Wonderful good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the pre-preliminary figures 2022 of Ströer. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. It's my pleasure, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Christian Schmalzl, Co-CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts, thank you for joining our prelims call on our Q4 and full year 2022 results today. Let us start the call with a short overview of the key figures of fiscal 2022 and then go straight into what we have achieved in the course of the year. Henning will then take over and present the financials for the full year and the Q4, and in more detail, before I'll give you a short outlook what we expect for Q1 and the current fiscal year. After our presentation, we will be available for Q&A. As mentioned in the different earnings calls last year, 2022 faced a tense economic situation due to the war in the Ukraine. Inflation still on a comparatively high level despite multiple interest rate increases.
It was once again a proof point for the robustness of our strategy. In a really challenging advertising market, we were able to deliver a comparatively robust earnings performance built on our number one position in the German out-of-home advertising market, our number one position in digital out-of-home, as well as our number one position in the SME market and the strong commitment of our employees. Reported group revenues in 2022 in total were up by 9% from EUR 1.63 to 1.77 billion. This against the background that in 2022, in addition to the market economic challenges, we also had to digest the first stage of the tobacco advertising ban. Due to limited M&A activities, with the exception of the sale of SEM in Q2, organic revenue growth was at the same level as reported revenue growth.
The adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% from EUR 513 to 541 million, driven by the robust performance of out-of-home, especially digital out-of-home, but damped by a softer development in the digital business. Pretty much the same development for our adjusted EBIT, rising by 6% from EUR 249 to 265 million. Net adjusted income, on the other hand, grew by 1% to EUR 172 million. This was almost only due to a higher tax result compared to the previous year. Operating cash flow for 2022 came in at EUR 411 million, just 4% lower than in the prior year. This development takes into account the additional payment for corporate taxes and municipal trade tax, as discussed in the nine-month call.
After investing in the accelerated expansion of our digital out-of-home portfolio with unchanged momentum in the Q4, CapEx spend for the 12-month period increased from EUR 101 to 163 million consequently. We will talk later about the substantial progress here, both on portfolio as well as advertisers' demand. In line with the development in net adjusted income, adjusted EPS increased by around 1% from EUR 2.86 to 2.88. With the beginning of the pandemic at the end of Q1 2020, our core business has been challenged twofold. The overall ad market was by far softer, the various lockdowns and restrictions of public life meant less audience and therefore less eyeballs to sell for out-of-home. The last substantial restrictions fell only in February 2022.
Our business rebounded strong after the various peaks of COVID, and mass mobility fully recovered across our total portfolio. Consequently, the market share of out-of-home bounced back to pre-COVID levels. Nevertheless, the Russian invasion and the various domino effects put the advertising market under pressure again. This time it was the same challenge for all media with an overall softer demand. On a level playing field, with us not getting an extra hit on the audience, you see the structural developments that we have observed before the pandemic. Classic print and broadcasting media are challenged by the digital transformation, and out-of-home is winning market share.
When you put our annual results into the context of a German ad market that went according to Nielsen backwards by 4%, plus 9% for our group, plus 13% for our core out-of-home segment, and plus 34% for our most dynamic digital out-of-home products are really outstanding. Even the historically over-dominant global digital platforms have not been outperforming our business. Nevertheless, and although there have been some smaller pandemic challenges at the beginning of 2022, it's fair to say that this includes some catch-up effects from COVID restrictions in 2021 in the H1 of 2022. Let's have a look at the H2 of the year when you can really compare apples with apples in an out-of-home business that runs against more or less COVID-free prior year numbers.
Ad market down by 9%, the large TV segment even down by 11%. The desktop mobile market down by 9%. Radio and print pretty much in line with the overall negative momentum. We talk about the gross rate card levels that tend to be a bit better than the real net revenue development of the various media. On a group level, we were able to grow 2% against the substantially negative market sentiment. Digital out-of-home still growing double digits and out-of-home being stable. Overall, we've been outperforming the local German media landscape by 10 to 15 points in the H2 of 2022. Also, we will talk at the end of the presentation a little bit more about the outlook for Q1.
It's interesting to see that the relative dynamics within the ad market has also continued at the beginning of this year, in January. For that month, we have the first public market data. The ad market is down by 7%, TV down double digits. Desktop mobile market is also very challenging. Ströer Group and the core out-of-home business is up mid-single digits and digital out-of-home up double digits in the high teens. Just as a reminder, this also includes the second stage of the tobacco advertising ban. What are the key drivers for the resilient performance of our core out-of-home business? First of all, it's clearly the digitization of inventory and the client's demand for more targeted and flexible solutions, also via programmatic advertising.
Programmatic share of national advertisers for digital out-of-home was 49% in the full year 2022, and the share of data products has gone up by over 35% for the full year. Our clients want more digital out-of-home, and they want it including improved targeting features, and they are willing to pay for it because it works for them. End of 2022, our total Public Video product, including the new roadside screens, has a net reach of exactly 70% in the top 10 cities. We have crossed the critical mark where our product, excluding any other digital out-of-home offerings in the market, can work as a standalone campaign. It's available on all relevant DSPs and trading desks, including Google DV360 since Q3.
It's offering constantly more audience data and targeting features and increases based on our rollout plan and the general growth of audience reach and coverage across all target groups. Second key driver is the structure of our revenue sources. 2022, 62% of our segment revenues come from 59,750 local customers. They book for longer periods. Advertising is by far a smaller part of their P&L and therefore more resilient. We constantly increase our sales force and sales activities to penetrate this large segment. That means extra OpEx investments but puts our business on a more diversified basis.
Like the digital out-of-home development, the local ad market development for us is still in an early stage, and there is so much more incremental potential that we can also grow in a more recession-like scenario or when the ad market declines as in Q3 and Q4. Finally, we have more than 60% market share. Precise numbers are not yet published for 2022 by the Out-of-Home Association in a fully consolidated market where advertisers can do out-of-home only with Ströer, but not without Ströer. According to Nielsen, the German out-of-home market was up 2% in 2022. Our out-of-home segment was up 13%. Of course, we are not immune against the current headwinds and have to fight hard as in Q4. The dialogue business has good momentum in tougher times due to a softer employment market.
