Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome, and 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 press star followed by one on your touch-tone telephone. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to Oliver Fahlbusch. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this analyst call for RTL Group's Full Year Results 2021. The speakers for today's presentations are Thomas Rabe, the Group CEO, Björn Bauer, our CFO, and Jennifer Mullin, the CEO of Fremantle. 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 shows the areas our management team will cover today. With this, I now hand over to Thomas.
Thank you, Oliver. Good morning from me as well. In addition to our full year results 2021 and the outlook for 2022, we're focused today on our strategy and growth plans. A special welcome goes to Jennifer Mullin. After our outlook statement, she will present in more detail how Fremantle's management team plans to grow our global content business. After that, we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Starting on slide four, 2021 was a successful year for RTL Group in terms of financial and operating performance and strategic progress. Three major developments marked 2021. A strong rebound of TV advertising markets, the dynamic growth of our streaming and content businesses, and active portfolio management and significant progress in the transformation of the group.
Let me give you some highlights to illustrate these major developments. See, the advertising revenue was up 16% year-over-year, Fremantle's revenue 25%, and streaming revenue 31%. With higher operating profit and significant capital gains, group profit reached a record level of almost EUR 1.5 billion. In addition, we saw dynamic growth of our streaming services, RTL+ and Videoland. The number of paying subscribers increased by 74% to 3.8 million, and to 4.1 million by the end of February 2022. One and a half years ago, we expressed our view that alliances and larger merger moves and of the creation of national media champions in Europe are necessary, and we call on the regulators to be supportive. We also said that we are ready to act.
Today, we are leading the consolidation of the European TV industry. Since the beginning of 2021, we've signed agreements for five transactions in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Croatia. They all have the same target, to significantly strengthen our businesses in the competition with global tech and streaming platforms. In August last year, we announced that we'll accelerate the expansion of Fremantle, targeting full-year revenue of EUR 3 billion by 2025. With high organic growth and four acquisitions closed since April 2021, Fremantle is making clear progress to deliver on these targets. We also continued selling non-core assets, particularly North America, with high capital gains. Our shareholders will benefit from RTL Group's strong performance with a dividend of EUR 5 per share proposed to the Annual General Meeting.
I will now hand over to Björn, who will take us through the Group's financial results in more detail and through the business review.
Thank you, Thomas. Good morning, everyone. With regards to the Group's financial results, I will cover three points that were key to our 2021 performance. First, strong operating performance while ad markets rebounded. Second, active portfolio management leading to significant capital gains. Thirdly, our continued focus on cash flow to fund investments into our growth businesses and to allow for attractive shareholder returns in the form of dividends. Let's start with a look at our key financials on slide six. In 2021, Group revenue was up by 10.3% to EUR 6.6 billion, mainly due to the strong growth of TV advertising revenue. In addition, our content and streaming growth businesses performed strongly. Fremantle's revenue was up 25.3% to EUR 1.9 billion.
Streaming revenue from RTLSA and Videoland was up 31.2% to EUR 223 million. While distribution revenue, i.e., the revenue generated across the distribution platforms cable, satellite, and IPTV, including retransmission fees, increased by 9% to EUR 437 million. On an organic basis, i.e., before scope and currency effects, revenue grew by 13.5% compared to 2020. With ongoing cost control, RTL Group's Adjusted EBITDA increased by 35.1% to EUR 1.152 billion. This resulted in an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.4%, up 3.2 percentage points compared to 2020. The group profit for 2021 was up by a factor of 2.3 to the record level of EUR 1.454 billion. Let's move on to slide seven.
Here you see the development of RTL Group's total and TV advertising revenue on a quarterly basis. As mentioned before, RTL Group is back to pre-crisis level. Here are some more details. The soft start in 2021 was marked by lower TV advertising revenue, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, due to lockdown measures. As expected, TV advertising revenue grew strongly by 65% in Q2 2021 and continued to grow double-digit in Q3 and Q4 compared to the same period in 2020 and 2019. We have observed the same picture as in 2020. Once the economic environment started to improve, TV advertising money came back quickly. This clearly shows the strength of TV with regards to building reach and brands in a high quality and safe environment.
As a result, group revenue was back on the level of 2019, and organically up 4.3% compared to 2019. Moving on to slide 8, that puts our operating profit in a longer-term perspective. Here we wanted to share with you a view on our underlying profitability. With significantly higher streaming startup losses of EUR 166 million in 2021, our Adjusted EBITA before streaming startup losses grew to EUR 1.3818 billion. This marks a record level for RTL Group, with an Adjusted EBITA margin before streaming startup losses of 20.5%. Moving on to slide nine, looking now at the items below EBITA, down to group profit.
In April 2021, RTL Group sold its interest in SpotX to the U.S. ad tech company, Magnite. Since the announcement of the transaction on February 5, 2021, RTL Group exercised an option to increase the cash component of the transaction. At the end of April, RTL Group then received $640 million in cash and 12.37 million shares of Magnite stock, which are still held by RTL Group. The disposal of SpotX alone resulted in a capital gain of EUR 770 million. With Magnite share price decreasing in the second half of 2021, the effect on the revaluation of Magnite shares was -EUR 188 million in our 2021 accounts.
