Good morning, everyone, and warm welcome to Sanoma's Capital Markets Day 2025. My name is Kaisa Uurasmaa . I'm heading Investor Relations and Sustainability at Sanoma. Today we are very focused on the growth that learning will bring to Sanoma in the coming years. You have maybe seen our updated financial targets that were released in the morning. We will discuss more on those, of course, as well. We have a wide variety of speakers today from both businesses. You can see them here. They will all introduce themselves, so I will not go into detail on that now. Maybe a few words about our agenda. Rob will soon come on stage to start the presentations. He will be followed by several speakers from the Learning Management team who will focus on telling you about different growth drivers across the business.
After these presentations, we will have a Q&A that focuses on the group message and learning. After that, you are able to see how blended learning works in practice in Finnish schools. We have two teachers here who will demonstrate that both from the primary school perspective and then from the secondary school perspective. After that, we will have a break, and during the break, you will be able to, of course, discuss with all Sanoma team members who are here, but then also see more about a few AI tools that we use in both learning and the media business. The demonstrations will be available in this room. After the break, we will focus then more on the learning business and overall financials of the group. A few practicalities.
This event will be recorded, and the recording will be available on our website shortly after the end of the event. When we have the Q&A sessions, we will first take questions from in person here at the event venue. Please use the microphone. On the webcast, please use the chat function for questions. With this short introduction, I would like to welcome Rob on stage. Please.
Thank you very much, Kaisa, and good morning, everybody. Warm welcome to all of you here in the room, and also warm welcome to all of you online. I'm very excited to share with you today our growth story. As Kaisa mentioned, a lot will be around the next few years. Where do we see it go? How do we see the organization grow? We'll try to make that as engaging as possible. Lots of examples, indeed also the teachers, and hopefully at the end of it, you will be as excited as we are about the years ahead of us and the growth and the specific plans we have to execute on that. Let me start by grounding ourselves in what is actually Sanoma today. What do we look at here?
That is really, I think, a great position to be in where we impact the lives of millions of people in a positive way every day. That is the leading K-12 learning business we have, the number one position in Europe, serving about 25 million students and their teachers and their parents across Europe. Today you'll hear a lot of different examples from across Europe as well. We also are the number one digital media company here in Finland, pretty much reaching all of the Finns on a weekly basis with our high-quality journalism, with the entertainment, the TV, the radio, and also the events. Two strong businesses in a very good position to deliver on a unique profile and on growth in the coming years.
It's all about looking forward today, but I think it is good to step back a little bit and think about what we said two years ago when we also had this event, the Capital Markets Day. We promised then focus on three key areas. I think we can honestly say we're making really good progress on those. First one is around improving the profitability. That has happened in Learning and Media Finland over the last few years. We also focused on improving the free cash flow. That has happened and continues to happen, of course, also with the upcoming growth. As a result of that, we also have seen significant balance sheet deleveraging, which of course puts it in a really strong position if you think about all the growth plans we have in the coming years. Good delivery on that.
Lots more to come, of course. We will continue to focus on this, but it's also now the start of growth in the coming years enabled by this position. Let me now turn to the growth part and the forward-looking element. We will build on the strengths that I've just shown you and point towards that multi-year high-quality earnings growth that we are focused on. That's also reflected in the targets we sort of shared with you this morning. That growth will be powered by learning, but really also very much supported by our Media Finland business. I'll touch on that in a second. Today, a lot will be around how are we going to do it. We'll try to bring to life to you how it works, what the kind of things are that we are working on across our business.
Let me start by painting the picture of why we are so excited about the growth powered by learning. That starts with that leading position that we have across Europe and K-12. That's a really unique starting point. We're the number one provider across the markets. It's still a very fragmented market, so there's a lot of opportunity here to also consolidate over the years. We have a truly unique cooperation with the teachers across Europe. We really work with them closely. You hear from two of them today, but it's that trusted relationship that is the basis for further growth in the markets we're active in. That's the first part. It's really a must-have for the governments. It's a must-have for, of course, the teachers and the students. Secondly, we are in a position to really help shape the future of K-12 learning.
That's what you see reflected here as well. Yes, a very important part in the coming years is around our curriculum cycles. I will touch on the growth levers of that in a minute. There is also a lot happening in K-12 when you think about the move towards more personalized learning. The position we have with our trusted content, with our blended methods, really is a good position to then also embrace AI in that. I will talk, and the team will talk a lot about AI this morning. Fundamentally, the key thing to remember here is AI can really enhance the growth, but always with expert human oversight, always making sure that it is a human responsible for using that technology and using AI to then get better learning outcomes. It is a market, as I mentioned, ready for consolidation as well.
That's the M&A part that I'll touch on later. The third point links back to the strong business fundamentals. We have, of course, really strengthened those over the last years, and that really gives us a really good position to grow from. I would also like to highlight here the integral part that Media Finland plays in this in the years to come. Pia and team have done a great job on really doing a well-thought-through move to more digitalization in media. That transformation has happened over a number of years. It will continue to happen, and Pia will talk about that later. If anything, that probably will step up in tempo even more. It's also exciting if you think about what will happen in the Finnish market specifically around the opening up of the gambling.
That is a step-up growth point that we see happening from 2027 onwards. We will try today to bring to life to you how we look at it, also from a valuation point of view and what could happen in the market. Good position to be in to now also focus on that growth in the years to come. Before I dive deeper into the topics on AI and learning, let me now first also share with you the financial targets. Those were done this morning. You saw them. Fundamentally, we try to reflect here the excitement around the growth opportunities we see. On learning, that is around the comparable net sales being at that mid-single-digit growth and adjusted operating profit at high single digit, effectively also indicating, of course, room for further margin improvement here whilst we are growing the business.
When you consider the learning targets, please keep in mind, like we also said at the quarter three results, that we have about EUR 40 million of distribution sales that we will be taking out of the business next year with no impact on the earnings. That is why I mentioned at the quarter three results that that has also the impact, of course, of the margin in our expectation clearly getting above 23% next year. All those points that I mentioned for 2026 during the quarter three results firmly stand. These targets are now giving you a path and how we look at growth going forward. On the media side, we try to be as transparent as we can on how we look at the underlying business, which is, of course, continuing that digital transformation.
There you see that the top line expectations are more or less stable for that. We also continue to improve on the profitability of the business. That is why you see the low single digit mentioned here. On top of that is the real step change when you think about the opening up of the gambling market. Pia will talk later about what is underneath the EUR 20+ million indication we give here. Fundamentally, when the market opens up from 2027 onwards, that is the step change we see in sales. Just keep in mind that is, of course, advertising sales with high margins like the normal advertising is. We also thought this is the right time to highlight the solid balance sheet that we continue to be focused on.
That is why we have also sharpened that even further by saying our net sales net debt over adjusted EBITDA target is below 2.5. Of course, that can go higher if you think about growth via M&A for a bit, but then with our cash generative position, it comes back quickly. Alex later on will talk about that. Our dividend policy is firmly unchanged. That is an increasing dividend, of course, on the back of growing the business with a 40%-60% of annual free cash flow. We measure growth here in a three-year CAGR just to also allow for, of course, some fluctuations that we will see in both businesses because of cycles that there are. Let us now look at the media business in a bit more detail.
Later on, Pia will, of course, touch on all the key topics there as well. It is a great position to be here in Finland, pretty much reaching all Finns on that weekly basis, but also very directly. I think that is a good one to just keep in the back of your mind when you think about also how that will change over time and how we use AI. We really touch the Finns directly with our high-quality newspapers and entertainment, TV, etc. We continue to focus on the digital growth for the existing audience, but also new products, of course, that we have. We see AI really having an opportunity for productivity, but also for new and better content and products. The responsible capture of this additional opportunity on gambling.
A really integral part of our story is this growth that we see over the coming years. Let me now zoom in on AI. Of course, a topic that you will hear a lot about today. What we will try to do is really bring that to life. I will give you the overarching contours and strategy and how we look at AI across the business. Let's also bring that to life later with what's already happening in schools, but also very much what we are working on at the moment. A few points to highlight. First of all, that responsibility point that I mentioned, we will always use AI across Sanoma with human oversight or expert oversight, if you like.
People who really know their content, know their stuff, are responsible for what is being produced, whether that's on the media side, on the learning side. For both, that's very important. Of course, there's a lot of innovation and growth opportunities here. In learning, I think now we still talk a lot about AI as a separate topic, but where you will see that go over time in our view is towards more and more personalized learning solutions, more and more trying to help the teachers and the students on that so that they can also be more efficient when you think about the teacher and for the student have real personal help. That's on the learning side. On the media side, we think it will strengthen further the high-quality content and also over time see us bring to market new solutions for our customers.
As I mentioned, Pia will highlight that more. The productivity is, of course, a topic that you hear a lot about too. That same applies for our business. We see lots of opportunities to further improve the way we work when you think about AI and it enhancing our productivity. That goes a wide range. Of course, that's in supporting roles like finance, HR, all those elements. It's also, and particularly when you think in our case around content creation, being more efficient in that and therefore being able to also reinvest some of the savings we make there in these more personalized learning solutions. A lot of different elements there and particularly also for learning. Charlotte later on will talk about that more specifically too. Let me go one level deeper for you on the AI in learning and the personalized element of it.
That is what you see reflected here. For us, AI and all the technology that comes with it is really a core component, not just a tool, but a core component when you think about the solutions we will bring to market over time. That is personalization for the students, but it is also very much personalization for the teacher, making the teachers more efficient. Of course, that is important because in a lot of our markets, Finland is a bit the exception, but in a lot of our markets, there are not enough teachers. Anything we can do to make them more efficient basically means they have more time to spend with the kids.
The other thing that from my perspective you already see happening a lot more is the focus on you can have these great tools, but it needs to be on top of trusted content, high-quality content. That is the second part for us. We, of course, have that blended content that really meets the needs of the teachers. We work very closely with the teachers on that in all our markets. We are ideally positioned to, on top of that, then bring these technologies and therefore have the more personalized learning solutions, including the business models that come with that. That is the second part there.
The point on the productivity gains is, of course, a third one, which also when you think about how we make the content in learning with that strict human oversight, there are lots of ways of doing that in a more efficient way. Therefore, having more time, also money to spend on these kinds of personalized learning solutions. Alejandro, Andrzej, and Sander will all try to bring that to life for their particular markets when we think about these kinds of topics. That is on AI. A lot more to come later in the morning. Let's also touch on K-12 as a market, which is here in Europe a large and very attractive market from our perspective. There are high barriers to entry. You really need to do it market by market, curriculum by curriculum, really work closely with the teachers.
This is not just about developing content for a topic. This is really being very, very precise. That is, of course, the first point there. It is also education. If you think of it from a government perspective, from a parent perspective, it does not get more important than K-12 education, the foundational primary secondary education years. That is resilient. It has proven to be resilient also from a funding point of view over the last 20-25 years. We expect that to continue. It is sticky. I mean, you can ask the teachers later on, but it depends a bit market by market. Teachers, of course, like to use content for multiple years to really also make sure they can make it fully their own and then also adjust it over time. That is the stickiness that we mentioned here as well.
Across our markets, normally between three and eight years on using that content. I mentioned that I would zoom in now on the growth levers for learning. You will see that being brought to life later as well. There are effectively three that I would like to highlight, the key levers of growth. The first one, very importantly, is, of course, the capturing of the curriculum renewal cycles. In a minute, I'll show you the famous slide with all the curves and also explain that a bit more. That is really driving organic growth over the next five years. We are also in that position to shape our market. That is with embracing AI, that is with the personalized learning solutions. You will see us bring a lot more new products and solutions to market in the coming years.
