Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this interim report session of Alma Media's first quarter 2024. My name is Elina Kukkonen, I'm responsible for the communications and brand of Alma. We begin our presentation shortly, and as usual, first to go on stage is our CEO, Mr. Kai Telanne. He will present the overall result of Alma Media and highlight the performance of our business segments: Alma Career, Alma Marketplaces, and Alma News Media. After our CEO's presentation, our CFO, Mrs. Taru Lehtinen, will present the financial position of Alma Media today. Then Mr. Telanne continues about the strategy and operating environment, which is quite challenging at the moment, actually. Then we close the session with the questions and answers, and you're more than welcome to ask questions online.
We take first the questions here at the Alma premises, and then our Director of Investor Relations, Mr. Teemu Salmi, will pick up the questions from online. With this short introduction, you're very welcome today, and nice to have you following us also online. Please, Mr. Telanne, the stage is yours.
Thank you very much, Elina. Welcome on my behalf as well. As noted, for the first time we are presenting the report with the new segment structure, so you have the possibility to take a deep dive into the new segment structure and the numbers and the achievements in there. As we started the year, we ordered or hoped for a step-by-step recovery in the market. Unfortunately, that has not happened, as we have seen. The market development has been quite unfavorable in most of the businesses of ours, most of the regions, especially in Finland, as seen. Due to the difficulties in geopolitics, interest rates, consumer demand, and some other factors as well.
So as many years before, we just had to adjust, and that's what we've been doing to mitigate the development in the markets by some cost initiatives that we have in place without stopping any strategic development projects that we have in most of the segments. The overall picture and the view of the performance from my point of view in these circumstances is pretty good. Well, we have been able to mitigate the difficulties and the lack of demand in most of the businesses so far pretty well. As reported, with local currencies, we were on par with the revenues and very close with the profitability as well. The further north you come, the more difficulties you face in the market, I would say, like in the Career business, meaning that the further south you go, the better the market and the business seem to be.
That's the name of the game at the moment. Our adjusted operating profit went down by 5%. That was expected in these circumstances from our point of view. Digital business is growing partly by the acquisitions and the organic growth and partly by the decline in the paper newspaper business. Of course, as expected, with the good cash flow and the profitability, our balance sheet is getting better and better, step by step. The gearing is close to 60%, the equity ratio more than 46%, which is actually quite a good situation as it stands, and basis for further investments in the areas that we have decided. As said, Alma Career revenue went down slightly. Half of the decline came from exchange rates, Czech koruna. Marketplaces went up EUR 2.2 million, mostly with the new acquisitions that we did, like Netwheels and Doks.
But there we have seen also organic growth. Alma News Media went down close to EUR 1 million with the revenues, with the decline in advertising market in Finland. So the end result is EUR 76.2 million. The profitability decreased due to the revenue factors that we faced from Alma Career, EUR 0.6 million down, and marketplaces, EUR 0.7 million down. We come and get closer into the details later. As said, the digital business share of the revenue is growing as expected, and you can see the share of different revenue sources from the total on the right side of this slide. One third of the revenues from classified businesses, around EUR 15 million from advertising, digital services, EUR 13 million, content to EUR 12.6 million, and so. This is the portfolio content at the moment of the company.
Let's take a short dive into the new business segments from the beginning of April. As said, Alma Career, as is, like it has been for many years right now, leading job boards in 11 countries and the main numbers down there. Alma Marketplaces is led by Santtu Elsinen, who is actually present online, if I'm correct. Leading marketplaces in housing premises, mobility services, business premises, comparison services, and other industrial systems in Finland. Then the third segment, Alma News Media, Juha-Petri Loimovuori is here, the head of the segment. News Media, all the news media assets that we have, like Iltalehti, Kauppalehti, Talouselämä, Tekniikka&Talous and so on, Arvopaperi. This is the composition that we have at the moment, and that's how we drive the business from now on. I start from the Career, which is the biggest business and the biggest contributor to our revenues and profitability.
Most of the revenues coming outside of Finland adjusted operating profit on a healthy level, close to 40%. And as said in the beginning, the markets are healthy and developing in the south, like Croatia, okay, in Central Europe, like in Czech Republic, and difficult in northern part of Europe, like Baltic countries and especially in Finland. And that's pretty much the picture of the economies in the area where we present. The more difficulties we have in the economies, the more difficult it is to run the recruitment business. We have been able to defend nicely our market position, so we haven't lost markets or customers. But the activities of the customers, especially on the bigger side, is slowing or has slowed down slightly.