The remeasurement effect is put as part of the line item fair value measurement of investments. In total, RTL Group recorded capital gains and remeasurement effect of EUR 949 million in 2021. In addition to the SpotX disposal, this line includes mainly the capital gain from the sale of Ludia, EUR 56 million, and positive effects mainly from remeasurements of Super RTL, EUR 94 million, and Stéphane Plaza and Nouvelles Écritures, EUR 52 million. The Group's tax charge came in at EUR 427 million. The higher tax charge compared to 2020 was due to the Group's significantly higher profitability and the capital gains from the disposals of SpotX and Ludia, which were taxed at rates below our normalized tax rate. Accordingly, the reported tax rate was 23%, compared to 29% for 2020.
Looking now at the next slide, the cash flow statement. Our operating free cash flow was strong at EUR 1.248 billion, while the operating cash conversion rate was 114% in 2021. Last year's exceptionally high cash conversion rate was due to the favorable network and capital effects, a result of the measures that we introduced in reaction to the COVID-19 crisis at the beginning of Q2, 2020. In addition, the cash flow in 2021 was impacted by investments and timing effects at the level of free management.
The line acquisition and disposal of subsidiaries mainly reflects the cash received as part of the disposals of SpotX and Ludia, and the cash paid out for the acquisition of Gruner + Jahr, the remaining shareholding in Super RTL, and for the production labels from NENT Group, which we now call This is Nice Group. With the higher tax charge, and most importantly, the dividend payment for the year 2020 amounting to EUR 569 million, the net increase in cash in 2021 was EUR 59 million. At the end of December, RTL Group was in a net cash position of EUR 657 million, up from EUR 234 million at the end of 2020. On the next slide, I will present 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 impact. We target a payout ratio of at least 80%. The adjustments of EUR 335 million shown here relate to non-cash capital gains from the disposal of SpotX and fair value measurement at the level of Super RTL and Ludia, Stéphane Plaza Immobilier and Nouvelles Écritures, and Eureka Productions. In line with our dividend policy, our board has proposed a dividend of EUR 5 per share for 2021, of which EUR 3.50 represents the dividend of ordinary activities, while the remaining EUR 1.50 relates to the disposals of SpotX, Ludia, and VideoAmp. Technically, the VideoAmp transaction only closed on January 5, 2022, but we have still included the gain in this proposal.
The proposed dividend of EUR 5 per share results in a dividend payout of around 80%. Based on the average share price for 2021, this translates into a dividend yield of 10.3%. For the business review, I will start with RTL Deutschland on slide 13. In 2021, our largest unit, RTL Deutschland, accelerated the growth of its streaming service, RTL+. The number of paying subscribers more than doubled to more than 2.7 million compared to the end of 2020, while the viewing time increased by 47% year-over-year.
The strategic partnership with Deutsche Telekom's MagentaTV contributed significantly to the growth, which was also boosted by the growing number of original formats such as Sisi. Total revenue of RTL Deutschland was up 14% to EUR 2.4 billion, thanks to significantly higher TV advertising revenue, growing streaming revenue and the full consolidation of Super RTL as of July 1, 2021. Adjusted EBITA increased significantly to EUR 541 million, representing a margin of 22.3%. In terms of audiences, RTL Deutschland reported a combined audience share of 26.3% in the target group of viewers aged 14 to 59, which was down 1.2 percentage points year-on-year, partly due to major sporting events broadcast by the public broadcasters.
Our German family of channels kept its lead over its main commercial competitor, ProSiebenSat.1, broadly stable at 3.5 percentage points. RTL Deutschland's main channel successfully launched the prime time late evening news show, RTL Direkt, in the second half of 2021. Vox performed particularly well in 2021 as the channel was for four months among the top three commercial channels in the target group 14 to 49, the first time ever ahead of Sat.1 in these three months. Moving on to Groupe M6 on the next slide. The French net TV advertising market was estimated to be up 16.1% compared to 2021. Total revenue of Groupe M6 was up 9.2% to EUR 1.4 billion, mainly due to higher TV advertising revenue, which was up 17.5%.
Please note that there were significant negative scope effects at the level of Groupe M6 in 2021, resulting from the disposals of their diversification businesses, home shopping services, and iGraal. Adjusted EBITA increased significantly by 23.7% to EUR 329 million, representing a margin of 23.7%, and this despite the programming costs of 11 live matches of the European Football Championship. The audience share of our French families of free-to-air channels in the commercial target group was slightly up to 22.8%. M6 scored high ratings in the prime time with its popular format brands such as Top Chef, L'Amour est dans le pré, and Peking Express. This was complemented by successful event programs and the broadcast of the Euro, UEFA Euro matches. It was also a successful year for our French radio channel.
Thanks to their complementary positioning, RTL, RTL II, and Fun Radio reached 10 million listeners each day. Turning now to RTL Nederland on slide 15. The Dutch net TV advertising market was estimated to be up by 25.3% in 2021, with RTL Nederland clearly outperforming the market. RTL Nederland's total revenue increased by 20.8% to EUR 575 million. This resulted in a significantly higher Adjusted EBITA of EUR 107 million, up from EUR 58 million in 2020, and a profit margin of 18.6%. The combined Dutch family of channels delivered an audience share of 34.2%, up 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. The strong audience growth was mainly driven by the main channel, RTL 4, which scored high ratings, which shows such as De Farao's, Make Up Your Mind, and Lego Masters.