Very specific market by market, what the market is ready for, what it can absorb, but a lot to shape the market across Europe on K-12. There is the scaling of the opportunity. Charlotte will talk about how we do that already with our existing scale, but I will also later on touch on the M&A approach that we have here. Let me zoom in now on the curriculum renewal. That is what you see here. Of course, the graph itself you have seen many times before, most of you. This one is now extended to 2030 to give you a feel for what this means also in our expectations if we look at the market.
To just avoid too much excitement on that line that goes all the way up in almost a straight line, that's the Swedish market, which is a good thing, but it's a relatively small market for us. The thick line, for those of you who have not seen it before, is actually our underlying expectation overall for us at Sanoma based on all these trends we see. What you see here is growth in the coming five years in our core curriculum-driven markets like Spain and Poland. It's continued good growth when you think about an important market for us like the Netherlands. Of course, also other elements play a role there as well. Overall, this is helping us with the growth in the coming years. Let's also keep in mind that this is about 80% of our net sales in 2025.
Really, the vast majority of what we do is reflected here on this. Of course, it's not a given, although it looks all very nice with the lines. This is based on that high-quality content. This is based on the leading positions we have as an organization in the markets we're active in. It's a really good starting point, but we, of course, need to deliver on that strong position to now further growth. If you look at what happened in the past years, whenever we have a curriculum change in a market, it's also an opportunity for us to further strengthen our position. That's what we're focused on. The second lever is actually about shaping the market. In a minute, I will show you a video about that. That's actually going to be presented by Cristina, our Chief Strategy Officer.
She will talk to you about, let's say, how now really we see K-12 develop. She can't be here. She's on maternity leave at the moment. Let's have a look at the video.
K-12 education is facing real challenges. Learning outcomes are declining, entertainment gaps are widening. There is a shortage of teachers, and classroom dynamics are more diverse and complex than ever. At the same time, AI brings hope and promise. Yet this comes with real risks, like, for example, that it could further deepen the digital divide. We believe in a future where these challenges are overcome and turned into opportunities, not by clinging to the past, nor jumping blindly into disruption, but rather by blending the wisdom and care of teachers and quality content with the power of AI to create the most inclusive, personalized, and transformative era in K-12 education.
As Europe's largest provider of K-12 methods, we have the expertise and the content to shape and seize that opportunity. Two elements are simply too fundamental to disappear. Schools will remain the anchors of learning with teachers at the helm. Classroom dynamics will change. If all could be captured in one word, it would be personalization. Picture a classroom led by a teacher, but with a broader and more integrated toolkit than ever. They can personalize lessons not just by test scores, but also by pace and style in real time, not just at the end of a semester, with more flexibility in pedagogy, integrated digital tools, and insights from data. They will need more support than ever. That is our role.
Learning methods will be more modern and effective than today, with AI integral to delivering deep personalization at scale, catering to the increasingly diverse student population. It will also be key in helping save precious time for teachers. Everyday life is becoming more remote, and it is no different in education. It is becoming flexible, and learning will increasingly occur outside of the traditional classroom. Lessons being extended from the classroom will be supported by AI student assistants to help students follow the school program no matter where they are. We believe the future lies in uniting home and school, making education not just more flexible, but more equal. Every child gets a fair chance. Our outlook is clear: a future led by teachers, shaped by blended methods and rising expectations for personalization.
For us, that means we will double down on what we do best: our core methods business with digital as an intrinsic cog in the machine. We will also dare to go further. We intend to grow beyond methods in adjacent areas that strengthen our role as a partner for schools and for families, supported by evolved, resilient, and sustainable business models. This is our path, grounded in what education needs, inspired by what technology makes possible, and guided by our purpose to support teachers to help all students reach their potential. Together, we at Sanoma Learning will help shape the future of education.
I hope that brought to life a little bit already how we look at the future of K-12 and how we can play a really great role in that.
As mentioned, our other presenters will then also bring that to life with real examples of what is currently happening. Let me now zoom in on the third point of our levers for growth, which is scaling our opportunity. I would particularly like to talk about the M&A side of that, which we continue to be very excited about in a way that we want to continue to grow inorganically as well, in a disciplined approach. Alex will later on share a bit more on the headroom and how we look at that. Fundamentally, our focus is on either stepping into new geographic markets, particularly, of course, here in Europe with blended learning, K-12 focused, or it is strengthening our position in markets we are already active in. That can be with additional methods.
That can also be, of course, increasingly with personalizations or the adjacencies that, as the third point, that also Cristina just mentioned. Offerings that really work well in addition for K-12. That also brings me, of course, to the key criteria. For us, the focus is on K-12. That is where it is all happening. That is also where we have the expertise, the know-how to deliver on it. It is either stepping into a market-leading position, which we have, of course, done over the years a few times, or it is further strengthening our market-leading position in markets we are already active in. Clearly, it needs to be supportive of our net sales and earnings targets that we released today. That can also be around seeing real great synergies and therefore improving margins from the point of acquisition. Alex will talk a bit more about that as well.
High barriers to entry. It really needs to be in that need-to-have content in K-12. Of course, that leads to accelerating our growth or driving the scale and, of course, the announcing of the shareholder returns as well, particularly also measured when you think about the increasing dividends. That is how we look at the M&A. We are still very excited about it. Where exactly that will end up on the top line, of course, is always difficult to say. Depends also on the type of targets we would be acquiring, the profitability of it. We are more focused on the fact that it really needs to add to the scale and add to the opportunity rather than exactly where it will come out on the top line. That links nicely to my final point, which is what you see here.
If you then add it all up, what I've now said in this opening presentation and what you will hear a lot more about from the team in a minute, this is what makes us exciting on the overall targets. On learning, you see the three elements here. You see that last step on the Dutch distribution, but then particularly the growth on the curriculum side, the renewals, but also those new products we bring to market, leading to that mid-single-digit revenue growth and, of course, the high single-digit profit growth. If you look at Media Finland, that continuing successful transformation, digitalization of the market, which on top line is more or less stable, but is, of course, already showing an improvement in profitability as well. Very importantly, the growth that we see with the opening of the gambling market from 2027 onwards.
That 20+ million that I mentioned then really also leads with high margin to overall for us as a group, high single-digit organic earnings growth for 2026 to 2030. That is the ambition. That is really the path we are on. If you think about everything that I mentioned that we also bring to life to you today. On top of that is the M&A. We remain very focused on that. We are now in a much better position to deliver on that as well, if you think about it from our financial position. That is a focus with a disciplined approach that I just highlighted. That is to set the scene for today. I would now like to hand over to Alejandro, who will start with bringing that to life a bit more from the perspective of curriculum renewals and then also within the Spanish market.
Alejandro, over to you.
Thank you very much, Rob. Good morning. It's great to be here speaking with you today. My name is Alejandro Castex, and I'm the Managing Director for Sanoma Learning in Spain. I'm deeply passionate about education and learning, and I'm lucky enough to spend my days working in this field with a great team. Picking up from Rob's presentation, over the next few slides, I'm going to dive deeper into one of the three growth levers for Sanoma, which is curriculum renewals. I'm going to discuss what this means in practice in Spain and how we can generate value from this opportunity with our best-in-class content. Let's start by setting the scene. Spain is one of Europe's largest K-12 education markets, valued at around EUR 700 million. To put it in size and perspective, Spain has about 7 million students in K-12, right?
It is not only large, it is also fragmented. Spain is organized in 17 different regions, each with its own curriculum. This means that we serve the specific education needs of each one of these 17 individual markets in Spain. Each region has significant cultural diversity. We publish our materials in five different official languages. There is no doubt that the learning market in Spain is both resilient and also exciting. The question is, where do we fit in? With our local brand, Santillana, we have been promoting education in Spain for over 60 years, and we are the most recognized publisher in the market. We offer a wide range of resources ranging from textbooks to literature books, home-study materials, but also teaching guides, assessment resources, and digital platforms. Santillana has a leading position in the market and a proven track record of success.
This is supported by our unique combination of local expertise and also Sanoma's European scale. Earlier, Rob discussed curriculum renewals as one of the key growth drivers for Sanoma. Allow me to run you through what this means. A curriculum renewal is when a country, a region, or a school system updates a set of teaching materials, methods, or subjects. It ensures that teaching content stays relevant, reflecting the latest knowledge, skills, and real-world applications that students need to thrive. Curriculum renewals help improve student engagement and, most importantly, to improve learning outcomes. In practice, this means that new standards are introduced, that learning resources are updated, that assessment methods are revised, and that classroom rules and tools are upgraded. Curriculum renewals create a major business opportunity for companies like Sanoma, as they usually follow new funding cycles where governments refresh public spending on education.
Changing curriculum leads to increased spending on learning content as schools invest in new textbooks, resources, and educational materials. That is why content is so vital to Sanoma's growth. As Rob highlighted, the outlook for K-12 education spend across our key markets is strong, and Sanoma has all the right ingredients to win. We have a deep understanding of our markets. We have best-in-class products, and we have a strong relationship with the key decision-makers, the teachers. Having said that, growth from curriculum renewals is not automatic. We have to work very hard to beat the competition, and this work is continuous throughout the cycle. It involves ongoing research and innovation, but it also involves promotional activities and commercial campaigns with teachers and also schools. Let's take a look into how this works in Spain. In Spain, the demand for new education content follows a pattern.
The latest law introducing a full new curriculum was the LOM LOE in the 2022 to 2025 cycle. You can see the big spike here in the graph. Now, roughly every four years, governments initiate a new funding cycle. This opens the opportunity for content renewal and triggers a wave of related spending on education content. Santillana demonstrated its ability to win during the recent educational reform, and now there's a new funding cycle starting in 2026. We're well positioned to capture this opportunity once again, and the work is well underway. Already two years before the beginning of a new cycle, we begin with the preparation phase. During that period, we conduct portfolio reviews, we assess the market needs, and also analyze the emerging educational trends. In Spain, the implementation of new curriculums is phased, and the scales are unique from region to region.
That is why the implementation is not linear through the cycle, but rather follows the trajectory that you can see described on this graph. We typically see the majority of change happening in the first two years. For example, the change in the first two years was around 75% of students in the previous cycles. On the next couple of years, we see a continuation of this work as adoptions finalize. It is also when we start our research and work in preparation of the next cycle. By the end of the fourth year, the implementation is largely complete. I want to zoom in then on an example on how we drive organic growth through our quality content and by winning the core. We will soon be launching groundbreaking new blended methods, including New World Makers and Serie Abierta. This is not just a content update.
It's a complete reimagining of our educational materials designed for today's Spanish classrooms. Our development process began with the voices that matter the most, the teachers. Through comprehensive research, we identified the three critical challenges facing the classrooms: teachers' time constraints, reading comprehension, and also diversity in the classroom. These new learning methods deliver streamlined, efficient resources that respect teachers' valuable time while maintaining educational excellence. Every single element has been created to maximize learning outcomes while minimizing the preparation demands from the teacher. Teachers get books and digital resources that make lessons fun and also effective. You'll hear more on how our methods work in the classroom from my colleagues later in this presentation.
