Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our Q1 results call today. As in the previous calls, I will talk about the recent developments in the Q1 2022, and give you a strategic update. Henning will then present the financials for the first-
The conference is now being recorded.
Henning will then present the financials for the Q1 2022, before we give you a short outlook, what we expect for the Q2 and the coming months. Following our presentation, we will be available for Q&A. Despite the quite challenging setting in Q1, moving from the COVID-19 pandemic virtually seamlessly to the next challenges, we were able to deliver a landmark performance, especially when it comes to revenue. We were able to achieve the highest Q1 sales in the company's history. In total, reported group revenues for the Q1 were up by a remarkable 23% from EUR 312 million to EUR 385 million, spot on with our expectations. As in the previous quarters, organic revenue was at a comparable level with 24%, up 39 percentage points versus prior year.
The adjusted EBITDA increased over proportionally by 29% to EUR 95 million, mainly driven by the strong performance of out-of-home and when having a deeper look into the segment by the continued high-margin digital out-of-home business. Adjustments remained low and came in at EUR 3 million in Q1 2022. Our adjusted EBIT reflects the strong performance of the quarter, but also taking into account the comparably weak prior year basis due to the COVID lockdown, by rising by more than 100% to EUR 31 million. Same applies for adjusted net income, which grew from EUR 1 million to EUR 19 million. Operating cash flow for the Q1 developed pretty much in line with revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance, despite the fact that it includes a one-off effect for bonus payments for our Plus businesses and was up by 18%, improved from EUR 27 million to EUR 32 million.
As already explained at our prelims presentation, we will continue to invest into profitable growth and especially the rollout and accelerated expansion of our digital out-of-home portfolio. Consequently, CapEx spent more than doubled from EUR 14 million to EUR 34 million. To be prepared to roll out our accelerated expansion for digital out-of-home in all circumstances, we already secured all hardware components to implement our plan. Nevertheless, we have the flexibility to react on short notice and to adjust our expansion plans. In the current situation, the heterogeneous client structure makes our out-of-home business by far more resilient than most of our competition. About 60% of our revenues come from, in total, roughly 58,000 clients, and we approach them with, in total, 1,000 inbound and outbound salespeople and specialist teams on a local and regional level.
In particular, the local customers sign multi-year contracts, and although 58,000 clients sounds like a lot, there are more than 600,000 SMEs on our general target list. The addressable market is huge, and just last week we had the highest order intake ever with almost EUR 4 million in only one week from local customers. In both, across regional, local, as well as national advertisers, our clients are spread in a very balanced way across all industries. Accordingly, there is no specific exposure, and if one customer segment suffers, another one might develop in the opposite direction. We are already working on compensating the most challenged national branding budgets via local and regional customers. Under rougher economic conditions, advertisers tend to shift slightly more money to performance marketing and activities that directly convert into sales.
Our out-of-home Plus model gives us the flexibility with digital and dialogue media to keep overall budgets inside our group, even when advertisers push the focus to the lower end of their marketing funnel. At our Capital Markets Day half a year ago, we talked in detail about our strategy. Our focus areas are still unchanged and have also been the key drivers in the first three months of 2022. First of all, the digitization of our out-of-home infrastructure, especially with more digital roadside inventory to strengthen our profitable Public Video proposition. Secondly, the continued optimization of the synergy potential and network effects of out-of-home and digital and dialogue media, i.e., in the areas of content, tech, data, and customer access.
Finally, there is the unlocked value crystallization potential of Asam and especially Statista, and both have shown excellent growth and performance in the last weeks and months, despite some headwinds through the war in Ukraine. Despite valuation multiples decline since the peak around year-end, 2021, we received quite attractive offers, especially for Statista, in a range of $1 billion-$1.5 billion, which we declined. To unveil the true value of Statista as of now, we believe a spin-off and listing in Statista's largest market, the U.S., maximizes shareholder value. Let's have again a closer look at our digitization roadmap for out-of-home and where we are versus our midterm targets.
We stick to our midterm plan with a CAGR of 500 roadside screens and 300 incremental premium indoor screens per year until 2026, but decided at the beginning of this year to pull some of our investments forward and accelerate the momentum in 2022. We planned 750-800 roadside screens instead of the midterm benchmark of 500 in the coming 12 months, and Q1 has already brought almost 200 on top. We planned 400 instead of 300 premium indoor screens on top, with a clear focus on the top 10 cities in Germany. In Q1, we have installed almost 100. The long-term portfolio will be optimized, especially towards high traffic point-of-sale locations. No material opportunities occurred year-to-date so far.