RTL Nederland's streaming service, Videoland, recorded paid subscriber growth of 20.9% compared to the end of December 2020. Videoland's growth was partly due to the third season of the original series, Mocro Maffia, and the reality format, Temptation Island, both of which are exclusive to Videoland in the Netherlands. Turning now to our global content business, Fremantle, on slide 16. In 2021, Fremantle continued to have major creative successes across all genres. Revenue at Fremantle was up by 25.3% to EUR 1.9 billion. Revenue was up 16% organically. Fremantle's Adjusted EBITA was up 62.1% to EUR 141 million. Jen will present the Fremantle story in full in a few minutes, and I'll now hand back over to Thomas, who will take you through the strategy update and the outlook.
Well, thank you, Björn. Our strategic framework remains unchanged. It is based on three priorities. Core, growth, and alliances and partnerships. Core means investing in premium content, strengthening our family's channels. It means cost and portfolio management, including larger consolidation moves. Growth focuses on our streaming services, advertising technology, and addressable TV, as well as content production with Fremantle. Alliances and partnerships span from advertising sales and content production to technology and data. Last year, we announced three major transactions to create national media champions. First, in France, with the planned combination of Groupe TF1 and Groupe M6. The closing is expected at the beginning of 2023. RTL Group's share in the combined group will be 16% after selling 11% to Groupe Bouygues. Second, in the Netherlands, with the planned combination of RTL Nederland and Talpa Network.
The closing is expected in the third quarter of 2022. RTL Group's share in the combined entity will be 70%. Third, in Germany, with the combination of RTL Deutschland and Gruner + Jahr. This transaction closed at the beginning of 2022. The strategic rationale for all transactions is the same. It is about scale and pooling resources to compete with global tech and streaming platforms. It's about higher investments in exclusive local content. It's about boosting our streaming services, and it's about investment in tech and data. When we presented the rationale for in-country consolidation, we pointed to the significant value creation potential. The estimated synergies by the Adjusted EBITDA run rate impact from these three transactions as follows. In France, EUR 250 million-EUR 350 million per annum to be realized by 2026.
In the Netherlands, EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million per annum to be realized by 2025. In Germany, EUR 100 million per annum to be realized by 2025. Summarized, the midpoint estimate of the impact on the unit's operating profit exceeds EUR 500 million per annum. RTL's share from these synergies is approximately EUR 250 million. This is more than a fifth of our Adjusted EBITDA in 2021. Moving on to slide 20. The growth of our streaming service, RTL+ and Videoland, accelerated significantly in 2021. With more than 3.8 million paying subscribers at the end of 2021, our subscriber base grew by 74% year-over-year.
This translates to average net subscriber additions of 135,000 per month in 2021, up from 63,000 in 2020. The positive momentum continued in the first weeks of 2022. As I mentioned, at the end of February, the number of paying subscribers exceeded 4.1 million, with more than 3 million RTL+ subscribers in Germany. This clearly demonstrates our streaming investments in marketing, technology, and content, as well as our strategic partnerships, such as the one with Deutsche Telekom, are paying off.
On the basis of strong growth in paying subscribers and as a consequence of significantly increased investment, RTL Group last year significantly raised its midterm targets by 2026 for RTL+ and Videoland as follows: To grow the total number of paying subscribers to 10 million and streaming revenue to EUR 1 billion, to reach profitability by 2026, and to reach all these goals will increase the annual spend, content spend to around EUR 600 million, which means that we will triple the annual content spend compared to 2021. The peak of the streaming start-up losses is expected this year with around EUR 250 million. Moving on to slide 21. In 2022, RTL+ will be enlarged to Germany's first cross-media entertainment service comprising video, audio, and text.
The new RTL+ offer will offer our audiences the most diverse spectrum of high-quality entertainment and independent information, all in one easy-to-use and personalized manner with a significant price advantage for the customer. This one app, all media approach is a true innovation in the German market, with the motto 'Watch more, listen more, and read more.' On watch, the new RTL+ will provide a growing number of originals and more than 60,000 hours of video content across all genres, as well as the HD/SD live streams of all 14 TV channels of RTL Deutschland. On listen, the new service will also include music, audiobooks, audio plays, and exclusive podcasts. RTL+ has agreed exclusive partnerships with Deezer for its premium package to offer a comprehensive music offering, and the publishing group Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe for audiobooks.
RTL+ subscribers will also be able to read digital editions of premium magazines from Gruner + Jahr portfolio, with access to a diverse range of content from popular brands such as Stern, Brigitte, and Geo. The new RTL+ will use state-of-the-art technology with a high level of personalization and content recommendations for true cross-media user experience. The successful partnership with Deutsche Telekom will continue, and the new RTL+ will be integrated into their MagentaTV offer. Moving on to our global content business, Fremantle, on slide 22. Since 2012, Fremantle successfully expanded into scripted drama organically and via a series of acquisitions. This helped to significantly grow the business with global and national streaming services. In 2021, streaming service accounted for more than 15% of Fremantle's total revenue.
In addition, there's a strong and growing demand for high-end factual content and documentaries, again, in particular from streaming services. For this reason, Fremantle has established a new global documentaries division, with the aim to replicate the success in drama and scripted. Jennifer will take you through the details of this approach. Moving on to the next slide. As already mentioned, we continue to actively manage our portfolio. In addition to the three major consolidation moves in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, we acquired the outstanding 60% shareholding of Super RTL from Disney, and we decided to sell RTL Belgium and RTL Croatia. In both cases, as you know, the buyers were strong local or regional media companies. We also continued to sell our share or shareholdings in non-core assets such as Ludia, VideoAmp, and SpotX.
