Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Sanoma's third quarter results presentation. My name is Kaisa Uurasmaa. I'm heading Investor Relations and Sustainability at Sanoma. We had a solid quarter, and it supported our improved operational EBIT for the beginning of the year. Today, President and CEO Rob Kolkman and CFO Alex Green will present you the results. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. We will first take questions from the audience here at Sanoma House. Please use the microphone. We will then hand over to the telephone line, and you can also use the chat function in the webcast platform. The full event, including the Q&A, will be recorded, and the recording will be available on our website shortly after the event. With this, I would like to invite Rob on stage. Please.
Thank you very much, Kaisa, and good afternoon, everybody. It's my pleasure to present the quarterly results to you today, and they were indeed solid results. Let me highlight a few of the key points first, and then, as usual, zoom into the different parts of the business. On the sales side, what really played out in quarter three is what we also indicated before, which is on the learning. The impact of the planned discontinuation of the low-value distribution contracts in the Netherlands was partly offset by the growth in the learning content sales. In Media Finland, we saw lower advertising sales, which was also partially offset by the continued growth in digital subscriptions. We're very pleased that for the first nine months, the operational EBIT improved in both businesses, and also our free cash flow continues to improve. That's driven by those higher earnings and lower financing costs.
Alex will later on go a little bit deeper into that as well. As a result of that, our deleveraging continues to progress well, with our leverage now improved to 2.0 compared to 2.4 same period last year. There were two key decisions that I would like to highlight to you. One is on the learning side, and there we decided to not participate in multi-year low-value distribution tenders in the Dutch market, and we took the impairment for that in quarter three. This really is a continuation of our view on the Dutch market that it is changing more and more to dealing directly from a publisher with the schools. That's what's reflected there, and again, Alex will talk a bit more on the technicalities also on the financial side.
That does mean that we expect for 2026 to have about EUR 40 million year-on-year less revenue for the distribution part, but with no impact on the earnings. Logically speaking, that also means if you think about it, we're working towards the 23% margin that as a result of this slightly lower top line, but absolute profit expected to be the same, the margin is now going to be clearly in our expectation above 23%. The second one decision that we took, difficult, but we think is also an important one, is on the Media Finland side, and we already announced that earlier in the quarter, which is the expected closure of the Tampere printing plant, which really supports our well-established practices for these continuous efficiency improvements. Also there, the impairment of EUR 30 million and the restructuring expenses, we took that in quarter three.
As a result of these solid results, we have also now narrowed our outlook for the year, which is now between EUR 1.29 billion-EUR 1.31 billion on the sales and the operational EBIT at the higher end of our original guidance being EUR 180 million- EUR 190 million. Before I do my usual slides on learning and media, just something to bring to life to you how important a quarter three for us is if you see what's happening across the business. That really is reflected, I think, quite nicely here. On the one hand, we continuously look for the longer-term growth profile of our business. How can we improve that further? I'm very happy with the agreement we closed with Cambridge to have a partnership in the Spanish market to really try to improve English language across the Spanish schools.
That is going to be one of our growth drivers as well in the Spanish market going forward. In Poland, great example of when we talk about blended learning, what does that mean specifically in this case in Poland? That is the launch we did there of something called the Smart Book, which really combines textbook, workbook, notes, exercises, multimedia, all into one format for the kids in Poland. That is the start of also a rollout that we will do as part of also the curriculum changes going forward in Poland. The Netherlands, key growth driver for us for many years already and continues to be, also has of course continuous new releases when you think about our blended content there. The one I wanted to highlight here is Line 3, which is really the blended content for early literacy education in the Netherlands.
That is now used at the start of this school year in about 2,000 schools across the Netherlands, just as one example. On the media side, very happy to see the continued good growth on Ruutu+ subscriptions, driven by the attractive entertainment package we have there and also the sports content. Just a few examples to bring to life what an important quarter it is and how that also drives both the results now, but also sets us up for the growth going forward. Let me now zoom in on learning specifically, top line first and then profit. On the top line, you see the point that the growth in our auto learning content businesses were actually more than offsetting the last year of the lowest cycle in Spain and Poland.
The Netherlands, I mentioned it already, we see continued strong growth there in the learning content sales, new product launches, but also continue to improve even further our market position. In Poland, although it's the lower end of the cycle, if you purely think from a curriculum point of view, we continue to see really good momentum around our digital platform sales, particularly also selling directly to parents and students. That is a basis for further growth in the years to come. The impact this year of the discontinuation of the low-value distribution contracts in the Netherlands was about EUR 19 million on the top line. With all that, the result in profit is an improved operational earnings for learning for the first nine months.
