Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ströer Q3 Figures 2026 Conference Call. I am Matilda, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Udo Müller, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Our Results Call for the Third Quarter and First Nine Months of 2026. Let us go straight to the results and key developments. I will start with the group update and market dynamics. Christoph will then take you through the financials and segment performance before I return to the outlook and financial calendar. On the top line, revenues in the first nine months of 2026 amounted to EUR 1,550 million compared with EUR 1,472 million in the prior year period.
This represents reported growth of 5%. On organic basis, revenue grew by 2.1% compared with a decline of 0.4% in the prior year period, an improvement of 2.5 percentage points. Moving down the P&L, EBITDA adjusted reached EUR 421 million compared with EUR 414 million last year. This represents a 2% year-on-year increase.
Higher exceptional items weighed on reported earnings, as we will discuss in more detail in the finance section. On EBIT adjusted, we reported EUR 183 million, up from EUR 176 million in the first nine months of 2025. This corresponds to an increase of 4%. Net income adjusted amounted to EUR 90 million compared with EUR 86 million in the prior year period. This translates into a 5% year-on-year increase.
Turning to cash flow, free cash flow adjusted amounted to EUR 5 million compared with EUR 19 million in the first nine months of 2025. Finally, CapEx before M&A amounted to EUR 80 million compared with EUR 67 million in the prior year period, an increase of 19%. This reflects the continued expansion of our advertising media portfolio, including our Iconic Screen Collection portfolio. Christoph will elaborate on the financial details in the finance section.
With that, let us switch gears and have a look at the market dynamic in Q3 and the first nine months of 2026. On market dynamics, first, let us have a look at the Nielsen numbers for Q3 of our local German peers in the middle of the chart. As always, please keep in mind that these show gross rate card developments and that net revenue growth is on average 6- 7 percentage points lower.
On this gross basis, the German advertising market increased by 0.6% in Q3. However, 1.3 percentage points lower compared with the previous quarter. OOH grew by 6%, clearly outperforming TV at -2.8%, print at -1.9%, and radio at -2.7%, while desktop and mobile grew by 12.9%.
Against this market backdrop, our OOH media segment delivered reported net revenue growth of 3.6% in the third quarter, driven by DOOH and PDOOH, programmatic DOOH, which were up by 11% and 21.1% respectively. With these developments, particularly with regard to DOOH and programmatic DOOH, we are once again on a level playing field with the major U.S. players, Meta and Alphabet, from both a Q3 and a nine-months perspective. The nine-months picture shows continued growth in our core business.
OOH media increased reported revenue by 6.5%. DOOH remains a principal growth driver with year-to-date growth of 15.9%, supported by the continued expansion of our digital advertising network, as well as strong demand for programmatic DOOH, which was up by 26.4% in the first nine months. That concludes my opening remarks, and with that, I hand over to Christoph for the financials.
Thank you very much, Udo. A warm welcome also from my side. Good morning for our today's call. I'll start again with the Q3 numbers. The revenue increased to EUR 513 million, +4% from previous year, and it contains organic growth at +0.8%, an improvement of 2.9% over the year. The Adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 148 million, broadly stable with the previous year. You might ask why, given the higher revenues, the EBITDA did not go up.
That's in majority of it is a mix effect. Depreciation amortization amounted to -EUR 82 million compared to previous EUR 84 million. Of this, EUR 55 million was attributable to IFRS 16. Broadly unchanged from the EUR 54 million in Q3 2025. The EBIT came in at EUR 53 million compared to the EUR 60 million in the prior year quarter.
Financial result was -EUR 20 million in the quarter against -EUR 18 previous year, so again, on a similar level. Earnings before tax amounted EUR 33 million compared to EUR 43 million as a result of various special effects, one-time effects. The tax results amount to -EUR 10 million, reported net income EUR 23 million compared to the EUR 30 million in Q3 2025.
The total adjustments amount EUR 12 million, again, up from previous year, and the net income increased by 1%. Let us switch to the free cash flow statement on page number eight. As discussed before, Adjusted EBITDA increased to EUR 421 million in the first nine months, EUR 7 million above previous year. The exceptional items to -EUR 32 million compared to EUR 9 million on previous year. As a result, the reported EBITDA declined.