The situation in the Ukraine has not changed our rollout plan so far, neither in Q1 nor for Q2, and we try to invest as much as possible in our long-term potential. Just in case the situation gets really bad, pausing the rollout would generate significant CapEx savings in the H2 of the year. We still try to convert every approval for new screens as quickly as possible. Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Essen have been focus cities for large format roadside screens beyond 10 square meters of size in Q1. i.e., in Berlin, Hannover, Duisburg, and Kassel, we've been strengthening our roadside proposition with a standard nine square meter product. In cities like Hamburg, Hannover, the Rhine-Main area, and Kassel, we have installed both smaller two square meter screens in the city centers, as well as digitized columns, our so-called Public Video City Towers.
Especially our growing digital out-of-home portfolio clearly helps deepening our relationships with advertisers like the food retailer, REWE, a campaign that just won the Deutscher Mediapreis for the best out-of-home campaign a couple of days ago, Lufthansa, leading the recovery of the travel sector, or Sky, representative for media and streaming services. Both classic out-of-home and digital out-of-home benefit from Ströer having a larger share of clients' advertising budget via online and dialogue solutions. New customers or temporarily non-active advertisers are finding their way to out-of-home. Stellantis, the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA, was one of the few automotive clients that was really present in out-of-home as the dominant lead medium, taking 95% of the total media budget. Also Scalable Capital and IKEA invested far beyond 80% of their above the line budget in out-of-home media in Q1.
A further door opener to our clients' budget is definitely t-online. Most advertisers use our two key platforms, the number one digital out-of-home network, in combination with the number one news platform by means of reach. As in the past years, t-online also grows website and app visits in 2022 so far. Just two weeks ago, we have launched a new design, including a completely new underlying technological backbone, headless CMS, cloud-based AWS microservices, and architecture. The new t-online is now fully responsive and currently the fastest-loading publisher website in Germany. There have been often discussions when that business is going to die, but the truth is, it was never stronger than today, and the most recent investment will fully pay off over the next couple of years. Q1 was also a good quarter for our non-core businesses, especially Statista.
Our first-mover advantage and market making pays off in a 48% top line growth in Q1, which speaks for itself. We constantly work on our roadmap to look into a potential value crystallization of the asset beginning of 2024. We have broadened the management team and constantly optimized the organizational structure to catch up with the growth. We have worked on defining the right KPIs to manage the business, but also drive value, ARR growth, gross margin, net revenue retention, and gross retention. We will start working on some formal and hygiene factors, like changing the legal form into an incorporation in Germany from a GmbH to an AG.
It's fair to say that our attempt to unlock the value of our non-core assets with a new segmentation and more transparency, especially around Statista, has failed when we look unemotionally at the current status. If we take, for Statista and Asam, the lower end of external valuations and offers, we get to EUR 1.5 billion. Our group market cap early this week was EUR 2.8 billion. We talk about EUR 1.3 billion for our core advertising business. Based on our guidance, the current market consensus for our group EBITDA is around EUR 555 million. Deducting around EUR 180 million for IFRS 16 effects and another EUR 25 million EBITDA for Asam and Statista takes us to roughly EUR 350 million euro EBITDA ex IFRS 16 for our core out-of-home and advertising business. Versus the EUR 1.3 billion.
An EBITDA multiple somewhere between 3.5 and 4. Anyway, the subscription business of Statista is running on rails, and the midterm target of EUR 250 million sales in 2025 is unchanged. In other words, nothing new. Statista simply performs. Despite some headwind due to the increased raw material prices, some challenging and longer discussions with retailers at the beginning of the year, and thus some revenue shifts into Q2, Asam delivered double-digit growth in Q1. Due to phasing effects in the retail business, Q2 is
Beyond 30% growth. Just as a reminder, Q1 last year, we had a hard lockdown and quite some favorable environments for the e-commerce part of Asam, and therefore more than 40% growth in Q1 last year. We have been running against comps this year that includes special effects at least 10 percentage points. Later in the year, we will evaluate our schedule sometime in Q4 to see if a potential exit makes sense considering the macroeconomic environment at that time. Operational and formal requirements like Tech DD or vendor due diligence work streams are already on the way, and we stick to our commitment to crystallize the value of non-core assets. Just to be clear, valuation is more important than timing. We will see what's possible end of the year for Asam, but we also have no pressure to do anything.