We are also taking another important step in inclusive education by embracing classroom diversity through visually accessible designs that can engage all learning styles and also offering clear and even progression between course levels to prevent learning gaps. In this new series, we also created a reading comprehension program that directly links content areas to relevant reading plans, creating a meaningful experience across all subjects. As Spain enters this new cycle, New World Makers, Serie Abierta, and our best-in-class content positions Santillana at the forefront of educational content innovation. There is more than winning the core. We are also continuously innovating and expanding our offering with new solutions. K-12 education in Spain is largely a transactional market. However, we are also taking the steps to shape and change the future by taking inspiration from what we see working in other Sanoma key markets.
This includes the opportunity to introduce new business models, new ways of working, new ideas, and also exciting new tools. For example, we're currently preparing for the launch of a fantastic new app called MindED, a new way for parents to engage in and also support their children's learning at home. We are also planning the introduction of an AI Teacher Assistant. My colleagues will be talking more in a minute about opportunities in digital and AI, and that can give you some flavor on what are the opportunities ahead. On top of that, another good example on how we're both winning the core and shaping the market is our exciting new partnership with Cambridge University Press and Assessment. We're bringing together Cambridge's excellence in English language education with Santillana's expertise in the Spanish education to set a new benchmark for quality in public school learning.
This agreement spans the entire state school journey from kindergarten all the way up to upper secondary. Strategically, this collaboration deepens our presence in the public school segment and also highlights our ability to partner with world-leading institutions to shape national curriculum. In short, it is a powerful validation of our content leadership, our pedagogical expertise, and also our long-term positioning to capture the next wave of curriculum renewals. Let me conclude with a recap on the key points. First, curriculum renewals and funding cycles are a key driver of organic growth for Sanoma. This is a key opportunity for us as schools purchase new materials and resources to match new education standards. Second, we have the right to win. Although these renewals do not automatically lead to growth, Sanoma has all the right ingredients and a proven track record to capture the opportunity.
Third, it's not just about winning at the core with our best-in-class content. It's also about shaping the future by innovating, partnering, and leveraging the scale of Sanoma. All of these will be a key part of our 2030 journey, and we're very excited about what lies ahead. Thank you for your time, and let me hand over to Andrzej, who will now talk about another key driver for Sanoma.
Thank you, Alejandro. [Foreign language] . Good morning, everyone. My name is Andrzej Kozłowski. I joined Sanoma in January 2025, a new year and a new challenge. I was attracted by the opportunity of delivering a real impact alongside some brilliant and passionate people. So far, frankly speaking, my expectations have been exceeded.
Over the next few minutes, I'm going to outline Sanoma's operations in Poland and bring the digital opportunity to life by showing you how it plays out in Poland. Firstly, let me briefly describe the market and our role within it. Poland is a large and growing economy with high demand for quality education for nearly 6 million students. As far as Sanoma's position, we are the undisputed market leader, both in the classroom and back of house, supported by 30 years of experience in the education market. We are the largest K-12 publisher and most recognized education brand. Our learning content and school management software set the standard nationwide. What is important? I'm sorry, something went out. What is important? These two components of our business provide significant synergies and a mix of competencies, including content creation and digital platforms. Our market position did not come by accident.
It's the result of our team's work and always staying one step ahead in terms of understanding the market needs, the quality of our offerings, and our drive for innovation. This allows us to capture the opportunities presented by both curriculum renewals and digital solutions. Alejandro just provided an excellent overview of how curriculum renewals help Sanoma to grow. In Poland, we are entering a positive cycle first in 2026 with the reform in the primary education and then in 2027 in secondary education. Polish decision-makers recognize that high-quality education is fundamental for the country's long-term success. In order to address these challenges of the future, the Polish government has established a vision of the skills and competencies of future graduates. The government is reforming Polish education in this image, and while textbooks will continue to play the key role, Polish school needs a fresh and more engaging approach.
What is important? Parents are increasingly engaging and investing in the education outside of the classroom. This means that there is a growing demand for additional courses and services that can support their children's future prospects. Naturally, this also creates additional demand for digital tools, software, platforms. Our digital expertise and trusted content are among the key advantages that allow us actively to shape the market. Now, let me present a few examples. Firstly, a digital opportunity in the classroom, our new SMARTbook series, which we introduced this year. SMARTbook, so to say, has five-in-one functionality. It is learning, worksheets, notebook, multimedia, and of course, the digital version of the textbooks. For high school students, this is simply a very practical and interactive learning tool, which also helps to reduce the weight of their school backpacks. It enables more flexible learning.
If you scan the QR code in the paper version, you get access to additional interactive services and multimedia content. Let me give you an example. Just imagine a volcanic eruption could be much easier for children to understand when they can actually watch how magma rises through the earth, gets out onto the surface. You know, seeing the movement of plates, the explosion, the flow of lava makes the whole process much more intuitive than just reading about it. It helps students learn faster and more effectively. The initial feedback we are receiving from the teachers and parents and students is very positive. They love the SMARTbook. It not only supports the lesson dynamics, but also helps to learn at home and in transit. The new generation textbook expands our value proposition and opens up possibilities for recurring digital access and platform engagement.
Therefore, we intend to expand our offerings with additional subjects in the future, taking advantage of the upcoming reform in secondary. Next, I would like to give you an example of another digital opportunity: how to connect learning at school and outside of the classroom. In 2024, we introduced this subscription-based student-parent assistant app as an additional tool to free access to a student e-register via a web browser. The app serves as a digital command center for users across Poland, providing information on grades, lesson plans, communication between school and parents, as well as additional learning content. For parents, it provides real-time visibility into their child's progress, closing the gap between school and home. For students, it creates clarity, organizing assignments, deadlines, feedback, and learning resources in a simple mobile environment that reflects their lifestyle.
For Sanoma, it represents a scalable sticky platform opportunity, and it is already having a profoundly positive impact on our business. We reached over 850,000 subscriptions last year, and we see future opportunities for growth and revenue. That is why our plans are to further develop the platform and to monetize it by adding more features and services such as tutoring or AI assistant to support students in their learning journey and to help parents navigate the maze of their daily school obligations. Next, another example of digital opportunity within the classroom. I'm sure you have seen the headsets like these before. I have to tell you, I mean, this is a product I'm particularly proud of. We created the first interactive virtual reality learning experience that is fully aligned with the national curriculum.
VR is unlocking an entirely new dimension of learning by making complex subjects more tangible and immersive. Instead of simply looking at the static diagrams, students can actually explore the 3D models of the human body, the solar system, and they can even conduct chemistry experiments in a virtual safe lab. You know, this way, we are helping students to increase their engagement, making the complex phenomena easier. It is incredibly important, especially in student engagement. I often visit the schools myself, and a few weeks ago, I even taught a lesson to high school students. Believe me, you know, keeping student attention and engagement for 45 minutes is a real challenge for any teacher. This is not a demo.
We are already present in more than 1,000 schools with our solution, and we expect that thanks to additional government funding, we'll increase our footprint in the near future. Clearly, for Sanoma, this represents a growth opportunity, and this sets us apart from the competition. As I mentioned before, we want to be always one step ahead. The key takeaways. I'm confident to say that our leading market position, the trust in our brand and offering, allow us to think boldly about the future and create favorable conditions for further growth. K-12 education in my country is evolving for the future, and we are committed to expanding our digital offering, not only our school methods, and we want to focus particularly on our student-parent assistant app, which will serve as a springboard for further growth and introduction of new subscription-based, AI-supported personalized services.
With that, I will pass on to my colleague Sander, who will tell you more how personalized learning can fuel Sanoma's growth. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Andrzej, for these exciting digital opportunities. Good morning. My name is Sander de Groot. I am Managing Director for Sanoma Learning in Belgium and the Netherlands, and I'm excited to talk to you today about the opportunity in personalized learning. This is really a growth opportunity for us as a company. To bring this to life, I would like to take you to the Netherlands to give you a couple of examples of how that works exactly. First, let me give you a snapshot of the situation in the Netherlands. We go back over 140 years in this particular market.
It's a sizable market and an attractive market with roughly EUR 450 million in revenues, a little lower than 3 million students. What is really important, especially for personalized learning, is that there is a highly digitized environment, both at home, of course, but also in the classroom, which is actually an enabler for personalized learning, as you will see later on in this presentation. We have a very strong position there, the number one position, and almost all classrooms in the Netherlands make use of one or more of our methods. That is a really important element.
One thing to mention, which is a bit different from other countries, is that two-thirds of our publishing content, learning publishing content, is subscription-based, which means that teachers and students receive regular updates of content and platforms, digital platforms, as well as textbooks, which makes up for a yearly subscription that is being paid in advance, which is a bit different from the cycles we have discussed earlier with four-year cycles with upfront payments every four years. You have heard about personalized learning through all the presentations from Cristina, for instance. Why is K-12 really moving into this direction? Maybe take an example. If you looked at a classroom in the past, it typically looked like one teacher, 30 pupils in one classroom, taking the same lesson, learning the same thing at the same time, at the same pace, and not personalized.
That is optimizing the average learning outcomes for a classroom rather than the individual performance of students. Also, this is mostly a transactional setup where textbooks are at the heart of the revenue generation. What we see is that individual students have individual needs. We are personalizing their experience in the classroom with printed and digital materials. What that typically looks like, indeed, is one classroom, 30 pupils, one teacher, and the teacher gives instruction to the class as a whole, and then the individual students work in little groups or individually to do the actual learning in the classroom, making use of the interactive materials as well as the textbooks that are available. This is a shift in optimizing the learning results, not so much to the average of the classroom, but to optimize the learning for individuals. That is something that is really important.
Of course, the teacher is at the heart of this. He manages this whole process and decides what content and methods he would like to use in a classroom. Now let's take one step back. Why is this important? Why is personalized learning linked to better outcomes? That starts with the teacher needs. If you are a teacher in these days, you face a couple of challenges, as touched upon by both Alejandro and Rob in their presentations. There are teacher shortages throughout Europe. There are challenging dynamics in the classrooms, falling learning outcomes. That is quite a challenge for teachers to work with. We feel that personalized learning can make a real impact there to improve on that, to take away those challenges.
It allows teachers to really measure the progress that students make, that classrooms make, and have the flexibility to do their own thing and focus on the learning and the teaching, which they like best. The second driver is around touching upon the student needs. The methods are really tailored toward their needs, and it is being personalized along the way, which makes those methods indispensable in the Dutch classrooms. Being there, teachers and students alike, they use digital technology to get the most out of education. That is a nice link towards AI, which we see as an accelerator of this development and even further improve on personalization of the classroom. As you will hear from Charlotte, she will touch upon some new developments, especially the AI Teacher Assistant we will be launching to support teachers even more.
AI tools will always be used as a choice by teachers. They will make their own decision on whether to buy them as an add-on to the learning method or to use them or not. How does that look exactly in the classroom? Teachers use the methods to do their preparation of their lesson and how to transfer their knowledge towards the classroom in an efficient way. We provide guidance in the form of manuals, but also all kinds of digital instructions and tools to make it available to the classroom as a whole, as you can see on this photograph. For students, it works like small groups of individuals making use of all the digital materials and the printed materials in a combination. We provide learned workbooks as well as digital instruction and all the exercises that come with it.
Finally, we all want to know whether the learning has really taken place. It is crucial that a teacher can really test the understanding of the progress that pupils make. We provide not only the tests, but also dashboards to measure and follow the progress of not only the individual, but also the classroom as a whole. When the progress is not sufficient, there is remediation available for teachers to provide to their classes to make sure that every student reaches their full potential. In the Netherlands, we offer a full scope of learning methods on a large number of subjects, both for primary education and for secondary education to support this learning process. Although the age and subjects vary a lot, the process of personalized learning is not very much different.