However, operating free cash flow improved to EUR 258 million in the first nine months compared to EUR 243 million, so +EUR 15 million. Main driver is a better working capital development. The outflow was EUR 23 million compared to EUR 54 million in the same period of last year. This improvement more than offset the lower earnings contribution and higher interest and tax payments.
Interest outflows amounted to EUR 51 million, while tax payments were EUR 52 million. Other cash outflows declined to EUR 6 million from EUR 11 million in 2025. Investment cash outflows before M&A amounted to EUR 80 million in the first nine months, a bit above previous year with EUR 67 million. The increase reflects the expansion of advertising media, for example, the investments in iconic screen portfolio, e.g. in Hamburg on Reeperbahn. Consequently, free cash flow before M&A was EUR 177 million and slightly above the previous year.
Lease liability repayments increased from EUR 157 million- EUR 172 million. That is mainly a phasing effect and a bit higher down payment during the quarter than originally anticipated. Looking at Q3 specifically, the Adjusted EBITDA was broadly stable at EUR 148 million. Higher exceptional items, -EUR 13 million versus EUR 3 million, reduced the reported EBITDA to EUR 134 million from EUR 144 million.
These were mainly exceptional items in the area of restructuring measures across the universe of operating units. Operating free cash flow or operating cash flow came in at EUR 96 million, same level as previous year, with a lower working capital outflow of EUR 11 million. After investments of EUR 29 million, free cash flow before M&A was EUR 67 million. Lease repayments rose to EUR 60 million from EUR 49 million, leaving free cash flow adjusted at EUR 7 million compared to the EUR 21 of previous year.
Always similar effects that bring these changes for the full period. Let me turn to net debt. Financial net debt stood at just beyond EUR 1 billion, so EUR 1 billion and EUR 15 million at the end of September compared to EUR 996 in the previous quarter, a sequential increase of EUR 19 million. Year-over-year net debt increased by EUR 70 million. With that, the bank leverage ratio stood at 2.66x at the end of the Q3, meaning September 26.
The increase compared with the prior year reflects a higher financial debt as the earnings contribution is slightly higher. We move now into a bit more detail on the individual segments. We start with out-of-home media. In the first nine months, the segment revenue increased by 6.5%. That is what Udo reflected also on market conditions.
This development shows again that our business outperforms the advertising market, and we have a very resilient portfolio of businesses and advertising means. Digital out-of-home was again the main driver with a revenue up 15.9% to EUR 309 million. We continue the targeted expansion of this digital network, still also a part of our significant investments, and more and more of our customers opt for the programmatic placement.
The World Cup also supported the nine months performance. You might remember that we have clarified that also in our Q2 call, where we said we estimate that it is about EUR 12 million on top, and part of it was certainly phased from July into June. Basic out-of-home revenue declined by 2.1% to EUR 379 million, which is an effect that we have anticipated and which supports our investment in digital.
Service revenue increased by 29.2% to EUR 49 million, so strong performance also on this level. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 5.7% to EUR 336 million. So here in this segment, EBITDA grows basically with revenues. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 45.6% versus 45.9%, basically unchanged, so that is what I said. Here we can see that our EBITDA conversion is really strong.
Before IFRS 16, the Adjusted EBITDA grew by 12.6% to EUR 170 million, and the corresponding margin increased to 23.1%. If we do a specific look at the Q3 segment, revenues increased by EUR 3.6 million, though a part of it is a little lower because of this phasing effect with the World Championship. Digital out-of-home grew by 11% to EUR 103 million, while services increased by 34% to EUR 70 million. Classic declined by 4.4% to EUR 126. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was EUR 111, so a little lower than a previous year.
Before IFRS 16, the EBITDA declined from EUR 58 million to EUR 55 million, which I think is still not a relevant change, but a little bit of a change in terms of segment split and media. I am moving to chart number 10, Digital and Dialogue. First nine months, the segment revenue increased by 14% to EUR 714 million. The digital revenue increased to EUR 312 million. I think some of you might ask, the Q3 grew by 26% to previous year.
Dialogue revenue showed, again, a strong growth, both from a nine months as well as a Q3 perspective, a plus of 30% in Q3 2026, and a + 27.1% to EUR 402 million during the first nine months. I think that is a strong performance. Certainly, there is an impact of the Amevida acquisition happening in October 2025, so there's part of it is inorganic.
