Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our H1 2021 results call today. Together with our entire Board, Christian Henning and Christian, we will present the financials for the first half twenty twenty one and give you more information. About the current business dynamics across all segments, but especially out of our media in the light of a normalizing out of our market. Our financial development in H1 across the various businesses and sub segments, we wanted to take the opportunity to make a deeper dive into the product and platform development of Stratista before we close the presentation with the outlook for Q3 and the full year, including an update of our ESG initiatives. The first half of this year was unsurprisingly driven by the dynamics of the pandemic and especially the lockdown measures of the government.
So we talk about 6 months of which more than 5 are facing massive restrictions of public life. And our strategic model, AutoForm Plus, clearly paid off in the crisis. Especially at the end of April, we focus on protecting our core business and its key levers for the future. We manage costs carefully, we've made sure not to harm any crucial relationships with partners or key initiatives like digitization or local sales. From May onwards and already before the end of the lockdown, we got back to full speed on both sales as well as portfolio development and digital rollout, definitely also a key reason why already at the end of H1, we could see pre COVID out of home levels and even stronger public video numbers.
The non auto phone business, our Plus segments, Digital and Dialogue Media as well as DAS and e Commerce have seen 2 really strong quarters and were operatingly unimpressed or even supported by COVID-nineteen, the business diversification across media segments within one country was definitely a resilient setup in the crisis. Since advertising market shows more vitality again, the demand for digital media as well as tech and data driven solutions is even stronger than pre COVID as this should also give us more midterm tailwind for our specific and very digital focused setup. Our leading out of phone position furthermore helps us gaining market share when advertisers come back and focus on premium and digital solutions from the larger players, us and GCD Corp. So we already started accelerating our infrastructure development plans towards more roadside screens. And at the end of H1, we see all sales channels, programmatic, National Key Accounting, regional as well as local sales back on full speed and optimistic for H2.
The results of the first half twenty twenty one once again reflects advantages of our globally unique positioning with Autofome Plus. Robot performance in a challenging environment of the 1st 5 months of the year due to the massive restrictions of public life and accelerated growth in a recovery market environment, in addition to the sound performance of our content based businesses, Dialog Marketing as well as our DaaS and e commerce activities, Shatista and Azam, Autofrom contributed its share to the strong performance. The reported revenues in the first half of 2021 for the group, then that €686,000,000 up 8% compared to the prior year period, organic revenue was at a comparable level with 8.9% are 23 percentage points above the level of H1 2020. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% €280,000,000 following the overall revenue development. Our adjusted EBIT benefited from a better operational performance and a slightly lower D and A volume.
Due to the lower comparative value of the previous year, adjusted EBIT improved over proportionally by 36% from €35,000,000 to €48,000,000 Adjusted net income accelerated over proportionally as well and was up by 48% from 18,000,000 to €27,000,000 Operating cash flow in the 1st 6 months was solid of EUR 120,000,000 however, some EUR 20,000,000 lower compared to H1 2020 due to higher receivable levels triggered by the overall higher business volume in the current reporting period. Driven by lower CapEx spend in the Q1 of the year due to phasing effects, CapEx for the first half was €38,000,000 or in Europe or 26% less compared to the same period in 2020. For the second half of year, we will again accelerate the ramp up of our digital footprint, especially for digital roadside screens, I expect a full year CapEx spend at least on prior year level. Let me zoom a little bit into our segments to highlight some initiatives and results it also forms a fundament for the rest of the year and our midterm perspective. COVID ultimately, it's just a bump in our road as we see all long term business drivers fully intact.
Our market share and our form is based on the latest and most reliable data from the German Advertising Association, ZAW, 63%. Besides our unique public video product, we have currently 748 Broadset Screens live and expect to see the crucial one thousand at the very beginning of next year. Together with GCT Co and the Out of Home Association, we are just launching dynamic audiences for digital roadside inventory and pre marketing for the new nationwide network we start from September. Local sales order book stand at plus 28% versus prior year, so our pipeline for 2022 and the following years is intact. Programmatic represents at the moment 40 3% of our public video revenue and this gives us interesting opportunities once we open our roadside network also for that sales channel.
And our Digital and Dialogue Media segment, T Online, with its content offering, so excluding the email platform, the number one news website since mid of Q2 and to see a strong and sustainable traffic development across all our publishing assets and verticals. 3rd party sales with its 360 monetization model for our publishers bundles roughly a third of the revenues of all German publishing assets and programmatic and data revenue count here for 52% of the total. Both our contact centers and door to door have again broadened the customer base via our group key account access, have optimized operational KPIs, also the employment market gets more challenging at the moment. Sales and e commerce have been slightly outperforming our expectations in H1. Statistical top line growth is also fueled by an optimized churn and net revenue retention, improved traffic and sales funnel management and strong product improvements, which Christian will show in more detail later in our presentation.
