This is also the basis for our planning and phasing, if you like, our financial subjects going on. We expect Q1 to be weak, as I said, Q2 to be slightly better, also on the basis of a slightly less onerous comparable as 2022, and then an improvement in the second half of the year. Modest decline, which is the word we use, means that we expect advertising to be broadly in line with what we saw in 2022, down by -3%.
Yeah. Last year the decline was minus 4%.
Exactly, yeah.
Yeah, we're seeing low single digits decline kind of in that area.
Yeah.
To your other question that decline is related to our overall portfolio, so the mix between all the key countries. The next question you had was on viewing time. When you look at RTL Deutschland, the total viewing minutes in 2022 were 20.319 billion and a share of non-linear 3.4%. In the Netherlands, just for comparison purposes, that share is 10%. In terms of 2023 outlook, you asked specifically about Fremantle that I will kind of point this in a broader perspective. As we said before, the market environment is volatile, the out inaudible impact is a little bit hard to predict. We also see revenue growth to EUR 7.3 billion-EUR 7.4 billion.
When you look at all the scope changes including Fremantle, they even out all together. The impact, the impact is not material to the organic. The growth we're expecting is fully organic, and that organic growth is driven by Fremantle. We're seeing continued healthy demand, and trend for business. The TV business, as discussed, is expected to be slow down by low single digits. This is really fully compensated by the growth of our streaming business.
Thank you, Jan.
Yep, welcome.
The next question comes from Richard Eary from UBS. Your question, please.
Yeah, I've just a couple questions. Just following on from Julien's first question on, around guidance. Can you be a bit more specific about streaming revenue expectations? Then you said healthy growth of Fremantle. Can you maybe just elaborate on that? That was the first question. The second question just comes back to streaming. Streaming subs last year were up 44%, revenues were up 20%. Can you just talk us through the mix issues that you're seeing and when you expect RTL+ subscription to come in, and how you expect that will impact on total ARPU and whether we see a reversal of sub growth versus revenue growth in 2023 and 2024? The third thing is just on the working capital. In the capital, there was a big working capital outflow of EUR 503 billion.
I don't know whether you can shed more color on that. I think you said something earlier in the presentation, but I've made most of it. Lastly, Thomas, you talked about consolidation. I don't know whether you can elaborate on your comments on that and the way you're at on conversations with regulatory authorities to see whether there is any positive light that could come through over the next couple of years.
Yeah, thanks for your question. Let me start with consolidation. To be honest, there's little hope regarding the attitude of the regulators. We were the first group, you know, to test the regulatory authorities and their definition of what they call relevant market. We thought we had good arguments to convince them. The broader definition of relevant market, beyond the advertising market, was justified. We continue to believe that's the case, but the authorities have taken a very, let's say, conservative approach.
Unfortunately, and I'd say in the foreseeable future, until we see even more structural change in the TV business, the linear TV business, and more substitution of TV advertising with other forms of advertising, the regulators are not going to move. That's why, unfortunately, we'll not be able to make the one big step of consolidation in France and the Netherlands, but now it goes with series of smaller steps in the areas which I described on advertising, on technology, on streaming, on data, content, et cetera. I see significant potential there, because on all these platforms, if you like, the consolidation of what small consolidation steps are in place about here, we're probably the only European group to have such platforms. You think about advertising technology, streaming technology, the international ad safe network, RTL AdConnect.
We're extremely well-placed. Let's not fool ourselves. Even if we're successful on all eight, paths to scale and make significant progress in front of you, which will not be equivalent to one big step. As I said, you know, we've got to accept reality. It's tough, to be honest, we accept reality, work with it, and help you find a new strategy, you know, of these series of smaller steps which we outlined, and we'll make sure that we update you on a regular basis on where we are, on where we are heading and what we're achieving. Jan, all the other points.