We have all seen the developments at the stock markets, especially around cyclical.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, we lost the connection, but we will be back in a second. Thank you.
Sorry, once again, I think we had some technical issues. Let me start again, running you through the Q1 2022 financials. On group level, sales growth accelerated as expected to 23% in the Q1 , right in the middle of our Q1 guidance of 20%-25% group revenue growth. Sales came in at EUR 385 million compared to EUR 312 million in Q1 2021. With that, we achieved the highest Q1 sales in the Ströer history, and this, as mentioned before, in the context of rising macroeconomic headwinds. Due to the very strong performance, especially of our high margin digital out-of-home business, which delivered a revenue increase of around 140%, adjusted EBITDA increased disproportionately compared to sales with 29% and came in at EUR 95 million for the quarter.
Exceptional items stood at EUR -3.3 million, including restructuring expenses of EUR 2 million and EUR 1 million of other minor items, and continued thus to remain on a very low level. As in previous quarters, depreciation and amortization continued to decline and were down to EUR 71 million in the quarter, mainly due to the declining D&A from capitalized purchase price allocation. As mentioned earlier, PPA will decline further going forward due to the general write down of the underlying assets. Financial results improved slightly from EUR 7 million to EUR 6 million due to lower interest on lease liabilities and more favorable exchange rates. Taxes developed mainly in line with business performance. Looking at the adjusted net income, the increase is pretty much in line with the improved business performance when compared with the prior year period and taking the effects described before into account.
In total, net income adjusted increased from EUR 1 million to EUR 19 million in Q1 2022. Moving over to cash flow. Altogether, we again see a quite decent cash flow, especially when considering our significant investments into the accelerated build-up of our digital out-of-home portfolio. Operating cash flow went up from EUR 27 million to EUR 32 million, a development which underlines our strong cash conversion capabilities even in challenging times. Working capital development follows seasonality, so the decrease will be normally reversed in the next quarters. In addition, working capital in Q1 2021 was supported by reverse factoring, which now amounts to zero. The 'others' position declined to -EUR 11 million. The reason here is the utilization of a provision for long-term incentives in our Data as a Service and E-Commerce segment.
Cash out from non-M&A investments more than doubles compared to Q1 2021 and increased from EUR 14 million to EUR 34 million, reflecting mainly the accelerated ramp up of our digital roadside portfolio, as Christian described earlier. Due to these investments, free cash flow before M&A was down from EUR 13 million to -EUR 2 million in Q1 2022. Leasing repayments declined by EUR 5 million from EUR 47 million to EUR 42 million, which is mainly the result of postponed payments by the end of the heavily COVID affected year 2020. Free cash flow adjusted came in at -EUR 44 million, just EUR 10 million short of Q1 2021. With this development, financial net debt was at EUR 653 million for the end of Q1 2022, and that's EUR 10 million below the same period in 2021.
Our leverage ratio, however, improved significantly to 1.96 compared to a level of close to 3 times a year ago. Sequentially, the leverage ratio remained stable. Let us now change perspective and focus on segment performance. Starting with out-of-home media. In total, out-of-home benefited from the overall positive market dynamics in the Q1 2022 compared with the prior year period, which was heavily affected by COVID-19 restrictions. In total, out-of-home segment revenue increased by 55% from EUR 98 million to EUR 152 million, and thus came in at the lower end of the forecasted corridor. Rising geopolitical uncertainty led to softer demand from national accounts, in particular, for our classical products. Adjusted for tobacco advertising sales, however, growth amounted to 59%.
With this Q1 2022 achieved an index level of roughly 93% compared to the pre-COVID Q1 of 2019. In detail, sales in classical out-of-home increased by 36% to EUR 96 million. This was outpaced significantly by the development of digital out-of-home, which more than doubled in revenues and rose by 141% to EUR 42 million. A clear sign that customers appreciate reach and flexibility of this product category, especially during times where economic visibility is impaired. Out-of-home services increased pretty much on a comparable level with classic. These performance trends were also reflected in the development of EBITDA adjusted, which increased disproportionately by 63% from EUR 36 million to EUR 59 million in the Q1 2022. Especially driven by the strong performance of digital out-of-home, as described before. Accordingly, the margin went up from 37% to 39%.