ASAM's momentum is driven by the unchanged dynamics of e commerce, as we have kicked off this year's planned investments of €5,000,000 into new markets like U. S, France and Poland, as well as the enhanced live video sales channel. And our current order book for Q3 shows that the achievements of H1 also convert into a strong start into H2. To give you better orientation about the business performance, we look at the comps of both 2019 2020. AUTO4 Media revenue is in the range of +29 to plus 28 versus 2020 and around 2019 levels up 5%, especially national sales and public video shows the best recovery dynamics at the moment.
Digital and dialogue media stand around plus 10% versus 2020 and plus 17% versus 2019. The total online business as well as our contact centers performed strong. Door to door robust against extremely tough comps from last year, the Ranger had massive catch up effects as we couldn't sell most of Q2 2020. Zaza E Commerce in Q3 is currently fully in line with what we have delivered in the last quarter, between 30% and 35% growth versus last year and 68% to 75% growth as of 2019. Even if auto form is over on pre COVID level in Q3 so far, it's worth having a look at different products and client clusters as the picture isn't fully consistent yet.
In some areas, we are already growing significantly versus pre COVID baseline. In other areas, we have still potential to catch up, especially once the pandemic is really over. Clearly, about the pre COVID are roadside screens, public video, our retail media around supermarkets and our signage media. From a customer class review, small local clients, e commerce, media and the public sector are currently extremely dynamic. Around the pre COVID levels, we see billboards, strollers, street furniture and our service business around auto foam products.
Looking at clients at the regional portfolio, automotive, telco, finance, FMCG and foot that has really recovered from the pandemic. Still below pre COVID levels is the analog inventory, the public transport locations, culture media and columns, ambient media in location like airports, fitness studios or restaurants, as well as our international auto phone business. And we see similar catch up potential with our event clients, customers in high investment categories, traditional retail and health. And just to wrap up positive outlook for our core business, the latest news and forecast see and expect a growing dynamic for all of our media towards Q4 and the end of this year. So H1 was challenging, but we used opportunities for our Plus businesses and made our homework to further grow our core AutoForm segment.
Let me now hand over to Henning, who will guide you through the financial details and the results of the Q2 of 2021.
Thank you, Udo, and hello to everybody. Before we get into the details of the Q2 2021 financials, let's note again that we are comparing 2 quarters with different economic backdrops here, Q2 2020 when we all went into a tightening lockdown versus Q2 2021, a quarter with light at the end of the tunnel due to an increasing vaccination rate and reduced incidence rates as well as a step by step easing of the corona measures here in Germany. Even when taking this into account, STORE continued to perform very strongly in Revenues were up significantly by 42% or in absolute terms from 264,000,000 to €374,000,000 Organic growth developed accordingly. This strong sales increase led to a significantly improving EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA increased from €55,000,000 to €107,000,000 and thus more than compensating the earnings decline of the Q1.
The adjusted EBITDA margin improved significantly from 21% to around 29%. This development was driven by both the operating post lockdown dynamics of our out of home business as well as continued strength in the digital and dialogue media business. At the same time, the support of short time work allowances in this year's Q2 was some EUR 18,000,000 less and in prior year's Q2. So all in all, the underlying improvement was even stronger. As our focus is less on M and A and rather on organic growth and since many restructuring efforts have already been implemented in the past, exceptional items are down significantly from minus €10,600,000 to €600,000 This improving earnings quality is in line with the guidance we have given.
However, this does not imply that there will be no adjustments effect in the future. But again, the magnitude should be much lower than what we have seen in the last couple of years. Depreciation and amortization, including mainly the depreciation on IFRS 18 assets was minus €79,000,000 €10,000,000 below the level of Q2 2020. The main driver behind this development higher impairments in the prior year and lower amortizations from PPA assets. Some assets which have been recognized in the process of historical purchase price allocations are fully written down in the meantime.
So underlying D and A has been more or less flat. With minus €7,000,000 the financial result was €1,700,000 better compared to Q2 2020, mainly because of impairment on loans for former group companies in the prior year. The tax result came in with approximately minus €5,000,000 compared to a tax income of €8,000,000 in Q2 2020. Summing all this up, net income adjusted turned positive was €26,000,000 in Q2 2021 compared to a loss of €17,000,000 in Q2 2020. Reported net income showed an even stronger improvement from minus €45,200,000 to now €15,400,000 again supported by lower adjustments on EBITDA level as well as lower adjustments on D and A, but more importantly fueled by a very healthy operational performance in the second quarter.
Moving over to cash flow, we see an improving cash operating cash flow, which has improved to €71,000,000 to €93,000,000 So we see that better EBITDA is not fully converting into better cash flow. This has to be seen in the context with last year's heavy cash flow protection mode due to the evolving pandemic, which at the time led to a strong contribution from working capital. Since we ended last year with a cash outflow from net working capital, this quarter's development should not be seen as an indication for the full fiscal year of 2020. Cash out from non M and A investments came in virtually flat at €24,000,000 Free cash flow before M and A was €17,000,000 up to €48,000,000 in previous year's Q2 and free cash flow, including leasing payments, went up to €34,000,000 With this development, financial debt came in at €621,000,000 so reflecting a sequential improvement compared to Q1, at the same time, bank leverage after a spike in Q1 improved again to 2.3 times, slightly better than we expected and more or less on the level of the year end 2020. For the Q3, we are foreseeing some impact on the leverage ratio resulting from the expected dividend payment.