Björn already explained in more detail how the proceeds from these disposals will contribute to the proposed dividend of EUR 5 per share. Moving on to the next slide. All of this results in a clear target structure for RTL Group's portfolio. With national media champions in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Hungary, cross-border cooperation in the areas of advertising sales, advertising technologies, streaming technology, and content development, and finally, as mentioned, Fremantle with ambitious growth plans. We've communicated clear targets for our growth businesses. Fremantle, EUR 3 billion revenue by 2025. Streaming, EUR 1 billion revenue by 2026. Addressable TV advertising, EUR 200 million revenue in Germany alone by 2025. In total, EUR 2 billion plus of revenue compared to 2021.
Let me now take you through the group's outlook statement, and let me start with some key assumptions. The first is that the economic recovery continues, mainly driven by private consumption, and there is no significant impact from COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. It is too early to quantify the potential impact of the war in Ukraine on our consumer sentiment, inflation and economic growth, and thus on our results in 2022. On this basis, we expect slightly growing TV advertising markets and continued strong growth in streaming and content. As the major consolidation move in France and the Netherlands are still subject to regulatory approval, our outlook assumes the full consolidation of Groupe M6 and RTL Nederland in the current scope for the full year 2022.
Slide 26 gives you an overview of how scope changes from organic growth are expected to impact our full year revenue and Adjusted EBITDA in 2022. Based on these assumptions, we expect our full year revenue to increase to approximately EUR 7.4 billion in 2022. This includes organic growth of approximately 5%-6% and positive net scope effects of around EUR 400 million. We expect our Adjusted EBITDA for 2022 to remain stable at approximately EUR 1.15 billion, despite significantly higher streaming startup losses of approximately EUR 250 million. This means that we expect our Adjusted EBITDA before streaming startup losses to increase to approximately EUR 1.4 billion in 2022, a new record level.
Moving on to the next slide, which gives you the summary of our outlook for 2022. As mentioned by Björn, our dividend policy remains unchanged. RTL Group plans to pay out at least 80% of the adjusted full-year net result, including cash capital gains. With this, I will now hand over to Jennifer Mullin, the CEO of Fremantle. She'll give you an overview of current trends in content production, but also how Fremantle plans to accelerate its growth over the next years. Jennifer, over to you.
Thank you, Thomas, and thank you everybody for having me. I'm excited to share our growth plans to become a EUR 3 billion company in the next few years. What I will say is it's an incredibly exciting time to be on the content side of the business. There's opportunity everywhere. I think if we go to the next slide, please. Thank you. This is just a snapshot of where there's an incredible amount of opportunity, not only in the U.S., but globally. Obviously we know about all the global digital platforms and there are new ones emerging every day. But we're also seeing the regional platforms. Of course, RTL has their fair share.
AVOD is an interesting new emerging area that Fremantle is taking advantage of, largely, with our catalog content and monetizing our vast catalog. Most of these platforms are starting to get into original content, which again creates opportunity for us. Pay TV is looking to commission more originals. Linear broadcasters, which is really the core of Fremantle's business and will continue to be the core. As we could see from Thomas and Björn's presentation, the advertising market is still strong. There's clearly a lot more investing that the linear broadcasters are doing in order to compete with the digital platforms. As has been referenced earlier, there's a growing demand for documentaries, largely in streaming, that Fremantle is looking to capitalize on. Next slide, please.
What does this mean for us? This is probably a very conservative view on the left of the market. These are original titles that the digital platforms have commissioned over the last five to six years. As you can see, it's a huge amount. Again, that 1,000 plus is probably conservative. Then Fremantle's opportunity. This is just a snapshot again of how we have capitalized on it. Mosquito Coast is a scripted show that we are producing our second season for with Apple. Apple has turned out to be a big client of ours. Amazon, we have several projects with Amazon, Veleno being one of them. This is a documentary. With Netflix, this is one of their most successful unscripted shows.
We're on our seventh version, Too Hot to Handle. We've done four English language versions. We've done two Spanish language versions, a Brazilian version, and we're actually shooting a German version right now. Us again capitalizing on the digital platforms is a big part of our strategic growth. Next slide, please. When we think about how we're going to get to EUR 3 billion in the next three years, it really comes down to three core pillars. One is protecting and growing our core, which is our unscripted side of the business, and I'll talk more about that in a moment. It is diversifying our portfolio, which Thomas just mentioned, and this is largely our scripted film and our newly developed documentary division. Finally, it's maximizing our global network.
This is incredibly important as the world becomes bigger and more access, us leveraging our creative relationships, our international relationships, our global footprint and scaling where appropriate is really important for us as well. This will be some organic and some M&A. Let's get into a bit more detail if we can go to the next slide, please. Entertainment or unscripted. Again, this is our core. Right now, this probably represents close to 70% of Fremantle's business, protecting this and growing this is incredibly important. It's our foundation. Just a couple of titles to call out. American Idol is. We're in our 20th season this year. The show is still incredibly strong.
America's Got Talent or the Got Talent franchise is our most successful franchise in the world of any production company in terms of its rollout and its scale. Nurturing these brands and keeping these brands alive and fresh is really incredibly important, again, to our foundation. To bolster that, we did two transactions last year. We bought the This is Nice Group, NENT, which is now called This is Nice. It's a collection of 12 companies in the Nordics that was designed to bolster, again, our unscripted entertainment proposition around the world, keep those formats coming into the pipeline, and again, giving us a really big market share, particularly in that region.