Please bear in mind that Q1 2021 still benefited from government short-time allowances. Our Digital & Dialog Media segment continued to deliver a sound performance. Revenues increased by around 6% from EUR 161 million in Q1 2021 to EUR 170 million in the Q1 of the reporting period. Revenues in online advertising and content publishing was up 4% from EUR 86 million-EUR 89 million, fueled by high traffic on Ströer's own content platforms, in particular t-online. Some changes in the publisher portfolio were more than compensated in the period under review. The businesses grouped under Dialogue Media continued to perform robustly. Sales increased by 9% from EUR 75 million-EUR 82 million in Q1 2022. However, performance showed diverse business dynamics in detail.
Direct sales in the energy sector in France and Italy had to prove themselves in a challenging context. Call centers in Germany had to cope with higher COVID-induced absentee rates, while the German door-to-door business developed very strongly and more than compensated for that. Taking the aforementioned into account, all in, adjusted EBITDA of the segment in Q1 2022 was, with EUR 37 million, pretty much on par with the same period in 2021. Yet another quarter of strong growth, especially for Statista. In total, our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment was up by 26% to EUR 71 million from EUR 56 million in the prior year period. With an increase of 48% growth in the Q1 , Data as a Service Statista continued to show strong performance and achieved sales of EUR 34 million or EUR 11 million up against the same period of 2021.
Against a very favorable environment for e-commerce and TV shopping in the prior year period, Asam performed very solidly, in particular in context of other German e-commerce players in Q1 2022. Sales were up by 11% to EUR 37 million. Due to increasing investments and accelerated growth and the expansion of our international business and higher raw material prices at Asam, adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 8% for the segment. Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 6 million in Q1 2022, EUR 800,000 short of Q1 2021. Adjusted for startup costs for Asam, adjusted EBITDA in Q1 would be slightly above the prior year level. Let me now hand you over back to Christian for some closing remarks and our outlooks for the current year.
Let's have a look at the coming months. Already in Q1, our advertising segments, i.e., out-of-home and online, have been performing well. Apart from our current order book, the Nielsen forecast for the rest of the year looks still okay. We are clearly facing more headwind, but it also doesn't look like we are getting in massive turbulences, at least based on the data points we have today. That basis, and without a significant next COVID wave in autumn or massive further escalation of the Ukraine situation and its domino effects for the economy, we expect for the Q2 2022, organic group revenue up by 12%-15% and out-of-home +20%-30% and group EBITDA margin broadly stable.
For the first half of 2022, we thus expect group organic growth of 17%-19% and out-of-home up by 33%-39% and group EBITDA margin on or above 2021 level. For the full year, we expect unchanged group organic growth of 10%-14%, out-of-home up by 16%-20% and group EBITDA margin above 2021 level. As of today, we also still feel very comfortable with our midterm plans until 2026. The non-core businesses grow fast. Digital & Dialog Media show consistent and robust performance. Out-of-home to date and in H1 will create a running start for our five-year goal. Just as a recap, because it's not the first time that we had to operate in rough conditions. Google entered the ad market and changed the game. We had a financial crisis.
Facebook and Amazon took advertising dollars. We had the pandemic and lockdowns hit public life and our audience. We have been always relatively strong in tough times, and on the long run, we have been growing our business. Before we close the presentation, let me briefly hand over to Christian Baier for some personal comments. Thank you, Christian. Let me express a few sentences on my own behalf. I decided to leave Ströer this summer due to family reasons. As some of you know, I have three kids and live with my family in Berlin. My wife and I decided that moving to Cologne was no option, and that continuing the commute between the two cities isn't the right way forward either. It simply is my turn now to take over more responsibility in our daily family life by being present as a dad.
I'm very grateful for the last three years, which have been quite challenging for our business due to the pandemic and now the war in Eastern Europe. Still, I'm certain that we have made significant progress in many areas, specifically the digitization of out-of-home, and that we are now stronger as a business than ever before. Let me take this opportunity to say thank you to you, our investors and analysts, for the professional collaboration throughout the years. Many thanks. See you around. Over to you, Christian. Thank you. Let me close the presentation with looking at our financial calendar for the coming months and further in-depth information we plan to provide. For the summer, we plan to give you a deep dive on our ESG initiatives as part of the release of our next ESG report.