Nine months EBITDA adjusted increased to EUR 95 million compared to EUR 91 million. Corresponding margin was 13.3% during the first nine months of the full year. There were parts of the year we had a less favorable product mix affecting it, while higher minimum wages increased the cost in the labor-intense dialogue business, but I think we have it full under control for Q4.
From a sole Q3 perspective, segment revenue increased by 15.7% to EUR 239 million, digital revenues EUR 204 million, while dialogue revenues EUR 135 million. The Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter increased by almost 20% to EUR 38 million. We take a look at the Data as a Service and the e-commerce business. Overall, I think that is a continuation of what we've said before.
Data as a Service revenue declined by 10% to EUR 110 million from EUR 122 million on a reported basis, but you know that we have excluded the Statista strategy and consulting unit. If we adjust that, and then the currency effects, the organic decline was only 3.8%. E-commerce declined by 13.6% to EUR 120 million compared to EUR 139 million.
That is an effect of consumer spending, but also an effect of focus of ourselves of spending marketing money only if the return is acceptable. I'm sure you're asking a couple of questions on this as well. The EBITDA adjusted in the first nine months came in at EUR 17 million, so significantly down. Margin is down to 7.5%, but I'm happy to explain a little bit later on what we do as an improvement for those two businesses.
In Q3, the segment revenue declined to EUR 74 million by rounded 14%. The Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was EUR 6 million. With this little deep dive into the segments, I'd like to hand back to Udo for his closing remarks and his statement on the next three to four months to go.
Thank you, Christoph. Before closing the presentation, let me provide some comments on the outlook for the remainder of the year and our full-year guidance. We reaffirm our full-year outlook, supported particularly by current quarter trends and our segments, order books, and bookings. As in prior years, however, the remaining weeks of the fourth quarter are most important, will be decisive.
Let me close out today's presentation with a short look at our financial calendar for 2027. We will publish our preliminary figures for 2026 on March 4, followed by the annual financial report on March 24, 2027. The Q1 quarterly statement is scheduled for May 13, the Q2 and half-year statement for August 12, and the Q3 quarterly statement for November 11. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Julien Roch from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one for Udo, can we now consider that the deal with private equity is off the table? That is number one. Number two, how much of the growth in out-of-home is kind of "one-off," quote-unquote, because you have important new footprint like The Whale and Königsplatz?
Then last question on Statista, -2.6% organic in Q3, so can we have some color on the transition? How is putting Statista in corporate LLM working? Do you have now more than one client? So some color on that. Thank you.
Hi, Julien. Thank you for the questions. So to take the second question first, there is no one-time impact from newly launched sites. I mean, even on a full-year basis, the contribution not so big that you see any impact on the turnover development. So there is no one-off impact. I mean, third quarter was overall soft, as I see it in all of Europe, but also in Germany.
So against this situation, we are not unhappy with the third quarter, but as you know, we never look on separate quarters. For the full year, we are completely on track what we guided from the beginning of the year, and the business is developing, the core business is developing like expected. We are now in the talks with the agencies for next year, and there is clearly ongoing support, especially for digital out-of-home, for the out-of-home sector in general.
So we don't see any change in trading momentum. Regarding a potential deal, there's nothing new. I never said there's a deal coming up. I said we have some conversations with investors, but we have this in 20 years. I think there's been a bit unlucky one and a half years ago because there was suddenly something launched in the press, but we were never really close to a deal. We have ongoing discussions with nothing new, nothing to add to this. And to Statista, it's also nothing changed since last quarter.
We see very promising signals from the customers who are now connected to Statista Connect. So consumption of credits is doing better than we expected, but clearly, we are in the transition because it's a long-tail business. They're private individuals or smaller clients who are searching specific topics on Statista.
This business is like we expected, is going down, because people are using LLMs, but our corporate business is developing quite strongly. But we are here dependent on ramping on our customers that they ramp up LLM infrastructure. Only if you have a company GPT, you will be able to connect Statista Connect. And we see now some customers are moving 100% to Connect.