But the organic decline or the decline in local currencies was only 2% in the profitability, which is, of course, a good sign of the cost control and a good sign of the ability to sell the services, also the add-on services around the current classified businesses. So that's more or less. We come later to the market focus in our markets and take a look at the central Eastern European markets as well. Invoicing and revenue recognition tells us more about the timing of the revenue development, and this has been the picture for quite a long time. When the invoicing curve is above the revenue curve, meaning that the order backlog is developing and is good, so to say. Now we are close to the revenue curve, meaning that the order backlog at the moment is not increasing. But it's not bad either.
So quite an okay situation anyway. Let's move on to the marketplaces, the Finnish business, and the Swedish commercial premises business, as we have a combination of housing premises, cars, comparison services, business premises, business insights, different kinds of business insights. As we have seen for two-three years now, the difficulties have realized also in our case from the real estate market. So the low demand on the housing market has started to affect our businesses as well, not at the or with the full speed, but anyway, while the new house or premises sale is at a very low level, it's been there for quite a long time now. That's also affecting the volumes of our services as well. But we have good signs there coming from the announcement or the expectations of the interest rates starting to decline during the summer.
So that will have a clear effect on the durable consumption and the related businesses like houses, premises, cars, and that kind of businesses, which is, of course, a really good sign for us as well. We have a good development in mobility services. As said, we did some new acquisitions like Netwheels here, which we have already integrated into the services and the whole combination of businesses around mobility here. Most of the increase of the revenues comes from there. But we have also organic growth in the service with like Nettiauto, with the used car sales, which is growing pretty okay. So the situation in the mobility side is really good. Some market-related difficulties in the real estate business, but not in the business premises.
Especially in Sweden, we have had a really, really good development still, and that's been going and growing nicely for years right now with the high profitability. So that's really good. And then on the Insights side, I would say that the digital part that we have around this business is growing nicely, double-digit clearly. And of course, we have the offline businesses like education and events. It's not growing. So that's pressing a little bit of the revenue development and the profitability of the Insights sector as well. But the focus areas around this, they are growing very, very good. But of course, because of or due to the real estate market development and high costs that we have around the development of the systems like industrial services or OviPro, we will have the extra cost the whole year, I would say, this year.
Hopefully, the situation will clear up by the end of the year so that we can get all the benefits for the new investments next year and on. So that's the picture. Quite solid, okay, situation here. Also here, actually, in the marketplaces, we suffered heavily from the automotive market decline. As you saw here, the advertising around the services, the marketplaces went down 18% in our case, which is quite a heavy decline. That comes from both car advertising and houses and premises because of the low level of construction business at the moment. A short market update of those two important areas like houses and premises and mobility. As said, we are on a low level. Still, the housing market going down 14% compared to the last year.
As you can see, the newly built apartments on a very, very low level, meaning that there's actually no new construction at the moment, which will actually eventually end up to a high pent-up demand when this situation clears up and we will see a remarkable change someday. We have pretty much the same situation with the mobility market, like the new car sales are at a very low level, well below, well, well below five years average, meaning that the Finnish car consumption at a low level at the total. Luckily, the used car market has picked up and we have a growing amount of visitors on our sites and a growing amount of listings as well. So there is that kind of underlying demand, but the problem is the new car. Of course, that comes mainly from the economy growing unfavorably. All right.
And then lastly, but not least, the news media, all the news assets in the company, like Iltalehti, Kauppalehti and those, as mentioned before, solid performance in a difficult market. Advertising down more than EUR 1 million, but a very, very good cost control. We've been able, of course, to decline the print-related costs hand in hand with the decline of the print businesses like subscriptions and advertising. So the printing and delivery costs around the offline business are declining, which is, of course, important in these scales. Digital content sales nicely up. So the digital subscription, both in business-to-business media and also in Iltalehti, Iltalehti Plus, we had at the moment 52,000 paying customers and growing. So that's the summary of news media development. 9.7% profitability going up from the comparable year and a nice plan to develop further. Okay, so that's the brief outlook into the numbers.
Now Taru will continue with the balance sheet and other figures as well.
