Ladies and gentlemen, the analysts, let me welcome you to our call on our Q4 and preliminary and unaudited full-year results for 2024. We start the call with a short overview of the key numbers and our key strategic achievements in the context of the current market dynamics. In total, revenues were up by 7% reported, or 6.4% on an organic basis, from EUR 1.9 billion- EUR 2.05 billion, a new milestone in the Ströer success story to break through the EUR 2 billion barrier for the first time. The most important thing to take away from this, however, is that with our core business Out-of-Home , we have the fastest-growing advertising category, and Digital Out-of-Home is a long-term revenue and earnings driver.
For the year as a whole, we were able to increase revenue in Digital Out-of-Home by over 23%, having a strong positive impact not only on the segment but also on the group margin. Looking at the other key figures on the page, they are developing exactly as we expected and explained in earlier calls. EBITDA adjusted is growing faster than revenue. EBIT adjusted and net income adjusted are growing almost twice as fast as EBIT adjusted, reflecting continuous easing cost pressure as well as declining inflation and, in particular, the sustained operational leverage in our core Out-of-Home segment. In total, EBIT adjusted was up from EUR 569 million- EUR 626 million.
EBIT adjusted improved from EUR 266 million - EUR 320 million , or 20%, also due to relatively stable IFRS 16 effects, a development that we also see for the coming years as described in previous calls. Net income adjusted increased in line with EBIT adjusted from EUR 143 million - EUR 171 million , or also 20%. Free cash flow adjusted is probably the strongest statement. It nearly doubled from EUR 81 million - EUR 158 million , in addition to the positive business development, lower capital expenditure, and tax expenses compared to the previous year, as well as relatively stable IFRS 16 repayments, contributed to this encouraging development.
At EUR 94 million CapEx in the year, it was 27% below the previous year's figure of around EUR 129 million and reflects the continued back to normal and the objective to further optimize and improve the fill rate of our Digital Out-of-Home portfolio. We develop our Infrastructure more demand-oriented and focus on leveraging the existing capacities. The ad market 2024 was driven by an extremely strong H1, and especially the UEFA European Football Championship, had a positive impact. At the same time, momentum slowed down after the summer break, and the Christmas advertising season in November and December was a bit softer than expected for all media, definitely resulting from the unclear political situation and the breakup of the Traffic Light Coalition in November. Let's have a look at the Nielsen numbers in the middle of the chart first.
Please keep in mind that those show gross rate card developments, and the net revenue is on average 6-7 points lower. On a like-for-like and gross basis, the Out-of-Home category is outperforming all other media with double-digit growth and continuously wins market share. In the last 10 years, Out-of-Home was winning half a percentage point market share per year, and 2024 was another proof point for this long-term structural change. Translating the gross Nielsen numbers into net revenue, the full-year 2024 ad market was probably somewhat flattish. RTL and ProSieben haven't published their net numbers yet or are just underway to see what the gross + 5% for television are worth on a net basis, but applying the normal spread from gross to net, television was best case down by 2-3 percentage points.
I think ProSiebenSat.1 communicated -5% for full-year 2024. In comparison, our Total Out-of-Home Business was up 12% in organic net revenue, and Digital Out-of-Home delivered 23% growth. We have outperformed TV and the ad market on a net basis by roughly 15 points, with the total Out-of-Home business, Digital Out-of-Home , is 25 points better. That said, Digital Out-of-Home continues to outperform the average growth rate of global platforms like Google, YouTube, or Meta, a picture we can see consistently in the last 6 to 8 quarters, no matter what the overall ad market dynamic looks like. Out-of-Home advertising is evolving more and more to a digital and data-driven business.
Until the 1990s, when the lead medium in the ad market was still print, Out-of-Home advertising meant selecting individual billboards, spending roughly EUR 400,000 for a campaign, and living with four to six weeks lead time from booking to going live. In the following 20 years, and when TV was the dominating media in the market, lead times didn't change, but more advanced products like Scrollers or City Light Posters got booked in predefined networks and required roughly EUR 1.5 million for a proper nationwide campaign. Today, globally, two-thirds of all advertising spend are digital, and our medium has become more and more digital as well. Digital Out-of-Home can be planned and realized in near real time, and programmatic audience buying allows any campaign size, as Digital Out-of-Home eyeballs complement all other digital advertising, seamlessly integrated in advertisers' marketing ecosystems.
We have been anticipating this development for over a decade. In retrospect, we have developed and led the German Out-of-Home advertising market from a highly fragmented analog age to a consolidated digital advertising market in our own interests. But this is only an intermediate step, and in the future, data, software, and AI will be the decisive success factors. We will continue to develop this in combination with our unique, wide-reaching infrastructure, what we call the Outernet. The consistent growth of Digital Out-of-Home in the 20s% range, no matter if the ad market is growing, flattish, or going backwards, proves that we are at the inflection point of demand and supply-side matching. The rollout of screens to reach roughly 70% of the population, the creation of the Outernet took roughly 15 years.
In those transition phases, you need to build the product first to see afterwards demand catching up step by step. That's exactly what we have seen since the end of the pandemic. Advertisers, meanwhile, channel the majority of their internet ad spend via trading desks and DSPs, and Digital Out-of-Home is fully integrated. The massive investments and our outstanding contract portfolio have brought us into the pole position. We have the largest Digital Out-of-Home network. We aggregate 75%-80% of all potential Digital Out-of-Home eyeballs in Germany. Given the quality of our contract portfolio, we have the largest average screen size per location. The most attractive offering for advertisers in combination with the best monetization potential, which also offers best payouts for our contract partners.