With a cash heavy 4th quarter, however, we expect a broadly stable ratio for the full fiscal year. Let us now have a closer look at the operating business segments and where we stand compared to 2020 as well as compared to pre COVID 2019 levels. The out of home media segment showed encouraging trajectory throughout the Q2. Nonetheless, some areas were still dampened due to not yet fully recovered mobility compared to pre COVID levels. However, travel data suggests a continuous improvement and easing here.
That said, out of home sales were on an index level of 73% compared to pre COVID, this index improved nicely throughout the quarter. Compared to the prior year, revenues were up 47%. In this context, adjusted EBITDA almost doubled versus the prior year from €33,000,000 to €64,000,000 and the margin jumped from 32% to 42% due to a better utilization of our fixed cost base and despite last year's support from short time work allowances, our new digital and dialed local media segment again performed very well in both sub segments, even when considering the brightening of the overall economic environment. Revenues increased by around 45% from EUR 120,000,000 in Q2 2020 to €175,000,000 in Q2 2021, our online advertising and content publishing showed ongoing growth momentum as well as margin improvement. The same applies for our Dialog business, which last year was heavily impacted by the lockdown, in particular in the area of our door to door activities.
All in all, adjusted EBITDA grew from €19,000,000 to €45,000,000 as adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 16% to 26%. Our Data as a Service and E Commerce segment continued its success story had accelerated revenue growth to 34% compared to 17% in the prior year period. And total segment sales increased from €42,000,000 to €56,000,000 With organic sales growth of 55%, Stratista once again significantly accelerated growth compared to the average previous years and was the main sales contributor to the quarter for the segment. The sales up by more than 20%, ASAM continues its success story. Due to an increasing investment in accelerated growth and the expansion of our international business, especially at Assam, adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 9% and adjusted EBITDA was €5,000,000 in Q2 2021 compared to €7,000,000 in the corresponding prior year period.
Let me now hand you over to Christian, who will give you an update on Stadista.
Thank you, Henning. In the last quarter, we gave you a detailed update on ASR. Today, we want to provide you with more information on Statista. Since the acquisition of Stittista in 2016, the team around Doctor. Friedrich Swandt and Hubert Jakob has transformed the company into the globally leading business data platform showing consistent fast growth over the last 5 years, they have grown the Hamburg based company into a leading international player with offices across the globe.
In today's presentation, we want to focus on the core product of Statista. It is the foundation of Statista's business model and the main Factor from other business information firms. Satista is the category leader in what we call data as
a service.
Traditionally, as most of you will probably remember, software was sold on CDs and had to be installed on the computer. Updates were expensive and required a new CD. With the advent of fast and reliable Internet connections in combination with cloud hosting services, numerous companies transformed the model. Salesforce was one of them. Taking the software for sales management into the cloud, they shifted from one off license sales to a flexible subscription model.
Certista did something similar with the business data market. Traditionally companies would sell paper based and later digital reports on specific topics to customers. If web access was provided, and the licenses were expensive and targeted at individual researchers within companies. Usually, only very few employees had access to this data and everyone who needed such information had to approach the research team. Satista transforms the industry by creating a data as a service platform.
Customers acquire subscription for teams, departments and frequently the entire company. Through this subscription and a simple web based user interface, users can access the information wherever they are. This leads to a deeper customer penetration compared to traditional business data providers, which results in higher usage, lower churn rates and stable customer relationship. The core of the Statista platform is the single statistics. It provides an easy to understand overview of data on a specific topic, including and source information, customers can change the layout to adjust it to their needs.
Statista also provides various download functionality. This enables customers to directly integrate the statistics into their workflows. Various enterprise clients are even using the so called PowerPoint which allows them to download statistics directly in their corporate PowerPoint design. Just one click, the statistic on the Statista website is converted into a slide for a PowerPoint presentation. This helps customers to save a lot of time.
Additionally, the statistic makes it easier to search and digest content, both for Google and for customers. The standardized format makes content comparable and much easier to understand. In traditional market research reports, the relevant information is frequently hidden within long text paragraphs or in charts scattered across tax documents, Statista focuses on the core quantitative information. Context is provided in the descriptions and annotations, but in the background. When Statista was founded, the focus of the content creation lay on the curation and aggregation of publicly available data sources.
Those included national statistics offices, international bodies such as the World Bank, Policy Institutes and others. While this information is generally freely available to everyone, Satista added a massive benefit for customers by checking the sources, standardizing the information, categorizing it and tagging the resulting statistics, thus making them searchable and easily accessible. Today, those sources only make up a fraction of the overall content base. Subsequently, Statista started to acquire additional data sources through contractual agreements. Those agreements provide Satista with access to broader and more specialized data from well known research firms such as GSK, Ipsos, and Nielsen, Statista customers can access this information through the Statista web platform and do not have to access various information providers.