Eureka, we did a minority investment with Eureka several years ago, and we stepped up last year to a majority ownership. Eureka operates out of Australia and the U.S., and they are a very prolific provider of unscripted IP for our pipeline. These are just some of the titles. Printer's Devil is a huge title that we're rolling out right now. They're doing business with all of the digital platforms as well. Protecting the core is pillar number one. We can go to the next slide, please. Our drama business, we embarked on this several years ago, and this is a unique combination of organic growth within some of our territories.
As Thomas alluded to, we have purchased a number of companies, acquired a number of companies along the years, and we will continue to do so. We approach this drama business with the eye to fill gaps location-wise and genre-wise. Just sort of going through a couple of these titles. The Mosquito Coast, which I've mentioned, this comes out of our U.S. team and is based on a key book IP. Anna comes out of Italy and is just an amazing production. The Investigation is based on a true story about a murder of a journalist on a submarine. Exit is rooted in reality, and Eureka came out of South Africa.
This is just a snapshot of what we're doing globally. Some of this is from companies that we've acquired, and some of these are through our own Fremantle-based productions. I think on this one, we'll talk about Lux in a second. Growing this part of the business, and we're gonna get to film in a second, is a big part of Fremantle's growth strategy. There is an insatiable amount of appetite for quality premium scripted drama. Next slide, please. Film, there are a couple of territories that have done local films, Italy and Germany being two of them.
What we've realized, particularly with COVID-19, and the almost collapse of the traditional box office, is the demand for film has shifted and largely to digital models. That has created an enormous opportunity for Fremantle to not only exploit our scripted capabilities, but it offers our talent. There's a lot of crossover now right now between box office talent, traditional movie stars, directors who want to get into TV and then vice versa, TV talent that want to get into film. A perfect example is The Hand of God on the right. This is from a director that we have a deal with, Paolo Sorrentino.
He'd done a lot of television, but he decided to do a film, and it had a box office release, but it also had a second window with Netflix shortly thereafter. This is up for an Academy Award next week actually for Best International Film. I think there's an enormous opportunity for us to leverage the key creative talent we have across the group and say that you can do a scripted drama, you can do a film. The monetization models are there that allow us to shift seamlessly and really become a home for talent that allows them to tell a story again, either in a scripted series or in a short form film. But we're creating flexibility for our talent. This is a very exciting opportunity for us.
As you can see, we'll release 17 films this year compared to six in 2019 pre-COVID. Next slide, please. Finally, documentaries. There is a massive appetite, again, with the digital platforms for documentaries. Fremantle does some. We've been doing some local documentaries, but what we did last year was start a unit, and we're building teams largely in English language-speaking countries. The U.S., the U.K., and Australia, and starting there. We are—we're looking—we will probably do some very strategic M&A, do some talent deals, and follow what we did with the scripted business, which is accelerate our growth in this area with some key acquisitions, people that are companies or talent that are already working in this space, and have credibility in this space.
This is very filmmaker-led, like directors on the scripted side. This is a very skilled group of directors on the documentaries side. Finding the right talent to align with and the right stories to tell will be key. That said, these titles are just three premium titles that our organic teams have done already. Kingdom of Dreams is the fashion industry. Planet Sex comes out of our U.K. company, which is Cara Delevingne exploring sexuality all around the world and different cultures and how different cultures deal with sexuality. We're shooting that right now. Then Phat Tuesdays was a project that our U.S. team did about Black comics in the 1990s after the riots, and it's just recently aired on Amazon last month.
This is a big growth area for Fremantle. Next slide, please. Again, we talked about getting to our EUR 3 billion mark, and some of this will be organic growth, and some of it will be through M&A. This is just a snapshot of activity in the last year. Abot Hameiri is an Israeli-based company, and we took full ownership of them last year. Eureka, we talked about. This is the Australian-US, and we increased our stake to majority last year as well. This is Nice. It's the Nordic group that I talked about, the 12 companies in the Nordics. Lux, we just announced a couple of weeks ago.
This is an Italian scripted company that is a wonderful complement to the existing businesses we have in Italy. By complement, they produce content that is that is quite different than our existing two Italian-based scripted companies. We are probably the largest producer of Italian content right now with this acquisition. Then just last week, we announced that we took a minority stake in Fabel Entertainment. They are a scripted company here in the U.S., and they probably are best known for the Bosch series on Amazon. Again, this is just a snapshot. We do have some others in the works, but these are very strategic acquisitions that tip our scripted and our unscripted strategy for growth. Then next slide, please. We're a talent-led business.
Everything comes down to talent, IP, and then obviously execution. Just on the previous slide, I consider all of those companies talent. When we look at those acquisitions, we look at the principals, we look at their track record, and it's all talent-based. It all comes down to who's running those companies. This is a different way of looking at talent. We are in business with, I think, some of the best talent in the world, and this is just a very small snapshot of some of the deals that we've done. Sorrentino we already talked about. He's our director of The Hand of God, and again, will be up for an Oscar next week. We announced the deal with Angelina Jolie a couple of weeks ago.
Angelina, I don't think I need to tell you who she is, but she has an ambition to tell global and compelling stories around the world. In looking as to who she would partner with for this, Fremantle and her vision, our vision were really aligned. Again, we're global. We offer creative independence and creative freedom. When we discussed with her, it just seemed like a very natural and organic partnership for us to think about films, scripted television shows and documentaries. This is a pretty wide-ranging relationship that's using our global scale and our footprint and our independence and the fact that we invest in content to help her realize her story. Then on the other side of Paolo is a really interesting woman that we signed a deal with.