Some customers, they have a hybrid solution, so between Connect and selling seats, so the usual, let's say, original business model. But we are quite confident that we can show in 2027 a sustainable and reliable positive development. So the signals we get from our customers are quite promising. But we cannot, but I always said, we cannot show it in 2026 in the numbers. And I think it will be second half of next year, I think it looks completely different.
Maybe two addings from a pure financial to give you an indicator, because you mentioned The Whale, a iconic place like The Whale creates about EUR 1 million in revenues in the first couple of months. So when they all love the initial new invention, and then it floods down a little bit, but it was also replacing a previous one. So this is why it's not totally incremental. And the second statement, I think that gives an indicator of what Udo said.
I mean, today, in that quarter, we had 48% of the Statista revenues came from big customers. And that is a significant change to the same in previous year. It was more like 30%. So, we're growing the big customer base. Those ones are more profitable, but as Udo pointed out, we're still losing small customers, and they will take a while till this balance is out.
And let's say, sites like The Whale or The Lighthouse are also very much a marketing investment for us. I have to say, The Whale was adopted by the market much better than anybody expected here. So we have a lot of conversation with customers about it. I never expected a single site would create a positive impact to the market, to the overall market, not for Ströer specifically. But w e see that we win new customers through The Whale, and that people are proud to see their own ads on the site.
That is why we also decided to focus more in the upcoming quarters in developing iconic sites. We are launching now these days Iconic Screen Collection, where we put our top 14 large screens together in one product. That is exactly what we also are focusing in the next four to six quarters. It is not so much that it is changing the turnover profile or the profit or whatever. I think it is on the marketing side, so visibility for the industry, it is very important.
Danke vielmals.
You are welcome.
The next question comes from the line of Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Good morning. I will pick up with that last discussion on the iconic billboard investments picking up. I want to ask specifically about the free cash flow and short-term, the outlook for Q4, if you could give us some color on what you are expecting there. Also then on your CapEx plans for 2027, particularly bearing in mind this step-up in the Iconic Screen Collection rollout.
I have two more. The second question is on digital. I just wondered, it looked like that growth was primarily driven by the programmatic DOOH, that marginal growth that you saw in Q3 in digital. Does this imply that T-Online sales and your third-party online sales declined, and if so, by how much? The third and final question, please, is on the exceptional items. Maybe you broke that down and I missed it, but I think you were going to help us work through what those items were. Thank you.
Okay. On CapEx, we do not expect an outrageous or a different CapEx from our planning in Q4. We have spent EUR 80 million so far, and last year's was EUR 104 million, and we are getting close to this also in Q4. Very interesting question of yours in 2027. We are just going through budget phase, and for obvious reasons, I cannot elaborate on the details.
But we have seen in the demand of our infrastructure units, we have seen a higher demand on CapEx for additional sites. That is not only in Germany, but also in Poland, for example. We are currently in review, and specifically, we are searching also for means not to finance all these changes ourselves. If you ask me from today, still as a CFO, I would say I am aiming for the same level of CapEx next year.
But given what we have said and what Udo explained, there might be a different mix, and we might invest less in mass, more in class. But I think that is too early to say. Second question, the programmatic DOOH is certainly the growth story and the successful story right now. We see that the convenience of booking it for customers is also saving money on the distribution side on our side.
So, that is attractive, and we push it hard. Your hypothesis is definitely right. This is the fastest and most intense growing element of it, and we are working hard to push that further. T-Online, I would say twofold. The one is ad impressions remain at the same level, which is promising because it definitely supports our position as the second most important and second-largest media portal in Germany. We are not anymore an email hoster.
We are an accepted and well-regarded media portal, and the only one, I'm sorry to say, Bild is still ahead of us, but we keep knocking the door, and we're trying to catch also those guys. We're doing really, really well. The team is doing a great job. It's all on performance-based publishing.
We have KI agents that constantly improve the display, but also the headlines, et cetera, et cetera. I think most likely the most modern and sophisticated editorial system that we deploy. At the same time, I have to admit that the open web market in general is suffering, so we can only keep the level of income or the level of advertising revenues on a stable level compared to previous year.
Consequently, the third-party business that we have on board, where we make lower margins because we need to pay back to the inventory owners, that is the one that is suffering, and that is the one where the revenues go down. Luckily enough, it doesn't impact margin so much, but still, let's say this entire business model is under review.