This also includes our own DMP, Data Management Platform, which originally started as a joint venture with the Otto Group under the brand name OSDS, to ensure that advertisers get best-in-class audience measurement, targeting solutions, and tracking of results of managed campaigns, Programmatic Guaranteed deals, or automated fixed-price campaigns. We continuously integrate more and more data sources with location-specific information to improve the machine-optimized playout of creatives on the screens with the best converting audience concentration. The backbone of our audience data from our DMP, fueled by many e-commerce shops and login data sources, is extended by more and more data providers, most recently, for instance, by Microm, Acxiom, or also Adsquare. Backed by data of telco providers or aggregators like Invenium, the spatial projection of various target group segments delivers dynamic audiences for our Digital Out-of-Home network and every individual screen.
Further data triggers from sources like AEOS, All Eyes on Screens, Mapbox, or OpenWeather enhances our product with what we call trigger targeting. We activate our screens where TV penetration is low. We fine-tune the campaign playout on the basis of the current local weather situation or change campaign creatives according to the specific traffic context. To combine the different sources: data, customer, customer needs, target groups, portfolio availability in the most efficient way possible, the Ströer Core platform optimizes the ad delivery chain through a suite of AI-driven algorithms. Specifically, the platform provides continuous forecasting of ad delivery designed to ensure optimal campaign fulfillment. Furthermore, real-time targeting is achieved by predicting 2,500 user segments, a process powered by the analysis of 67 billion monthly data points. Finally, Ströer Core implements constant optimization of all campaigns, aligning performance with the unique goals of each advertiser.
To make the data strategy a bit more tangible, we have transferred one data set of one of our partners, Acxiom, into a mapping. You see the visualization of the audience concentration of vegetarians and vegans across the country on zip code level. It's only one little piece of data from only one possible data source that illustrates how we can improve the targeting options on our Digital Out-of-Home network, especially when that data is integrated into our automated booking and playout systems. To make it even more concrete, we have a little demo video for you that illustrates the journey from locations and screens via tech and data to audience targeting and campaign performance for advertisers. As we mentioned before, we are at an inflection point of the digital transformation of Out-of-Home. You see the advertisers' and trading desk perspective on our inventory.
For those who have only dialed in via telephone, you will hear no sound or only music during this time. Those who have dialed into the webcast, please unmute the sound so that you can hear the explanations in the film. After the film, we will continue with the conference call in the usual way.
Digital Out-of-Home at Ströer is Public Video, flexibility at scale. It is an exceptional blend of expansive reach and digital adaptability. In the last few years, we have developed our proprietary and unique supply-side platform called Core. As such, we now have a fully automated, AI-supported, and integrated multi-channel sales platform for our Digital Out-of-Home assets. In addition, we set up the Public Video Planner, which makes DOOH inventory easily plannable and visualizes target groups dynamically in public space.
Based on software and first-party data, as well as time and location, campaigns can be planned and implemented programmatically in near real time. Ströer Core is an open MarTech marketplace where third-party partners can also market inventory through Ströer. This is the first time in the history of Out-of-Home advertising that DOOH has been seamlessly integrated into the digital MarTech ecosystem for our advertising customers. Unilever launched a DOOH campaign in Germany to address vegetarians and vegans. To optimally reach this target group via DOOH, the campaign was controlled with audience targeting. How does it work? Commuting data of the target group was combined with movement data from a large mobile network provider. The DOOH playout was triggered when the target group concentration is highest. The result: 2.7x higher target group reach.
As media partner of UEFA Euro 2024, Deutsche Telekom showed all the goals of this major soccer tournament on over 5,000 Ströer DOOH screens in near real time. The 22nd goal clips were compiled with the help of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, the AI selected the most relevant scenes and adjusted the length. Secondly, an AI identified the necessary formats for the different displays and automatically adjusted the important image sections. Result: all goals were played on Ströer DOOH within one to three minutes after the goal was scored.
Most of you will have noticed the acquisition of Vistar Media, a Digital Out-of-Home advertising platform by T-Mobile USA. The agreement with the telco company probably marks a significant turning point in the development of global Out-of-Home markets and heralds the beginning of a new era driven more by first-party data, software, and artificial intelligence.
Global players with access to key first-party data and advanced technology, like Deutsche Telekom, are beginning to enter fragmented markets such as the U.S., where they are focusing on operational tasks and seeing significant growth potential. We've anticipated and driven these developments with Core, our fully integrated, fully automated SSP. Our first programmatic Digital Out-of-Home campaign was launched already at the DMEXCO 2014, more than 10 years ago. As the market continues to digitize, a clear separation between infrastructure and operations is emerging, similar to other industries such as the hotel business or TowerC os. The key difference for us is that we are not interchangeable or substitutable in a fully consolidated market, and we have more and more clients generating more use cases and constantly more innovative prototypes, which we can roll out across all of our customer base.
A recent example from the Bundestagswahl almost three weeks ago: the SPD, like the CDU and the Green Party, used our direct booking tool to optimize their creatives in near real time and in direct reaction to the most recent discussions and public trends, i.e., after the candidate duels or quarrels on television. You've seen the Deutsche Telekom case. The client was leveraging their content rights for the UEFA Football Championship with branded real-time video highlights and snippets from goals during the matches on our Public Video network. Netflix has a Programmatic Direct deal based on fixed prices, where the self-booking system allows them, for instance, to optimize campaigns based on subscriber development across regions and cities and the corresponding marketing efficiencies, as well as the audience affinities of series or movies on the campaign creative. Esso is working with dynamic geofencing.
On the basis of the current traffic situation, we are activating the screens where people have less than five minutes driving time to the next Esso station. The most efficient real-time approach to only address the relevant audience. Already from the tech and data side, our approach in monetizing Digital Out-of-Home inventory has substantial synergies with our digital, our online business. In parallel, our online business, with a combination of owned assets like T-Online, watson.de, and third-party assets like Transfermarkt, Men's Health, Auto Motor und Sport, or Apotheken Umschau, reaches more than 43 million unique users and benefits from two structural drivers: constantly more programmatic business via private deals and direct bookings with a direct link to the advertiser, excluding intermediates, and constantly more portfolio deals where the share of wallet across the owned and operated assets in combination are the key lever in winning market share.