We'll happily answer the revenue assumption question for 2023 and also the working capital time. The first one, 2023 revenue, we're expecting our streaming business to grow revenue by around 25% in 2023. Fremantle we're checking organic growth within the tune of 4%-7% in line with kind of our previous guidance. In terms of working capital, the cash conversion rate was down in 2022 compared to previous year levels. That's kind of driven by an investment cycle we are going through. The drivers are well understood and primarily relate to our investment in streaming.
On the one hand, higher CapEx, on the other hand, build up of inventory for our program rights, for example, for fiction and other products. The other driver is the growth of the business of the organic growth of Fremantle, in particular here the film and improvement business. We also had a number of timing effects that we expect just tend to reverse in 2023 and expect a gradual return to higher cash conversion rate that we've seen in the past.
Briefly, on the streaming business, I mean, Videoland, look at Videoland and the Videoland metrics. We already in a pretty good shape, right? We have 1.2 million subscribers, all of which are owned and operated, at attractive with low churn rates and thus, attractive and increasing the attractive lifetime values. We're almost going to even strip out some of the costs related to the migration of the Videoland platform onto the platform, which will operate together with MTV. Look at RTL Deutschland, we have a slightly different situation there. We have significant momentum in the subscriber growth as we explained. We have 4 million subscribers at the end of last year. We've seen continued momentum in the first months of this year.
We have a very strong distribution partnership in Germany, which we don't have in the Netherlands. In Germany, it's with Deutsche Telekom. Approximately 50% of the RTL+ subscribers in Germany come via Deutsche Telekom, which I think is a healthy mix. What we need to do with RTL+ in Germany to become profitable is pretty straightforward, conceptually, much harder, of course, in practice. We need to continue the momentum on subscriber growth. Increase the revenue per subscriber. We're making significant steps there in Germany with price increases, significant price increases, which we announced a few weeks ago.
We're going to expand our content offer on RTL+, as I mentioned, from video to audio and text, which we believe will make the service even more attractive. Overall will widen the relevance or the addressable market for our service. And we'll, you know, have to put a significant investment into our technical platform, optimize our technical cost of the platform. We have a very detailed plan at RTL+, which we are in the course of fine-tuning with the heading pass the profitability and at least four or five or six key KPIs and key performance indicators, which we're monitoring very, very closely to get us to profitability and certain decent margins in the timeframe which I described.
Can I just ask a clarity question on so what you have? How do we think about as we go into 2023 between the outflow because of content investments in three months or, you know, subscriptions, what magnitude are we expecting in 2023?
As I said earlier, we're expecting a gradual improvement of the cash conversion rate in 2023, going to, I would say, levels of at least 70%-80% in 2023.
Okay. That's perfect. Thank you.
As, you know, as Jean explained, you know. I mean, historically our cash conversion rates were approximately 100%, which is great, but not necessarily the kind of growth of the business, right? The growth of our businesses, streaming and teaming, which to a very large extent are organic growth, in particular streaming, mean that we consume a bit more working capital. I mean, it's just as we think about CapEx for the teaming services, we are investing in CapEx to build a platform to increase and improve customer experience. We're almost at a peak there this year in particular for the multipurpose app in Germany. At the same time we're investing in content as you said, and therefore a slightly higher content inventory.
Think about, you know, at least part of the lower cash conversion rate to be an investment in the transformation of RTL and the organic buildup of new businesses, which if successful will create significant value for shareholders.
Great. Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Conor O'Shea from Kepler. Your question please.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. A few questions from my side as well. First question, just on the French business. Understanding there was a bit of a later catch-up post pandemic. There was strong growth initially last year. This seems to be continued again this year. Can you just give a little bit of color why there's such a markedly improved performance there versus some of your other regions? I would've thought that was a much bigger non-linear market. Can you explain what's going on there? Second question, on the distribution revenues. I think, according to my calculations, it's down about 7% year-on-year in Q4.