Thank you. Thank you, Kai. Hello everyone, also from my behalf. It's nice to see you here at Alma House as well as everyone joining us online. Let's start with our long-term goals and how we have been able to perform against them. In terms of revenue growth, we recorded a 1.2% increase in Q1. The slight growth is attributed to the M&A actions, which offset the impact of the fluctuations of the koruna currency exchange rates. We were not totally able to reach our long-term 5% target, but on the other hand, we were again able to keep our strong revenue baseline despite the challenging market condition. Our operating margin for Q1 stands at 21.2% and profitability is a little bit lower than in our strong full year 2023.
Due to the modest organic growth, development in revenue in average, and of course, because of the increase of expenses in housing, housing business unit, and increase of ICT costs. But however, we believe that our strategic initiatives and proactive cost controlling measures are enhancing our financial performance and profitability over the long term accordingly. Finally, our leverage for Q1 decreased to 1.5% and still comfortably below our target of 2.5%, demonstrating the strength of our financial position. In summary, despite some challenges, our Q1 performance reflects the resilience of our business and our ability to adapt to the changing market conditions. We remain firmly committed to delivering our long-term targets. Then let's focus next on Q1 financial position. During the beginning of the year, we did not raise any new financing loans and actually we did a small repayment concerning our leasing agreements.
In total, our net debt decreased by EUR 7.6 million, ending at EUR 138 million. Gearing is at 60% and equity ratio at 46% and proceeding as expected. At the end of March, we had quite strong cash flow cash position due to the good cash flow from Q1, allowing us to secure the dividends that we actually paid this week. However, it's also worth noting that the average interest rate for Q1 rose to 3.5% compared to 2.4% in the comparable period last year. The full year 2023 average interest rate was 3.2%. Like you know, the increase is because of the increase of higher market interest rates. In summary, Q1 continued the stable development of our balance sheet. Despite the growing financing cost level, our solid financial performance has enabled us to maintain a robust financial position and our balance sheet still has room for investments.
Then moving on to cash flow in Q1, our operating cash flow was EUR 24.2 million. An increase from the previous year, which was EUR 20.6 million. We were not able to reach the really strong Q1 2022, which was driven by really strong growth of advanced payments. In the current year, the operating result and higher paid interests decreased the cash flow, offsetting the decrease in taxes paid. In addition to that, the decrease in working capital explained the growth of operative cash flow, though the decrease in customer advanced payments received was EUR 1.2 million compared to Q1 2023. Cash flow from after investments was EUR 8.6 million, lower compared to comparable periods, EUR 18.7 million. This actually gives me a good bridge to move on to investments. In Q1, we invested a total of EUR 15.7 million.
Of this, EUR 14.5 million was connected to M&A and acquisition of Netwheels, which strengthened our offering to mobility corporate customers. The remaining EUR 1.3 million were directed towards capital expenditures to renew our digital services. This is slightly lower level than in the previous year. But still, we are still continuing to invest to our digital industry solution in order to expand our services in customers' value chain. Depreciation also slightly below the previous year's level, amounting to EUR 4.1 million. And despite the investments and the growth in assets and equity, our return on investment and return on equity continued to deliver at a good level. In the first quarter, earnings per share was EUR 0.13 , EUR 0.1 less than in the previous year. And adjusted items costs amounted to EUR 1.2 million compared to the previous year, EUR 0.5 million .
In the current year, we reported restructuring costs of EUR 0.7 million for change negotiation in the media sales department. In addition to interest expenses, our financing items include a EUR 0.9 million positive fair value adjustment of the interest and exchange rate derivatives compared to the previous year, EUR -0.8 million. And just to remind you that the realized income from the derivatives is shown in the operative cash flow, while the change in the fair value of the future expected return is shown in P&L. And then as a conclusion, once again, we defend our result against a market headwind and continue to invest our products according to our long-term plan. Thank you for your attention. And then moving on to the operating environment.
Thank you very much, Taru. Let's have a short look at the current environment and maybe about, especially, the forecast, how we're moving on. As said, we have had some headwind and the change has been postponed, as said. All or everybody should have expected that at the end of the day or someday this should change. The current forecasts have been, how would I say, taken down a little bit from the previous ones. But still, the GDP development in European or Eastern European markets where we operate are positive, meaning that even the change in the markets has been postponed, there's still hope and wait for positive development. Most of the markets are above or should be above last year's figures. Only Estonia, Finland, and Sweden are, of course, the northern part of Europe seem to be difficult.