You might know that part of those contracts are one, two, or three-year contracts with a certain guarantee. If we are in the renewal phase, the team is super radical and say, "We bring down guarantees, we bring down revenues, and we are fine losing revenues and business there." Also to some small competitors that are trying to get into the market.
I think everything that you have stated, programmatic, DOOH, growth story, T-Online stable, third-party business is, well, going down, but we are not suffering really from it. I would even say we partially we accelerate. Could you do me a favor and repeat your third question, because I was not sure whether I picked it up correctly.
No worries. It was a little bit long-winded, my question. It was just about the exceptional items, if you could work through those, please, what they were. Then, sorry, just to finalize on the free cash flow discussion, what kind of leverage level would you feel comfortable next year? That's what I wanted to wrap up with on the free cash flow question. Thank you.
Well, I would say leverage is going to be at a similar level than this year. That is, ceteris paribus, some M&A. We don't have something on the list. Except for inorganic, I would say, free cash flow stable to this year, and also net debt level the same. On the exceptional items, well, I think it's not bringing down all the numbers, but listing what we've done, we have for sure, and Udo made it clear also in Statista, a significant restructuring in Statista, but also significant restructuring in core.
For example, the IT department, we modernize. Platformization is not only facing to the customer, it's also facing our internal processes. We had layoffs across the board in Statista, in Asam, in IT, in SNS. We have booked those ones as exceptional items.
That is the material volume, and then there is a lot of other stuff. Bringing down headcount is mainly the driver for those exceptional items, and that's definitely higher. By the way, it will continue. I have seen the next program for Q1, so that will be a remaining thing, but it improves our business mid and long term.
This is actually the first step now, Craig. We talked about it last time, for the upcoming years, is clearly automatization, platformization, digitalization of the infrastructure. That is the strategic program, and what we're doing now, we're streamlining our processes to make it possible to automate them.
That's exactly what we're doing right now. So that, what Christoph said, is ongoing process, and the exception is, you see here, the increase is actually reflecting exactly this. Streamlining the organization, centralizing the core business, make it ready for an AI-native organization.
Okay. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Marcus Diebel from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, everyone. I actually have four questions, if that's okay. Hopefully clear. The first one, Udo, on the outdoor operations, you mentioned obviously the weak advertising trends, but on slide four, you show that in the quarter, you underperformed local peers, which we heard from your largest peer that actually Germany has actually quite a good momentum. How do I square these comments to your result in the quarter?
If you could just tell me a little bit more what's actually happening in the German market, why do peers do, at least in this quarter, better than you? That's the first question. The second one is just on management. Christoph, is that now the setup for a while that you're going to take the CFO helm, or is there currently a sort of search process for a CFO ongoing? The third one would be on disposals.
Clearly, you can't really comment on any M&A from around Ströer as a group, but are you currently still looking at potential disposals? Not all easy to sell, I understand, at this point in time, but even smaller sort of divisions, are they currently reviewed for disposals? The fourth question, if that's okay, Udo, obviously you talked a lot about the new structure, making Ströer AI-ready, as you just commented.
Where are we in this process really, and when do we actually see sort of an impact or positive impact on the financials? I understand we have the restructuring and we have the headcount optimization, but when do you actually see sort of a revenue impact from this? That would be interesting. Hopefully that makes sense, four questions. I'm happy to repeat if it is not clear.
Yeah. Thank you, Marcus. Normally, there's only three questions allowed. But exceptionally.
Highly appreciate.
Look, I think it's a misunderstanding because we didn't underperform the market. In the middle block, you have the gross numbers, and you can assume that the net numbers are 6-7 points lower than the gross numbers. So if you deduct from the 6% you show here on gross level for the German ad market, then you're more close to zero.
I don't think the market was growing in Q3, and we were growing 3.6, so we have no doubt that we're outperforming the out-of-home market. We see a positive trading momentum for Q4 in comparison to last year. We had a difficult Q4. I think even that we have a lot of headwind from all this, whatever, inflation, rate hikes, the war here and there, everything known. We see quite a robust trading momentum for Q4.
Sorry to interrupt, but if you look at the breakup and you say out-of-home, sort of like the core business down -4%, and obviously DOOH lifts it again, but is that something that you don't see as disappointing? How do you look at it?