At the same time, the online market is really difficult, and even global platforms struggle at the moment. The mix of segments and the resilience of digitization of our core business bring a lot of stability. Based on the strong market demand, we've not slowed down the pace of digitizing our infrastructure. On the long run, it would be not smart to reduce CapEx short term to optimize an individual quarter when you have the chance to grab market share. We are prepared for any situation where we have to tune down or even tune off development CapEx, but we didn't see the necessity in 2022 and have meanwhile almost 1,900 roadside screens complementing roughly 5,500 indoor Public Video screens parallel to a broader long-tail network.
2022 was also a year with some new products, like more and more city towers, where we leverage historic column locations or so-called video city windows in areas where that's the best way to unlock highly frequented inner-city spots. Cities like Leipzig, Munich or Hanover have been high on our priority list to further expand our digital footprint, indoor as well as roadside. Cologne, Hamburg and Dusseldorf were more about fine-tuning the existing network and cracking some complicated approvals for top locations. Bonn, Neuss or Heidelberg were a good example for tier 2 cities, where we had a strong focus on the inner-city areas to unlock the revenue potential of regional and local advertisers that focused historically on newspapers only. That context, it's also interesting to see how the discussion around the consumption of energy, sustainability, and digital out-of-home has changed in the last.
Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the interruption. Please hold the line.
Again, looked like we had some technical problems. I would continue or start again at chart 14. In that context, it's also interesting to see how the discussion around consumption of energy, sustainability, and digital out-of-home has changed in the last three to four months. Until mid of the year, there were many emotional and symbolic decisions where and how to save energy quickly when Germany seemed to face a tough winter. Both advertisers and agencies, as well as meanwhile politics and administration, have a more fact-based view on the marketing and media ecosystem. The study of one of the largest agency groups in Germany, Serviceplan Mediaplus, is eye-opening.
They have made a detailed analysis of the energy consumption of all media on a daily basis, including energy costs for printing, paper production, distribution of products, et cetera, to ultimately measure what it takes to generate 1,000 contacts for advertisers. The study is called Green GRP. The columns in the diagram show the carbon emissions in grams per channel for 1,000 ad contacts. In the categories where we are present, out-of-home and online and marginally ATV ad sales, the green colors show our performance as we use, for instance, for digital out-of-home, more or less only renewable energy sources and compensate part of the carbon footprint for advertisers in our online business. Ultimately, there is no more sustainable medium than digital out-of-home in case you run it with green energy. Not everyone needs an own device.
Thousands share one large public screen instead of millions having devices or TVs for themselves. Printing is, besides glass, probably one of the most energy-intense production lines within the industries. Digital out-of-home involves no paper. Digital out-of-home is managed, once installed, completely remote. No one must drive into inner cities or deliver newspapers or magazines to private households. Including the contribution to smart city concepts, digital out-of-home can play a substantial role in re-engineering the advertiser's universe in a sustainable way and reducing advertiser's carbon footprint. Henning will talk in more detail about our segment performances, but I wanted to briefly speak about our non-core assets. In the environment in 2022, and probably also in the next six to nine months, was and is not ideal for thinking about disposals or monetizing assets.
That said, the long-term development of Asam and Statista is extremely positive. We don't value them on a quarterly basis. It's an opportunity that we will leverage in the right moment. Yes, 2022 was not an easy year for Asam, with less consumer confidence, increasing raw material prices, challenging logistics and inflation. We used, especially the H2 of 2022 to refocus on the DACH region, reorganize our e-commerce business more towards the right balance of margin and growth, and also fine-tune our international activities accordingly. That's the foundation for ongoing growth, with significant margin improvements in 2023. We have top-performing beauty products with an excellent gross margin profile, have successfully shifted the business from telesales to e-commerce and retail, and more than doubled the business over the last five years.
The start into 2023 seems to be in line with the historic CAGR. Statista had another fantastic year and a track record of more than quadrupling the business in the last five years and a CAGR in the 30s. At the same time, that means, of course, tough comps, especially in the H1 of 2023. The further globalization of both product and sales is fully on track. Our DAOS KPIs continuously improve, and the plans towards 2025 with EUR 250 million sales is unchanged. The truly global company, with the U.S. as the most important individual market, with 22 million average monthly visits, we have more than twice as much traffic than YouGov or Gartner, and therefore a fantastic free lead generation for our sales team.
The latest AI developments and ChatGPT features open up completely new dimensions for productivity gains of the platform on the long run. Over to Henning, who will share more details on our numbers.
Thank you very much, Christian. Welcome also from my side. Let us now walk through the key financials of fiscal 2022. As Christian explained before, total revenue for the year came in at EUR 1.8 billion, 9% higher compared with prior year. In absence of any major portfolio adjustments, organic growth was slightly higher, mainly due to the disposal of our Turkish online marketing business, SEM, in the H1. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% from EUR 513 to 541 million, including an earnings decline in our digital and dialogue segment, while the EBITDA adjusted in our out-of-home segment increased by more than 10%. Exceptional items stood at EUR +0.8 million, significantly below prior year's level of EUR -5.9 million.
The main adjustment components have been the positive earnings effect from releasing stock option accruals and the profitable divestment of our Turkish entity, SEM. These effects were compensated by one-off costs from restructurings and the complete impairment of the carrying amount of a non-controlling investment in the call center space recognized in the Q4. Accordingly, reported EBITDA came in at EUR 542 million. Depreciation and amortization for the full year declined slightly from EUR 310 to EUR 304 million, mainly due to declining D&A from capitalized purchase price allocations after the terminal write-down of the respective underlying assets, as well as higher impairments in 2021 that were partly offset by higher capitalizations driven by growing business volume in 2022. Due to this, EBIT increased from EUR 197 million to EUR 239 million, or by 21%.