Starting in 2016, Certista has built up and expanded own proprietary content base, a large team of data scientists and research analysts creates so called market outlooks that allow customers to access data, a detailed country and industry specific forecast for various topics. The consumer market outlook, for example, contains market data on fast moving consumer goods such as cosmetics. Additionally, the team conducts extensive surveys. Its flagship product, the Global Consumer Survey is paying customers access to consumer sentiment, attitudes and behaviors in 56 countries. The data is based surveys conducted with more than 1,000,000 respondents worldwide.
Over the last year, proprietary data has been continuously expanded and today accounts for roughly 50% of the information on the Satista platform. To make the differentiation between the two content types easier to understand, think of the following analogy. Proprietary data can be compared to Netflix Originals, such as House of Cards that are exclusively available on Netflix. 3rd party content can be compared to non exclusive shows like Stranger Things that are available on Netflix, but also on other platforms. The investment into proprietary content has thus created a defendable competitive advantage for Statista, customers who want to access this kind of information need to stay with Statista as it is not available on other platforms.
The vast content on the platform in combination with customer friendly usability and the simple premium subscription model has made Stithis a credible, reliable source for business information, today almost 30,000,000 users visit the statistic site per month. This is substantially more than even the largest competitors can command. The 15 other business information and market research companies that you can see on the chart together command roughly the same number of visits as Statista
alone. This traffic brings
a consistent flow of potential users and subscribers to the platform. They get to know Statista through web searches for any kind of information. If they want to access more information, they need to sign up for a free account. This provides Statista with contact information that can be used for targeted marketing and sales. The free account will allow them to access the entire platform.
However, they can only see around 5% of the data as the rest lies behind the paywall. Customers can find this information and their searches that need to subscribe for a paid account to exit it. The large traffic base does directly through direct purchases and indirectly through leads for the sales team has persisted to win new customers and expand the business further without incurring marketing expense. We hope you find this information helpful. We are planning to provide deeper insights on Statista at our Capital Markets Day in October.
Let me now talk briefly on our business outlook for the Q3 and our expectations for the full year 2021 and give you a preview on our upcoming ESG report. For the Q3, we expect our group revenue around 15% to 20% above prior year and our EBITDA above both 2020 2019. All three segments will contribute to this positive development. Our expectations for the full year 2021 are unchanged. We expect our out of phone business at around €700,000,000 revenue, I.
E. On 2019 level, minus lockdown effects of EUR 120,000,000 in H1 plus potential catch up effects in Q4. This assumes that there is no substantial 4th COVID wave. On that basis, we see a revenue range of around €1,600,000,000 for the full year for the group. Depending on the out of home dynamics towards Q4, we expect group EBITDA in the range of €490,000,000 to €510,000,000 as Arne pointed out before, we do not expect any medium and long term structural changes in our revenue and profitability expectations.
Let me now give you a preview on the highlights of our ESG report for 2020, which describes the progress we've made on our sustainability goals and which we will publish soon. Along our guiding principles, efficiency, innovation and responsibility, we've continued to push several ESG topics forward. Most importantly, we concluded the group wide assessment of our corporate carbon footprint together with the renowned agency climate partner. In total, we produced CO2 emissions of 47,000 tons in 2020, mainly from our digital out of home billboards, our employees commuting to and from work, our car fleet and our office buildings. While this is within the typical range of our industry and already lower than in 2019, we are working hard on bringing this number down significantly.
Most importantly, we are switching our energy contracts to green energy. All our office buildings and 80% of our out of home billboards are run without from Adafone and online campaigns via a repowerstation program in Colombia. But this is certainly not enough. We set ourselves the goal to reach climate neutrality for the entire company by 2025 and will work relentlessly towards making this happen. Another key goal for us is to use both our out of home and online reach to promote sustainability topics on a pro bono basis.
Therefore, we are very happy to announce a strategic multiyear collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Our joint objective is to promote the rights and well-being of children worldwide. We aim to inform and raise broad awareness and wide attention to advocate children's rights and the UNICEF Child Rights School in particular across all of Germany. We aim to co develop campaigns supporting children's rights and UNICEF's work in Germany and played out on our nationwide digital adafoam and online network. In total, we will dedicate MediaReach with a few €1,000,000 to this effort.
On the governance dimension, cybersecurity remains key to us, rooted in a newly defined group wide cybersecurity strategy, we are now working on further professionalizing our cybersecurity governance. This includes building up a dedicated organization with clear responsibilities, conducting a rigorous vulnerability management via scans and penetration tests and managing the risk in the information security management system, OneTrust. Most importantly, we were able to close all severe security weaknesses identified in our initial assessment from end of last year. We will provide more information on these topics and quantify our progress towards more sustainability in our 2020 ESG report in a couple of weeks. Let me close the presentation by looking at our financial calendar for the coming months.
Our AGM is scheduled for September 3. Around this time, we will also publish our ESG report. We will hold the Capital Markets Day in early October. We are planning to do a review of the company's development in the last 8 years and our current out of foam plus strategy. Furthermore, we will give you a mid term outlook on our out of core business, especially in our digitization, will drive our market share in the coming 5 years.