The key elements, as you can see here, the highest share of learning content sales versus the low-value distribution going down, that has a positive impact on our margins, also slightly more digital sales mix. Solar continues to start to show the impacts in our P&L as well. We already of course saw it for some time in the cash, and that is expected to continue. We also see here the benefits of all the efforts we've done on the paper and printing, and that continues to come down as well. That results in the picture you see on the right, which clearly indicates we're on that trajectory to get towards the 23%. As I've highlighted before, a big step up is of course in 2026, when then also the volumes on the learning content sales are expected to go up significantly.
Let me now go to the media side of the business. There, we actually see the trends continuing, which is good growth on the subscription sales, and that was driven by what I already mentioned, good growth in Ruutu+. We still see a challenging market on the advertising side, and there overall it was lower advertising sales driven by TV. A big part of that is also around the third-party advertising reselling that stopped this year and a bit in the newsprint as well. I'm very pleased to see how Pia Kalsta and the team have continued to manage this business so well that although there is the top line pressure, we do see a further improvement on the profitability and on the margins.
That is driven of course by the growth in digital subscription sales, but it is also this continuous focus on improving the performance of the business overall. The lower paper printing distribution costs, volume-driven, has an impact there too, and also the lower TV programming costs. Overall, it's still a tough advertising market, really solid results on the media side for the quarter. Just briefly coming back to the outlook, we've narrowed it in line with what I said, which is also reflected here on the slides. On the higher end of the EBIT guidance between EUR 180 million-EUR 190 million now, the underlying assumptions are actually the same, which is the demand for the learning content relatively stable this year across the group's main operating markets.
The remaining part, just as a reminder, in quarter four is still a bit on uncertainty around returns, particularly in countries like Italy and Spain. The advertising market in Finland is relatively stable, plus or minus a few percentage points. Of course, there we still see the pressure, but we factor that into our narrow guidance that you see here. With that said, I would like to hand over to Alex, who can go a bit deeper into the financials.
Thank you, Rob. Great to be here again with you. Let's start off as usual with the Q3 operational EBIT. You can see here an improvement in operational EBIT year-on- year, driven by Media Finland. In the learning business, we have stable operating EBIT with the lower net sales being offset by the impact of a higher proportion of learning content and also the lower expenses around paper and printing. The Media Finland, as Rob just said, the growing digital subscription sales and the lower programming costs, the lower costs as well, offset slightly by the declining advertising sales, but netting to a positive too.
Moving to the key income statement related items, you can see here that the improved performance leads to a higher operational EPS, but on the overall EBIT and in the IACs, you can see the impacts of our two recent strategic decisions in terms of the impairments. First, in terms of the Dutch distribution market, the EUR 48 million impairment. If you remember this time last year, we booked a EUR 27 million impairment. At that point, although we were still participating in tenders, our expectation of winning those tenders had come down and therefore reduced our expected revenue streams, leading to that EUR 27 million impairment. This year, we've made that recent decision not to participate in the multi-year distribution contracts, tenders rather. That significantly further reduces the revenue expectations, as Rob said, going down EUR 40 million from this year to next and leading to a EUR 48 million impairment booked in Q3.
This leaves no material remaining intangible asset connected to the Dutch distribution business. Looking further down at the net financial items, that came down again in Q3. Lower average interest rates, as you can see there, 3.7% versus 4.9%, and also lower net debt helping us in this line. We can see that lower net debt here on the next slide in terms of deleveraging, EUR 536 million versus the EUR 615 million last year, taking our leverage to 2 versus 2.4. As you can see on the usual trend going into Q4, it'll come down a little bit more from here. Our equity ratio at the high end of our range up at 43.1%.
The free cash flow improved, as Rob mentioned earlier, EUR 86 million, so up following the higher, primarily the higher earnings and also the lower financing costs, offset slightly by some further investments in TV in the Media Finland business and some working capital movements. As you can see there with the 12-month rolling line going upwards, which supports the view that we've said that we expect 2025 cash flow to be increased further from the 2024 total of EUR 145 million. With that, I'll make a quick mention of the Capital Markets Day. Whilst welcoming my colleagues back to the stage on Tuesday, 25th of November, we welcome you all to that event, and Kaisa will talk more about that at the end.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Rob. We are now ready to take questions. As agreed, we will start from here at Sanoma House. If we can have a microphone first to Sami. Thank you.