The financial result improved slightly from 29 to EUR 28 million due to the recognition of an unexpected interest income from an already fully written down vendor loan. Underlying financial expenses for drawn credit facilities and promissory bills increased by roughly EUR 2 million. This fueled EBT, which increased by some 25% to EUR 211 million against EUR 169 million in 2021. The tax result declined significantly from minus EUR 38 to 59 million. This is mainly due to a higher tax base as well as a higher tax rate. The tax rate increased to roughly 28%, in particular, due to better than anticipated earnings outside the out-of-home segment. As a reminder, in our out-of-home business, we are subject to comparably lower municipal trade tax rates.
We had higher impairments for tax loss carry-forwards at Statista, which is not part of the consolidated tax group. These tax loss carry-forwards can be used without any limitation. According to IFRS, may not be recognized as a credit in the P&L until Statista delivers sustainable positive taxable income. Reported net income increased by 17% from EUR 113 million in 2021 to EUR 152 million in 2022. Only significantly lower adjustment effects needed to be accounted for, a net adjusted income was broadly flat at EUR 172 million. Have a brief look on the Q4 2022 developments.
Against tough prior-year comps and within an increasingly challenging market environment, revenues in the Q4 of 2022 were basically flat at EUR 526 million compared to the prior year. Following a sales decline in our businesses with some cyclical exposure to the ad market, EBITDA adjusted came in some EUR 7 million lower than in prior year's Q4. Exceptional items were -EUR 4.6 million and relate mainly to the already mentioned impairment of a non-controlling investment. Depreciation and Amortization were up from EUR 79 to 84 million in the quarter, mainly driven by the increase in underlying investments compared to the prior year, and partly compensated by expiring depreciation of PPA assets as described earlier. EBIT came in at EUR 99 million after EUR 115 million in last year's Q4.
The decline in the Q4 financial result reflects higher net debt as well as a rising short-term interest rate and an effect of around EUR 1 million from prematurely replacing our old facility agreement. The tax result, especially the tax rate development, are ultimately a consequence of what I just described for the full year. All in all, net income adjusted declined from EUR 87 to 67 million. Moving over onto the cash flow development. Altogether, we see a quite stable operating cash flow in an overall more challenging business context towards the end of the year. Thereby, the operating cash flow included higher tax expenses from a catch-up effect, which we already discussed during our Q3 call. Cash out from working capital includes the further expansion at our high-growth assets, Asam and Statista, as well as the strong sales dynamics in our Dialego business.
Let me point out that the working capital position in our out-of-home segment is broadly stable compared to the prior year. The position others declined to minus EUR 16 million due to the adjustment on items like changes in provisions and equity account investments, as well as the non-cash release of accruals for the stock option plan over the past year. All in, operating cash flow stood at EUR 411 million compared to EUR 426 million in 2021.
As already mentioned before, cash out from non-M&A investments was with EUR 163 million and an increase of more than EUR 60 million compared to 2021 on a record high level, and reflects, in particular, the continued expansion of our digital roadside and Public Video portfolio, as well as the purchase of our headquarters building here in Cologne in the Q3. All in all, free cash flow before M&A went down from EUR 325 million in prior year to EUR 248 million in 2022. Increased IFRS 16 repayments, especially in Q4 2022, mainly due to some higher payments for minimum lease obligations, as well as some phasing effects, finally led to a free cash flow adjusted of EUR 50 million after EUR 147 million in the prior year.
Net debt year-on-year was up by EUR 106 million, including EUR 50 million free cash flow generation before M&A and net cash in of EUR 14 million from acquisitions and divestments, some EUR 137 million for dividends and EUR 26 million for the share buyback, as well as EUR 7 million from the purchase of minorities and transaction expenses for the new facility agreement. Looking at the sequential development from Q3 into Q4, net debt was down by EUR 22 million, including the mentioned expenses for the share buyback. Underlining again, the very cash generative nature of Q4. The bank leverage ratio remains stable at 2.2 times. Let me now talk you through the performance of the individual segments, starting with Out of Home media.
Out of Home delivered strong sales and earnings growth, despite an increasingly tough market environment in the H2. Sales were up by 12.9% to EUR 791 million. When taking out sales from classical tobacco advertising, which has been since beginning of 2022, growth even amounted to 16%. Also, EBITDA adjusted showed double-digit growth to EUR 373 million. Almost two-third of the growth came from digital Out of Home, which accounted for 30% of sales. A good quarter of the growth was generated from classic. However, looking at the development of the year, it was a story of two different halves. The H1 was still characterized by strong recovery from the pandemic, while the H2 faced an overall declining advertising market trend.
What the two halves have in common, though, is the outperformance of our Out of Home business, which even accelerated help by the strong resilience of our local SME business, also in particular when times were getting tougher during the year, as Christian already described. Looking at Q4, which was quite a strong quarter last year, the top line was flat if you take out last year's tobacco ad sales. EBITDA came down from EUR 141 to 127 million, also reflecting some cyclical decline in the high-margin national account business and some support for our external gluing service providers. On a full year basis, our Digital and Dialog Media segment continued to show slight growth, with revenues increasing to EUR 744 million.
Thereby, the Dialego business delivered remarkable 17% growth and thus more than compensated for the sales decline in Digital. Given the higher operating leverage of Digital, however, earnings declined by EUR 10 to 178 million. The digital ad business could not escape a generally worsening trend for the category as a whole, as general news traffic declined from peak levels during COVID and the beginning of the war, and advertisers were increasingly reducing their spend throughout the H2. Keeping things into perspective, on the other hand, it is worth noting that our sales level here is still very healthy above the 2020 level, and this despite losing some EUR 9 million sales in the H2 of 2022 from the disposal of our low margin Turkish activities.
Looking at the Q4 performance of the segment, we see despite the stronger sales decline in Digital than in the first 9 months, that EBITDA was slightly up. This is reflecting good margin and cost control in Digital, as well as a very strong year-end trading in Dialego, and here in particular at our door-to-door marketing activities. Finally, let us, let's have a look into our Data as a Service and E-commerce segment, comprising Statista and Asam. Sales for the full year were up by almost 22% and reached EUR 294 million. With around 34% growth, Statista was the main contributor to this strong development, exceeding also our own expectations. There was some tailwind from a stronger dollar, but even excluding this effect, growth was very healthy with 27%. Asam's revenues were up by 13% to EUR 158 million.