And we will make a deeper dive into Statista and other. We will provide more information on exact timing and location. Our Q3 quarterly statement will be published on November 10. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.
Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session.
The
first question we've received is from Anik Mas, Exane BNP Paribas. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I have three questions today. So the first one is, you say on Slide 5 that programmatic currently 42% of makes up 42% of public video revenue. That seems to be quite a big chunk compared to how much peers are generating from programmatic. So I'm just keen To really understand how you define programmatic here.
Then my second question is, if you could give us an update on whether you had more conversations regarding the sale of Azam Beauty over the last month. And then just thinking about the cash of a potential Adam and Statista sale IPO, what Are you intending to use cash for? Thank you.
Hi, Annik, Christian, thanks for your questions. On the first one on programmatic, I mean, it's quite simple definition, all kind of revenues that come in via trading desks and demand side platforms. So that means it can be automated trading as well as revenues that come through private auctions, private deals or also meanwhile open auctions, very small part. But the key point is the technical execution is coming via demand side platforms and trading desks that originally have been implemented only for the online business. So what's the reason for the relatively high number?
I think the reason for that is that since meanwhile 6 or 7 years, we are working on that, I think while the rest of the market is working on that topic since 18 months. And I think we've meanwhile both online agencies, digital agencies, traditional media agencies, but also out of home specialists that work with more and more automated campaign bookings, And that's what we ultimately wanted. So on the one hand, access to digital money that is then via the logics of programmatic trading also allocated to digital out of home. And ideally, as a second effect, the traditional out of home industry learning that there are has massive process benefits through automated trading, which also allow us smarter yielding of our inventory. But you're right.
I would say the true global average is probably a low single digit number of programmatic volumes going on digital out of home, I think we are with above 40%, and that's definitely also a number that was pushed further by COVID. I think we are meanwhile getting to closer to where the online standards are in Germany, which are around 50% or slightly above for the traditional online
That's a good clear. Thank you.
On Annick, on Assam Duty, maybe just to reiterate and what we stated so far is our key priority is to grow the business to size of around €200,000,000 turnover, and we are fully on track with regards to reaching that number next year, so in 2020 to this is what we are focusing on together with the company. But you're right, we've initiated talks specifically with banks to understand better how they look at the company, also what's the key elements of the equity story that we have already presented in our last call and also get a bit of judgment on valuation and process. I believe we will really actively reach out to the investor community early next year.
Nick, Henning here on the question on potential disposal proceeds. I mean, first comment is, I'd say, across the bridge when you get to it. But in general, I mean, we are thinking around the lines of the bank leverage, which we're seeing now has sequentially improved from Q1 to Q2. However, we're still is a little bit weaker than the pre COVID level. In general, you also know that we are constructive in terms of the dividend.
So I think we need to find the right balance on both getting back to the historical bank leverage ratios and letting shareholders also benefit
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Christopher Yoonen, HSBC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks also for taking my questions. The first on the order book. On the slide you say that you have a robust outlook in Pre bookings also in September October, is there any chance we can get a bit more color on that, particularly on October? Are we talking I know that the comps are not Exactly, the same in Q3 and Q4.
But are we talking similar type of growth than the range given in Q3? Any color on that would be great. And then as far I mean, I take the comments on Adam being on track that there is no change to view also with respect to growth rates for 2021 is the same also true for Statista. You gave some indication last quarter. That will be interesting.
And then last one, I don't know if it's worth talking about, but I figured I'd ask, there's been a bit of a debate on in terms Political advertising in Germany, particularly with respect to the Green Party the last couple of weeks, I would say, the topic of attack ads, is this Yes. Is this something worth talking about? Do you what's been your sort of feedback? Do you expect any sort of even possibility of pushback on political Yes, any comment, that would be great. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions,
Christopher. Maybe I'll start with your last question. Yes, indeed, there has been massive debates around aggressive advertising during, I think The campaigns around the coming election, I think historically, we've always had and we have this also today very clear position. We advertise everything that is not illegal and is not against public policy because and therefore, there is the freedom of speech in our country and we accept and respect that. And anything Beyond that would be tricky because beyond, I think, the legal framework, you would start to make judgments.
And the problem with those judgments, especially as a company that deals with marketing and advertising, is where to start and where to end. And obviously, if It comes down to opinions. It's very difficult to define a clear and neutral line. And our point was always, we respect the legal framework and we want to be 100% neutral. So what we've Seeing, I think, in the last week was a lot of debate and also, I don't know, an overall campaign atmosphere that is ultra is aggressive, so that suddenly someone like us that tries to be just neutral and doesn't want to be the referee for that just offers a platform for communication, gets in between the lines.