She is a lawyer, she's a journalist, an activist. This is Afua. She decided she wanted to take all of that experience that she had, and turn that into a television production company and tell stories that matter to her, and again, on a global scale. Similar to Angelina, but with a different experience. Really finding key talent for us, whether it's through an acquisition, whether it's through a filmmaker, whether it's through somebody who's in front of the camera like Afua or Angelina, is key to our ongoing success. That is Fremantle. Thank you very much. Thomas, back over to you.
Thank you, Jennifer. Yeah, no, thank you so much, Jennifer. Thanks for dialing in from L.A., and sorry for keeping you up so late. Thanks for sharing your insights. That brings us to the end of our presentation. Thanks for your attention, and we're now available for 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 on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Annick Maas from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I have first a few questions on Fremantle and then one on RTL. First of all, on slide, I think it's 29, you show us from where you get your revenues and suggested that linear is still the biggest client base. Can you maybe give us a bit more granular detail of what the mix is and how you expect this mix to change in the next five years? Then the second one on Fremantle is on M&A. Clearly M&A is a big part of your strategy. What are the areas where you think, you know, M&A is needed at Fremantle? And typically, when you look at M&A, what type of multiples do you have in mind?
I guess the last one on Fremantle, just, specifically to Jennifer, I guess, can you explain to us why is it advantageous for Fremantle to be part of RTL Group? Just on the TV advertising market, I think you've already suggested that, you see a slightly growing TV ad market. If you could give us a little bit more granularity per country, that would be great. Thank you.
Jennifer, you want to go first? Jennifer?
Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Yes.
Yeah, we can. Absolutely. Go ahead.
Oh, okay. Thanks. In no particular order, why is it advantageous to be part of RTL Group? First of all, it's incredibly supportive shareholder, and understands, again, the opportunity and is willing to support investments, strategic investments, and has really set us up for this growth plan. Look, we couldn't ask for a better shareholder. I say this, I've said this often, we're incredibly fortunate to have just have the solidarity and the structure behind it. In terms of M&A, we are looking in genre. Look, right now, in terms of M&A, we are looking in genre. We're looking for gaps, whether it's in our drama business, and that could be regionally.
We're looking at Spanish language as an area for growth, and then certainly in the documentary space. As I said, this is an area that we need to scale and build, and there'll be some M&A. Those are probably the two areas that we're focusing on in terms of M&A. I'm sorry, I think those were the two questions for me.
Yeah. Just to add from RTL's perspective, I mean, Fremantle is independently run, very important, but has excellent relationships with our broadcasters in Germany and France and the Netherlands and Hungary. As I said, you know, all dealings between Fremantle and RTL broadcasters are on an arm's length basis. Significantly more than 80% of Fremantle's revenue is with third parties. It's actually more than 90%. That's very important to us. We think that's absolutely key to maintain its independence, to attract the best talent at all levels of Fremantle and in all their dimensions. This has worked well in terms of M&A. I mean, as Jennifer said, I mean, there are plenty of opportunities, and we take it in steps.
We're not planning any significant, I mean, large scale M&A in content production. We take it in steps as we have in the last 18 months. Our objective is to increase the revenue of Fremantle this year to approximately EUR 2.2 billion. That then would leave a gap of EUR 800 million to the EUR 3 billion. We'd expect to fill approximately 50% of the gap via M&A and 50% organically. That's how we look at it. All the funding which Fremantle needs, be it for acquisitions, be it for talent deals and funding of productions, is available. I mean, RTL is very well funded and makes all the funds that Fremantle needs available.
For the growth plan, there's also a great relationship I should add, between Fremantle and other Bertelsmann companies, in particular, thinking of Random House and books, which can serve as a basis for films and series, and so with BMG in music. On the advertising markets, we said slight growth.
Revenue share?
Yeah, please. Yeah, yeah. On revenues, yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah, sorry. Just on your question related to the revenue mix of Fremantle. So the business with the streaming is obviously growing. It's close to 20% of revenue now, and the majority is with broadcasting clients. In terms of our strategic growth areas, around 30% is scripted. Documentaries is fast-growing, as Jen pointed out, but currently still less than 5% of revenue, and the rest is kind of entertainment.
On advertising, we say slight growth, beyond that probably means 0%-3%. That's our best estimate at this point, and this would apply to all markets in which we operate. The start into the year has been solid. As we said before, the potential impact from the war in Ukraine is very difficult to quantify at this stage. We don't see any direct impact at this stage, with the possible exception of Germany in March. Then the picture in Germany is much better in April. There's also the Easter effect, of course, in March and April of 2020 because Easter is two weeks later than in 2021. It's a mix of elements.
We continue to stick to our view that the ad market, that's only linear advertising, right? That's very important with the 0%-3%. That is also the basis for the outlook which we provided, the EUR 1.5 billion EBITA after and EUR 1.6 billion EBITA pre-streaming start-up losses. If more money would come in, that would clearly have a positive impact on the profits and our outlook. At this stage, we prefer to be prudent.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Yep.