But in other parts, there should be quite a good basis for our business development, especially on the recruitment side. As we have learned from the past, usually when the markets are starting to pick up or even a little bit earlier, the recruitment markets start to pick up. So usually the old logic has been that when we see that the recruitment demand and the labor demand starts to pick up, we can wait for the market to pick up as well as seen. A very good sign, of course, is that the forecast for the inflation is about half of the last year's levels in all the markets. That's very important, of course, for the consumer confidence. Of course, for the investments to start again.
If the interest rates are starting to come down from the second half of the year, that will eventually clearly start the change in the market and release the demand more or less in the durable business like houses and premises and cars. The good sign here is, of course, and a sign of a quite tight labor market is that the unemployment rate is not growing during these times, during bad times either. The situation is quite good. Like in Czechia, we have or the forecast is about 2.5% unemployment, meaning a full employment more or less. Like in Prague, the metropolitan area, there's a high demand for skilled labor and good basis for our business then. Unfortunately, there's not in the view a change in the geopolitics. On the contrary, I would say, like we have all the troubles there.
The other issues that we have in our sight and to take care of are there. These are the main drivers or issues that we have to carefully consider when developing our businesses. Of course, the long-term drivers like changing consumer behavior, maybe the increased regulation as well, are those that are driving the digital development of ours. They are good and bad. There are possibilities in this change, like the consumer behavior, need for new solutions in the digital arena, so to say. But then, of course, some difficulties may arise with the regulation, increasing regulation in the EU, which is, of course, a high heavy task to tackle. But anyway, we can't do anything for the environment and we just have to adjust. The bad sign is, of course, the Finnish market and the low demand on advertising.
That tells us that the demand for our customers' businesses is still at the very low side. The February ad market development was really, really disappointing, especially for the newspaper advertising. Luckily, we are not that dependent anymore on the newspaper business, but still the online advertising was not growing either. Despite the difficulties or the headwind in the environment, there's no need to change the strategy. We are very decisive with the developer and driving the business with the current strategy. The main task is, of course, to secure the extremely good position in our current businesses and markets, like in recruitment, houses, premises, cars, financial media, news media, and so on in Finland. Of course, we try to continue with the internationalization of the recruitment business. We are continuing and developing the business in the Balkans area at the moment.
Hopefully, you hear more about this later. Of course, we grow around the current businesses. We have this kind of adjacent businesses that we are developing around the current core business. The strategy, as simple as that, has been stable for years. We are moving from traditional offline business to digital, from digital media to services, and from digital services and media to advanced digital platforms with the capabilities to secure and to develop high-end AI-supported services for both consumers and business customers. As simple as that. We continue to concentrate on these three main areas, meaning marketplaces, information platforms, and media platforms. We drive the efficiency and the profitability of these with a very good cooperation inside the company, meaning we share audiences, data, technology, and common sales.
This is the key and the recipe for the good performance and the profitability of the company. Moving from traditional advertising business to transactional businesses step by step, meaning that we try to get our share from new revenue sources, like commissions from financing or insurances or whatever, outside of the traditional ad market to a bigger transactional market. Okay, that's the strategy. No need to change, just to secure the good continuation of the current strategy and secure that we can smoothly finalize the investments that we have on transactional businesses and on the industrial service tech development that we have in place at the moment. The outlook, we stay with the view that we have had, meaning that we expect our full year revenue and adjusted operating profit to stay at last year's level. Thank you very much. That's the message.
And if you have any questions, me, Taru, and all the management, we are here to answer those.
Thank you. It's Pia Rosqvist from Carnegie. A question. I start with a career. In the report, you say that invoicing was down by 5% in the first quarter. So what implications should we expect for the second half? Does it mean that revenues, there is a risk that revenues are declining year-on-year in the second half?
No, we are not expecting the revenues to decline during the second half, but during the first half that might happen. It seems that the market is on the lower side at the moment. So that is more or less the case. In a career segment, there's actually differences between the different customer segments at the moment.
As before, when we came to the decreasing economies, the bigger customers seemed to continue with the investments in people, meaning that they kept their volume more or less. And the smaller customers started to decline and be more careful. And now when we have had these difficulties have continued in the market, now it seems that the bigger customers have faced the problem or been started to be more cautious, meaning that the volume for the biggest customers are started to slow down, but the smaller customers seem to be more active at the moment. That is more or less, so there are changes. We have been able to mitigate the volume decline with good sales of the adjacent services, like the ATS systems and others as well.