So based on that, we've sent public and an open letter to all the parties end of last week invited them to a roundtable. We're already in how we deal with it today, if everyone is fine or to find a new framework that everyone agrees and everyone accepts so that we can act then accordingly, but it needs to be a clear framework so that judgment decisions are not up to us. That is our position at the moment, and we tried to play here an absolutely neutral and pragmatic role. Maybe just commenting
on
the commercial impact, Yes, because I think that's an important aspect that just illustrates a little bit the situation. In in a year like this year, where we have a nationwide election, Bundestagswald, because that's ultimately always a slightly bigger budget driver, the total out of home revenues that we generate through political campaigns is around €5,000,000 in nonbundes talks for all years. So without the national elections, if we only have, I don't know, 2, 3 up to 5 regional elections or state elections. The volume is normally around 2,000,000 to 2,500,000. So the annual average over 4 years is around €3,000,000 And given the fact what the current level of debate is, indeed a radical position from us could also be if neutrality cannot be that you accept the law and freedom of speech, if that is no longer reasonable or people don't accept it and you're suddenly in the middle of discussions, And the end parties cannot agree jointly to a fair play game that where the rules are crystal clear and we execute it, Then the other neutral position could be just to have no political communication at all on out of home advertising.
Not sure if this is really reasonable in a democracy and if it's if you shouldn't have that debate publicly, but If we come to situations where our inventory gets damaged, if we get attacked or trying to be neutral, if our employees don't feel comfortable with being attacked on social media, then yes, we need to change something about it. But That's the overall situation at the moment. So commercially, I think not really something crucial, but the emotional debate
Maybe, Christopher, on the quarter, not to be unpolite, but we feel that we have given enough, I think granularity on what we see, what we have in terms of visibility. So it's clear if you look at the second half implicitly, we're showing out of home getting back to 2019 levels. So if you think from a group perspective, growth in the second half will be much more driven by out of home and of the Plus businesses, and I think we'll leave it there for the moment. However, that comes with the caveat, obviously, that we do not anticipate at the moment that there is any significant impact from the discussion around the 4th wave, so this is not included in our proposal.
No, sorry.
I had to try. Thanks.
Joseph, I believe your last point was on the growth perspective of Statista. I mean, as we pointed out, we had a very strong quarter again this quarter Q2 with Statista and we are also very optimistic for the remainder of the year, so for the full year, as we always stated, we expect CitiSA to grow in a corridor of 25% to 30%. And this is also actually the growth rate that we target for next year. And I think the company just has so many leave us to grow. Certainly, still the existing markets are not saturated.
We're driving the internationalization. We're working on our product portfolio where we can drive sales and then also another lever obviously is pricing. So what I'm trying to state is we are fully confident in what we outlined for Certista and reaching €200,000,000 in a couple of years.
And maybe just picking up that point and just will come back to what Henning said, because I think we over the last 6 to 9 months, we had a couple of statements to that and we would still Stick to that, I think we feel comfortable with a leverage of up to 2.5 times. I think mid of next year, we will already be close We don't see share buybacks at the moment. We don't see that we need extraordinary extra money for to invest in our digitization, so the only solution left is ultimately special dividend paying out the money. I think that's what we said over the last quarters and that situation is unchanged. But as Christian said, we have to do our homework first developed the assets to the level where we feel they are then prepared to have a closer look at crystallizing the value.
Perfect. Very clear. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. The next question is from Craig Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Yes, thank you very much for your very detailed answers a few moments ago regarding the whole issue of political advertising. If I may, just 2 quick follow ups on that topic. The first one is, my understanding was that you're actually required to provide a certain amount of percentage of your inventory for a brief period of time around the major at least the national election, I think, 2 or 3 weeks.
Is that not true? If you could just answer that with regards to the roundtable talks you've got scheduled for next week. And my follow-up is, you were very clear about the immediate commercial impacts If you were to come to the conclusion that you would not provide inventory for political advertising in the future, but what about Would there be any risk in terms of upcoming tenders for new concession mandates with some municipalities, Whether there might be some backlash that can negatively impact the outcome there for you. The second question that I have please is, you had a very strong margin in Digital and Dialog Media. And I would like to understand a little bit better, please, how much of that was sort of structural?
What was behind that? And what can we how should we think about that going forward. And the final question is just on the margin outlook then for DAS and e commerce. You're clearly investing in the growth that you've talked about, but can we expect that to ease back off a little bit and see some will have higher margin in the second half in that division. Thank you.
Hi, Craig. Thanks for your questions. Let me start with your first point on political communication. So we are not forced or it's not required that we give specific parts of the inventory to political parties.
Okay.
That's the logics on television, especially public television, that all parties get the same special amounts of I think that in our case, it's very difficult up to impossible to reject advertising from political parties, unless you have, I don't know, some self restriction that you put on the table. The other way around already today, we have municipalities that have in the contract that they don't want Advertising, exception and not the rule. And there are always debates about exactly those points Because should there be alcohol, I mean, tobacco is meanwhile or for the future already decided, What about political parties? What about NGOs and so on? And we see political parties as well as municipalities and the legislation and administration, they are always quite clear about where potential problems are and could be, but they have been struggling so far with defining rules.