No, it's only in the quarter. Third quarter is not a big quarter, so there's always a swing into it. We look always on the overall out-of-home spend. What I said, currently I'm doing the conversations for next year with the agencies, and I can only repeat what I already said beforehand. Everything looks exactly like expected, and we are quite confident that the development, there will no change. Whatever the macro situation is doing, we are very confident in the further development here.
I think also, Marcus, the point is that the classical out-of-home, which you see that in the second line on page nine, that is paper business. For sure, every change into digital must reduce the platform of paper. You could say this is intended, yeah. It is replaced by the digital, and you see that -4% in Q3 is reflected in +11% with the other. We have lost EUR 5 million, but we have won EUR 10 million. Here you see the rebalancing of digital versus paper.
Yeah, okay. Overall-
What is maybe interesting, we are currently getting the first orders from the AI industry. We are waiting for that for a while, because you can already see that in the U.S. for some quarters. Now for Q4, we get the first meaningful orders here from LLMs.
I also believe, if you think about certain industries, that we are going to see a better year 2027, the car industry, because the Chinese now build up the distribution, and we see first earnings from Chinese car manufacturer. This will also stimulate spend from European car manufacturers. That is, for example, some positive trends which we see now and which we think will also carry us through 2027.
Okay.
On the disposal side, now we are working on a couple of smaller disposals. We have, for example, a small agency which we are about to sell. We are reviewing the portfolio. This is also part of moving into an AI-native organization. We are streamlining the portfolio, and we are streamlining our processes. That is an ongoing process.
We are also looking for some smaller add-on M&A projects in Germany and abroad. Everything is going to change, and I think every organization has to focus what is happening and what we have to expect in three or four, five years from now on. We are very active here, but I do not think it is a time for bigger deals. I think it is a time for cleaning up the portfolio and get rid of smaller businesses and maybe have some add-on M&A activities here and there.
First impact, I think from the second half of 2027, so 2027, 2028, we see meaningful impact, what we expect. In the next, let's say, until the end of the year, we are going to decide more on a concrete path in moving into an AI-native organization. That is a big word, but I think this is out about speed here. We are completely focused on, especially look, we have in our core business, we have hundreds of thousands physical items on the ground.
The management, the maintenance, the sales of the advertising units are very complex organization where we need thousands of people in selling and maintaining it, et cetera. We see a significant upside here for the whole industry. We are quite, let's say, optimistic that we are going to see some significant cost effects, but completely in the P&L, I think, relative to 2028.
I would like to add, the impact on financials out of an optimization in, if you call it AI or digital, doesn't matter, is always delayed, because the layoffs only follow if you switch off the old systems. The whole organization internally, but also our customers need to adapt to the new versions and new ways to book and so on and so forth.
Let me just illustrate the simple thing, and that as it gives you a flavor. This is a very profitable business, but we are still managing 45,000 invoices manually a year because of legacy systems that have been built in the 1990s, and we are trying to switch them off. That sounds easy, and you all know Udo, he is very impatient with it, but at the same time, we need to accept that some of our raw data still sit in systems that are, well, yeah, legacy is a nice word.
We need to replace them, but you can't do that overnight, because you want to do it in a sustainable manner. We rebalance in IT, we rebalance. Switching off the old stuff, replacing it, but being really resilient and robust for the future. I think that is a challenge for any company, but everything that I personally see is that we are progressing big time, and we are very positive. I see in small areas, we see already impact, but that is not the level that you would expect or it would be visible to you. The remaining question was about the CFO position.
Well, I mean, we are definitely looking around, but I think we are also. I mean, on one hand, I have to say, I like the job and I enjoy it. Maybe that is a good thing for the interim period, but it is going to stay interim.
At the same time, we have agreed with myself and the board that we are looking for somebody to join the company in Q1 next year, because we also believe that in that significant transition period that we are right now, it might make sense for me to stay for another four or five months to hand over at a, let's say, not stay, it is not unstable.
But in an even more stable and more sorted out setup. Also do the full year results in the current setup, including the auditing results. I think that makes sense. Then, end of Q1, it is the goal to have somebody new on board.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We now have a question from the line of Miro Zuzak from JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Can you hear me?
Perfectly well.