Consequently, we are leveraging the synergies between our Internet and alternate propositions and fuel our growth also with dedicated cross-media products. Let me highlight two out of the examples you see on the slide: MaxScreen Advertorial. Classic advertorials are a key format for advertisers, getting as close as possible to the content on a website with a brand message. That kind of Trojan horse can be also extended to Digital Out-of-Home. We replicate the content website also on the public screen and put the ad as close as possible. Same logics, same format, more net coverage for the advertiser, more share of wallet for us. Multi-channel audiences. Given the sophisticated targeting opportunities on the internet and the automated execution via programmatic, we mirror those targeting features in our DMP also for Digital Out-of-Home playout and simply extend an originally online-only campaign into multi-screen audience solutions.
Same result as with the advertorials: more net coverage for the advertiser, more share of wallet for us. Digital Out-of-Home, including tech and data, also offers value-added services for municipalities and the broader public in general. Beyond advertising, we become step by step more a part of a critical infrastructure on a local level. Digital Out-of-Home is used in the area of public safety, for example, to warn of extreme weather events. The virtually non-existent lead times can also be used to efficiently control traffic flows, such as at the end of a football match or a sudden roadblock. In addition, the infrastructure can be used to provide the population with timely information. And while the business model is financed with advertising, the benefits for smart cities are driven through digitization. So far on my remarks, and with that, over to Henning.
Thank you, Christian, and a very good morning, everybody. Let us first have a quick look onto the full year P&L, where Christian already elaborated on the key developments. Altogether, for sure, a very successful year for the group. Revenue growth for the year was 7%. This includes around 40 basis points contribution from changes in the portfolio, which represent the net effect from our opportunistic acquisition and integration of a few call center locations since the month of June 2023, and the first-time consolidation of RBL in November, on the one hand, and the disposal of the service activity in our Out-of-Home media segment in the prior year, as well as some direct marketing activities in France, on the other hand. On top, we incurred positive net currency effects, mainly from Out-of-Home activities in Poland, amounting to 10 basis points.
Excluding that, organic growth came in at 6.4% and was somewhat impaired by the sales development at Asam. Excluding Asam, organic growth was 7.6% and thus higher than in the comparable fiscal year 2023, where it was 5.5%. EBITDA adjusted amounted to EUR 626 million, EUR 57 million, or 10% higher compared with the prior year period. Exceptional items for the year were EUR 20 million and thus roughly EUR 6 million higher than last year. With broadly stable costs from restructuring measures and the stock option program, the main reason for the increase are costs related to the assessment of potential portfolio measures. Accordingly, reported EBITDA was up from EUR 554 million- EUR 605 million. Depreciation amortization decreased by 1% to EUR 319 million, including a declining Q4 that I will talk about in a minute.
In the aggregate, reported EBIT for the year came in at EUR 287 million, EUR 56 million higher compared with 2023. The financial result decreased to - EUR 77 million. This decline of EUR 11 million includes roughly EUR 3 million higher interest costs from IFRS 16 liabilities and EUR 3 million from currency effects. The remainder results from around EUR 35 million higher average net debt for the year and slightly higher average interest rates, including the refinancing of the EUR 85 million fixed-rate note loan redeemed in October. This led to earnings before tax of EUR 210 million after EUR 165 million for the prior year. The tax rate was slightly down to 30%, in line with our expected underlying tax rate.
In comparison with the prior year, the tax rate, in particular in Q4, benefited from a change in tax provisions and an improvement of pre-tax earnings at Statista, where we are only allowed to recognize deferred tax assets after achieving sustainable local gap profits. All in all, reported net income for the year came in with a gain of 31% and amounted to EUR 148 million for 2024, compared to EUR 112 million in 2023. Adjustments were down by EUR 7 million, mainly because of phasing out of amortizations resulting from purchase price allocations and total EUR 24 million. Accordingly, net income adjusted was EUR 171 million after EUR 143 million in the prior year. Overall, we have seen a quite solid performance in the final quarter of fiscal year 2024, also considering two things.
Firstly, last year's Q4 was by far the strongest quarter for our Out-of-Home business, with a growth rate of almost 13%. And secondly, a temporarily more challenging market context here in Germany, arising from uncertainty towards the end of the year after the failure of the government coalition. Sales growth was 4% and organic growth was 3.1%. Looking at our P&L trajectory, however, and despite somewhat muted sales growth in the fourth quarter, we delivered substantial improvements across all relevant earnings figures. EBITDA adjusted was up by 6% to EUR 206 million. Expenses for the quarter were higher than initially planned, mainly due to some costs for organizational streamlining measures at Statista and costs in relation to the assessment of potential portfolio optimization on group level. Nevertheless, reported EBITDA increased by 7%. Reported depreciation and amortization were down by EUR 11 million for the quarter.
This reduction resulted from value corrections on assets in the prior year, lower depreciation for assets from purchase price allocations, as well as from assets recognized under IFRS 16. In addition, there was considerably lower amortization for media rights following the termination of the Bauer contract at the end of 2023. With that, reported EBIT came in 27% higher than last year and thus well above the growth rate of EBITDA. The interest result decreased by around EUR 4 million. Roughly three quarters of this resulted from a non-cash negative currency effect from an intragroup US dollar loan at Statista. All in all, net income for the quarter was up to EUR 66 million or + 41%.