Just wondering what's going on there and if we should factor in growth, return to growth for 2023. Then the third question just on the synergies, the EUR 70 million run rate by 2025. Can you give us an idea of if you think that'll be backended with the timing? Realistically, are those savings gonna be partly or even fully offset by advertising declines in the print business in the meantime? Thank you.
Okay, let me start with Gruner + Jahr. Emma will then take the question on RTL Nederland, and Jean on distribution revenue. The synergy target for RTL and Gruner + Jahr is EUR 75 million. Last year we, excuse me, EUR 30 million. When we initially announced the deal, the synergy number was slightly higher. It's now a bit lower, and that's due to the market situation in Germany. It's due to the fact that we are effectively divesting or discontinuing 20% of the Gruner + Jahr title portfolio. We should get to the EUR 75 million mark by 2021.
The share of cost synergies will be significantly higher than in our initial plans, which I think is good news, because we all know that cost synergies are more tangible, than revenue synergies. Part of the savings which we're going to make as we went through restructuring the publishing business, EUR 70 million effectively come from integration, for example, of corporate functions, IT, data, et cetera, between RTL and Gruner + Jahr, which we didn't progress sufficiently on until now, so there's potential for more. Jan, on distribution?
As you pointed out, the distribution revenue on a reported basis is kind of stable versus last year because it's more EUR 18.1 million. Keep in mind that previous years still had RTL Belgium and RTL Croatia which had distribution revenues included. If you strip out the scope effects on an organic basis on the full year distribution revenue actually grew by 6%, and that growth is driven by RTL Germany. When you look specifically at Q4, there was indeed, again, on a reported basis, a decline. Again, fully compensated by the 2 scope effects, and on an organic basis, it was also around stable. Again, I think the important view is on the full year basis, where it continues to increase by 7%.
Thanks. Elmar?
As we mentioned earlier, we have seen a very robust and strong TV advertising market in the Netherlands throughout the course of 2022. It was an exceptional market growth of 8.7%, as we mentioned earlier, RTL Nederland even outperformed that market growth. We believe that there are two sectors that we would like to draw your attention to. The first one being the retail sector. There's been fierce competition amongst retailers, there's been also a significant advertising around the gaming and betting opportunities that continued to be strong out in the first quarter to 2023. We all know that these opportunities will cease to exist going forward. Probably it has helped to show a strong advertising income in the first quarter.
Yeah. There's future regulation on betting-
Okay.
-which unfortunately came in the Netherlands. It's probably accelerated advertising for betting in the run-up to the regulatory ban. Unfortunately this phenomenon will disappear after regulation.
Just a reminder, the re-restrictions ban, kicks in when?
Currently, first of April.
First of April. Okay. Any idea what proportion of the client base it is running at the moment in the Netherlands?
I can't give you a very precise figure as we speak. I would need to come back to that. We don't have a good enough grasp.
Yeah, we don't really disclose, you know, advertising by segment, by customers, for simplicity reasons. I don't think we want to disclose that number to be honest, but it's not insignificant. And it will lead to a normalization of the Dutch TV advertising market and growth in 2023 versus 2022.
Understood. Okay. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Roch. Mr. Roch, please go ahead.
Yes. Hello again. As it seems there is no more questions, I'm coming back with another three. On tuning, thank you very much for the guidance of it's going to be up to around 25% in 2023. Since that's a full question on 267, I get 325. Because we analysts would use the ruler to do forecast, 25% goes from 2024, 2025, 2026. I only get 63, and your guidance is EUR billion. We're expecting a significant acceleration in 2024, 2025, 2026 for the tuning. Can you explain why that is? Is my first question. The second question is how much was TV advertising down in Germany in 2022? On what basis you're gonna give me the number?
Is that including RTLZWEI, or excluding that one? Thank you.