Our AGM is planned for June 2022, and the invitation released yesterday includes the dividend proposal for 2021. We will probably use the AGM or Q3 numbers to update our capital allocation strategy, given the fact that our leverage is declining month-over-month. We plan the next capital markets day end of September or early October, and the focus topics will be digital out-of-home and Statista. Further dates can be found on our financial calendar on our newly designed website. Thank you, everyone, and we are now happy to take your questions.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine and the star key again. Please press nine and the star key now to state your question. The first question comes from Julien Roch. Please go ahead.
First one is on Statista. Can you tell us when approximately you received the offers and whether you got one, two, or three offers? Second question is, what is the visibility on Q2? If trends go down dramatically all of a sudden, say next week, what's the minimum you can get to on your versus your 20%-30% guidance? I mean, kind of question on visibility. Coming back on something you said about a minute ago on capital allocation, where you might revisit that because you're starting to be unlevered. Are you thinking about special dividend or share buyback?
If you do share buyback, the shares are not that liquid, so would the founders sell to stay where they are, or would they bleed themselves? These are my three questions. Thank you.
Hi, Julian. Thanks for your question. On Statista, I think the last offer that we got in was 10 days ago, following well, I would almost say a small DD, because someone was very serious about the asset, asked us for additional information, which we shared under an NDA. The first one that we got that was, I think a serious one in the kind of range that I described between EUR 1 billion and EUR 1.5 billion, went back to January this year. I think we had at least 3 or 4 more indicative offers, where we just didn't follow up in real detail 'cause we didn't feel like it's the right time for that.
I think there's ongoing and quite concrete interest in the asset and that's why we just want to keep everyone updated here. On Q2, well, when it comes to the worst-case short-term, we wouldn't expect any immediate impact on the segments 2 and 3 that have an impact on our guidance. I think knowing the lead times for out-of-home in general, for the classic business as well as the general lead times in the regional and local market, I would say the guidance that we've given, the lower end that we've provided already includes the kind of residual risks for the coming, let's say, three or four weeks. That would anyway be the only weeks that have an impact on the Q2 results.
Because week over week, the share of Q2 in our order intake is going downwards. That's why I think today we feel quite comfortable with the Q2 guidance also for out-of-home, on even on the basis that there might be short-term some more negative news from the Ukraine. Whatever happens in the H2 of the year, it's very difficult to predict. The order book basis at the moment looks very reasonable. There's nothing where we would say you see clear tendencies. Everything. Right. I think at the moment it makes more sense to look at stuff quarter- by- quarter, because that's the kind of things where you have a feeling for.
On your third question, I think as of now, we can only say we want to do a really general review and look at everything unbiased, without already indicating anything. We just wanna have a look at our current dividend policy, at our updated CapEx needs. We just wanna double-check where the leverage is and how that leverage develops under different macro scenarios. We feel like it's the right moment to double-check if what we have done in the last two or three years is right, or if we need to change something. As I said, unbiased means we look at every possible opportunity and would also take all assumptions from the path aside, be open in general, to execute whatever the analysis might bring.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Annick Maas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. First question: you gave now a 2022 board guidance. I think you want to install 1,200 new boards this year. Did I get it right, you installed already 100 in Q1? I guess, you know, that's my first question. Linked to that, actually, my main question would be, how much of the CapEx linked to these boards is already committed? Basically, you know, what is your CapEx variability in the H2 of the year if things get worse? Secondly, on Statista, maybe can you tell us which type of buyers you are talking to? Just in dialogue, I'm keen to understand which ones of the assets actually did well here. Is it Ranger or is it the call centers?
Finally, can you just confirm that you have still not seen any budget cuts, but we are still only speaking about budget shifts in the outdoor business? Thank you.
Maybe, Annick, on CapEx. I mean, I think you were probably reflecting the numbers. The basic message is that we're trying to redraw some of the midterm expansion plans and do as much as we can on the shorter end. In terms of flexibility, I think it's fair to say that if we were to stop, at least, let's say, at any point in time before the first half, there is still significant room to reduce the budget in a vicinity of, let's say, EUR 10 million-EUR 20 million. Of course, this, you know, building those screens is a long-term process, so you cannot go from like 100 index to 50 within two days. I think there's firm flexibility.