Net adjusted income, which excludes now a lower amount of exceptionals, as well as lower value corrections and PPA-related amortizations, improved by 16% and thus also considerably above the growth rate of our EBITDA. Let us now switch over to the cash flow. Altogether, the group continued to show good cash flow generation in Q4, in line with our expectations, as shared with you during our call on Q3 results. While earnings, as we've seen, continued to improve, working capital contributed less than in last year's Q4. At the same time, investments were broadly stable, and the phasing effects from lease liability repayments reversed. Nevertheless, free cash flow adjusted amounted to 80 million EUR and thus underlining once again the very cash-generative nature of Q4. For the full year, free cash flow adjusted was up from EUR 81 million- EUR 158 million .
55% of that improvement came from the underlying operating cash flow, and 45% resulted from lower non-M&A investments. Let me come to the net debt development. In the sequential view, from the end of Q3 to the end of Q4, net debt was up by roughly 43 million EUR, including the adjusted free cash flow for the fourth quarter of + EUR 80 million and M&A expenses of + EUR 106 million from our acquisition of RBL, - EUR 5 million financial debt towards minorities, and around - EUR 13 million from increasing customer overpayments.
Net debt year- over- year was up by EUR 67 million- EUR 837 million, including our free cash flow generation of + EUR 158 million, +EUR 7 million cash in from exercised stock options, our dividend of -EUR 103 million, cash out for minorities of -EUR 18 million, and M&A expenses of -EUR 106 million for RBL, and -EUR 2 million cash out for other smaller M&A and refinancing topics, and the remainder of -EUR 3 million from higher customer overpayments. With that, our leverage ratio remained stable sequentially and further improved year- over- year to now 2.1 x, despite the acquisition of RBL. Excluding RBL, the leverage ratio would have amounted to 1.9 x.
Before we come to the usual discussion of the development of our individual business segments, let me, as promised, shed some light on the Out- of- Home business dynamics of the last four years, and here in particular on the interplay between our EBITDA adjusted under the application of IFRS 16 and the corresponding EBITDA before IFRS 16, which is certainly a better indicator for cash flow generation. Just to remind us, the difference between these two numbers lies in the treatment of fixed lease payments, which under IFRS 16 are translated into depreciation and interest. At the same time, please also bear in mind, however, that both numbers include variable lease payments. So looking now at the trajectory of our EBITDA margin in each case, we see a quite different picture.
While regarding our reported EBITDA, the margin clearly improved by 130 basis points compared to the prior year, reaching now 47%, it is still somewhat below the level of 2022 and 2021. We see a quite different picture, however, when we look at the EBITDA margin before the application of IFRS 16. Here, the improvement is way higher and was 280 basis points last year, and at the same time, it is well above the level of 2021 and 2022. The reason lies in the fact that the reported EBITDA only includes the cost for the variable lease component, which depends on two things: the incremental sales generated more than what is covered by the defined fixed lease and the agreed-upon revenue share.
If we look at the drivers behind the improvement of the cash EBITDA margin of 280 basis points last year, it was a further relative improvement in lease expenses of 50 basis points, as you see at the bottom of the slide, and 230 basis points improvement from all other costs. What drives lease expenses in precent of revenue down is the shift towards digital, where we in general enjoy lower revenue shares, reflecting higher CapEx requirements. This downward trend was a little bit less last year compared to the development in 2023 and 2022 because of improved performance from our classic product. So what does it all mean for the future? The bottom line is that we continue to expect the EBITDA margin before IFRS 16 trajectory to outperform the reported EBITDA margin.
The two main drivers are lower lease revenue shares on digital, as well as lower relative selling expenses from a higher sales share of the national account business. Let me now discuss the performance of the individual operating segments, starting with our core segment, Out- of- Home Media. I already touched upon the Q4 development earlier. Sales growth came in at around 4% against a strong performance in last year's Q4. Nevertheless, growth was not fully matching our initial expectations in the context of a temporarily quite weak ad market in December, following the political situation here in Germany. On top of this, it is fair to assume that some of the peak media investments that we have seen in Q2 around the Euro Cup were a little bit weighing on the amount of dry powder advertisers usually keep for the year-end business.
Christian will talk about the outlook for Q1 later. Organic growth for the quarter was 2.4%. For the month of November and December, RBL contributed sales of around EUR 4 million , representing a growth of more than 20% compared to prior year pro forma numbers. Looking across the different product groups, after a strong first nine months, classic was down by 6.8%. Digital Out-of-Home again grew substantially at 16.7%. Within digital, programmatic sales were up from EUR 38 million- EUR 48 million . Out-of-Home services delivered growth again in Q4 after sales development in the first nine months was still impacted by a disposal of a side activity. The EBITDA margin for the quarter was slightly down to 48.8%, also reflecting a one-off accrual for VAT settlement for prior years of around EUR 2 million . Excluding that, the underlying margin was stable.
For the full year, we delivered strong, profitable growth. Sales were up by 11.3%, and with that, getting closer to the 1 billion marks. Programmatic sales grew by around 34% and represented a share of 37% of digital. The digital share of the total segment revenues reached 39%. EBITDA adjusted grew by almost 15% to EUR 448 million . In digital and dialogue, revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 5%. Within digital, programmatic continued to be the growth driver, with total digital revenues up by 4.5% to EUR 137 million . Our entire content publishing business, with our flagship asset, T-Online, delivered broadly stable sales and earnings. In our dialogue business, we achieved sales growth of 4.6%, supported by both activities, our door-to-door business, and in particular, our contact centers delivering a good year-end performance.
In total, the segment achieved an EBITDA adjusted of EUR 55 million after EUR 53 million in Q4 2023. Please bear in mind that earnings in digital are still affected by a technical effect from the discontinuation of the Bauer contract that I mentioned in the previous calls. The effect on EBITDA adjusted from this for the quarter was around - EUR 3 million. There is no negative net effect on sales, EBIT, and net cash flow due to the compensation of business volume through newly acquired, very successful business mandates in the sports area, such as Sport1 and Transfermarkt. Finally, some comments on our data as a service and e-commerce segment with Statista and Asam. Revenue developments continued to show a differentiated picture in the fourth quarter. As expected, data as a service revenue development accelerated further.