Thereby even showing some acceleration in Q4, driven by a sound Christmas business and an overall declining German e-commerce market. Segment EBITDA adjusted was slightly down for the full year, whereas the Q4 showed some traction with an earnings improvement, which is also our target for the current fiscal year. In fiscal year 2022, we successfully refinanced a total volume of more than EUR 850 million and thereby optimized the maturity profile of our financial debt. In May last year, we launched our first ESG-linked note loan with a total volume of EUR 203 million, divided into 3 maturity tranches of 3, 5, and 7 years. In early December, we closed our new revolving credit facility agreement with a total volume of EUR 650 million and a tenor of 5 plus 1 plus 1.
We're supported by a strong syndicate of national and international banks. With the successful implementation of our refinancing, we can continue our profitable organic growth course out of a strengthened position. Just before I hand you over back to Christian, let me summarize the developments of the Q4 from a financial perspective. We have seen a strong operational performance in Out of Home, especially when compared to other media types. This against a market environment characterized by uncertainty and retained consumer spendings in Q4. We have seen some burden in the Digital and Dialog segment from slowing demand for programmatic online ad spend. At the same time, the Dialog activities did not show any signs of demand slowdown, but the opposite, also demonstrating the defensive quality of our portfolio.
Our high growth assets, Statista and Asam, go from strength to strength, developed expectedly at a slightly lower pace at the end of the year, but with better earnings. All in all, our operations across all different sectors show sustainable relative strength at a time of macro uncertainty, but now better visibility regarding 2023 than at our Q3 results call. Our debt maturity profile is optimized, and our leverage ratio provides sufficient headroom. I think we are well prepared not only to gain share based on our strong market position, but also to maneuver what future will bring. Talking about the future, I will hand you back over to Christian for some closing remarks and our outlook.
Based on trading in January and February, as well as the trajectory of the order book for March, we expect that Q1 sales will show mid-single digit organic revenue growth for the group and also for our Out of Home business. Parallel, we see the German ad market, and we mentioned before the current trends that Nielsen showed for January. February looks the same. Declining high single digits. Therefore, we're outperforming the market by 10 to 15 points in Q1. Given the macro environment-driven market volatility in the last quarters, we will specify in more details the growth expectations for the rest of the year and in the Q1 earnings course. That's not a sign of being not confident what might come, but it's just too much change in the market in both directions.
You see our structural growth drivers unchanged, I think that's the most important point, the digitization of out-of-home, the sustainably growing SME business backbone, our good client access via the plus businesses, and the value growth of our non-core assets. Increasing energy and labor costs, of course, require tight steering at the moment on a monthly basis. Let me now close the presentation with looking at our financial calendar for 2023. The publication of our annual report, 2022, is on the 30th of March. On May 11, we will publish our Q1 figures. Our AGM will take place on July 5, followed by the presentation of our H1 figures in August. In November, on the 9th, we will update you on the Q3 performance. As always, further dates can be found in our financial calendar on our investor relations website.
Thank you, everyone, and we are now happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by 1. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by 2. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. We have the first question from Christopher Johnen from HSBC. Mr. Johnen, your question, please.
Thank you very much. Also, thanks for taking my questions and good morning. I would like to do them one by one, if possible. First, I would like to pick your brain on the potential introduction of a high fat, sugar, and salt advertising ban in Germany. Maybe you can give us a bit of color as to what % of your advertiser base would fall into that category. I know you're already having a certain type of ban around schools and stuff with respect to your out-of-home product. I'd be happy to get any sort of color on that. That'd be helpful.
Hi, Chris. Well, I would say I think the answer is difficult because what you have at the moment officially is quite vague information. I think yesterday or today, there was a potential list leaked from the ministry that included even bread and milk. I think the discussions here are very broad still, I think there is no proper consensus in the government that ultimately needs to put those things forward what the right direction is. I think in general, out-of-home specifically was not mentioned, I think, in the draft so far. Secondly, as you said, we already have for alcohol and other things that are critical for especially younger target groups or kids. We have specific ban miles around kindergarten schools and so on.
I think there is whatever happens, there is a way to work around that. On top, I would say, yeah, I mean, our business is extremely diversified. I would say the kind of topics that are currently discussed are more or less non-existing in our regional and local business. I would say the share within our national business; the max share is maybe 8 to 10% out of 40%. We talk about the max, max, four, five percentage points. That is already a view when you say what is food in general. I think that would also mean brands can still be advertised.
If it's forbidden to advertise products where the sugar level is, I don't know, above XYZ, then you could still have a light version of a product and advertise for that. That's why I think what might happen is really unclear. I think it will be a longer process and there will be a broader discussion around it. Nothing, I think, that we have currently as a huge short or midterm risk. The volume would be also too small. It's somehow a discussion that fits into a couple of discussions we have in Germany in the last couple of years. It looks like the government knows everything better than the economy and the free market. The government struggles to fix all the areas where they are in charge. That's maybe a separate discussion.
I think there's a misunderstanding. There's no ban for sugar-related products from kindergarten. This doesn't exist. The discussion is now if there would be a ban for this, let's say, sugar product, then it would be around kindergarten and schools. Right now, there's nothing in place. There's also an upside for us. If this ban, which of course would come now for electronic media like TV, for example, radio, et cetera, where they'll be banned during the whole day, there's definitely also an upside for out-of-home.
Most likely, if the whole thing will be established at the end, we're going to see these ban around kindergarten and schools. We had that for tobacco for 20 years. In reality, it didn't affect at all our turnover in tobacco, for example. For us, we are totally relaxed here.