Well, I mean, first, you know, subscriber number we're aiming for, you know, the 10 million is end of 2020. This is to ramp up until then. Then actually we're forecasting a significant ad increase in Germany, which will kick in in the course of this year, not, you know, not have a full year effect. That increase is related to two factors. The first is price increase, which we're currently putting in place for our video service. The main video offer we make, the one which is most demand, it's gonna be at EUR 4.99. We're increasing the price to EUR 6.99.
That will kick in, this will kick in in the course of the year. The second impact in Germany will be the MPA, the multipurpose app, comprising video, audio, and text. That, if it works, will drive ARPU very, very significantly. As we said, you know, the MPA will be launched in the course of this year. Let's say, around summer, before or after the summer break. You'll not see the full impact in 2023, but you will see it, if successful, in the subsequent years.
The second part of the question.
No, that I think was the question why we, you know, we were seeing the 25% growth this year and then in the next iteration, EUR 21 billion in 2026. I think what the two TV licenses in Germany, I think are part of the explanation.
I think we have a second question.
Oh, yeah.
Yes. What was the historical growth and the actual growth of German TV advertising for RTL in 2022?
Advertising in Germany, - 8%, 2022.
Less, yeah.
Less for the market. Less for the market. No, that's us. We think that this is in line with market. We lost a bit of market share in the first half of the year. We regained that market share in the second half of the year. We outperformed our commercial rival in terms of audience, as you explained, 0.5 percentage point audience delta between us and ProSieben. A little bit of catching up in the second half of the year. In the very soft German TV advertising market in the first quarter, in January, we gained market share. For 2022, assume that the -8% to -9% is our number and also the market number.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
That includes RTL too, because you were specifically-
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's the way we always report these numbers consistently, and compare them at the year by year by year base.
Next question comes from Stefan Finck from Finck Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking also one question, from the investor side. Just a small question on one balance sheet item. The loans and bank overdraft went up almost to the level of the cash and cash equivalent. Was this due to pending prolongation at the reporting date? Maybe you could say a word to this item.
Yeah. Just a second. In the net cash position at the end of the year, was EUR 118 million. We have EUR 500 million of kind of a long-term financing in place. That is, kind of, I think that is due in beginning of March, and that's why there was a reclassification from long-term liabilities to short-term liabilities. I think that just maybe, sort of, caused some, yeah, some confusion there on the changes. We did in the meantime, and that was, you know, sort of reported following subsequent events, did prolong that external financing at stable rate, EUR 200 million for three years and EUR 300 million for five years.
Oh, yeah, sure. Thank you very much.
We track short-term, long-term, short-term.
Yeah, of course. Okay, thanks.
You're welcome.
We have another follow-up from Mr. Eary. Mr. Eary, please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. Just trying to understand the streaming numbers and content spend for 2023. Streaming revenues are going up by 25% from EUR 267 million towards EUR 335 million. You are essentially reducing your losses to less than EUR 200 million. You're making a saving of EUR 25 million to get it to below that. There's content increasing in terms of spend because you're on the up trajectory from EUR 300 million- EUR 600 million. That would suggest the other OpEx in the business is coming down. Can you just explain why that is and what's happening on the other OpEx? Is it just because of marketing and tech investments? Are that costs which we should expect to come out and that's what's gonna be driving the operating leverage in the streaming business?
That would be helpful just to get some color.
Absolutely. I mean, first of all, look at our streaming numbers. They cover all streaming businesses in all territories. So at EUR -233 million last year, we'll be below EUR -200 million this year. One factor is that we discontinued the streaming service in France, Zive. Right? That eliminated a set of losses in France. At the same time, we are reducing, slightly reducing the set of losses in Germany. That is in to some extent due to technical costs which will go down in 2022 as a marketing expense.
Content spend will continue to increase as a significant and important driver for subscriber growth. Having said this, we now have much better data in Germany and also in the Netherlands. The content that actually drives inflow and drives usage, prevents churn, which means that we will, on the basis of that data, be able to make much better informed. Our content decisions are really focused on content genres which are particularly attractive in the metrics which I've just outlined. The combination of factors, we really have to go through the P&L of the streaming businesses country by country and then on title and then look at the different cost items to give you a better explanation. The headlines are the ones I mentioned.