Sales in Q4 rose from EUR 37 million- EUR 44 million, or 17% respectively. Sales benefited from a three-year deal with a large AI operator that includes provisioning of specialized AI data packages for training purposes, with particular focus on data that might otherwise be freely available. Statista continues working on generating highly valuable, cleaned, and harmonized AI data sets, including standardized structures and formats, high-quality metadata, and taxonomies, while ensuring proper licensing and usage rights. On a full-year basis, revenues came in at EUR 164 million, with a growth of 10%. Asam's business development in Q4 was still impaired by reduced trading and wholesale distribution in China, which last year delivered very strong growth. In contrast, sales in Asam's core retail, TV, and online activities continued to deliver good growth of around 9%.
On the back of good earnings progress at Statista, EBITDA adjusted for the segment was up from EUR 12 million- EUR 16 million. From a full-year perspective, the EBITDA margin of Statista improved to around 13%. With that, let me hand you back over to Christian for the outlook and closing remarks.
Before ending the presentation, let me just have some comments on our outlook for Q1 and the current trading momentum. Although the Christmas business of the total ad market was challenged by the unclear political situation in Germany after a strong H1 2024, with potential phasing effects for H2, we see unchanged momentum for our core business in 2025. Our order book is strong, and for Q1, we expect against strong prior year comps of + 16%, top-line growth between 13% and 14%.
Classic Out-of-Home is growing mid-single digit, Digital Out-of-Home in the mid to maybe even high 20s. Digital and dialogue in Q1 should be low to mid-single digit growth. The business is overall developing in line with 2024, but with some deviations over the quarters due to incentive schemes within the dialogue part of the segment, i.e., in Q1, but especially the digital online business in Q1 also looks quite positive. DAS and e-commerce are starting in Q1 in line with prior year. We see strong margin improvements for Statista and the DAS business of Asam in line with the last year, but Q1 still impacted as last quarter by declining sales in China. Let me now close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2025.
The annual report for 2024, including the publications on our CSRD sustainability reporting for the first time, will be published on March 24. On May 8, our Q1 numbers will be released. The half-year figures will be presented on August 13, and Q3 figures will be published on November 11. As always, updates, reports, and roadshow presentations can be found on our investor relations website. Thank you, everyone, for your time, and we are now happy to take your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to only use handsets while asking a question.
Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Christopher Johnen from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple. I would like to start with Statista. Maybe first a comment about Q4. I think guidance was for more than 20%. You didn't fully get there. Any more color as to what changed that during the quarter. And then on the Q1 guidance, first, that there is no breakdown between Statista and Asam. Obviously, the market cares much more about Statista than Asam. I think last year's Q1 was like a rounded 5%. Is there any more color you can give between Statista and ASAM? I guess also my question is, do you expect the acceleration that you've seen throughout 2024 for Statista to carry into 2025? Then a question on the ongoing sales process.
Obviously, it wasn't mentioned so far. Is there any more color that you can maybe give, given the sort of comments we've had in the press over the past couple of days? That'll be interesting, and then another sales process question with respect to Asam. Is there any sort of color on the process, where do we stand with that disposal? Thank you very much.
Good morning. Thanks for your question, so let me maybe start with Statista. We just double-checked what we said for Q4. We said further acceleration, so I think we further accelerated the business. I mean, we fully agree with you. 20% would have been better than 17%, but I think we are happy with the general development.
I think regarding the outlook, we just want to stay for the moment on a segment level because we just see that also for the Out-of-Home business, but in general, we have many discussions around quarterly deviations for businesses where the differences on a quarter-by-quarter basis are sometimes minor or have a specific reason. So we just want to deliver data points that are rather misleading than really supportive. I think for Statista, I would mention three things that why we are really positive. The first one is, I think Henning mentioned it in the call. We see the results step by step of some restructurings we've gone through, including the leadership team margin is improving. We've been up to 13%. We see that development continuing also in 2025.
I think secondly, we spend a lot of time with the robustness and uniqueness of our data, especially in the context of AI. And if it's about standardized structures and formats of data, high-quality metadata, taxonomies, data cleaning, harmonization, licensing. So there are many, many areas where we've spent time and work to make sure that we are ready for a more AI-driven context of that business. And I think that's the third point. What we also see and what we've been working on is that, in general, the research process has clearly changed also on client side in the age of AI. So historically, you had a question, then you entered a search engine, Statista delivered these results. You get data pieces, and out of the data pieces, clients created their answer. Today, the clients have a research question.
They go to data sources, and AI application delivers the answers. So on the one hand, we've been working with a team on AI-powered search on Statista, but at the same time, we are also currently working with a couple of LLMs and global platforms, how we can link our data into their overall products and get into more indirect sales. And I think we can talk a little bit more about that in the coming quarters, but that's also one of the reasons why it's a company that we develop to the next level. And I think having discussions +- 3% or 4% on a top-line development, we feel it's just the wrong focus.
Yeah. Regarding your second question, we already said a couple of times that we are, like any other top management team, in a permanent process in thinking about value crystallization in case you have the impression that the stock price does reflect really the inner value of your businesses. So there's no sales process, like you named it. We got approached. We said that already in a statement by outside parties with a suggestion. We discussed that and through the press communication, which was necessary because there was a leak. There are other people coming actually also on the table, and that is the situation. So we are in open-ended conversation here, but there's no decision, no sales process, open-ended communication because obviously our business, our core business is performing very well.
There are more, let's say, parties in the capital market who think that Digital Out-of-Home is one of the key growth stories in the next 5 to 10 years, and that is attracting capital. And that is the situation. In case there's something new, we're going to report that. But there's nothing more to say here. We are in open-ended discussion, and this is completely unchanged.