That's very clear. Thanks. Second question on Asam and Statista, so the segment as a whole, I guess. Consensus still expects for this year, for 2023, some 50% EBITDA growth. Yet when you look at the performance over the years, there's been a clear prioritization of top line growth versus profitability as the margin has sort of declined for the past 4 years. I'm just curious. I know you haven't given a specific guidance, but maybe there's, you know, any sort of color you could give as to the trade-off this year, growth versus profitability, so that maybe we have a bit of a better idea as to what you expect on the EBITDA for that segment.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Chris. I mean, first of all, I think we don't see any big conflict of growing and improving earnings. I simply, I think we have to see that both assets in the meantime have also reached some critical mass. There is now a phase where we will be better on leveraging our fixed cost base, and so this is why we believe that we can grow earnings this year. I don't wanna go into too much detail in terms of the size of the improvement, but clearly the target is that we wanna see a turnaround in earnings, probably more at the H2 of the year than in, than the first. In general, we are quite positive that we can now come into a phase of, you know, earnings getting better traction.
Okay, that's clear.
Also maybe to add one comment, also helped by what Christian described, as within Asam, we have been quite busy also refocusing the business clearly on the DACH region. We believe that here, say, in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, there's still so much to do, so much market share to tap. Also, as Christian said, we're reconfiguring the e-commerce business, which is a very difficult thing to do in order to maintain both a good sales traction and proper margins at the same time.
All clear. One more follow-up on Statista, though. I mean, just what should we know with respect to, let's say, pricing in 2023? Because I mean, it is facing increasingly tougher comms, but I think you did a pricing round, but I'm not 100% sure about the scope across the entire footprint. Maybe you could give us a bit more color as to how we should think about the top line development for Statista this year.
Yeah, I think as always, I think on normally we increase prices by roughly between, in the range of 8 to 15%, because the product in itself also gets broader and we offer more and more content to clients. Nevertheless, there's always client individual pricing underneath. How long do clients commit? It's a subscription model over time. You're operating in general on an overall run rate where I would say the changes are not that dramatic. I think for us, the most important point is that we broaden the footprint, bring in more international global sales. We also started with dedicated team for global key accounts. So far, we've been focusing on countries and regions and then indirectly acquiring global accounts.
With now also a team in New York and London, focusing specifically on the headquarters of like Fortune 500 companies. I think that's the most important point at the moment. I think the historic growth rates are ambitious, but that's what the company has always preferred.
What we need to have a look at, though, is what the dollar will do a little bit, right? 'Cause I think we had some sort of tailwind in the H2 of last year. Right now, I think we have more or less neutral compared to the Q1, but there might be some headwind if you look where the dollar is now, where it was last year in the H2. Operationally, as you can imagine, we are really looking at the sort of organic performance stripping out currency effect.
Okay, that's very clear. Thanks, everyone.
The next question comes from Greg Abbott from Kepler. Your question, please.
Yes, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my call, my questions. First question I have is just looking at the continued weakness in online ad sales in general across the industry, I'd like to get your view, please, on how much of that you think is really just, you know, the first real cyclical downturn we're seeing in online advertising, or how much of this may be a bit more structural in nature. If you could give us any color on what kind of trend you're seeing there in Q1, that would be very helpful. I still have a second question, if you don't mind, after that one. Thank you.
Hi, Greg. Yeah, thanks for your question. Well, I think it's an interesting point, especially when you see that also companies like Alphabet or Meta are struggling at the moment with sometimes even to deliver any growth at all. I think there's three aspects. The first one is, clearly, we are running in parts still with the online business in total against COVID numbers. Where both. Ladies and gentlemen, there's a little bit of technical issues, so please hold the line. We apologize. Phone bill. Yeah, it makes me a bit nervous that we get cut off constantly, but we're working on it. Back to your question, Craig. There is the comps point, where I just think throughout this year, in general, we have a more normalized base.
I would say secondly, yes, there is cyclicality in there. I think the third point is more, maybe also based on the COVID bounce back that I think there was almost an undoubted and unquestioned development towards anything that was digital. I think a lot of those things get questioned at the moment again. Yeah, I think that's also what the global platforms see. I think going forward, I don't think that there is in general a structural problem, but you will see probably that it's getting tougher, for everyone that just is big globally. I think it's also tougher for someone that doesn't bring anything to the table. That's why the development going forward might be more diversified than in the, in the, in the past.
I think what we see at the moment, I think the January numbers were really bad for the market. When I look at our business, I would say the low point has been some time in Q4, maybe October, November, Q1 already looks better than the two quarters before. I think it's not realistic that we get to last year level cause Q1 was really strong. If you look at Q3 and Q4, where we've been versus prior year, I think you will see that we get closer and closer to historic levels. My feeling is end of March, beginning of May, April might be the point when that business will grow again. Yeah, I think it's a mixture.
The relative performance is a mixture of COVID cyclicality or post-COVID comps, cyclicality, and here and there also some structural shifts, but maybe more within the category on the long run.
Okay. Thank you, Christian. That's very helpful. My second question is, turning to or staying within the digital dialogue division. I mean, obviously we saw the very good operational EBITDA result in Q4. You mentioned that was driven by the strong performance in dialogue. Obviously, you know, a pleasing result, but that was quite an increase in EBITDA, which I think was a positive surprise for many of us, considering that traditionally, the margin's been much higher on your digital sales. I just wondered if you could add a little bit more color on just what was driving that, and then how sustainable that might be if we continue to see similar trends. Thank you.
Yeah. I think in general; we've been working in the last, I would say 18 to 24 months on bringing more and more of our contact center people into nearshore locations following the increase of the minimum wage in Germany. As always, when you open up locations outside of Germany, it takes a little while to ramp it up. You need to step-by-step shift resources that you have for clients to those locations. I think that gets, in general, nice traction. I think that is one aspect. The other one is, I would say, almost different to the developments that you, for instance, see on digital performance marketing. I think that what we do in that direct marketing really works.
It's sustainable, it delivers, sales results. It feels like at costs that are relative to online performance activities, maybe something that is more attractive to clients. That's what we see in general, that advertisers for the first time really question if their paid search strategy is the right one. They really question if all performance marketing also on Facebook is allocated the right way and what alternatives are. I think talking directly to existing customers, doing cross upselling, using direct marketing initiatives that we have in that dialogue segment is I think just something that is maybe benefiting almost.
The digital market segment that you see.