Thanks. I have two questions. Starting from the guidance, the midpoint suggests EUR 5 million higher EBIT for the full year, you're EUR 8 million ahead after first three quarters. What's your thinking on Q4? Why would Q4 be below last year level?
I think the biggest uncertainty remains the advertising market for us in quarter four. That's of course where also the visibility is still the most limited. If you compare it particularly to learning where we have a really good feel, of course it's the advertising side that makes us be also on this kind of range now for the outlook.
Anything else than the advertising media market?
I think I briefly mentioned it. There's always, of course, the returns in Italy and Spain, but that's in the order of magnitude of maybe a couple million, but that's normal business, I would say. It's the advertising. Does the Finnish market now improve? Yes or no? That's the key uncertainty.
You're expecting Q4 to be somewhat below last year level?
If you go to the higher end of this, it's somewhat similar. It's that pressure that we still see. It's not like we see at the moment in quarter four an improvement in the advertising market now.
Secondly, a bit of a housekeeping question. If we think about Iddink, you did now EUR 48 million impairment. What is kind of like the cumulative number on impairments front you have done on Iddink over the years?
I mentioned the two, the 27 plus the 48 is 75. There were some smaller amounts earlier to do with the rental books business in the previous years, which were EUR 4 million or EUR 5 million in that sort of range. As mentioned, there's no remaining intangible assets connected to that business now.
Maybe about one third of the acquisition has been in a way written down so far. What is the remaining business left? I mean, if we think about next year, you will have EUR 40 million lower distribution revenues. What will be the size of Iddink next year?
We're expecting this year to be roughly EUR 50 million, and we're talking the learning materials business. That's going down by EUR 40 million, so roughly EUR 10 million. Also, within that original acquisition, we had what we now call Schoologica, the business that contains Magister, which is doing well, and also a small business in Spain as well, which is profitable.
Will you still need to do impairments next year related to business coming down by EUR 40 million, or was that done now?
What we've done now is based on the projections of future revenues as we did last year. The projections of future revenues last year, we were expecting to win some tenders. Now we're not expecting to win the tenders, so the balance sheet test is effectively what's the future value that would support the balance sheet intangible assets. That's all done now.
You think you don't have to revisit anymore the book values of Iddink?
No, as I said, the intangible assets are now gone. The goodwill related to that acquisition is part of the overall goodwill of Sanoma Learning, and that gets tested for impairment. That's not amortized. That gets tested for impairment merely based on the overall results of Sanoma Learning, and there is sizable headroom there. No concerns there.
Thanks.
Thank you, Sami. Nikko, please.
Hello, this is Nikko Ruokangas from SCB. I have also two questions, and I'll continue with the Netherlands. You said that you should now be able to reach the 23% margin target next year following this decision to not participate in the tenders. Is it still the case that you would be able to, or you believe that you would be able to reach that even without this decision?
I can take this. What we are trying to say is the fact that the sales comes down with EUR 40 million year -on-y ear has no impact on the absolute profit we already predicted. Logically, of course, and Alex can go into more detail, logically that means that where we already had the target of 23% margin, that effectively of course on a lower revenue base means that the percentage goes up somewhat, and that's what we're trying to indicate. No impact on the bottom line, although it's coming down on the top line. Alex, anything? Yeah.
I'd just reemphasize, we would hit the 23% irrespective of Iddink, and the Iddink drop with no profit actually lifts it above. The target of hitting 23% by 2026 is achieved without that Iddink drop.
Good, so that you don't need that addition to reach that.
No, that wasn't part of it.
Thanks. On your decision to close the printing facilities in Tampere, can you be a bit more open, kind of comprehensively, about the profitability impacts to you from that decision?
Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, the process around that is still not yet completed. However, we expect the savings, if you like, to be roughly in the form of EUR 5 million for Media Finland on an annual basis.
Cost side.
That's the cost savings of around that for annually related to the lower costs needed for running one plant versus two.
The provision for the one-off course is booked now in Q3?
Yeah, the IAC provision is in Q3, reflecting primarily the amortization of future lease liabilities for the equipment and the plant that's already been booked, together with estimate of reorganization costs as well.
Thanks. That's all for me.
Thank you, Nikko. Over to Pia, please.