Next question is from the line of Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Three questions from me as well. Just the first question, just have a little bit more detail, if possible, on the first quarter, particularly in the German market. I think you said, Thomas, March was down, or certainly weaker, than the start. If you could maybe give sort of an indication of TV advertising revenues in Q1, and also the potential rebound in April. And if possible, we could have that for France as well, that would be very helpful. Then second question, just to understand the guidance, particularly on the operating profit. You're guiding for EUR 800 million of extra revenues next year.
I understand streaming, there's more investment going in, but I think that's the increase in losses is less than EUR 100 million, but you're still coming out to flat EBITA at a group level. Just wondering what additional, sort of extra investment is going in there that's, you know, making the operating leverage effectively be close to zero. The third question, just in terms of the timing of the regulatory approvals of the major deals that you're expecting, in the Netherlands and in France. Just wondering if you could give an update if you see any potential delays there, obviously with the election in France and so on. What are your sort of, your latest thoughts on that? Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. Let me start with the timing of the deals. No change there. We expect clearance of the deal in the Netherlands in summer. You know, it can be just before the summer or during the summer, whatever the definition of summer is. You know, let's say between June and July. In France, there's a very clear timetable, which I think has been discussed publicly, which is that the decision would be taken and clearance would be obtained by mid of October. No change there to the timetable. As you may have seen, we've now made the formal filings, regulatory filings to the ADLC, the competition authorities in Paris. They're working on it.
In terms of additional revenue, yes, indeed, it's EUR 800 million additional revenue from EUR 6.6 billion to EUR 7.4 billion, of which EUR 400 million are organic and EUR 400 million are scope, net scope. Look at the guidance that is the slides which we provided. We look at our profitability pre-streaming start-up losses, and that profitability goes up by approximately EUR 90 million year-over-year, which means that on the incremental revenue of EUR 800 million, we generate EUR 90 million of EBITA, which is below our average margin. That is due to two effects. First, we have sold a number of businesses with pretty high margins. Think about SpotX and RTL Belgium, which are no longer in scope.
We're adding a number of the business and assets with slightly lower margins, like the production business. It really is a business mix point more than anything. Yeah.
If I may add, when you look at the margin pre-streaming, as presented earlier, 21% or 20.5%, and when you look at the EUR 1.4 billion, it's also around 20%.
Yeah.
The margin is relatively stable.
The important point here is that, frankly, is what we're trying to do, it's a balancing act. We want to keep profitability of the company high, particularly net profits and dividend payments. That's why we always look at net profits as a combination of operating performance and capital gains, which will continue in 2022. We keep net profits, I mean, operating profit, net profit up, we keep dividend levels up while significantly investing in our streaming business. I think it's a pretty good balance which we found, which I think is paying off quite nicely for the shareholders. On Q1, John, what would you add? To Germany, January and February were pretty solid. I mean, double-digit up versus prior year.
March is a bit weaker. It's very hard to tell what the various effects are. There is most probably Ukraine effect in the March numbers, but there's also the Easter effect, which I mentioned before.
Mm-hmm.
As I said, you know, the market is really hard to read. It's really short term. It's always been, but frankly, the level of uncertainties right now around COVID-19, inflation and Ukraine is very high by any standard. But we see, as I said, you know, April is picking up quite nicely. But this will have to be confirmed in the next weeks. That's why, as I said before, for the moment, let's be prudent. Let's work on the base of 0%-3% advertising market growth. We'll manage the costs accordingly to keep margins up. If the situation improves, which is perfectly possible, and particularly driven by private consumption, then I'm pretty certain that, given our strong market positions, we will benefit significantly.
Very clear. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas.
Yeah.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch tone telephone. Next question is from the line of Richard Eary from UBS. Please go ahead.
Many thanks. Just a couple of questions from myself. Thomas, you talked about the EUR 800 million of revenues, EUR 400 million was organic, EUR 400 million is in scope. Can you break those down further? I presume organic, you know, is gonna be driven by streaming, Fremantle organic, and then TV advertising. Within scope, we've obviously got Gruner + Jahr in some Fremantle M&A, and then we've got SpotX and RTL Belgium out. So I don't know whether you can maybe give us a more detailed bridge within that. That would be helpful. The second question is just, can you provide an update in terms of on the streaming announcement that you made in September, when the new products will become available? And how do we think about that? That would be helpful.
Maybe the last one is just on the Gruner + Jahr, basically acquisition. Obviously, you talked about synergies, you know, can you talk about when we can expect those to flow through into numbers, as well? That would be helpful.
Great. No, absolutely. Let's start with the EUR 400 million organic. Here, our breakdown is as follows. As I said, TV advertising between 0%-3%, Fremantle approximately 10%, and streaming is 30%. On scope, I mean, you provided, I mean, most of the elements. In scope, additional is Gruner. It's Fremantle with some acquisitions, but we expect more acquisitions in the course of the year. This will come on top. Obviously the full consolidation of Super RTL in Germany and the Free TA consolidation. Full consolidation started on the first of July. Scope out would be SpotX, Free TA and RTL Belgium.
We expect to complete the sale of RTL Belgium at the end of this month, which means that we'll have three months of revenue and three months of profit, and thereafter the business will be deconsolidated. Concerning the new product, the new product will be launched in the course of 2022. We're working on the launch timetable. We are very well advanced on the content agreements with third parties, in particular with Deezer, as I mentioned, and with Penguin Random House for audiobooks. We're also very advanced on distribution, in particular with Deutsche Telekom and the bundling with MagentaTV. All of this is in place. What we're now working on, or not working on, but focusing on, is to provide a product and a customer experience that matches customers' expectations.