But the decline is not that big with local currencies, I would say. So the situation is not dramatic. But yeah, that's the picture. The first half seemed to be a little bit difficult.
Okay, thank you. Then on advertising sales for the group, sales declined by 6% year-on-year. That is more than the market still. Yeah. So what is burdening this? And I'm trying to understand since you did some changes in your solutions business. Yeah. Do we have any read across from that here?
Yeah. We have Tiina here who is responsible for the group level ad sales. But I try to summarize a little bit and you can back up if I'm wrong.
But I would say that the reason for us to lose you know like market share is that we are a market leader in houses and premises, cars, and then on business to business side as well, where we don't have listings or that kind of businesses. So like for our classified services, as you said, the decline in advertising was 18%, which is of course pressing the whole group's ad sales heavily. And that 18%, of course, that comes from the construction business, like the new house construction business and the new cars. So that is, Tiina, I think I'm close to being right. And then, of course, on the business to business side, while we don't have any listings, car advertising is really important for Kauppalehti, Talouselämä, the business media.
So we are lagging behind with the car advertising as well and some others, and especially the programmatic advertising, where we have been the market leader in Finland. And now the programmatic, which is global business, is on a very low side. So as being a market leader in the programmatic advertising, we are suffering heavily from the market decline. Anything to add on, Tiina, or was this the big picture? Okay. All right. Do you want to continue?
Yeah, maybe still on Alma Solutions. The net savings of the cost efficiency measures you have done, are they kind of disappearing in this market?
You mean marketplaces?
No, sorry, in Alma Solutions. I mean in the ads.
Yeah, okay, here. Yeah, Tiina. You mean the personal negotiations that we had?
Yeah. Maybe Taru wants to add on as to this question.
Maybe if I understood it right, your question, I don't know, should I stand up about that? If we are losing those savings because of the market condition, no, we don't consider that we are losing. But of course, we don't know what is going to happen to the advertising sales market. But the purpose now is that we are strengthening and focusing to the right projects. And that way will bring some new profitability to advertising sales in that sense.
Okay, so if I understood correctly, your question is that if you forecast the amount of the savings to our profitability, are we losing the change with the bad developing in the market? Is that the conclusion? Okay. Yeah. You know, well, we it's really difficult to forecast how the revenue on the advertising is going to develop.
But anyway, we do all we can to mitigate the possible changes that we face in the market. Yes. Yep. Thank you. Other questions?
Hi, Sanna Perälä from Nordea. Regarding marketplaces, the segment, where do you see the margin going forward? Is there an improvement potential there?
Yeah. A lot of potential there.
Where do you see it?
So we have quite a bunch of investments there. Like said for the OviPro, which is the biggest investment for the industrial customers, meaning the services, the industrial systems for the housing agents. There's plenty of room there on the revenue side. And of course, where we get rid of the project costs by the end of the year, the profitability will step up. And the same we have on the car side. I mean, for the vehicle systems, there we have this kind of same situation.
So yeah, the target is far above the current level on that side. And then we have to remember that the market is on a very low side. So we might see a high jump in the future if the market goes up and we get rid of the project costs in the segment. And then I just want to remind that we have a very good development on the ad sales business as well, meaning the digital ad services for the business usage, more or less. And that's really encouraging. 22% growth in recurring revenues on that side, on the digital side, which is of course the core.
Thanks. That was very clear. Well then, moving on to mobility, you mentioned that the mobility revenue growth was very good. What was the level of organic growth, like excluding Netwheels in mobility?
I think it is in the report, it's some percent.
Yes, I would say that.
Single-digit percent.
Altogether, the M&A counted EUR 2 million. And part of that is included in insights. So it's like divided like one fourth of that is considering the insights business, more or less.
Okay, thank you. Then my last question is regarding the advertising market. Yes, we all know it's very weak. But do you feel like there could be some support from weak comparison numbers this year? Or does it still look like weakening further?
Tiina, what's your view?
Well, we aim to grow profitable way. And that's why we had this [Foreign language}, what is it in English?
Personal negotiations.
Personal negotiations, yes. And as we heard, the second half might be better in our economy. We don't know. It might be slightly better.