Hello, it's Pia Rosqvist from DNB Carnegie. A question regarding the Netherlands. If I looked at the numbers correctly, sales declined by only EUR 6 million in the third quarter, and this is despite you discontinuing, I think you said for EUR 19 million. What's happening? Underlying growth is really strong. What is driving? Is it primary? Is it secondary? Anything specific?
We are very happy with the learning content sales in the Netherlands. We have a strong position there, and that is both in primary and secondary showing really good growth. It's partly also why you see, of course, our mix changing so much, therefore also the profitability margin. That's all, of course, less visible as you highlight on the overviews because of the decline of the low-value part, but the underlying core business of content methods K12 is really strong. We, of course, see that as one of our key growth drivers also going forward.
Thank you. If I continue, maybe on the distribution contracts still, just to be very clear, do you have any distribution business left in the Netherlands?
Yes, we're not participating in the future multi-year contracts, but these are multi-year contracts. The ones we've had before are still ongoing for the next year or two. As I say, we're going from a EUR 50 million business this year to down by EUR 40 million next year, and then those contracts will eventually.
Of course, the students are still getting their books, but the way that then goes is more directly from publishers, including our own publishing to the schools. It's a different way of delivering it.
Are you the only one doing this, or is this a broader trend in the market?
The market has been of course difficult in this area for quite a number of years. There are a few other players there, and they need to make their own decisions on this.
Thank you. Maybe to Media Finland, if I can continue on the solid performance in Ruutu+. The subscription revenue growth, is this driven by price increases, or are volumes also growing?
Volumes are also growing, and I think what is very encouraging to see there is that the offering we have, that combination that I mentioned of entertainment and the sport packages, the right kind of mix there, is also driving the growth. It's both that and of course also the value in the way of pricing.
Thank you. You mentioned lower TV programming costs supporting profitability. Was this kind of isolated in Q3? Should we expect them to be lower in the future or normalize in Q4?
The level we have is actually the reason it's lower, it's lower year-on- year. We actually had slightly higher costs the previous year due to some timing of some write-offs of TV programming. The actual amount we had this year is a more normal level.
I think that's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Pia. Any further questions from the audience? If not, do we have any questions on the telephone line? We have one. I would like to.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Sanna Perälä from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, Sanna Perälä from Nordea. I have a couple of quite detailed questions. Sorry if I missed this, if you mentioned this earlier, but these contracts you chose not to apply for or participate in tenders. Did I interpret correctly that you have been the chosen distributor for those deliveries before? For how long have you delivered this? How long have these been part of your revenue, if so?
The contracts that we are talking about tend to be a mix of what we already did and also sometimes from our competitors. The impact for us is the impact that we highlighted, around EUR 40 million year-on- year on the top line, with no impact on earnings.
Thank you. Perhaps touching learning a little bit more, how did the digital platform sales in Poland develop during Q3? I know there was a lower cycle otherwise in Poland, but what was the magnitude of the digital platform sales?
We don't disclose the exact amount there, but it continues to grow well. You saw that in the smaller quarter two already, and effectively that continued in quarter three as well. It's a really good base also for future growth. As you also highlighted correctly, of course because of the lower cycle, that growth in itself is less visible in quarter three, but it's still there and continues to be really good.
Thanks. How much did Iddink contribute to Q3 growth? Meaning, what was the organic growth in learning or perhaps in Finland if you'd like to mention that?
We're not disclosing the individual details of that within the Finnish learning content business, but safe to say that that was a sort of minor acquisition that's been integrated well, is doing fine, and is contributing considerably decently to the growth in that market.
Thanks. My question about the Media Finland subscription sales was already asked, so I have no further questions at this stage.
Thank you, Sanna. If there are no further questions at the telephone line, there are actually no questions on the chat this time. We have quite a big audience at Sanoma House, so I think that's one of the reasons. Before we conclude, as said, Capital Markets Day will be held on the 25th of November. We will start in the morning. You are mostly welcome live in Helsinki. In addition to Rob Kolkman and Alex Green, and then of course Pia Kalsta, CEO of Media Finland, we also have several members of the Learning and Media Finland management teams participating at the event. Next week, we will be sending the actual invitations and the registration will start. In the event, we will elaborate more on the growth path, especially on the learning side with the upcoming curriculum renewals and the growth outlook for 2026/2030.
We are looking forward to seeing many of you there. This concludes the presentation. Thank you all, and we will be happy to be in touch with IR in the afternoon with any further questions. Thank you.