So I think no matter if commercial or sorry, political advertising would be allowed or not, I think it wouldn't really if I break it down on individual contracts, I think it wouldn't really change something Ultimately, it comes down to the money and the commercial deal that we have with municipalities. They already regulated in different ways and has very different opinions from the various parties on this. And just to compare it with our other businesses on our publishing assets, Sonti Online and others, we don't Take any political advertising because advertising on an online website is very close to the content, And we just want to avoid that people mix up information, opinion and advertising. So we rejected there completely. It's the same with our online advertising business, also with 3rd party mandates, where we also have discussed and organized that historically have a clear logic that we don't take political advertising exactly for the same reason.
And in the out of home business, our view was always Yes, we it's part of public life. So we are 100% neutral and stick only to legal and restrictions. And that looks like we need to get to something different or at least have the debate with political parties around it to define a standard or just to reconfirm that the current standard is okay, which takes us a little bit out of the public discussion where we feel shouldn't be at the moment.
Craig, maybe answering your question on the margin profile in e commerce. So I actually would expect it to stay where we also saw in Q2 for the rest of the year, this is basically going back to the Internationalization that we're driving specifically at Assam, we just opened the web shop in France as well as in the U. S, and there we need to simply build brand awareness and combine that with performance marketing, Which really costs a couple of €1,000,000, so in terms of this year, I think the margin profile will roughly stay where it is
in Q2, So around 8% to 10%. And Craig, on the margin question, the Digital and Dialog segment, we have seen a very strong improvement of the margin in the first half, as you said, also driven by the fact that the door to door area in the prior year operation was very restricted or virtually not possible. Altogether with the margin level in absolute terms in the first half, we feel pretty confident. However, I think it's fair to assume that there will not be an increase in the second half because the second half last year was already pretty strong. So maybe we see a little bit of a normalization
Just remember, we had, I think, 8 weeks no door to door sales. So ultimately, despite, we had more or less fixed costs that we were paying without any revenues or gross margins. I think the over proportional step up was clearly driven by the low comp from the previous year. But as Henning said, I think of both businesses, the online business with 3rd party sales and our own publishing assets as well as dialogue or direct media with both contact centers Door to door sales, they are in a very good shape at the moment. I think the current performance is free of any Onetime effect or if there's been step up through the crisis, we see that it is recurring.
So the current run rate Looks like a fair view on what is possible margin wise. We do a good job.
Okay. That was all very helpful. Thank you very much, gentlemen.
The next question is from Nizla Naizer, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Great. Thank you.
I have three questions from my end. The first is on the roadside screen level customers would be interested in such a network of screens. Could you give us some color on what The prospects would be in terms of expanding that 2 national type of campaigns. And how should we then think of out of home growth In a hopefully normal year like 2022 on the back of everything that you've done this year. Secondly, Christine, could you remind us the split between local, regional and national sales at the moment in out of home media?
And how is the health of your Local and regional clients, obviously very robust from holiday would be great. And my last question is on Assam Beauty. Now that you are seeing, I guess, a great normalization in the market, how is growth progressing in the particular e commerce business? And would you even consider growing Assam via M and A? Or is it just an organic sort of part that you've mentioned for it?
Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Thanks for your questions. Let me start with the middle one around sales channels, I think when we look at the end of Q2 and what we see for Q3 at the moment, we are back to the historic mix between the sales channels of roughly 40% coming from national advertisers and large agencies, 40% coming from regional clients that are serviced through our media consultants most of the time directly and 20% come from really small local businesses with tickets below 40,000, sometimes €1,000 and more that kind of signage business. So we are pretty much back to the sales structure we have been before, slightly different mix per product, but I would say that should completely normalize throughout the second half of the year. And coming from that, I think based on a normalized level, the local sales channel is probably the fast growing one and both regional and national, especially if digital out of home picks up should should develop pretty much in line. On your first question, I think that's a really interesting question because there's 2 aspects in it.
The first one is that we convert more analog sites into digital ones, and we have learned from the last 3 or 4 years that per location, we can, on average, at least quadruple the revenues. So just by switching a location where we've made maybe €10,000 annual revenue in the last years, if we convert it to digital, just a step up in the inventory of the, let's say, 1 year presales and acquiring clients means in the current setup making 40,000 out of 10,000. The key point is now, and I think that is very difficult to predict for the next 12 to 18 months is what happens if you combine our 5,500 public video screens that are indoor with the best 1,000 locations outdoor that are now digitized. So the question here is, will that be perceived from big national advertisers as a completely new advertising opportunity? Because with the combination of indoor and outdoor, you're suddenly able to reach through that medium by pressing one button together with Sturer, you can reach 55%, 60% of the population across the country.
And I think that will be interesting for us to see if we can win incremental market share and if we are able to accelerate our historic growth rate. Yes, but I think what we've done so far is making sure that even if national advertisers take some time, we are fine with the investment case because we know the local customers only model works already quite nicely. Secondly, to make sure that we can improve the yielding with national advertisers with a high share of programmatic revenues where we can guide or channel the revenues across the total digital portfolio to also strengthen roadside screens once we invest more. And I think that's a little and thirdly, we need to make sure that we get to a critical mass and being in the top 20 to 25 cities at least, plus having that crucial number of 1,000 where you would say with the stand alone product, you already reach 20%, 25% of the population and can combine that with the indoor network, I think we have a really compelling and probably also globally quite unique product. But we'll talk about that and midterm plans and the logics in more detail at our Capital Markets Day because I think then we can make mid term projections over the next 4 to 5 years, and I think that's the interesting long term view.