It's a combination of printed materials, it's digital platforms, it's about testing, dashboarding, and all the tools that come with it. To bring this to life to you even more, I would like to show you two very different examples in the Netherlands. First of all, I'm very proud about our brand new Lijn 3 offering. It's a proposition for early literacy, and it's a major innovation in our market and a big success as well. It is used by five to seven-year-old children for reading, spelling, and language, which is, well, the most important topic in a classroom at that age and time. They use it almost the full morning. They make use of this method, which makes up for like nine hours of teaching with Lijn 3 every week. Quite intense. What does that look like? And why do teachers find this a very effective method?
It is about meeting the needs of students and giving them the best possible experience and giving them attractive materials as well. Because you can imagine, if I were a teacher and I would need to manage a classroom full of five to seven-year-olds, it is a quite diverse group for language skills, concentration, other skills, quite a task for a teacher to work with. Lijn 3 really addresses the differences that there really are between those students. It puts teachers at the helm, as Cristina put it, to guide the class step by step through the learning process by use of the digiboard, for instance. It offers children a great diversity of very attractive materials that they can use to do the actual learning.
This includes nine board games, but also a digital library of over 100 books that can not only be used in the classroom, but also at home with parents to get them involved as well. Lijn 3 also is seamlessly connected to the subsequent methods for eight to twelve-year-olds for languages. It is a very nice way to learn throughout your career at primary education. That is Lijn 3. It is now being used by over 2,000 schools in the Netherlands and still growing, and we are really, really positive about this development. Now let's dive into a very different example. Let's go to secondary education, 12 to 17-year-olds, and the subject of biology. We have a method called Biologie voor Jou in this particular market. Let me show you a bit about that. Actually, it is the same personalized learning approach as we use in primary education.
It's a combination of printed materials. It's about digital platforms. It's about testing, dashboarding, and tools that come with it. Very similar to Lijn 3. Pupils experience a great structure, a clear structure, and a great practical learning path. Teachers can adjust their approach to the individual students. That's the reason why Biologie voor Jou is also very successful in the Dutch market and is the market-leading biology method in the Netherlands. To summarize all of this, I would like to stress that before I hand over to Charlotte, who will talk about productivity, innovation, and AI, I would like to summarize this a bit. What personalized learning is all about? It's a combination of printed and digital materials really tailored to the needs of individual students.
It drives better learning outcomes, and it offers teachers the flexibility to do their teaching in the best possible way with up-to-date content and innovative tools. By that, it's a key driver for us as a growth opportunity for Sanoma as a whole as well. Now let me hand over to Charlotte.
Thank you, Sander, for that great example of blended learning and personalized learning. Good morning, everyone. My name is Charlotte Svensson. I'm the Chief Operating Officer of Sanoma Learning. I'm here today to talk to you about two important areas for our path to 2030. Firstly, productivity. We have created a foundation that enables us to do more with less, and it's a scalable model that gives us operating leverage. Secondly, I would like to go a bit deeper into what Rob talked about, the innovations and AI for teachers and students.
Firstly, let's start with productivity. The foundation for what Sander, Alejandro, and Andrzej talked about is our scalable model. As you know, we have delivered Program Solar successfully, and Alex Green will talk about that more later, but I want to put emphasis into three of the areas, starting with harmonizing our digital platform, reusing components, modules, products innovated in one country, and scale it across Sanoma's footprint. We, of course, also have the organizational optimization. What does that mean? To give you examples, it means that we have less layers, less duplication, we move faster. Thirdly, centers of tech excellence. It gives flexibility to a lower cost, but as well adds access to tech talent. We can add, adjust, adapt, and expand teams and talents fast with cost discipline. What's next then around productivity?
Yeah, we see AI as an enabler for internal efficiency. Let's start with content. How can AI support us in the content creation process? It can adjust, reuse, correct, and more. Alejandro talked to you about Spain and the complexity of Spain. 17 regions, five languages. We used AI in the translation process of Sanoma books into Catalan, Basque, and Galician. We saved 80% of the time. As we always use human expert oversight, it means that we can create high-quality content at a faster pace at a lower cost. That human expert oversight is equally true when it comes to software development. Yes, it's about development cycles and being faster, but it's also about quality and documentation. Sounds a bit dry, I'm well aware, but it has real benefits. Think about it.
It's a new developer being productive from the start, less dependence on key resources, more time for high-order thinking, investing development into innovation and growth instead. We have workflow optimization. Of course, it is about customer service. It's about admin. It is really freeing up time, letting AI agents do repetitive tasks. In this area, there's a lot of opportunities moving forward. In summary, on productivity, we have delivered real productivity gains with our scalable model and AI coming into play. There are more opportunities here. AI is not only about internal efficiency. Rob talked about this, and he highlighted these areas, and I want to add to it. It is also about building products and innovating.
When we see AI being an integral part of the future of education for both teachers and students, you can argue that the trend right now is more going back to the physical books, not wanting digital tools in the classroom, but there is a place for both books and AI. As the fundamentals stay the same, what students learn? Curriculum. How they learn? Pedagogy, teaching approach, didactics, and high-quality, trusted content. That should not be underestimated in today's world. Sanoma is ideally placed because we invest in our products and adapt to the learning goals and the individual learning, personalized learning you heard from Sander. We are also the leading K-12 publisher in Europe, meaning that we have the trust and the reach to schools and teachers.
Shall we take a look a bit more on the product side of this and what we are seeing? We see that we will deliver AI products to help both the teacher and student to improve learning outcomes. Let me start with the student and the student assistant. We build adaptive tools for personalized learning. Building on what Sander said, there is a real individual need for the student to have its own learning path based on the method and the content already used in the classroom. With that, we will have one of our teachers here today to show you more about the type of tooling we will give to the students moving forward. As one of the examples, there are more to come. I will deep dive instead into the AI teacher assistant.
The problem we solve with AI teacher assistant is clear: simplifying time-consuming tasks, helping teachers to spend more time in the classroom, and as well simplifying life, whether that is about planning a lesson, assessing, grading, feedback, adapting, adding content. We take the LLM and connect it to our content with the pedagogy and the didactics in a safe environment. We intend to move both fast and responsible in this. Instead of listening to me, shall we take a look at the product?
Imagine an English teacher called Laura planning a lesson for tomorrow's class. She teaches a diverse upper secondary classroom and wants to personalize our learning materials to meet different needs. Laura opens Sanoma Learning's AI Teacher Assistant and logs in. The platform already knows her and the subject she teaches. Laura selects the right book and asks our AI Teacher Assistant to help generate new exercises, everything aligned with defined learning goals. Instantly, she gets three didactically sound variations of the chapter's exercises. It's very easy for her to customize the exercises. She uses quick iterations to create the versions she wants. What gives Laura great confidence is knowing they're based on the trustworthy Sanoma Learning content she's already teaching. With a few clicks, she easily exports the exercises to adapt them further using her personal touch and expertise.
Now, every student in Laura's classroom can progress thanks to her personalized and pedagogically grounded approach, supported by our AI Teacher Assistant.
Yes, that was an early version with one of the functionalities we will bring to market. We intend to give early access to teachers in 2026. That is based on our books across our markets. Before we open up for questions, I want to boil this down to three themes. Firstly, our operating model is delivering real productivity gains and true economy of scale. Secondly, AI for internal use will deliver real productivity opportunities. Thirdly, as a natural next step on personalized learning, we will bring trustworthy AI products to market for both teachers and students. With that, thank you. Over to you, Kaisa, for Q&A.
Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you, all the presenters. We are now happy to take questions for this first presentation section. As said, we will start from here at the event venue.
Please raise your hand and then wait for the microphone before you kick off. Please also introduce yourself before the question. Thank you.
Hello, this is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Thank you for the presentations so far. I have a couple of questions, and I'll go one by one. Starting with AI, which we have been, or you have been discussing a lot so far, maybe on competitive landscape. How do you see AI affecting your competitive landscape going forward? Do you see that creating more opportunities or threats?
Yeah, first of all, we try to follow that very carefully, of course, right? Because it's an important point. What we currently see is that when you look at the competitive landscape, we, of course, compete with some other players that also go from the strength of the content, right? We are normally the number one player. There's also a number two, number three. That competition currently looks to be the key one because you need that trusted content to be able to deliver these AI tools. Our view currently is, and we look at all kinds of scenarios for this, that yes, technology is there. Like the last 10-15 years, EdTech could play a role in that. Fundamentally, so far, that has been limited because you need the content and the trust with the schools and the teachers as well.
We see the competition mainly from the key players that also have this high-quality content.
All right, thank you. On kind of financial impact, as you discussed, kind of two sides of AI benefits both from what you can offer more to your customers and students, teachers, and then also internal efficiency. Which one do you see to be more important? In continuation of that, if you think about your financial targets for learning, how much do they include impact from kind of a market contribution and then about your own actions?
Yeah, the way I look at it is that there is a lot of opportunity to shape the market, and we try to bring that to life here as well. If you think about it longer term, the new products that come to market, that's really, of course, where the excitement is. That's also where part of the growth driver comes from. The faster we can do that, the better it would be. For that, we need to be as efficient as possible with, for example, the content creation examples that Charlotte mentioned. It's really that combination that I think is very powerful. Fundamentally, for the longer term, it's all about shaping the market with more personalized solutions.
If I look at it from an investment point of view, then we do see, of course, the opportunities to really benefit from cost savings and things like that. We also will invest a significant part of it in those new solutions and bringing them quicker to market. That is sort of the way we think about it. All that is reflected in our updated targets, which effectively says that our growth, of course, is mid-single digit on the revenue, and our cost will not be much higher than that. Therefore, we see the margin improvement happening as well. That is partly benefiting from what I just described.
All right, so kind of from an investment point of view, you don't see kind of a big need to increase your investment levels due to AI and Sanoma?
If we would see that, we would do it because I think nobody knows exactly how this will play out, right? At the moment, what we see is if we go fast enough, also on the productivity gains, that gives a lot of time and also money to invest in those personalized solutions. Maybe one other thing to highlight here is we're working in a market that is, of course, not moving the fastest of all markets, right? In a way that it is really about continuing with that trusted relationship with the teachers. From that point of view, it's not about the latest technology, the quickest. It's really doing it in the right way when also the governments and the schools are ready for that.
All right, then the last one from me. You showed us great examples for, for example, the personalized learning in Netherlands and the B2C solution in Poland. How do you make sure that you can kind of scale these success stories in all of the countries you're operating in?
Yeah, I think that's a really important point, right? If you think about the personalized learning solutions, this starts now from developing it in one, right? Centralized development and then rolling it out in the different markets. From that point of view, what Charlotte just highlighted for the AI teacher is, of course, we develop it and then roll it out and tweak it with the content that we have in those specific markets. That's the real scale opportunity. We're not building it from scratch in all the markets, building once, rolling it out, and adapting when needed on the content.
All right, thanks. That's all from me.
Thank you.
Thank you for the presentation. This is Pia Rosqvist from DNB Carnegie. A few questions if we start by discussing something you touched upon, learning kind of moving slightly outside the classroom. Do you see a future where homes carry a larger cost of learning materials?
Yes, and that depends market by market. I think Andrzej highlighted that very well for Poland. You probably noticed, of course, if you look at total market size of Poland compared to Netherlands or Spain, it is very different. That shows that there is also much more eagerness and need for parents to want to be more involved and also pay for it. That is the link we see also, let's say, if you look at solutions for the parents. Of course, when you think about blended learning, personalized learning, it is a logical extension then to see what a child does in the classroom to also do that at home when you think about the preparing for the next day, etc. It is a real continuum increasingly, I think.