Maybe some more sort of technical hint. As you know, within the digital ad business, it's like two components. The stuff which we sell from the own property, so like t-online, which is very high margin, and then the sort of lower margin wholesale ad business. If you look at the decline, the decline takes place at a stronger stage. At own assets, obviously not helpful with the margin and the other way around. There's probably some little bit of headroom that we can apply in terms of how we manage the sales. Secondly, call center wise, I also indicated that there was quite a positive EBITDA effect from, in particular, the door-to-door business, which sold very strongly, teleco products.
That gave, some sort of very good, impact on the profit in the Q4 . If you look at it today, now, we don't see any signs of slowdown in the dynamics of that business.
Okay. Thank you both very much. Very useful. Thank you.
The next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi there. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is on Statista and Asam. Could we have an update on the monetization of those two assets? Is there any change in timing? Are you active talking to people? Do you feel that the price of those assets has evolved? That's my first question. The second one for Henning, could we get some indication or guidance for CapEx, working capital, tax rate, and interest for 2023? The last one is on M&A. You sold a small business in Turkey last year. You bought some minorities. What are your plans for 2023? You know, still a few small deals, something bigger, any color there would be great. Thank you.
Hi, Julien. I would take question number 1 and 3 on Statista and Asam. I think just looking a little bit back, originally, we had Asam on our mind for Q3, Q4 last year. We've been preparing ourselves and the assets for a potential process. I mean, the overall M&A market was more or less hardly existing. I would say we are prepared because of the work we've done by 80%, 90% to go into a potential process any time. At the moment, we have no concrete plans because we see that, yes, the M&A market maybe picks up a little bit, but it's very difficult to predict anything. I think we have no pressure, so it wouldn't make sense to do anything unless the overall M&A market and valuations are really robust.
We also had no focus on talking to external parties. Yes, in general, I think there is interest. We get feedback here and there, but we have not really focusing on discussing current valuations. I think it's the same in the case of Statista. There we always said we look at revenues beyond EUR 200 million before we see realistically the right moment for monetization. I think that won't happen before end of 2024. The company is very well organized, so whatever we do, we can always act relatively quickly. I think at the moment, we really concentrate on doing our homework and developing the businesses, and we wait until the external environment is a more stable one. Then we.
I think on M&A in general, yeah, we there's nothing that we have planned. I mean, we are always opportunistic if a really interesting bolt-on acquisition might pop up here and there, but it would be really small, opportunistic, and at the moment, we don't see anything. We don't have anything in our pipeline. Realistically, at least that's our plans. M&A is nothing we have on our list, either way, for 2023.
Julien, to come into your question, a bit of indication on some of the cash flow components. I would say if you look at CapEx and interest together, I would probably expect sort of the same cash outflow in 23 as we had in 22. Meaning that I think we believe that CapEx is probably coming down by some EUR 20 million. You know, we have these kind of special one-off buying in the headquarters here. Also, we were sort of fine-tuning a little bit the expansion path in digital out-of-home. Clearly, we have to expect like, you know, probably 15, more like 20 million EUR higher interest rate expenses. In terms of the tax rate, for the time being, I would still work with like 27%, 28% as a guidance.
At the same time, I think it's not unlikely that cash out for taxes will be higher this year than the cash cost. Also because we had some, let's say, postponement of payments, again, some opportunity that we used in 2022, where we shifted payments into 2023. That was part of the government sort of measures against the energy crisis that was on the radar by the end of last year. On working capital, I think that is kind of, to be very fair, it's very hard sort of to forecast that.
Of course, we're trying to do everything we can to have a better situation in the current fiscal year than we had last year, where we had like EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million cash out. In the end, to be very open, depends very much on the sort of business dynamics, in particular in the H2 of the year.
Fine for you, Julien?
Hello?
Julien?
It's fine. I was cut.
Okay, we go to the next question, which is from Nisla Niza from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. I have two questions from my end. The first is on the decline in classic out-of-home in Q4. Could you maybe give us some color as to what the scope of declines were in the national customer base versus, you know, the performance of the local and regional customers? Second, I guess related to that is what sort of conversations are you now having with your national scale clients? Are they still holding back on spending when it comes to out-of-home, or has that tone changed from maybe three months ago, similar to maybe what we're hearing from other markets, given that the macro expectation doesn't seem to be as bad as we anticipated going into 2023? Any color you can give us there would be great, even by sector, if that's possible. Thank you.
Hi, Nisla. I would say the Q4 development, there was again, as in almost every quarter, the tobacco impact. There were no specific tendencies. It was lower demand throughout the total market. I think entertainment was relatively good. That was the only positive exception. We had more new streamers that went to Germany with Paramount, and Disney was doing more. I would say all others were spending rather cautious in Q4. No sector-driven development similar to the overall ad market. Regarding Q1 and the rest of the year, I mean, I think we've just finished week eight.
To be really honest, if you would have asked me end of October last year what Q1 might look like, my really honest answer would have been, I think Q1 will probably be the low point of the whole development, because you could see from Q3 to Q4 it got worse. The overall sentiment was very, very negative towards Q1. What we've seen, surprisingly, that it looks like Q4, and even there, maybe more the mid of Q4 was the low point of the development. Q1 shows good dynamics. That's why I would say on the basis of the annual commitments that we have, there is nothing that looks in a way negative. I mean, you never know what clients ultimately do and where they log in within their commitments, but that all looks reasonable.
We only had, during the annual negotiations, one client who canceled the whole advertising budget for like six months, but that was the exception that you always have here and there. Funny enough, they already came back for Q2 now. That's why I would say it's very early. That's why we don't want to be too positive too early, because the other way around, we've seen last year with the war, with the inflation, with supply chain problems, that there are so many things that you don't know because you don't know them. At the moment, the order book doesn't show anything else than what we see in Q1.
Again, from the general logical view on the business, I would say that the comps get easier and easier throughout the year, and especially the H2 is, I would say, a base performance from 2022 that is easy to beat and the other way around. My original feeling was that January and February might be the toughest months to beat because that was pre-war, and then there were some tactical ad cancellations right after the Russian invasion. At the moment it all looks quite stable, and I think it's more the experiences from the last almost 3 years, yeah, with pandemic and lockdown and next mutation and war and so on, that you almost expect that there will be problems that you don't see right now.