But it's as we are just going into pre marketing, we are launching dynamic audiences for advertisers. There's a lot of new features, but it's very difficult to predict what the very concrete impact will be already on the next quarter, so next year. For us, it's a midterm plan and the long term strategic initiatives, the concrete step 1 or 2 in implementing it in the market is sometimes a bit difficult to predict, but we are 100% convinced that no matter if it takes 2 years, 1 year or 3 years or 5 years, on the long run, that will change the role of out of home in the total advertising market. And apart from global platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon, I think there is no other channel and medium currently in the market that is able to pick up, while declining revenues from traditional broadcasting television or also print media in a comparable way, that's where we are 100% convinced of.
Nesloy, your question, Assam Beauty, was A bit hard to understand what I understood was your question on organic versus inorganic growth. So let me comment on that and maybe then you just add to what you wanted to add. So the answer is relatively simple. Our clear focus is on organic growth. As we stated, we want to grow the company this year by 30% plus and have similar growth ambitions for next year, and we also simply believe that we do have that growth potentially organically or internally with us, I mean, obviously, there's still a lot of room to grow in what we are currently already doing.
So the e commerce market in DACH where we want to continue to grow, but then there's specifically these 2 growth levers that we want to pull. 1 is that we already talked about, the live shopping experience, we're bringing more and more content live and streaming that live to the customers, so that obviously involves finding the right people, moderators, influences to do that, but also building the tech infrastructure behind it. And then the second big lever is obviously the internationalization part. As I mentioned earlier, we just opened up France and the U. S.
And then for next year or the year thereafter, we're also looking at China. So all of our sales team is really focused on that. But you can as you can imagine, that has also implications for other departments in the company, for example, the tech That's within now these international websites. So what I'm trying to say is we focus on these organic growth levers to drive the business forward.
Perfect. That was all very helpful. Thank you. Thank you for all of you. And we've received a follow-up question of Craig Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, again. Thanks for taking my follow-up. You mentioned in the presentation that your estimated market share in out of home in Germany is now Around 63%. And I just wondered if you see medium term A potential seeding before you might begin to face pushback or potential limitations?
Thank you.
Hi, Craig. No, not really because I think we've calculated here our market share based on the revenues because there's different ways calculating it. You could do it by number of sites, but then you compare Apple with Clear's because the format is also different. So we just said, okay, we do any kind of out of home advertising, because we stand for advertising in the public space, and we look at the net revenues that are calculated by the advertisers themselves through the ZAW, and we look at our net revenues that we have for the German market. And I think from an advertiser point of view, especially when out of home becomes more digital, I think it's a really good opportunity for them because they get out of home out of 1 or 2 hands.
I think that allows us also to increased the quality of the medium. We are able to make it more flexible and convenient for them Because they don't need to go via a lot of shops. So I think ultimately, especially from the buyer side at the moment, including the investments that we make Into digitization, and I think that's what they also see for JCD Corp. I think we get rather positive feedback. And the other way around, also means that every location that we market and sell delivers more revenues and ultimately better payouts to municipalities to private landlords.
So what we are doing is creating benefits for both sides of better products for advertisers and agencies, a A more digital product that's exactly what they want. So we reinvest most of the money that we make. Secondly, also for the landlords, they get a better extraction rate. And ideally, we need less locations. And instead of 1,000 analog locations in the city, maybe we can with 200 digital locations, Yes, we can deliver 3 or 4 times more revenues.
So our feeling at the moment is that the market development goes its way and we rather see support on all sides for those developments. Okay.
Thank you. Excuse me. Can I just follow-up real quick? Looking out next few years, I mean, you said you expect to approach 1,000 digital roadside billboards by Beginning of next year, what is your target? Can you just remind us again if it hasn't changed, say, for 2 or 3 years out, 5 years out?
Thank you.
Yes. As I said before, we will make a more detailed midterm plan At the Capital Markets Day, but if you and I'm sure you remember the last Capital Markets Day, we talked about 3000 to 5000 locations over the next 7 or 8 years. So when we talk in autumn this year, you will talk about, okay, so what will be happen in for 5 years' time, so I think that target wouldn't have changed. The difference is that by then we will be close to 1,000 and we have proof points for what happens in the first with the first one thousand that the model works and we can show more of what will happen over the next Also 12 to 18 months for advertisers, what kind of product will they see? How does that differentiate from the history?
And I think that is ultimately, I think so far it was vague numbers and plans, I think we come to a point where we get into a new phase when people see more and more of digital out of home out there on the street, so far it's more indoor, but I think the more advertisers that agencies see it in the bigger cities, the more you see premium advertising on there, I think the more it will completely change the view on out of home in general. And I think it's it's an interesting opportunity because we are just at the tipping point.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Craig.
Thank you. There are no further questions. So I would like to hand back to you.
Okay. Thank you very much for your