There's no other revenues that are booked within the streaming businesses to literally the EUR 267 million, the streaming revenues minus the EUR 273 million of losses, which is therefore EUR 500 million of costs, which you said EUR 312 million of that is content. EUR 300-odd million that is in there in other costs.
Yeah. Yep. That's exactly right way of looking at it. One additional element which Pierre just mentioned is that we launched a streaming service in Hungary, right? That's in the fourth quarter last year. It's relatively small, but it will grow in the course of 2023 also on the back of high investments.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our last question for today as a follower is from Mr. O'Shea. Mr. O'Shea, please go ahead.
Yes. Yes, thank you. I just one follow-up question, if I could. I know this could probably take a start. As Thomas you said that you're going for small steps on consolidation around the TV in France, which was blocked, of course. You also looked into an alternative straight sale, and I think there were at least three bids in there at double the share price at the time. Each of these bids, citing, you know, the short deadline versus the renewal of the DTT license. Can you just talk us through sort of the thinking about that, as to why were there other factors involved as to why you decided not to follow through with that process? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Well, let me take you through the sequence of events and the timeline because it was pretty dynamic last year. The competition authorities informed us about their decision in October. The decision, interestingly, was not to say we blocked the deal, but the decision was to say you have to combine with one of M6's on the basis that you either sell to one or M6. I mean, okay. That's, I mean, that leads to the obvious conclusion not to go forward with the-
Sure.
with the deal. We were then, as I think I put it at the time, inundated with offers or expressions of interest to acquire our shares. It's not the case that we actively went into the market. We received a series of expressions of interest, which is fair, which is what I produce through the obligation to test the appetite, and of course also the attractiveness potential in offers and then to decide whether we want to go with them or not. The problem is, and you rightly pointed to this, the deadlines for the submission of the applications for the license renewal of the main channel and VOX was the fifth of January.
Based on our assessments, but also conversations I had with the head of the media authorities and competition authorities in France, we concluded there was a high risk that the transaction would not go through before the 15th of January. That was a precondition to making the application for the license renewal. It's on that basis that we then decided to hold on to M6 to make the license renewal request. As you know, in the meantime, we've been selected as technical expression from ARCOM, selected for the license renewal for point two, which I think is good news. It's kind of what everybody expected us to know that we are selected and we are now negotiating the terms itself, right?
The terms and conditions of the license and the new license will kick in today. The strings attached to the new license, as you know, is that we're not allowed to sell our shares or to give up our controlling position at M6 for a period of five years. That is just a condition related to the license and the license renewal. That's the situation. In the meantime, as you know, there's a new, let's say, anchor, potential investor in the capital structures on the society, which is CMA CGM. We have a great relationship, working very constructively. He or his company came to join the board, M6, perhaps on the board with Elmar Heggen.
We see place a new French partner in the business. We are currently conducting a strategic review of the business, in particular for the streaming business. As you said before, the focus will be on AVOD, advertising from the video on demand as opposed to subscription funders, given that M6 is not the number one in the market, but the number two, and it's a bit late in the game, given that the French broadcasters bet on CANAL+, which didn't work out for all sorts of reasons. That's the context which we operate. I can tell you a very happy shareholder for M6. Don't get me wrong.
It's, I believe, one of the best run TV companies in Europe. It generated, you know, record results in 2021. It shipped out its half year in features in 2021. In 2022, results are, you know, broadly in line with prior year, record level. We're happy shareholders of the company. Our biggest relationship is the management team, fully support the strategic review, and also investing in the business, particularly streaming going forward.
Yes. Great. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. If there are no further questions, thank you very much for your interest in RTL Group and our community results. Have a good day, and if there are further questions, we are available to answer them. Thank you. Have a good day.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.