Thank you. Maybe focusing on Poland and this parent-student assistant, what's the cost of it now and what kind of monetization path do you see?
Yeah, I do not think we comment specifically on the cost of one example, but the monetization path is very clear, which is a subscription model. Andrzej already highlighted that. We have only just started it, and I think it is very exciting to see that about 850,000 parents see the benefits of doing that. Of course, it is a starting point for adding a lot more personalized solutions going forward in a market where parent pay is important given the funding structure.
Thank you. If I can finish off with the numbers question. You mentioned the share, the learning market in Europe is roughly EUR 5 billion and expected to grow. What is your market share currently in that market and how has it developed?
I think it's roughly, if you look at it, it depends a bit on how you calculate, but roughly 17% or so if you look at the total market. We see a lot of opportunity, as I think highlighted, on consolidating that market, being one of the consolidators, to also increase that percentage. Of course, as you've seen, we always try to step into either a market-leading position or the prospect of becoming a market leader when we actually step into a specific country.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have further questions from the back of the room. Just a moment, please.
Caj Toppari from Nordea. Firstly, thank you for the great presentations and the practical presentation you had of the new AI tools. Maybe I have a couple of questions regarding the new targets. Comparing to the previous targets you have for 2030, you released a couple of years back. Do you have any specific reason why you decided to move away from these numeric targets you had before to these more rough estimates? You mentioned that the market you're operating in isn't maybe moving the fastest. Are there any market reasons or uncertainty relating to current market conditions or any other reason you decided to move to these new targets?
Yeah, I think it's obviously a very good point, right? From our perspective, this better reflects how we think about growth. If you think about the mid-single digit on the learning in particular and the high single digit, what it effectively, of course, means is we see opportunities to improve our margins over time. I think it's also a better way for us to look at the acquisitions. There, of course, rather than the exact profitability at the point of acquisition, it's more about what we can do with an acquisition to then further improve it, either with our market-leading position or the synergy. We think this now better reflects that. On media, just to also highlight that, we just try to stay very transparent.
If you think about what do we see underlying happening with the digital transformation, and then to the best of our ability, how do we see now the impact of the gambling market opening up?
Sure, thank you. Maybe just another quick question regarding the previous targets. How should we view the old target of reaching EUR 2 billion, I think it was, if I recall correctly, which of 75% was from learning? Is that still a kind of rough guiding point, or have we completely moved away from it?
We are as ambitious as we were then. From that point of view, nothing has changed in the way how we look at M&A, etc. Of course, if you look at what happened over the last few years, all kinds of things have happened also to our top line. When we reflected on target setting, we said it's more important to show a continued ambition here where that exactly will end up. When you think about it from a top line growth, it's always more difficult to see. The ambition is there with that really disciplined focus that I highlighted.
Sure, thank you. Maybe lastly, regarding learning and its new markets and acquisitions you talked about, you mentioned that you are considering entering new markets. Which new markets would this be? Do you have any mention or any guidance on that?
You mean with the focus on K-12, right, to start off with that? Yeah, no, no, very good. I mean, look at the map, and you can see where we would be. Our focus is on Europe. You can never rule out that something really exciting happens that could slightly go beyond it if we look at acquisition. Really, Europe is the focus, and then it's not difficult to see where, of course, we would like to play. It always takes two parties for that. We are not in a rush. We have a good scale at the moment. We benefit from it, but we have the ambition to grow further.
All right, thanks a lot. Thanks for my part.
Thank you. We will now round off this Q&A. There were a few questions from the chat that we already actually now answered. We will then have a final Q&A when you have again an opportunity for questions. We will continue with the program. Now you really see how teaching in Finland with blended materials works. First, I would like to invite Kirsi on stage to introduce our teachers. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, also on my behalf. My name is Kirsi Harra-Vauhkonen, and I'm the Managing Director of the Nordic Region here at Sanoma Learning. You have heard a lot about the future of K-12 education and also our learning materials business in different regions. This particular session will then focus more on what teaching and learning is in practice. We will start from the primary education, and I have the pleasure to invite Jarno Bruun to the stage. Jarno comes from Kuopio and has a background as a primary education teacher. For the past 15 years, he has been also creating a lot of learning materials for the primary in several subjects and lately also for mathematics. Please welcome Jarno.
Jarno will discuss three key points from his perspective in primary education and also show us how it actually is to learn mathematics in primary classroom today in Finland. Over to you, Jarno.
Thank you.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and best wishes from primary school. Today, I'm proud to present to you Sanoma Pro's latest primary school mathematics material called Laskupolku, a unique path for every math learner. In my presentation, I'm going to focus on three points: blended teaching, differentiation, and blended learning. We'll start with blended teaching first. If we think of a primary school teacher, the main tool for a primary school teacher is the digital teaching material. Why is that? It is because it's very easy to use, and it saves a lot of teachers' time. A primary school teacher needs to keep lessons like 10 different subjects during one week or 25 lessons, so they don't have time to plan every lesson from scratch. That's why digital teaching material helps the teacher.
It includes all the animations, videos, digital teaching materials, all the assessment materials they need during the lesson. It is easy for them to plan the lesson when everything is ready made for them. It helps the everyday life, and it helps to focus on teachers' and students' different needs as well. With the digital teaching material, it includes all the things the teacher needs so that they can keep versatile teaching and use different kinds of learning methods as well. Let's take a look at in action what a digital teaching material looks like. I am going to take you to a multiplication lesson, and if someone is now concerning that I am going to test your math skills, you can relax. We are going to take a look at this from the teacher's point of view.
On the menu on the left side, there is all the content the teacher needs: the content of the book, warm-up activities, teaching methods, and also the digital exercises. In primary school, it's necessary that the visual appearance of the digital teaching material is the same. In all Sanoma Pro's learning materials, the menu on the left looks the same. The headings are the same. No matter if you're teaching English or maths, the headings are the same here. It's very easy for a teacher to use it. If I would start a lesson with you, I would start with a video. In our material, videos challenge the students. We want to present a real-life problem, and we want the students to solve the problem. In this particular video, there are two characters arguing which one has more stickers.
In this lesson, we want to learn about commutative probability or multiplication. The third person, the one in the middle, comes in and tries to solve the problem. We're going to take a look at the end of this video. The video is in Finnish, but I think you can figure out the problem and the solution to this as well.
[Foreign language]
That was one example of the digital material. Let's continue with the differentiation then. If we think of school nowadays, the biggest challenge, in my opinion, is differentiation for the teachers. The school pupils are more diverse than ever. They need more support. There are different backgrounds, different skill levels, different support needs. This challenge teaches a lot. There's also been a growing diversity in the classrooms, and inclusive expectations and educational requirements are increasing a lot. There has been a lot of new added emphasis on learning support, and teachers are expected to provide personalized feedback to every student in the same classroom with their peers. Also, parents' expectations have increased a lot lately. They expect that the teacher can provide support to each kid in the classroom. All these expectations challenge the teachers a lot nowadays.
I want to show you one example from our book, What is Differentiation? How we solve the problem in the book itself. Here we are in the same lesson. Our book consists of two spreads. The first spread consists of basic skills, and every pupil does the exercises on the first spread. At the end of the spread, there is a self-assessment section. In this section, the pupil answers how they did on the first spread. If they thought that the exercises were a bit difficult, they can mark, for example, one box here. If they think that the exercises were easier, they can mark two or three boxes. According to this self-assessment, the pupils choose the exercises they want to do on the second spread. On the second spread, we have on the left side the basic exercises, and they are marked with a poor.
Then on the right side, there are more challenging exercises, and they are marked with a cloud. The kids can choose which path they want to do the exercises. Of course, they can also mix those paths and do exercises from both of those paths. This way, the kids get exercises they want and they need. In this way, the teacher has more time to help the kids that really need help during the lesson. This was only one example of that. I think we've received a lot of positive feedback from teachers about this solution because it helps to save, again, the teacher's time to focus on things they want to focus. The third topic I'm going to talk about is blended learning. Now we take a look at the lesson from a nine-year-old kid's point of view.
The basic of the lesson is the book, the printed book. It offers logically structured material, and it's used in every lesson. If you combine the digital materials to the printed books, you get even more supportive learning, and you get even more personalized feedback. It also increases students' motivation. Of course, when the motivation is increased, the learning becomes better. Sanoma is offering Bingle, a virtual learning environment. Its main idea is that it can give students exercises they need. For example, when they answer the questions there correctly, it gives more difficult exercises to the student. On the other hand, if they answer the questions incorrectly, it gives easier exercises. This way, the student gets exactly the exercises they need at the time.
We have received a lot of positive feedback from the guardians of this feature because they can trust if their children are doing Bingle exercises, they can trust that they get the exercises they really need. I want to end up my presentation with one of my pupils' favorites and exactly one of mine as well. Usually, gamification is associated with digital environments. We have brought a math-themed escape room in the book. You can find it at the end of the book if you want to look at the book there. This is a very good example of how we keep up the motivation during the math lesson. This is also a very good example of the group work we do when we make these materials. There are, of course, us authors who do the exact exercises there. We also need editors, layout designers.
Everybody is focusing on bringing the engaging experience, engaging pedagogically, logically structured materials for teachers and students. The main focus for us all is, of course, to bring the joy of learning and teaching to every classroom. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Jarno. We will move over to the secondary education. I have the pleasure to invite Kirsi Silonsaari on stage. Please welcome Kirsi. Kirsi is a very experienced English teacher in upper secondary and also one of the authors of our new English method for the upper secondary Elements that you have on the table as well. Some of you might remember Kirsi from our previous Capital Markets Day. We invited her back to share her experiences, how things may have evolved and changed since then, and also to share her key points about secondary education at the moment. Over to you, Kirsi.
Thank you. Yes, my name is Kirsi Silonsaari. If you were here two years ago, I was talking about the hybrid materials and the learning analytics that I use in my teaching. Today, I'm going to give you an update on what's happening in upper secondary school today and what the development has been like in the past two years. I'm going to be touching on three key points: teaching English today and the meaning of study materials in my work, plus also the role of artificial intelligence in education in 2025. You may all remember what it was like to study English when you were at school. What we do differently today is what I'm going to be talking about. Yes, there's still grammar and exercises and texts and vocabularies, but we also teach thinking, mainly critical thinking through English. We teach content through English.
We teach communication skills through English. We teach the students to do argumenting and debating and standing for a cause and also attending job interviews in English. The Finnish National Core Curriculum mandates the themes that we need to teach, but the learning materials and the teachers need to be up to date because the world is developing fast, and education actually needs to be a vision of the future. We do not want the students to graduate with skills and knowledge that are already outdated when they graduate. The curriculum has also introduced transversal competencies that overlap all subjects. These are set as the goal for teaching in upper secondary schools, and they include well-being, interaction, and creativity, plus also societal, environmental, ethical, global, and cultural competencies. We teach them in English. We also teach through several different media.
We have the study materials that offer us texts for new information. Sometimes we watch a video, or we do online research. We listen to podcasts or create podcasts. We have discussions and listening comprehension exercises. We solve ethical dilemmas in different contexts. We might even look at some chemical compounds and what they're formed of. We build puzzles forming logical sentences and essays and research reports, and we do that in English. Most students show individual interests and styles and characteristics, and the teacher in the classroom has to cater for all of these tastes and different learning styles by creating individual paths for each of these learners to reach their goals. Most importantly, what we're trying to do is plant a seed of passion for learning, for individual growth, and gaining new knowledge. How do we do this?