It depends a lot on the economy, the situation, how we will be able to cope with that. We do all different things at the moment to improve our revenue in advertising sales as well. The forecast is that we wait a little bit better second half than the first half.
Yeah, clearly. What is needed in the market is hope at the moment. As we know, the consumers are lagging the visibility as we. And hope is needed in a difficult situation. And I would say that if the change of the interest rates will happen, that will change the overall atmosphere and the consumption would start to pick up, I would say. And that will obviously affect the ad market as well.
Petri Gostowski from Inderes. You mentioned that the housing market weakness has been visible now in your figures.
Just wanted to ask if it's purely linked to the lower volumes or are you seeing any signs of trouble within your customers, given that their business environment is very weak?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The difficulties in the volumes come from the difficulties with the customers, yes, because there's no activities. But as we know, the need for consumers to change the houses or the premises is still there. But they don't have courage or the money at the moment to move on. So the volume decline in advertising comes from the difficulties in the change there in the market. We haven't lost market share, I would say. So we are well in the situation there. But of course, we do all that we can to help our customers to survive and to develop and to speed up the market as good as possible.
That's why we are developing the services continuously without interrupting the project that we have, despite the difficulties in the revenue side.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. It's Pia from Carnegie again. In difficult markets, it's not untypical to see competitors starting to behave irrationally. So is this something which you identify in any of your markets, in recruitment or in the Finnish market?
Yeah. Usually in a tight market, when things go badly, the price competition starts to evolve and increase. And that has, of course, happened all over the place. And that's normal. That's not news for us. As being one of the biggest players, we, of course, try to defend the price levels and try not to do anything stupid. So there are situations, of course, that we lose some campaigns by staying where we are and not taking part of the heaviest price competition.
But yes, that is obvious that that will happen. And we see that kind of cases where we don't think that there's no sense in that.
Thank you. And just in career, there are no new players bubbling under, which we should be aware of?
Not really. There are competitors in all of the place. And they are not new ones, actually, but the obvious ones. And there are also some smaller players that have been there for quite a long in the biggest markets. I don't know, Vesa-Pekka, have you a better view on that or is this the case, more or less?
Thanks, Kai. I think Kai actually described it quite well. The usual suspects on the big end, the global giants, so to speak, and then the local you know people that have been competing with us before. But Pia, I guess you're right.
The desperation of the marketplace is everywhere. I think we, as well as the others, are trying to see how to move forward. I would point out the same that Kai said, that even in those markets where we've been declining, mostly in the north, in the Baltics, we've been fighting for the market share still quite successfully. But the competition itself is pretty much where it has been, even though we've been expecting AI and other innovations to bring something totally new. But that has not been seen.
Actually, I didn't point it out, but.
I don't remember, did we disclose it before, but we have quite a lot of AI initiatives in place, actually, more than 50 projects inside the company all over the place, meaning that we aim at deploying the AI in every business during this year, meaning that for classified businesses, we are deploying and embedding the capabilities inside the services. And the same for other services as well, even for the news media. So like the journalists, they use the AI for gathering the raw material, making some kind of summaries and those and whatever. And for the coding, like for the ICT development, the management has promised me that we can get 30% off from the cost with the AI. I remember that. I said always to them that I remember your statement.
But as they already deploy, use the AI for the coding, especially for the testing, as I've heard it, it is useful. It is really useful for cost effectiveness. And that's important for us because we have so much to do in the different businesses all over the place. All right. If you don't have any other questions.
Maybe we can move to online questions.
Do we have online?
Okay. We have real persons this time, I promise you. First one from our analyst in SEB, Niko Ruokangas. Actually, four questions. First of all, are you now any more worried about reaching the guidance compared to in February when you initially gave the guidance, given the challenging market environment?
No. We are still confident that despite the difficulties in the market during maybe the first half of the year, we can reach the target.
Perfect. How do you see the trend developing inside the quarter in different business areas? What kind of demand did you see in March compared to January, February? So the trend developing inside the Q1 in different business areas.
Okay. Tiina, can you actually comment on the advertising? So we haven't got the market numbers yet from Tiina, so we don't have. We have only February. We have, of course, the finger touch, the feeling. And I would say that the overall view has been that the March, not in the advertising market really, but in other businesses, it's been better than the first two months, meaning that the situation should be improving.
Perfect. You said that you have initiated new cost efficiency actions. Which divisions and which will these affect?