That is the only reason why we say, let's, at the moment, look at the business quarter by quarter. That's how we optimize it. We still have homework to do on inflation, on energy costs, on minimum wages and so on. Nothing is a home run here, just to be clear. I would say the general development looks really good. I think what we see as very positive is our development versus the sentiment that we get, at least from other local players in the German ad market. Yeah, it looks like the out-of-home business or our business is recovering faster or has less challenges and is again in growth mode while others are still somewhere in the middle of going significantly backwards. Yeah, that's where we are at the moment.
We also see that, beginning of the years in generally in 2023 very encouraging for us, especially in the light of the fading out of the pandemic effects. Don't forget in 2021, for example, you had a very strong TV development, and many people saw it as a recovery of TV. The pandemic changed completely media consumption and changed also spending behavior. If you see now, the results of the overall market in Q1, where we see a decline in high single digits, when you see the Q1 results, you're also going to see these effects in the balance sheets of our competitors.
We were very encouraged by the development, what we see for digital out of home and for out of home in general. If you look back also last two years, you had the COVID crisis, the wars, inflation, the interest hikes and tobacco ban. The resilience of our business for the last two years is quite impressive from our point of view. We see the same development now going into 2023, where we're going to see a normalization of the structural effects of the overall media market more than the last two years. I think at the end of the year, it will be much more clear where we see structural growth and where we see structural decline in the media business.
Super helpful. Can I just ask you to remind us again what was the absolute tobacco impact in 2022 and Q4, please?
I think total number was probably around EUR 15 million, one five. It's like 22 classic that we lost that were compensated by 7 in e-cigarettes or heaters. The net loss was EUR 15 million, and I think in Q4, it was around EUR 3 million, I would say.
Great. Thank you very much.
A little bit less than in the H1 of the year and the H2. To be fair, I don't have it at the top of my head, but you can square it from chart 21 where we give both growth rates.
Got it. Thank you.
You should be able to map it out.
The next question comes from Simon Keller from Hauck Aufhäuser Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. First, again, on the digital and Dialego segment profitability in Q4, you answered on that before already, with the explanation you gave, should we now expect to see similar margins for digital and for Dialego? The second question on CapEx, how much, roughly, belongs to the out-of-home rollout of the digital screens? Thank you.
Okay. Simon, good question. You know, I gave some light on the developments in Q4, as you said, you know, I will refrain from sort of giving a guidance what we expect in terms of margins now for individual segments. I just wanted to point out the sort of sell-side mechanics that are also a function of the portfolio diversification that we have. Obviously, our best scenario is that margins go up, we see growth, let's say, in Dialego and in the digital ad business as well. At this point of time, you know, I would not give any specific outlook for what we expect in terms of earnings. In light of what Christian just described, the Q1, sort of pretty tough base, especially for the digital part in that segment.
CapEx, I would say based on the rollout, roughly a little bit less than 40% of the out-of-home infrastructure CapEx went into digital expansions.
Thank you.
We still have a very broad portfolio, so there is stuff going into classic maintenance, renewal of contracts that's more or less ongoing and rolling. I would say that let it be 38%-39%, something in that range as the share for digital expansion.
Okay. Thank you very much. Just with short follow-up on the digital and Dialego. Between the two, yeah, I mean, was it clear that the margin development between the two segments or is digital the same margin as Dialego, roughly?
No. I mean, we've disclosed the numbers historically, I think at our capital markets day. So just giving you rough ranges. Also, when you look at peers, I think top-class global BPOs or Dialego businesses get margin profile between 15% and best case 17 to 18%. So, with our Dialego business, we're at the upper end of that, like, top-class corridor. Our digital business in total has probably around 28%. Yeah, it could have been during the pandemic, close to 30%, I think it was historically rather 28%. And that again, is a combination of proprietary publishing business, which we fully control, where we run the platform like t-online, like watson, like GIGA. There, the margin profile is probably up to 50%, depending on the asset or even beyond, if it's a small, profitable vertical.
The ad sales business that we do, that's something where we only do the monetization, where we pick up a specific commission there, the margin profile is rather between 10% and 15%, roughly. Different margin profile, the difference is probably 10, 11 points between digital and Dialego. If you look into digital, there are parts of digital that is even a bit lower than Dialego.
All right, thank you.
Next question comes from Marcus Dibble from JP Morgan. Your question please.
Hi, everyone. Christian, one question, you can comment on volume and growth, yeah, in the outdoor business. I know it's a bit of an art. It's not easy given that they are sort of interlinked. Yeah, just trying to find out for 23, given you still aspirational plans to roll out more screens, what would you say is just a component of volume growth that you sort of get on in 23? Yeah, that would be maybe interesting. Then, one question for Henning. I mean, first of all, great that the difference between EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA is now low. Yeah, I think that's very helpful. Thank you for that. The question is on leasing expenses.
Yeah, if you can also give us the cash effect of leasing. I think that's the key one to look for in the cash flow pledge. Thank you.
Well, on the first question, as you say, I don't know if it's, if it's science or arts, difficult to say. Just technically, If I just look at the premium screens, that's a really relevant one because that the monetizing long tail inventory, smaller screens, point of sale is, I don't know, less than 5% of the digital out of home business. Ultimately, we have, let's say, 7,500 screens with 2 sq m and bigger. That's premium roadside products. We add, let's assume 500, maybe 600 or 550 on top. You talk about 6%, 7% expansion of the network just by means of volume. That said.
I meant more in revenue terms, if that's okay. If there's anything to. Obviously I've seen the slides, but more in terms of like what could be the revenue impact of this rollout, which is obviously a bit harder, I guess.
Yeah, if you just look at the volume. If it's the pure volume, it's 6 to 7%, but you digitize top-down. Screen number 7,501 doesn't have the revenue potential of the 1st screen because you pick the best.
Yeah
locations first. Realistically, I would say out of the 7% that you increase in volume, you generate best case 5% growth that comes by more inventory. The rest is organic growth on the existing infrastructure. If you, under normal terms, would assume, you're able to grow 15% with that business, then it's driven by 5% expansion of the network and 10% organic growth on the or better yielding of the existing inventory.