I'm going to give you an example of how these competencies are taught in our Elements series. In module five in Elements five, we start by looking at the future of food. There's a text where a financer, a research team, a startup, and a food activist express their ideas on the future of food. With this one text only, we teach sustainability, technology, economy, and ethics in English. This leads me to my other key point: the meaning of study materials in teaching today. Now, if one person compiles a study material, we get a material that represents that one person's values and interests and perspectives, however wide or professional they may be. If we gather a team of professionals, teachers from various backgrounds with various knowledge, we get study materials that reflect several viewpoints and also represent the world better.
When you build a team of pedagogue and experts, you can create a product that is more than a product built by one person only. Now we can also discuss whether we should let AI build the study materials. If we did that only without the teaching experts there, AI would provide us with an inauthentic, narrow view of the world. It does not know what we need or where we want to go with teaching. It basically looks at the task through algorithms that are essentially just calculations of likelihood. It would ignore the less traveled areas, the interesting ones. It would provide us with material that is mechanical, repetitive, and mostly also incorrect. I mean, neither AI nor I would have thought of finding a text on a Cuban male ballet dancer to teach arts. One of my co-authors did.
Maybe I wouldn't have come up with a text on health and different kinds of treatments from the past, like kissing the nose of a donkey to cure a cold. One of my co-authors did. Maybe one of my co-authors wouldn't have suggested a text on the different stages of economic cycles, but I did. These examples prove that a diverse author team builds a diverse study book series. The meaning of a professional author team for a learning material is essential. We need the variety. We need the pedagogical expertise to inspire the teachers, but most importantly, to inspire the students to use English as a tool to learn about the world, not just the world that they see, but also the whole world that they do not see in the vicinity.
As mentioned before, we can't really talk about the world or education without taking AI into account. That's a given fact today. We can paint a black-and-white picture at schools saying true learning only happens when the learner does it themselves without the assistance of AI. At the far opposite end, we can say, okay, we should let AI do everything it is capable of doing and focus on other things. As teachers, we need to draw the line on how much of AI use we allow, if any, and in which contexts we allow the students to use AI, if in any. We don't want the students' knowledge and skills to be sort of superficial, kind of veneer or a cover for the lack of true know-how.
What I'd prefer is the option where we teach the students to do it themselves with the assistance of AI in some parts. The study materials, as seen today, will inevitably include AI exercises in the future to some extent, yes. I think that's a good development. As a teacher, I support that development. It needs to be carefully planned and implemented by a team of teaching experts. I am going to take you through some pedagogically well-thought tasks that AI currently assists with the Elements series in my work. There are three exercise types in the book that we use to practice oral communication skills. It takes my time off of giving feedback for the students, and also it makes the path individual for each student. What we can do is practice pronunciation with the help of AI.
Again, if the student feels very confident in pronouncing these words, they can go straight on to recording them and getting feedback from AI. If the student feels less confident, they can listen to the recording and practice and then record it. These are words that are gathered by the team of authors. We know that these words are difficult for Finnish students to pronounce. Now AI gives them feedback on the words that we have chosen. Let me record the first one, and I'll show you what kind of feedback AI gives me. Acoustic. I got it green, 98%. I'm doing pretty well. If I tried the next word, this might already be a bit more difficult. I could listen to the recording.
Choir.
Choir.
Choir.
Choir.
Then record it myself. Another exercise type that we use currently is practicing the words in context. Again, we, as the textbook authors, have gathered these sentences because in these sentences, we know that the students struggle in pronouncing the word in bold. It is pronounced differently in these contexts. Again, what I would do as a student, I could do this, for example, at home. I would listen to the sentence.
The concert will be broadcast live on TV.
I would record it. In the next sentence, as you can see, it's not any more live. It's long live rock and roll. The word live is pronounced differently, and this would allow me to practice it. The last exercise type that AI assists with is a conversation type of exercise. In this exercise, we as teachers have gathered the sentence starters, the conversation starters. If I wanted to start a conversation with AI, I would click on record and then choose one of the conversation starters. Hello, in your opinion, is it better to buy and download music or stream it online? I would wait for AI to respond to my question. Might take a while. Let's see.
Hello.
Hello.
Both buying and downloading music and streaming it online have their advantages. Buying and downloading music allows you to own the files permanently and listen without internet access.
AI is generating an answer to my question. As you can see at the end of it, they're asking me a follow-up question that I can then answer and maybe ask something from AI again. We can have this conversation so I can practice my conversation skills, for example, at home, individually, at my own level. This will adapt to my level as well. If you want to try your hand at these exercises, you can do it during the coffee break. To wrap things up, we want the students to go to the books and go online with a purpose, with curiosity, but most importantly, with critical thinking. We also want the study materials and any technological devices to give them insights into the world. We want them to feed their curiosity.
We might even want the study materials to give them something that they could not even imagine finding. The demands of the modern world, the changing world, can be met with quality learning materials, inspired teachers, expert teachers, inspired learners, and with pedagogically, critically reviewed use of AI assistance in education. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Kirsi. I hope that these presentations brought you some curiosity about our learning materials. If you want to have a bit closer look at them, the demo booths will be over there during the break, and both Kirsi and Jarno will be there also to explain you a little bit more. Thank you very much.
As mentioned, we will now enter into a break, and the webcast will continue at 11:45 EET. As said here in the room, please use the opportunity to get to know our solutions. There is a solution also from the media side that you can try out. It is called Watchdog which is kind of looking for news topics over the internet. Coffee and refreshments are served at the same place where the breakfast was available as well. With this, thank you and enjoy the break. Welcome back. As I promised in the morning, we will now focus on the media business and the growth opportunities we see there. After that presentation, we will look at the financials. What does this all mean for Sanoma Group now in 2036?
After that, we will have a joint Q&A with Rob, Alex, and Pia answering the rest of the questions that are left. With this, I would like to invite Pia on stage. Please.
Good to see you all. I'm Pia Kalsta, CEO of Media Finland. It feels great to be here today for two reasons. Since we last met in CMD 2023, Media Finland has continued its digital growth, and we have improved our profitability in a quite challenging macro. Now, and second, now over 10 years in the role, after changes in the media industry and Media Finland, I see this coming period towards 2030 as truly exciting. I will share with you today why. As we look ahead to our strategy towards 2030, it focuses on three main areas. We will continue to grow in digital. We will capture the opportunities of AI.
We will grow in advertising when the gambling market opens up in 2027. Let's dive into each of these areas together today. Before we look to the future, let's take a moment to reflect where we are today. With our strong brand portfolio, we have a unique position in Finland. Our portfolio consists of well-known brands known to all Finns. These brands with a strong heritage are highly relevant also today. Out of our total net sales, two-thirds come from journalism, one-third from entertainment, and share of subscription revenue is increasing. We reach 96% of Finns weekly, 89% digitally. Over 80% of our digital visits are direct, and over 90% of all our digital usage comes from direct traffic. I want to stop there. The importance of direct traffic is increasing for media companies.
Now that AI is disrupting traditional Google search, meaning that referral traffic is unpredictable, and we know that the traffic from social media could change overnight due to unpredictable changes in algorithms. With this portfolio, with high reach, extremely high share of direct traffic, we are a truly exceptional media company, not only in Finland, but actually even in the world. Just to give you one example, Ilta-Sanomat is the most used digital news media company when measured by usage per capita in the world. We have a robust platform to continue our successful digital transformation and improve profitability. We stand on a solid foundation. With this portfolio, combined with first-party data, we are the marketing partner of choice for our advertisers, and we have the scale to produce and deliver unique content for our audiences. We are digitally advanced.
After all these years in this role, we are reaching a point in digital transformation that I have been waiting for. We have progressed to a phase where in news, digital growth for our key brands starts to compensate for structural print decline. In TV, VOD growth is strong enough to turn the TV net sales to growth. This business has demonstrated its resilience over the past years with Corona, with the war in Ukraine. We have a good, solid track record of driving transforming business and delivering healthy profit. We plan to continue on that track. We will not only take care of the digital growth and our net sales, but we will also continuously improve our productivity. Although most of the productivity work consists of continuous work we do throughout the organizations, also larger actions take place.
In early November, we announced a closure of the Tampere printing plant and consolidation of our news printing into Sanomala facility in Vantaa. This strong foundation gives us confidence to execute our strategic plan towards 2030. Now let's take a closer look and see how our digitalization has progressed and shaped our business. Look at development from the past 10 years. Our weekly digital reach has grown from already high, 70% to 89%. However, the most pronounced change is the strong growth of digital-only subscriptions. Now over 50% of all our subscriptions are digital-only. During that time, TV has transformed from a linear advertising-funded business to a digital business where actually subscription revenue is the largest net sales component. When you look at this picture and all these years, you might ask that why aren't we 100% digital already?
Even though the digital usage increases, and our customers know how to use digital, they enjoy the experience of print and linear. Given that we want to have high reach, high scale here in Finland, we will digitalize at the same pace with our customers. The direction is definitely digital. Media Finland today is a modern, integrated digital media company. After the development and consolidation of our systems, processes, and more important, and very importantly, data, we are also well positioned to take the next step with AI. The media landscape, it is always evolving. We continue to see changes in consumer behavior, business models, technology, and regulation. When we look at consumers, we see ever-increasing competition for consumers' time. Gen AI is exploding the volume of content with various qualities. This development makes trust the key assets for any news media company.
There will not be lack of content, but there will be lack of content that you can trust that it's worth your valuable time. According to the annual Reuters News Media Report, Finland continues to have the highest trust in news in the Western world. That makes us and Finland unique also. When we look at the business models, we see increasing consumers' willingness to pay for digital. That is supporting the media industry going forward. What we also see is the stickiness of print and willingness to accept price increases, which is then lengthening the life cycles of print products. Gen AI is changing the way content is being produced, as you could see in the demo here today, and how content is being distributed and consumed.
I think regarding media and AI, the key questions currently are what will happen to search and how to differentiate and maintain trust. Finally, what is the impact of regulation? So far, the regulators in Europe and Finland have not really been able to regulate global platforms. Instead, the focus has been to regulate domestic media and especially to enforce that regulation because that is easier to do. Now we start to see a change. One example being the gambling regulation that is being prepared. There we saw a real willingness to create a level playing field between domestic media and global platforms. Another key topic is, of course, the protection of unique content and IPRs in the age of AI. What are our strategic priorities going forward amid all these changes? They are very clear.
We will continue to drive digital growth both in subscriptions and advertising. This growth will be supported by the work that we have been doing for the past years in our capabilities like data and personalization. Those capabilities will combine with our new cross-functional operating model that has made us faster and more customer-centric. We will not only grow in digital. At the same time, we will smartly optimize print and linear, given that they are more resilient businesses than earlier thought. We know the value that they deliver to our customers. We are embedding AI into our operations to improve productivity and to free up time for value-added work and innovation. We have chosen the key focus areas for AI to drive real business results.
Given how important trust is in our business, we are very transparent about the way we use AI, and our people are always overseeing the work and responsible for the results. With our strong portfolio across media segments, high reach, first-party data, we are really well positioned to capture the growth from the gambling market opening in 2027. Let's now take a deeper look into digital growth and specifically at digital subscriptions. I'm pleased to hand over to Jenni Nummela.
Good afternoon also on my behalf. My name is Jenni Nummela, and I'm the Chief Commercial Officer for B2C at Media Finland in PST. I've had the privilege to work with our media brands and their digital growth and transformation for almost 20 years now. First in entertainment and TV, and now focusing on our news brands and our subscription business.