Christopher, on your points regarding Asam, I mean, I've read your comments this morning saying that nobody cares about Asam. We obviously disagree. We care, first and foremost, about the operating development of the business. I think it's probably useful to put things a little bit into perspective. I think we all know that the Chinese topic was quite a challenge.
Again, to remind us, we achieved more than like EUR 30 million sales in 2023, had a strong growth from China, and basically now we see that business to a larger thing falling apart, but if you really look at the true underlying performance of the business, and Asam is basically about selling beauty products on the website and delivering into retail institutions here in Germany, the growth in these segments are between 12% and 15% throughout the year of 2024, so I think a very successful operating performance. Still, I think for the first quarter, as Christian indicated, will be kind of a difficult comparison. Asam last year, Q1 was the strongest quarter still. We continue to be optimistic for the underlying performance, and with regard to a potential transaction, our position is unchanged.
It obviously remains a non-core asset, and I think we are well advised to communicate about this once we have made progress and not create too many short-term expectations on that end. And I would leave it there.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from Annick Maas Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Morning. Yes, so my first question is on the Out-of-Home business. Q4 classical Out-of-Home was relatively weak. I think you mentioned something around spent being around the summer rather than the end of the year. Can you just give us a bit more detail what happened there and why you're confident in classical Out-of-Home should grow mid-single digit again in the first quarter? The second one is on full-year margin. You laid out how margin accretive Digital Out-of-Home was going to be.
Will you be in a position to maybe give us a bit of an indication where you think fully adjusted EBITDA will get to if nothing changes from here? And then maybe more of a theoretical exercise, but I guess these discussions were around the Out-of-Home and the digital bits of the Ströer. So if you were to sell those businesses, how do you think of the remaining assets? Would these remain listed? Would you sell them to another party? What was your thought process when you were sitting with these other parties on the table? Thank you.
Hi, Annick. Thanks for your questions. I would start with the Out-of-Home topics. So I think Q4 was, I think, just phasing-wise, given the strong H1, just already expected from our side to be below the previous quarters. Full year, 12%, and then we have deviations between the quarters.
I think we had seen an extremely strong classic Q2. That's why some of the clients, like for instance, Deutsche Telekom, like for instance, Lidl, who have been advertising strong on Classic Out-of-Home solutions in Q2, have pulled money forward during the year. The simple answer is, sorry for being a bit to be very bold, but for the classic business, Q1 is over because lead times are like four, six weeks on average. So the little bit of money that will come after March 6 for the remaining quarter in classic is really minor. So we simply know in the order book, none of that can be canceled as well due to cancellation periods. So we see that we are already there. But I think the underlying logic is, first of all, in the national ad market.
We see that, yes, a lot of growth comes from Digital Out-of-Home, but there are concrete campaign targets of advertisers where they want to get as close as possible to their dealer structure, to specific outlets, specific locally targeted audiences where digital is simply not available. So those need Classic Out-of-Home advertising. That doesn't change. And we have a strong regional and local sales force. And I think what we've been also working on in the last six to eight quarters is focusing those teams more on the classic part of the business. That's why we are confident that what we've seen in the last four to six quarters and what we see for Q1 and on the basis of the current order book, Classic Out-of-Home has low to mid-single digit growth potential. And of course, we'll fuel that a lot with the regional and local sales force.
You had also a question, I think, on the margin development in Out-of-Home. I mean, we're not coming up now with a precise forecast on that for the year, but I think if you go back to the slide that I walked you guys through with regard to the medium-term historical development of Out-of-Home. I think if you look at the KPIs that you see there, this is pretty much how we think about the future, so that does not necessarily mean that this will work now each and every quarter, but this is the way we structurally think about how the P&L should build out going forward. Yeah.
And to build on that, again, I just had a look at our last six, seven quarters in the Out-of-Home segment, starting after the pandemic and after the immediate Ukraine war impact, including inflationary challenges in Germany, like in the summer of 2023. Q3 2023 started with 8% growth, Q4 13%, Q1 2024 16%, Q2 2024 21%, then we had 9%, 4%, and now in Q1 13%-14% again. So if you look at it on average, we're a very robust double-digit growth company here in that area. But yes, we are not independent from individual quarters, previous years, and sometimes also the ad market dynamics. So there will be always deviations.
I think that's why we tried to focus a little bit more on that kind of rolling 12-month development, what we see structurally with where does the growth come from, what is the average number to not overinterpret an individual quarter. I remember in August discussions when we had 21% Out-of-Home growth. I remember one of you was asking if we will see those numbers on the long run. So after 4% in Q4, people question if there is anything going in the opposite direction. I think the truth is you need to look at the rolling 12 months. As Henning said, I think almost the most important slide in the presentation numbers-wise is chart 23. That's where you see long-term structural development, including margin profile development.
And I think the general tendency is also what we see going forward, not only for the next year, but for the next couple of years.
Yeah. Regarding your last question, there's nothing much to say because, look, we have a price on the stock. There are obviously some players in the capital market. They think that our Out-of-Home business has a much, much higher value than the whole company. So if you get approached like that, you have to talk about it. And the whole situation now, especially in Digital Out-of-Home, as you saw also in the presentation, globally is very agile. Deutsche Telekom entered Digital Out-of-Home market in America. It's possible there because the market is not consolidated.
If a company in the size of Deutsche Telekom is entering the Out-of-Home market in America, you can assume what kind of potential they are seeing there based on the data they have. So there's a lot of discussion going around, and everybody's expecting that Digital Out-of-Home is the next big thing in digital advertising. So we completely share that. But if you get approached from outside with a suggestion like that, you don't start to think about how you restructure the group. So you just have conversations. And that's what we have right now. We see that, let's say, the public capital markets doesn't reflect up to now, don't have the same view. Let's keep it like that on valuation, like many other players in the market. And that's actually what we're discussing.