Yeah, we have. We have maybe discussed this before already, but to start the year, we always do at least two different plans, like two different scenarios. If the year and the market doesn't start favorably, we deploy the Plan B, more or less, meaning that we have already this kind of cost initiatives to start and planned in advance. In this kind of circumstances and situations, those cost initiatives are mainly from this kind of variable costs, like from marketing, a little bit from personnel costs, sales. We can postpone some non-necessary investments or that kind of things. And so on. That will happen in every segment. Actually, at the moment, we have the Plan B in place in every segment. There are, of course, differences, what you can do and what is wise to do in different businesses.
The effects and results will be seen from the third quarter on this year, third or fourth quarter mostly. The second quarter might be too early.
Thank you. And then Mastan Mirza is asking a holistic question. Just would like to know about the future of Alma. Like, where could investors see Alma in the next two to three years in terms of revenue and any dividend increases we could expect in the coming days?
Yeah. Okay. We have disclosed the core business areas as shown you before, the three areas, meaning marketplaces, digital services, and media. And those are the areas where we invest in. We are not going to other places. We continue with the transformation of those and the internationalization. As said, we are moving now to the Balkans. We aim at growing more than 5% per year with an increase in profitability.
And as said and mentioned before, we have room to improve with the profitability, clearly. We have high targets on career. We have the Career United project, which concentrates on integrating the different markets and countries into one common idea of doing the business and some shared services. We have high expectations on the marketplaces, as said, where we have invested in, and a good plan in place for news media as well. So the answer is that more than 5% yearly long-term target for growth with increasing profitability. At the moment, we are close to the 25%, 24% or something. And that's not the. The most difficult target for us is not the profitability, but the growth. And the difficulty with the growth comes from Finland, of course. Finland is not growing. So that's the biggest difficulty. We have done more than 70 M&A deals since 2005.
The journey will continue. While the balance sheet is developing as seen with the good cash flow, the possibilities to bigger transactions improve. We will use the M&A day as a tool as before. The board, the management, the board, and the shareholders of Alma have all committed to this strategy. That will definitely continue. In terms of dividends, we have promised to pay at least 50% of the earnings per share every year. With the current strategy and the targets, meaning dividends are improving. Step by step, they are improving. Do we have time for one more? Of course.
From Rajkumar Mahendra. Is the company planning to utilize AI to enhance productivity? And if so, in what ways are you implementing them? AI is to what? AI is to enhance productivity.
Okay. Productivity, yeah.
Yeah, we have actually this kind of three layers, three-step approach in AI. Of course, in the beginning, we are in an experimental mode. So we have promised that we have AI at the use of every Alma Media employee this year. We are in good speed with that. But then the first layer in the AI development is, of course, the cost effectiveness, so the productivity. How do we deploy the AI at the use of journalists, at the use of marketing, at the use of subscription sales or whatever? And that happens on top of the good data layer that we have, a lot of data and a very good basis for the AI development that we have developed. It's called Sammio, the data layer and the lake that we have in Alma. So the productivity is the first layer.
Then the second layer is the product development, so new services or new features in the products and the services that we have in the market, meaning that we are deploying AI into Autotalli or Etuovi, into the search features or whatever, or other services like Career. How do we match-make better than we have done so far? How do we guarantee that the employers and the employees are finding themselves with the best ways you can? Then the third layer in the AI development is then new services, totally new services. Of course, the further you go in those circles, the more difficult it becomes. It needs creativity to develop totally new services. But of course, we try to do that, and that will happen. Eventually, that will happen when we have the AI fully at our services.
We will find the new ways to and the new services as well. Of course, we have to be aware if that happens in the markets where we are in, are there some kind of new players in commerce in our current businesses to fight with us, the incumbents, in a new way? All right. So that was it. Any other questions? I remind you that you can contact us at any time if you have further questions. Don't hesitate to do that. Now I thank you very much on behalf of Taru as well. It was a great pleasure to start the year with you. We'll be in touch. Upcoming events here on this slide, the January-June report on Thursday, 18th July. We actually a little bit planned that and came to the conclusion that we might do that only online. Maybe only online.
You might have your holidays. Or if you want to come to Tampere, maybe to visit us there, there might be a chance to do that. But we come back to this. And then the third quarter presentation on Friday, 18th October. Thank you very much. Hope you have a nice weekend, the summer, warm and like summer kind weekend in Finland. Thank you.