This is an area that is the cornerstone of Media Finland's B2C strategy and a kind of core engine of our transformation. In the next minutes, I'll show how subscriptions have grown into the largest part of our business and, more importantly, how we're set to drive growth in the future. At the heart of our success in subscriptions is our content and our brands. They're attractive because they genuinely matter to people. In journalism, the need for trustworthy, curated content is stronger than ever. There, our flagship brand, Helsingin Sanomat, is the largest news media subscription brand in Finland and also, relative to population, has the largest reach among Nordic subscription news media peers. In TV, against many popular beliefs that everybody only watches Netflix these days, the Finns want to watch domestic programming.
With Finnish stars and Finnish hosts, this is programming that is on the top of most viewed programming lists, and this is programming that also drives subscriptions. It is very cool to sell these products that are part of everyday lives of the Finns. Even though it all starts with content and brands, to complement this, we have developed a strong know-how of running and growing digital subscription business, both in news media and in TV. Where are we now? Over the past few years, as Pia already described, the weight of subscription business in our portfolio has increased, and as said, it now is the largest part of our business. This underlines the continued shifts toward more recurring, more predictable revenue base. Digital subscriptions are a main driver for this development.
In the graph, you see that the total subscription base at Media Finland, the digital subscription base, has grown 6% per year over the past three years. This includes both news media and TV, and in news media, both digital-only subscriptions and digitally active customers who have a print component in their subscription. The key is not whether you have the print component or not, but the digital relationship and the engagement. We have grown 6% per year over the past three years, and we expect the growth to continue at a similar pace. What does this look like from the revenue perspective? Our digital-only revenue growth has been strong. In news media, with the ongoing transformation of our subscription business, we have grown at about 13% per year the past three years.
Going forward, in terms of subscription penetration in news media, there is room to grow and some unmet demand in younger cohorts. Now when I speak about younger, I speak about under 45-year-olds, which might not sound that—I think it's young, but might not sound that young for all of you. Teens and people in their 20s are not traditionally big news subscribers. You have other priorities in life at that point. We aim to build a relationship with them so that before they reach their 30s and life gets more settled and you are more likely to subscribe to any news media, for example, we are already an alternative there. In TV's subscription VOD, the so-called SVOD, we've seen strong revenue growth over the past years, over 20% per year. This reflects also the rapid expansion phase of the market that we've been in.
There the growth dynamics are evolving. By that, I mean that we expect that the current and the future growth relies more than earlier on ARPU, the average revenue per user. This is development that is visible also in international comparisons, as many of you probably are aware. In SVOD, we've been particularly strong in younger demos. There, in terms of volume growth opportunity, the focus is more on the older demos as opposed to the younger demos in news media. Our ambition is high single-digit growth in both news media and TV's SVOD. How we then plan to drive that growth? I'll illustrate with an example from news media and our thinking behind productization and sales strategy. First of all, our customers have diverse needs and diverse willingness to pay.
Our value creation is based and must be based on deep understanding of both of them. Our productization vision is clear. We have and we continue to develop an offering that meets those diverse needs. From entry-level digital products on the left-hand side of the graph, for example, for new and younger subscribers where the willingness and maybe also the ability to pay is lower, and also to ensure that we have a pipeline of new digital loyalists in the making, all the way to the right-hand side to premium bundles for our more kind of engaged readers, including maybe also print. There are three main levers for value creation. Firstly, regarding our existing customers, premiumization and personalization. The premiumization here meaning creating new features that increase the value experienced by our customers.
This, of course, then when we succeed, increases the satisfaction of the customers, but also unlocks new revenue potential. We are set to create these growth pockets here depicted with dotted line boxes. In the personalization part, through targeting, ensuring that a customer finds the right productization for him or her, and for example, that the price reflects the true value our products deliver to a customer. Secondly, reaching new customer segments, for example, by using targeted offers so that we do not undermine the value experienced by our existing loyal customers. We have researched the demand in non-customers quite recently, and the results are also quite promising. Younger people are used to pay for digital subscriptions with entertainment services like SVOD and podcasts.
According to our research, the younger audiences are willing to pay also for digital news, given, of course, that the price and productization is right for them. Thirdly, the print transformation. We are good at managing print with discipline, but in a customer-centric way. This is a premium product still driving high willingness to pay. In an era of screen fatigue, constant notifications, what have you, print offers something rare, a calm experience. Not only older segments, but also other audiences value these types of curated and tangible experiences. These can be, for example, weekly or weekend subscription formats. Ultimately, our focus is on delivering the right value to the right customer at a price reflecting that value as well as possible. We have quite recently refined this thinking.
We've invested in IT systems that help us enable it and being in this sort of foundation building mode. These are capabilities that are just coming in and are not visible in our historical performance, but we think that they position us well for more profitable growth going forward. Finally, some concrete results. Part of subscription business know-how, or at least our subscription business know-how, is driving scalable digital growth through productization of existing brands and content. There, as the latest example, we have IS Extra and Plus Kaikki, Plus Everything product bundle, where we have 100,000 subscribers combined. This is achieved in a fairly short amount of time, these products launching one, one and a half, half years ago.
More established example is our entertainment and sports video service Ruutu +, where we have over a decade-long strong track record in delivering growth and, as Pia said, transforming TV, traditionally a B2B business, into this sort of hybrid where subscriptions account for a large share of revenue. Our SVOD subscription base fluctuates with content schedules, for example, sports series. To give you an idea of the scale, we have about 400,000 subscribers. I want to leave you with a thought that with these brands and these contents, our customer understanding, our refined strategy, the new capabilities, and so forth, we are ready to raise the bar and drive the next wave of subscription growth at Sanoma Media Finland. Now I'll hand back to Pia. Thank you.
Thank you, Jenni.
Jenni and her team make excellent work to drive our subscription growth with the help of data and, as you could hear, deep customer insight. Let's then turn to advertising and specifically to gambling advertising. As you know, the domestic advertising market has been slightly declining for the past years due to weak macro in Finland. Going forward to 2026, we expect the domestic markets to stabilize as consumer confidence and GDP start also gradually to grow. However, the real game changer for the domestic advertising market will be the opening of the gambling market in 2027 that will bring a step change to this market. The gambling market is expected to open up to a license model in 2027. In our figures here, we assume the start to be in January, but the start could also be delayed till, let's say, mid-2027.
We will learn that soon, given that the law should be passed in the parliament still before Christmas. According to the current plan, advertising will be permitted in the majority of the categories where we are present without any major regulations. For example, gambling advertising will be allowed in prime-time TV and radio. Regulators have understood that you cannot protect minors with time limits in media. We assume the first years to be peak years as advertisers will invest to build their positions and brands here in Finland and then markets to stabilize towards 2030, similar to other markets. Brand building means that advertisers will invest in TV, radio, sponsorship, and digital. Over time, when the marketing stabilizes, the share of digital will grow. We at Sanoma will be positioned well in both phases. How do we estimate the size of this potential?
We estimate our share of the gambling advertising to be EUR 20+ million during the first years. How have we ended up with these figures? We have learned from other markets. When the gambling market has opened, we have discussed with the gambling operators, and we have also used our advertising inventory as input. We estimate that the total incremental marketing spend from gambling operators is around EUR 200 million in the first years, and then EUR 150 million of that to be spent in advertising. 50% of that EUR 150 million to be spent in domestic market and 50% in global platforms. This global market growth estimate assumes the increasing price level with increasing demand in key advertising categories. We estimate that we get roughly one-fourth of the domestic ad spend resulting in EUR 20+ million for the peak years.
The margin contribution is expected to be high given that it's advertising. This might be a conservative estimate, but I'll be happy then to increase it later if there's a reason to. When the gambling market opens up, Media Finland will be well positioned for several reasons. With our comprehensive presence across media segments, across target groups, combined with rich first-party data for compliant targeting, we are really well positioned to work with these companies and capture the growth. We are looking for a sustainable long-term approach that takes into account also the consumer experience in our media and other advertising customers. This means that we will not only comply with all regulation, we will also use, for example, frequency caps in our brands to safeguard the consumer experience and guarantee a quality advertising context also for other advertisers.
Gambling represents a major growth opportunity for us, and we will approach this opportunity responsibly. Let's now turn to another opportunity: AI, how it's shaping the media industry and how we are approaching it. For media, AI represents the latest phase in the digital transformation. Like before, media is in the forefront of this change. The consumer and advertiser behavior is changing. Thanks to high share of direct traffic, high trust, high subscription penetration combined with digital capabilities, we are in a good position to embrace AI. Like said before, but I want to repeat this, for us, it is of utmost importance to harness AI responsibly. We want to safeguard trust, and you always use human oversight. Let's take a closer look at our approach on AI and its impact.
At Media Finland, we embrace AI as both an opportunity to drive productivity and increase customer value and provide innovation. Our approach is both top-down and bottom-up. With this, I mean in the top-down approach, we automate FTE-heavy, data-driven core processes with always human oversight. In the bottom-up approach, we augment individual work with the new AI tools. Let's see how all this translates into tangible business results. In our top-down approach, our current focus is to leverage AI in four key areas. I dare to say that in the AI-driven newsroom transformation, we are among forerunners, even internationally. Our teams have both capabilities and motivation to drive the change, and we are well advanced.
When we look at marketing, operating a large portfolio of brands, also TV show brands, we purchase and produce a vast amount of marketing content for our own use and for our advertisers. We see great potential in using AI in production of video, audio, pictures, and whole campaigns. Our digital development leverages AI at every stage of the process. All our developers use AI in their daily work, from planning to coding to testing to documentation. Already one-third of all our code is produced by AI. Finally, in B2B advertising sales, and especially in the SME segment, with the increased automation, we will be able to serve underserved customer segments and deliver new growth. It means that our salespeople will have more time to spend with customers.
Now, having worked in years with AI and last year specifically with GenAI, we can see that in most use cases, we can improve both productivity and customer value at the same time. I think this is great news. We are not only more productive, but we are faster. We can improve our offering, whether it is deeper insights, better solutions, or a broader variety of content types for our readers to choose from. All these initiatives that I described here are running at full speed, and they are expected to deliver significant business impact by 2030. The fastest and most visible impact is expected to come from reduced external spend and growth from underserved customer segments. To bring this to life, let's look at how journalists are transforming the newsroom with the help of AI.
For five years, Sanoma has invested in standardizing newsroom processes and developing new ways of working. This has created a strong foundation on which we now build AI-augmented and increasingly automated workflows. [Foreign language]
AI is part of our daily work at Sanoma Media. As we are approaching the end of Media Finland's presentation, let's recap our strategic priorities and take a look at our financial targets. To sum up, Media Finland is built on a strong platform to succeed in an evolving media landscape. Our strategic priorities are clear. We will continue to drive digital subscription and advertising growth and optimize print and linear. We are embracing AI at full speed to unlock productivity and customer value. These efforts will support stable net sales development with increasing share of digital and low single-digit improvement in operating profit.
On the top of this, we are preparing to capture significant advertising growth as the gambling market opens up in 2027, creating a step up in our profitability given the high margin of advertising revenue. I'll be very happy to embark on this journey with a highly capable and motivated Media Finland team. Thank you. Now I hand over to my colleague, Alex Green.
[Foreign language] Good afternoon to you all. You have now heard from our business leaders in both Learning and Media Finland about the exciting journey we have between now and 2030. A journey of growth that leads us to high single-digit earnings growth for that period of 2026 to 2030. Now let me take you through what it looks like in the financials. I'll start with the chart that Rob started out on earlier, showing growth power by learning and our unique position.