So there's nothing more to say about open-ended conversation based on the significant valuation gap between different players in the capital market.
Thank you.
The next question is from Craig Abbott. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. First one, I wanted just to add a little bit more color on the Q1 outlook for Out-of-Home media, which obviously is very encouraging. But first of all, could you maybe give us an idea of how much the scope effect, and I'm just talking about Out-of-Home media, should be in the first quarter? Should it again be around 2%? That would be the first question.
And secondly, on Out-of-Home media, I just wondered if you could give some more color on what you're seeing there, i.e., in things like increased brand advertising now, which had been a bit subdued in recent years, or are you seeing a strong growth in that national share? If you could just shed a little bit more light there, I would be thankful. And then I have one quick follow-up technical question.
Thank you. Hi, Craig. Thanks for your question. The first one is easy, yes. I think a little bit more than 2%, but roughly 2%. That's the impact, I think, what you mean with scope via the RBL. The RBL, yeah. Exactly. So that's 2 points out of the 13%-14%, and the remaining number is the organic growth on the existing portfolio.
The RBL piece in itself is growing significantly faster if there was an organic number for that, because I think we mentioned it in the announcement of the deal that contracts that were won are still in a ramp-up phase. So there is additional inventory coming. And of course, we're working on monetizing it a little bit better, maybe than in the previous setup. And regarding Q1 or 2025 dynamics, I think first of all, we see what we've also seen in the last four to six quarters, that roughly 80% of our growth comes from national advertisers, 20% from regional and local ones. That clearly helps the margin. Secondly, 80% of the growth comes product-wise on Digital Out-of-Home. That also helps the margin.
And thirdly, the fastest growing sales channel is programmatic digital, which is growing beyond 30%, where we can also work with a little bit of scale effects. And I would say that that's, on the one hand, the macro trend from our portfolio point of view. And advertiser-wise, I would say yes. What you see is, as always, a slightly softer Q4 means or also softer second half last year generates a little bit more ad spend from brand advertisers because you can't be too long off air if you want to manage and run a proper brand presence. And other than that, I think especially Digital Out-of-Home, we see almost no churn on existing clients, but increasing ticket sizes and more and more new clients, just as we've seen in the last quarters. But I would say, is there any specific category or trend that is fueling Q1?
I wouldn't say so. I think it's the same development as what we've seen last year, just better penetration of Out-of-Home in general across more or less all industries.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Actually, I just have two real quick technical questions. Henning, for you, the CapEx outlook for this year. And just a quick follow-up on the earlier discussion on Asam Beauty. Is the China effect now completed with Q1? Thank you. First of all, thank you, Craig, on CapEx. I think you have already seen in Q4 that there was not much of a decline anymore. So we are more like stabilizing. Outlook for the year would be a slight increase in CapEx. The two main building blocks for CapEx, as we reported, are obviously Out-of-Home and the Statista investments in content.
So I would guide for a slight increase, but not going back to the 2023 level at this point. The second one was on China.
Yeah. I think, to be fair, after Q1 this year, we've probably been through that. But still, last year's Q1 had considerable China sales of around, I would say, EUR 4 million or so, EUR 4 million sales. And we will clearly see rather less than EUR 1 million. So probably we'll see a drop of EUR 3 million coming from China along for Q1, as we see it from today. Still a couple of days trading left, but that's it. And from there on, I think it should be better comparable going forward.
Okay. Excellent. Okay. Yeah, that does help. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Craig.
The next question comes from Marcus Diebel from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Henning, congratulations.
I mean, the cash flow metrics are really strong. That's very good to see. I have a question, though, for Christian, again, on the sort of momentum. We have now a situation that in Q1, clearly, you guide very, very strongly. So there's a lot of excitement back in the market after the election. How do you read this also going forward? We heard that there are no special effects in Q1. Yeah, you didn't give guidance, yeah, but is there anything conceptually wrong in thinking the kind of double-digit growth rates on, obviously, high comps should continue for the remainder of the year? Should we see a full year 2025 number that is double-digit growth in outdoor? Because it seems the environment is getting better, budgets are getting released. So that should also help in the next couple of quarters, from what I can see.
I understand it's not about full year guidance per se, but if you can help me at least conceptually, why I would be wrong assuming still double-digit growth for the year.
Thank you. I mean, conceptually, if you look at the last two years and also if you look at the kind of last four years on Henning's slide, page 23, I refer to that again because I just love it with the cash flow development out of the incremental money. It just shows the potential of the business. I would say what you see there is double-digit top line growth, but you see deviations over the quarter. And of course, just looking a little bit forward, yeah, we are in Q2. We are running against 21% last year's quarter and very strong UEFA football context.
At the same time, in Q4, we are running against 4% in a rather soft ad market and very soft Christmas business. So if you would assume that there's an average 10% growth potential on the long run, always low to mid-single-digit classic and somewhere in the 20s for Digital Out-of-Home as the underlying structural growth, you would assume that probably the relative growth rate versus prior year in Q2 is softer than in Q4 for the simple reason that prior year's numbers have had different phasing. That said, it could also be that for whatever reason, Q2 is suddenly ultra strong again, and there is another effect like the elections we've seen in Q4, and we maybe have the next elections in Q4 2025. Yeah, no one is hoping for that, but you don't know.
I think that individual impact on a quarterly level is something that we simply cannot manage. But what we see, and I think we have enough data points, is that Digital Out-of-Home is growing substantially and recurring, and the Out-of-Home segment in itself is a double-digit growth business versus maybe 6%, 5% if you look at the last 10-15 years.
Yeah. I think that's really the key point. I mean, we are discussing, obviously, quarters because we have a quarterly call. That is a bit of a structural problem here. We don't manage our business by quarters, and it's really no news into it if we grow 8% or 12%. The question is, what is the average, what Christian said, yearly growth rate?