Okay, perfect.
Marcus, on the leasing payments, as you know, I mean, we map them out with the cash, sort of, cash effect on page 20 as part of our, sort of, cash flow statement. If you obviously look back over the last 2 years, I think there has been some distortion also from achieved postponements with negotiations with municipalities in the course of the pandemic and so on. What we see now behind the increase of 2021 into 2022 is 2 effects. One is that in one or the other contracts, we sometimes adjust the minimum lease payments, and then need to be accounted for under IFRS, and also lead then to a higher number in this context, and the rest is postponements.
I think sort of a mid-single digit EUR million effect would be from adjusted minimum payments, and the rest would be postponements. That I believe that what we see now there in terms of the EUR 198 million should be more or less also the working assumption for the coming year.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jörg Philipp Frey from Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Hello, guys. Can you elaborate a bit on the drivers behind the slowdown of digital out-of-home in the Q4? Did the discussions about potential dark screens play any role in that slowdown? How do you see it? A bit about the share of national account in digital out-of-home, I presume it's substantially larger than in the overall business and, well, so in that kind, it's probably a bit more in terms of growth rates, we should add TV growth, advertising growth rates, plus a certain outperformance, certainly. Well, how are you looking at that business in terms of the spread between the drivers of the spread between TV growth and digital out-of-home growth?
A bit more light on that one.
Hi, Jörg. What I have to say, the Q4 result was not impacted by the electricity discussions. I think it was end of August or beginning of September, discussions with advertisers, if they can be sure that they get the airtime that they want. That was like one or two weeks around, okay, we need to be reassured what's possible in Q4, but the development there was clearly demand driven. I think it's a video product. That's how we've positioned it in the market. If the TV market is so bad as in Q4, of course, TV stations give discounts. I think the competitive environment has made it difficult to grow, to make sure that the digital out-of-home business can grow even faster.
If you look again at the performance of digital out-of-home versus the market, it was like 20% or more than 20% better than the ad market. That just says that it shows the relative potential of the product. That said, under normal conditions, let's say normal in Germany is that the ad market grows very low, single digit, 1%, 2%. That what we've seen over the 3, 4 years before the pandemic. I think digital out-of-home has a growth potential of 15 to 20%. The majority of the growth of that product clearly comes from national advertisers. You're right. I would say the share is 75%.
If you look at it the other way around, national advertisers spend meanwhile, and that's our prediction for 2023, slightly more than half of their out-of-home money in digital out-of-home, which is quite positive for us, cause that's where the highest margins sit. You see that this is happening as a part of the structural challenges of the media landscape, because national advertisers, they ultimately allocate the money where the eyeballs are. Structurally, the eyeballs in television, print media, even radio, meanwhile, go backwards. I think what we do by means of free inventory, more mass mobility, more screens out there, we offer more and more inventory to spend that money that maybe is no longer allocated in the same way in other channels. That's, I think, where the growth comes from.
I personally don't see that that long-term trend is changing. It looks like that the pandemic was a little extra positive kicker for broadcasting television, and now it's going faster backwards than before. I think print is an ongoing development that gets maybe also accelerated now by the printing costs and electricity costs. I mean, that hits especially regional newspapers very hard. Difficult to say what happens beyond the next five years, but I would say that overall trend that you could also observe before the pandemic is now just continuing. I would say digital out-of-home outperforming the ad market by 15 points is something that is our target, yeah. Besides the classic out-of-home still growing low to mid-single digit. That's what we said before the pandemic. That's what we say for the midterm plans.
I think the current development of the ad market show that the relative development of our businesses are going exactly in that direction. Unfortunately, the overall market is a bit more challenged now, but at least Q1 feels like we are getting more back into the direction that I've just described.
Yeah, we hope so. Thank you.
Interesting new aspect. There is a carbon footprint of advertising campaigns. We believe that this is going to play a much bigger role in the foreseeable future. There we're actually very good positioned with out-of-home and with digital out-of-home. With digital out-of-home, we see 0.007-gram carbon per contact. If you look to other classical media is from 0.4 in online and to 11 gram in magazine advertising per contact. I mean, I would not be surprised if in the future, besides the traditional key KPIs, reach and cost 1,000 eyeballs, also carbon footprint will be one of the key KPIs for the efficiency of campaigns.
There's, we don't know now how strong this is going to be. We see that this is discussed more and more. There's definitely a very interesting perspective also for out-of-home and for digital out-of-home.
Yeah. Right. Regarding, good positioning, also coming back on this chunk, food discussion, it looks a bit like this is, Ferrero would be the poster child of a company affected by this. Would it be fair to say that, while Ferrero is, while a client which is disproportionately, has a smaller share in your business than in the overall market, where it's the second-largest advertiser?
Yeah, absolutely. I think, their Head of Media, Uwe Storch, I personally have battles with him cause he's spending all of his money still in television, like in the 1980s or 1990s. 90%. If you look at the media mix of Uwe, as a. Maybe one day he will listen our calls, but he would say, "Yeah, I know you tell me all the time." He spends 90% of his money in television, like in the 1980s. He does digital out-of-home here and there, when he gets completely frustrated with inflation rates and television. I think, I personally think he has made strategic mistakes. Yeah.
Yeah.
For the good, there is nothing or not that much to lose at the moment for us. Yeah.
The opposite. I mean, definitely, we would see much more ad money from his side, in case this law will come through. That's what I already said before. I mean, don't forget, we have the tobacco ban, restrictions for tobacco ban in all other media and restrictions on out-of-home. We benefited from that about 30 years, I think. So, we are generally against advertising bans, but commercially, it's more likely that we're going to benefit from that than anything else.
Sounds good. Well, thanks a lot, and all the best for the future.
Thanks, Jörg. Thank you. See you soon.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if there are still any questions, please press star followed by 1. There seems to be no further questions and I hand back for closing comments.
Good. Thank you very much for your time, all the questions. We hope you also had a good start into the year and looking forward to see you soon. Yeah. Take care. Have a good time.
Bye. Take care. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.