Looking at all the things the company has achieved during COVID challenges, I think we are very optimistic that whatever the environment will be, we have a lot of levers to react properly on CapEx and on cost as well. Maybe just to clarify that on the numbers. If we look at roadside screens, we say that over the next five years, we want to do on average 500 on top per year. At the beginning of this year, we said year one will be definitely a stronger year with 750-800. We are not defining already if that means that the extra comes in general on top, or if we do a little bit less in the following years, we will see that.
In the Q1 , we've done roughly 200 roadside screens. So a little bit more than a quarter of what we planned for this year, which is already a higher number than the average across the 5 years. There is on top the indoor portfolio, so that is traditional Public Video product and train station, shopping malls, public transportation systems. We said at the Capital Markets Day, we wanna do 300 per year. So for this year, we also said we do wanna do a little bit more, 400 instead of 300. We've done, I think, 98 or 99, something like that. So a little bit less than a quarter of what we wanna do as an upgraded number.
The interest at the moment regarding Statista clearly comes from financial investors, both private equity as well as specialized funds into those areas that invest in information services data, but also SaaS businesses, and maybe also come rather from the U.S. or are global players than being originally European investors. I think strategic investors have not talked to us in a way that we felt like the offer is in a range where financial investors are at the moment. On the budget cut question, at the moment, we work on the basis of the same annual agreements and commitments with all the national advertisers. That's the ones where I think it's worthwhile looking at what is budget shift, what is budget cut. At least at the moment, we don't see that anyone already renegotiates deals.
Yeah, they are shifting money back and forth. I think as Henning described in the segment financials, the digital out-of-home business is running almost a little bit better than expected. The shifts that we currently see are rather happening on national broadcasting brand campaigns, where advertisers, more money, but book at least 4, 6, 8 weeks in advance. Including all the production, at least 2 weeks before the campaign, you normally cannot change too much. I think, obviously the area where I think it's just natural that advertisers shift a little bit money because if they book it today and then produce the stuff in 4 weeks time, and then are on air in 6 weeks, they need to know today what exactly the environment for branding is. I think that's at the moment the key obstacle.
Back to your question. We don't see cuts yet. All we see is that advertisers shuffling money a little bit back and forth. I think we've missed one question on the Dialog segment, I think that you had.
Yeah, yeah. Indeed. Just keen to understand which one of the assets within Dialog was the driver here.
Clearly the door-to-door business.
Okay. Super. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Craig Abbott. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning, everyone. Yeah, I just have one really quick one here. On your slide regarding the digital sales, you know, which were sluggish in Q1, you mentioned two things. One, challenging monetization in news environment. You mentioned that you were able to compensate for changes in the publisher portfolio. Could you maybe elaborate on a little bit more on both of these points and how you see those trends potentially developing in the coming quarters? Thank you.
Well, I think the first one is a little bit like the combination of positive and negative aspects of such a crisis and the underlying situation for news media. If you look at the online, the traffic there is one more time at an historic all-time high because of course, after the pandemic, traffic went a little bit down to more normal levels. But with the Ukraine crisis, the people are interested in understanding what's going on. So I think that's the best times for any kind of news media. And you probably get an extra tailwind of 5, 10, maybe sometimes 15% of traffic because of that interest in news in general.
That said, if your landing page or starting page is dominated by news around war and so on, it makes it a little bit less attractive for advertisers. You need to find the right balance, on the one hand, to benefit from the traffic uplift, on the other hand, to make sure that you maybe keep a couple of news pieces free of advertising and give advertisers space somewhere else. At the moment, the net effect is still positive, but it's fair to say that traffic goes up because of the news around the war. For advertisers, more traffic in general is good, but they also don't wanna see most of their advertising in that kind of environment.
There's specific brands that are a bit more concerned about those connotations, but that's okay and handleable. On the publisher portfolio, we have one larger publisher that is doing parts of the inventory on their own. That's a sports website. They want to combine it with other portfolio that they have in other media, and that has an impact on revenue structure. That doesn't change the cooperation in general, but there's a little bit less traffic that goes through our monetization arm. That's the background of that.