No, no, of course. Of course. I was just more like conceptually thinking.
It looks like at least macro-wise, top down, things are getting even better than they were in Q1 so far.
We hope that we have a government very soon, and the war will be finished sooner or later, which is in front of our doors here, which is not helpful for Germany. Interest rates are going down, and so it should have. But anyway, for us, it's the, look, how much we grow the last 10 years and how much we're growing the next 10 years. That is actually important. And so we are targeting what Chris already said, around double-digit growth on average. There can be more one year, can be less the next year. But the question is, what is the five-year average? And this is one point.
The second key important point here for structural growth is clearly what Christian already said also before here, the gap between TV growth and established old media and Digital Out-of-Home. So as long as we see a double-digit gap in organic development, you see that the structural growth is intact. And this is for us, let's say, these two key important KPIs here.
Perfect. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Nizla Naizer, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, thanks for the very helpful demo on how to book Digital Out-of-Home inventory. I think that was really useful for us to see as well. My first question is on Digital Out-of-Home.
Can you remind us how you think about its double-digit growth, but when you think of 2025, do you think growth could accelerate from 2024? And what's driving that in terms of how you think you can increase the pricing of your reach and convenience, which you helpfully showed us? Is that the way you're sort of thinking about managing the business, or is it really adding more inventory and making it more appealing to national-level customers? And on the adding more inventory, could you remind us how many new sort of digital screens you hope to add in 2025? What’s sort of baked into the CapEx? Some color there would be great. And second, we've spoken about how spending sort of stopped in Q4, at least was held back because of the German elections that were upcoming. What was the reverse impact in Q1?
Were people very optimistic right after the elections? If you can give us some context there, that would be great. Or was this just an organic step-up of activity at the start of the year? And my last question, I know you've said that this is not a sale process and it's just conversations happening, but in the hypothetical event that something does happen and Out-of-Home media could be monetized and Ströer gets all of this cash as a group, what would be the sort of the fate of that cash? Would you consider returning all of it to shareholders? Have you thought about that at all? Some color would be great. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks for your question. I would start with the Digital Out-of-Home business. I think the more predictable one, CapEx and how many more screens. We roughly have planned 500 more screens this year.
Again, roughly half of it indoor in shopping centers, train stations, and public transportation systems, and half roadside, both in inner cities with 2 m2 formats as roadside formats, larger streets with 9 m2, and a couple of iconic bigger ones. So I would say half of our Out-of-Home CapEx would probably go into that digitization, the next level of digitization, including maintenance CapEx for digital. If you see those 500 in the context of the 7,800 premium screens, bigger than 2 m2, we add 6%-7% more inventory. Although exactly that inventory is probably not immediately on the same fill rate as the existing screens, but there is probably 3%-4% growth coming from more inventory. The rest is demand and organic on the basis of a pricing that is up by roughly 4%.
Yeah, you can see that the general benefit of Digital Out-of-Home versus other media is probably 70%-80% of the growth, and the rest is coming from pricing and more inventory. And clearly, the ongoing improvements on the tech side, the ongoing improvements on the data side with more audiences available is clearly enabling us to show our customers not only more screens every month, but also more audiences and more opportunities to precisely target that. And I think the Q1 election effect isn't a Q1 effect because no one knew what the election outcome would be, and there was more until the day of the election uncertainty. And since then, there's not that much that happened. I think we had a couple of customers that, as soon as the election was announced, pulled out money because they didn't want to advertise in the context of political campaigns.
That said, political parties advertised a little bit. That's why I would say Q1 has a net neutral effect through the elections, and we will now see going forward what the general impact of the new government, their investments is, and how also consumer behavior and the ad market will respond to that. But our feeling is, in general, midterm, there is more certainty than six weeks ago, and there are a couple of signals that we are moving carefully in the right direction again.
Good. Yeah, regarding your last question, this is indeed very hypothetical, but obviously it would return cash to the shareholders. But I don't want to repeat what I already said. So I think this is clear. But again, it's a very dynamic situation right now, again, reflected also by the move of Deutsche Telekom.
So you see that many people are thinking about further options, and we'll be well thought here, and we will think it through very precisely before we would go with a suggestion to the shareholder, to our shareholders.
Thank you. Very helpful.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Julien from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Apologies. The question I've already asked is Q4 results this morning, so I'm jumping from call to call. The first one is on your guidance for Q1 for outdoor. Could we get an organic number, or rather the expected growth rate ex the acquisition of RBL? That's my first question. The second one is any comments you can make on your discussion with various private equity. And then third, any update on the potential disposals of Asam. Thank you.
Julien, on the first question, and of course, we had the question earlier already. So the contribution of RBL is around 2 percentage points of growth for the Q1 that we expect. On the second question, also that we have been through that in the call now several times for probably either we can have a chat on the phone later on, or you just refer to the transcript without being impolite. No, that's perfectly fine.
As I said, I missed the beginning. Yeah. And then on Asam?
Well, on Asam, we have, first of all, put also the trading into perspective a little bit for 2024. Reminded everybody that excluding China, there was still a good underlying growth in the core retail, e-comm, and TV sales activities, and that we still expect a negative effect from China in the first quarter.
And after that, then I think we've been through the China situation. So that's been roughly what we said for Q1. So it's fair to assume that there will be a sales decline in Q1.
And coming back on RBL, it's 2% of total revenue, right? So if I just, it looks like Q1 outdoor guidance is 4%-5%. Is that correct?
Yeah, we said 2% is what the gross contribution should be. So if you take the 13%-14% reported minus the 2, you get to, on the old or existing portfolio, to 11%-12%. Thank you. All right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Christian Schmalzl for any closing remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much for your time, many questions, and yeah, looking forward to seeing you soon again. Take care. Take care, everyone.