Okay. I try to keep the questions short. The first one is on the situation with Asam. I mean, we see the numbers, we see the minorities, basically no improvement or on the top line even much worse. Maybe you can elaborate on the situation. You mentioned the layoff, but maybe also from a product and market perspective, what is happening there? That is the first question.
The second one is on Statista. It is the first time that at least I could update or let us say increase the top line estimates for Statista after this sequential growth again versus Q2. Can you please elaborate on the situation there? There was also a lot of change, and also in this connection where you stand, as in related to this, where you stand regarding the commercialization of the data within Statista with the big AI labs.
Yeah. Let me start with the Asam. Thanks, Miro. I have spent last week, the last couple of weeks, also during budget phase, I was trying to get much closer to Asam than we did before. So what are the things that we have identified? Some of it we already talked about, some of it might be new.
The big change is over the years that we have It was originally a TV sales company with QVC and HSE24, and e-commerce, online, and retail was small. Now we have a different balance. TV is a small channel, but the others have been growing. So it is for sure that if you enter, for example, the retail market, you definitely make mistakes, and your optimization is still not there. We have learned that our first of all, we need to review the channel mix.
I think there we are much better off, and we have a very, very good plan for the near future. E-commerce is the key pillar, so owned e-commerce must be the biggest one. On e-commerce, we are fighting Amazon that is doing about the same volume of business with our products than we do ourselves. So we needed to review our marketing spend to make sure that the people go straight to our own website.
We have also identified that a significant part of our marketing spend is kind of useless because it is only attracting the same customers again. Now you might say, "Well, it is strange that only in 2026 you come with that finding." Well, I think it is better to have it now than for the future. So we are reviewing our marketing spend to get more new customers instead of spending the money on existing customers.
We are limiting our expansion in retail because in part of our areas, it is not profitable. We have also served almost all European countries with small, not subsidiaries, but small businesses, shipments, et cetera, et cetera. We have learned that our distribution partners in some of the countries, let me name France, it is a very small business in terms of revenue, but the revenue is almost the same as the losses.
So we were betting on new countries, and we have stopped it now. We have done a very detailed analysis on product portfolio profitability, and it became obvious that we put too much effort into beauty, whereas skincare has better margins, and also our cost of goods and on the entire handling is easier and is slower moving than beauty. So, I mean, this is a range of enough. Now, I think I have listed four topics.
We address them. We have seen a budget next year where the margin goes up, revenue will go down still. It's a cleaning effect, but the EBITDA will be higher or is supposed to be higher than this year. I think we have identified the levers to turn around the business. We have identified to bring the business into growth again.
We strongly believe that if we make 2027 as indicated now and as the discussion show, we are back on track to go into EBITDA in the areas of EUR 20 million over the years. Then we will certainly also be in a position to attract potential interest for the acquisition of our 50%, as this is not a strategic part of our business in the long term. Maybe a little bit of a comprehensive long answer. I hope this helps.
Otherwise, feel free to get in touch and I can give you more details. On Statista, before handing over back to Udo, let me repeat what I said. Interesting for me was to see that last year's big clients, and bigger clients are clients that spend more than EUR 20,000 on our service on an annual basis, whereas end consumer or small and home office spend EUR 1,500.
The proportion of revenue with those bigger customers grew from about 30% last year, nine months, to 48% this year. That clearly shows that, and that also comprises big partners and platforms. It, to me, shows two things. One is we're going the right direction because we need to be not in the enterprise, but in the company market. The second thing is that we still will suffer from the small customers leaving us.
That will be an ongoing bleeding for the next 12- 18 months. This is why Udo said by the end of 2027, he expects kind of like the fundamental turnaround. The tokenization, and I've said that before, proves that we're making more revenues with big customers than we did on a subscription model.
The use of token, the utilization of our data, the acceptance and the attractiveness of the data creates more money if you sell it basically one by one instead of subscription. That gives us a strong feeling that we are close to a turnaround. But I have to admit that it's going to be, cash-wise, it's going to be another year of sacrifice with Statista. But we can afford it. Udo doesn't like to afford it, but he accepts it.
Perfect answer, Christoph. There's nothing to add from my side.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Udo Müller, CEO, for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, everybody. I hope you have a great Christmas time. I am looking forward to hear you soon again.
Bye.
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