As you know, customer expectations are driven by a series of U.S. offerings which are high standard. We don't want to disappoint them. Frankly, the main challenge of the product we're launching is that we're not just providing, you know, different media categories, but we actually want to provide services which is personalized across media. That, frankly, in technology terms is Champions League. I mean, this is quite demanding. As I said, the timetable will be this year, as soon as we can, but driven by a product that matches customer expectations. On Gruner + Jahr, we're making very good progress. Integration is running like a Swiss clock. We have a very detailed integration plan.
Organization management team level one and two, or first level and level one are in place. We're working on the second level. We announced that we would go for EUR 120 million, approximately EUR 100 million, but up to EUR 120 million of synergies, of which 30 would be cost synergies and 90 revenue synergies. We have identified a significant part, I mean, very specifically of these synergies based on projects already. If you would watch German television and our main channel, you would actually find Gruner + Jahr brands already on the schedule. One example is Chefkoch TV. Chefkoch is a brand owned by Gruner + Jahr. It's one of the largest cooking communities in Europe with a huge following in user-generated content.:
It's now been turned into Chefkoch TV, a TV program, which runs every day with 11:00 A.M to 12:00 A.M In the morning, and we're off to a very good start. We also launched Gala TV, which will be a society magazine on TV. There's a corresponding magazine at Gruner + Jahr. We're going to extend to Stern TV, which is a very popular magazine, a political science magazine. We're going to extend this to Sundays, and this will launch in April. Again, it's based on Stern, the brand of Gruner + Jahr. We're also going to launch Geo TV. It's a popular science program. Geo is a very well-established German brand, magazine, and online from Gruner + Jahr, which we're now going to bring to television.
In the first year of the integration of the two businesses, you'll already see significant changes and impact on RTL's program, and that we believe is very beneficial. More to come. We can provide a more detailed update maybe in August with the half year numbers. The message to you is that we're off to a very good start, and much of what we're doing is already visible on the TV channels.
Hey, can I just ask a follow-up?
Yes, of course.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Yeah. Just on the EUR 400 in-scope revenues, can you just outline what your expectations were for Gruner + Jahr and Super RTL in terms of revenues for this year?
Yeah.
Maybe just on the Gruner + Jahr integration, obviously it you know, within that EUR 100 million-EUR 130 million worth of costs, is now where you've now got first line of sight. Does that seem conservative or not?
Björn Bauer, on the scope, the details.
Yeah. When you look at RTL Germany, the G+J full consolidation and Super RTL full consolidation is around EUR 400 million positive impact in 2022 versus 2021. The other big impacts are RTL Belgium, approximately EUR 140 million less, and SpotX, which is - EUR 60 million. Then the other bigger ones are Ludia, - EUR 45 million, and Fremantle all in all is around over EUR 100 million more than last year. Yeah. These are the
Sorry, just to follow up on the Gruner + Jahr and Super RTL. You're saying that's EUR 400 million together?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gruner + Jahr alone would be how much, Björn Bauer?
360.
Yeah. EUR 360 million core publishing, print and online assets that were acquired by RTL at the beginning of this year.
Isn't that significantly below where you talked about, which was the EUR 500 million when you gave out pro forma numbers when you made the acquisition? I'm just trying to balance the numbers.
Yeah. Well, that's possible, yes. I mean, we made some changes to the scope. We ended up acquiring only the core publishing brands at print and digital. I mean, the assets which are really synergistic with RTL. That was the focus, and that probably explains the delta. I mean, we can check this further. Jan?
The additional impact. There were some consolidation effects.
Yeah.
that weren't taken into consideration. I think at the time we said, a little over EUR 400 million and, let's say around EUR 40 million EBITA. The EBITA contribution stands-
Yeah.
The revenue will be a little bit less than EUR 400, as I said. This is consolidation and partly scope driven, as Thomas just described.
Yeah.
It's not an underperformance.
No, absolutely not. No, no. The performance at Gruner + Jahr standalone is in line with expectations, despite significantly higher prices for paper for the print business. The synergies, as I said, are on track. I think, you know, to get back to your question on whether the EUR 100 million or EUR 120 million are high or low, I think it's realistic. Is there more potential on the cost side or generally on efficiencies in our German business? I'd say yes. We're clearly tapping into this. I mean, I think we've got a strong track record of cost control and cost management, and that applies to all of our business units.
just looking at RTL and Gruner + Jahr combined, the number of under EUR 20 million by 2025, 70% revenue and 30% costs, and we're very confident to achieve them.
Sorry, just to monopolize the call, but just one final question. Just on Fremantle, you talked about 10% organic growth for this year. What's the actual M&A addition into Fremantle this year in terms of absolute revenues from the consolidations?
Yeah. Just a second.
I mean, Fremantle ended the year at EUR 1.9 billion. At 10% organic growth, it's about EUR 200 million. We would expect from the known M&A effects an additional impact of about EUR 100 million, a little over EUR 100 million.
2.2 targets for this year.
Yeah.
The EUR 2.2 billion target. Okay. Thanks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask any further questions, please press star followed by one on your touch tone telephones. There are no further questions at this time, and I would like to hand back to Oliver Fahlbusch for closing comments. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you very much for your interest in RTL Group's full year results 2021. If you have further questions, of course, we are available to answer them throughout the day and, of course, in the future. Yeah. Thank you very much, and looking forward to connecting soon again.
Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time, and let's stay connected. All the best to you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephones. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.