Okay. Your core portfolio of, I don't know the exact number at the moment, but with these hundreds of third-party contracts, publishers, that remains stable.
Yeah. It's just, you know, if you have one of your top 10 publishers decides to take 10% of the inventory to monetize it directly, and it's a high margin publisher, then it has an impact of at least two or three percentage points on the top line, not on the bottom line.
Mm-hmm.
If you would take that into account, then your growth rate would be another 2 or 3 percentage points higher. That's the point that we wanted to make. The online business, let's call it online, not digital, just to be clear and
Mm-hmm.
Not confusing anyone, is really performing very well, also including or excluding those aspects.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Christoph Löhrke. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks everyone for taking my questions. First coming back to the guidance, I think 20%-30% in the out-of-home is quite strong, given that the comp, you know, wasn't that easy. You talked about macro, which hasn't been helpful either. I'm just curious, is it possible to get a bit more granularity on, let's say, digital versus classic, just so we have a bit of an idea of some of the shifts that you've outlined before with respect to the numbers in the current quarter. Second question on Asam. I looked at the one on the slides last year, which suggested that 2022 revenue could be around EUR 190 million. You know, that would sort of imply a still more than 35% growth.
I get the point on a lot of your e-commerce comps being weaker or having a weaker start to the year. I understand 11% growth in that context, but it still kind of looks challenging, looking at the full year. I'm just curious whether it's possible for you to give a bit of an update on what kind of growth rate you're comfortable with for Asam for the year, you know, even if it's a range or something like that would be helpful. Then just trying to understand like a non-value crystallization question on Statista. I'm just curious, obviously a strong quarter, is there any more color you can give what drove that. Maybe also, whether it had a positive impact on profitability.
Just get a bit of an update on where we stand here. Thanks.
Let's start with Asam. Yeah, I think you're right. I said about a year ago, we said we can get up to EUR 190. I think our budget for this year ultimately is the mid-EUR 170s. We've calculated with up to 25% growth for the full year. On the basis of what we see at the moment for H1, we expect being above 20%. I think we are still, despite the headwind that we see through raw material prices, there's less momentum for e-commerce. We feel like until mid of the year we are on track for our plan. There's a little bit of shifts between Q1 and Q2 because of the retail business.
For the first time, I think also with Asam, we've seen that there were some discussion.
Ladies and gentlemen, we lost the connection to the speakers again. Just wait a second. We will be right back. Thank you.
Sorry. I think we've been falling out again, but we should be reconnected. I think just summing up the last question, up to 25% growth as we historically had with the asset, taking us from EUR 140 into the mid-EUR 170s revenue-wise, is what we see at the moment on the basis of the first half of the year.
Some color on Statista, Christopher, I would say extremely strong performance, also better than we anticipated in the Q1 . Honestly, also to some extent, reflecting very strong billing business towards the end of last year. As you know, we accrue the respective turnover over the years. Some of this overachievement was actually still due to the heavy and strong performance the sales teams in Statista have delivered last year. Also, on the profitability side, you can be assured that also here, based on the sales trends, we saw some progress.
On your outlook question for out-of-home for Q2, if we got it right, I think at the moment what we see is that a classic business is in the range, probably, including services, they normally tend to develop in parallel somewhere between 15 or around 15%. Digital out-of-home is again, we had seen a quite nice uptake last year in Q2, if you remember, from May onwards already. At the moment, I would say we are able to double the digital out-of-home volume in Q2 again. I think that's also the kind of, I don't know, where our, I wouldn't say confidence, but we feel comfortable with the substance and the performance of the business, especially also the out-of-home business.
Because we see when the macro environment is unclear and advertisers need flexibility and they want to react short-term and maybe they are happy with the booking but want to change the copy or the creative short-term, then digital out-of-home is an ideal medium already for that. I wouldn't say that the crisis has almost accelerated again, the digital out-of-home development, but you clearly see that if there are challenges, then it's more the long-term bookable classic stuff for branding and digital out-of-home is performing quite nicely. First half of 2022 will be definitely more than doubled digital out-of-home revenues.
Perfect. Very clear. Thanks a lot.
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Good. I would say thank you much for your time, for your attention, for your questions, and stay healthy, stay safe, and we hope to see you soon.
Take care. Take care, everybody. Thank you.
Bye. Bye-bye.