To go through the financial targets just again, on learning, we'll see mid-single-digit comparable net sales growth and high single-digit adjusted operating profit growth. The Dutch distribution business, which has that EUR 40 million drop in 2026, will actually improve learning margin in 2026, clearly above the 23%. As you've just heard Pia talk through, stable comparable net sales in Media Finland, leading to low single-digit operating profit growth with the efficiencies coming through. On top of that, the substantial opportunity from the opening up of the gambling market with EUR 20+ million per annum. This is growth measured using our three-year annual CAGR, so every year three-year CAGR based on the previous three years.
In terms of the balance sheet, we've adjusted our net debt to adjusted EBITDA target to 2.5 or lower than 2.5 based on the strong balance sheet we have following the deleveraging, which we set out to do from the last capital markets day. Our dividend policy remains unchanged. This growth and this growth story is supported by a unique sustainability profile where we have a positive impact on millions of people through students across Europe and also through our sustainable media with trusted journalism and inspiring entertainment. This is supported by four key pillars: trustworthy data, responsible business practices, valued people, and vital environment, all of which have clear targets, unchanged targets, and also where we are well positioned to hit them going into 2030. On the right-hand side, you can see our sustainability ratings, which confirm our strong position in this area.
Now let me take two slides to focus on 2026. Starting off with Program Solar, which Charlotte talked about in her presentation earlier. We set out with Program Solar to increase the margin of the learning business. In doing that, we worked on the program streams you see on the left, which Charlotte highlighted the key ones and said that this would generate EUR 55 million of increased earnings from 2026 or earnings impact from 2026. That we have achieved, and we will demonstrate that in 2026. We also set out to do this at a one-off cost of EUR 45 million booked in IACs, and we have also achieved that. The majority of that, EUR 39 million, was booked in 2023 and 2024, and the remainder was almost done. We have delivered on this going into 2026. What does that look like?
On this slide on profitability, left-hand side learning, right-hand side Media Finland. If you look on the left-hand side, we have been increasing the profitability, and then 2026, it goes clearly above 23%. Up to 23% with the full solar impacts. If you remember, I have talked about this before, the impacts of solar were delayed getting into the P&L for two clear reasons. Firstly, the fact that we had reduced in our restructures the size of our content creation teams in a number of key places. That is booked as pre-pub onto the balance sheet and then depreciates over time. Therefore, it takes a little while for the depreciation to fully hit. Secondly, our improved operating model reduced the unit costs of production, which then hits us in a positive way when the volumes go up.
In 2026, with the curriculum renewals that you've heard about, that lifts the volumes, therefore lifts the margins through the unit costs. That's taking us along with the mixed impact from the Dutch distribution drop. That then lifts it above the 23% to be clearly above there for 2026. Now on the right-hand side on Media Finland, you heard Pia talk about the improvements made over the years in terms of the efficiencies creating margin improvements. Now the key assumption we're making here for 2026 is, as Pia talked about, the stabilization of the Finnish advertising market, which is one of our big uncertainties, as that is not necessarily anyway certain.
With the stabilization of the advertising market and the continued efficiencies, example of which is the closure of the Tampere plant, that does lead us to assuming the stabilization, a slightly increased margin here in 2026, with, if you remember, the large game-changing change coming in 2027 with the advertising market opening. Now worth pointing out also, with the closing of the Tampere printing plant, some of the savings there will be reinvested into the preparation for that advertising market opening. Now let's look at the longer period. On this chart, we look at between 2025 and 2030 in terms of net sales growth. First of all, on the learning side, you've heard about each of these buckets.
We talked about the Dutch distribution drop, but we talked about the curriculum renewals, both in Alejandro and in Andrzej's presentations, lifting us up, and also personalized learning and innovation with Sander and Charlotte. Now this lifts us to mid-single-digit growth on the sales side and leading to high single-digit growth for profitability. On Media Finland, we talked about the stable situation excluding gambling, with digital growth in both B2B and B2C balancing off the print decline in B2B and B2C. That is stable before the gambling, and the gambling advertising market opening lifts it up to get to where we show in 2020-2030. With the stable excluding gambling having low single-digit growth, with the gambling on top, that together at a group level is what is leading to the high single-digit organic earnings growth in the period.
As Rob mentioned, on top of that, we have the M&A opportunities in K-12 learning. Focusing again on the profitability and the pathway there, if you look on the learning side on the left, the net sales growth that we talked about in the previous slide lifts us up here, but with increased volumes and the more centralized operating model that Charlotte talked about and the AI productivity gains, this is leading us to the high single-digit profit growth. On Media Finland side, the top two bullets, the offset of the digital offsetting the impact of print and the continued improvements further supported by AI, takes us to the low single-digit growth, and the uplift further from the gambling market opening lifts us beyond that. As I have said, we have been increasing the profitability and more of that coming in the future years.
In terms of cash, that has lifted our cash. As mentioned before, some of the Solar impacts were visible in the cash earlier than in the P&L, as helping us to grow our cash in the past couple of years. That cash growth, free cash flow growth, will increase with the high single-digit operating profit growth going forward, together with stable investments, including into AI. Higher free cash flow coming, but take the chance here to confirm our new definition of free cash flow. Going forward, we will include lease payments because we feel it better reflects the amount of available cash. Now the leases, the lease payments relate mainly to property leases and consider particularly operational costs and are around about EUR 30 million per annum at the moment. You can see there in the box the full definition.
Increased profitability, increased free cash flow growth, that leads us to enabling higher dividends. As I said before, the dividend policy is unchanged. Now the way that works, the board makes its dividend proposal based on EUR per share, looking at the performance of the company and the cash flow generated. The new free cash flow definition does not change this consideration and therefore any decision. It just gets reflected as a higher payout ratio. If you look on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see that in 2024, we had a dividend that equated just above 40% of free cash flow. If you follow the arrow up into the bubble, that would have been 56% based on the new definition.
Now our increasing free cash flow in the past has enabled us to deliver on one of the key objectives we had in the capital markets day last time around, or key financial objectives, which was to generate free cash and deleverage. As you can see, it's come right down to two at our last report in Q3, considerably below our new target of 2.5. It will go down a little bit further at the end of the year with a positive cash flow in Q4, as usual. This is the basis for us changing that target to 2.5, which better reflects where we are as a company. Now this target should mainly be considered as a year-end when the whole cycle is finished.
An example of that being, we see, if you look at the seasonality of cash, we see a cash out in the first part of the year coming from the learning business, coming back in the second half of the year. Our leverage does move seasonally. In addition to this, we will repay the hybrid bond in Q1 2026, which will also lift this leverage number because that hybrid bond, as booked as equity, we'll refinance it with a combination of cash and debt that does lift it temporarily, and it'll come down quickly to below the target. Also, if we consider M&A, M&A would lift us above this target temporarily, but we'd always expect in the type of M&A we do and how we operate it with synergies, generating synergies, that we would come back below the target within a few quarters.
Behind this, our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Increasing dividend, M&A, and deleveraging. Now that solid balance sheet and our free cash flow generation has left us in a pretty good position in terms of our funding with a maturity profile external debt, as you can see on the top right. We have a refinancing underway. A couple of points though of what we've done recently. A year ago, we issued the first social bond, EUR 150 million, first social bond in Finland by a corporate. We just released recently the report around that about how that is being invested in, which is primarily in learning. We also extended the revolving credit facility of EUR 300 million by a further year to November 2027.
We are currently in the process of working on a refinancing, which is refinancing the EUR 150 million hybrid bond and also the term loan from 2023, where the remaining EUR 119 million comes due next year. We will refinance that in a combination of cash and debt and expect to finalize that in December this year. Now the strong balance sheet, free cash flow generation leaves us in a really good position, well placed to grow through M&A in K-12 learning, as long with a strong operating position. Rob showed this slide or the left-hand side of this slide earlier and talked through our key position in M&A. I have three particular points to add on this.
In terms of the significant headroom highlight on the left, if we do the maths, we work out we have headroom of above EUR 300 million in the short term available for M&A. I say in the short term, obviously, as we generate more cash and deleverage further, that goes up. A significant headroom there, or reasonable headroom there, if you like, to do M&A in the short term. Secondly, in terms of our route, and we talked about, Rob talked about whether it is new geographies or existing geographies or adjacencies. Now, in order to execute on those, we have got an experienced team that has done well in integrating businesses that we have done recently. Typically, we can generate 10%-20% of synergies on in-market acquisitions through our scale, through our existing operational setup and the efficiencies we can create.
With new markets, that is clearly going to be lower, more like 5%-10% of the net sales as synergies and still significant to enable the creation of value. The third point we have on here that we say it's supporting our net sales and earnings targets. Now, as Rob mentioned earlier, as part of one of the questions that was asked, one of the reasons we wanted to change our financial targets structure is it better fits with not only where our overall journey, but how we think about M&A. We want M&A to add value to the existing financial targets. It doesn't matter specifically, as Rob mentioned earlier, exactly what the margin is initially. It's what we can do with it through growth and through the synergies that I talked about. Those things will add value on top of our financial targets.
I'll leave you with three key financial takeaways. As you've heard through the day, we have the pathway to high single-digit earnings growth for the group in the period of 2026 - 2030. We're increasing our free cash flow. We've been doing this recently. We will continue to do that, which enables higher dividends. We are well placed to grow through M&A in K-12 learning supported by a solid balance sheet. With that, I'll welcome my colleagues back to the stage for the final Q&A.
Thank you to all speakers during the second presentation slot. We are happy to take the final questions and starting here from the audience in person. Maybe we start from the back row, please. Please introduce yourself before the question.
Yes, thank you. Samu Wilhelmsson from Nordea Creek Research. A few questions regarding the balance sheet reflecting your new financial targets. You're decreasing now your leverage target, but you're not targeting the equity ratio anymore. In terms of conservativeness, aggressiveness, how should we interpret this and what's the rationale behind this?
Yes, so we believe that the leverage target fully enables us to steward ourselves in terms of the balance sheet and the balance sheet strength. We will continue to report the equity ratio on a quarterly basis. In fact, we will continue to manage it and to think about it in the same way. We reflect that the two of them together was not necessarily necessary. We felt that the leverage ratio as a financial target was enough to ensure that we stay in the right place.
Okay, thank you. Perhaps on the capital allocation in the slide, you showed that the capital allocation plan is as before. During this day, perhaps we've got an idea that there might have been some change in the M&A approach. Could you return to that? Are you now more looking to acquire something in the case there's an opportunity or how actively you're actually now focusing on seeking that inorganic growth going forward?
Yes, let me take that one. We are as ambitious and keen to do the acquisitions going forward. What Alex highlighted was we continue to look at the capital allocation in that way. For us, success, of course, over the coming years is also to continue on the inorganic growth. We feel that we have good headroom to do that as well.
All right, thank you.
Thank you. Next questions, please.
Hello, this is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB again. Thank you for the presentations. I have now a couple of questions again, and I'll go one by one and starting for Alex. You mentioned that some of the gains from Tampere printing facility closure will be invested back into preparing for the gambling market. Of course, this is also for Pia, but how much investment is that really kind of needs?
I would say from 2026, low single-digit millions. Yeah, low single-digit millions from 2026.
Thank you. If we leave the gambling market potential out, does your Media Finland profitability target require that the advertising market at least stabilize, or can you kind of read slight improvement in earnings even if the advertising market will be slightly declining?
Our assumption is that the market will stabilize and then start to gradually grow, but really kind of modest assumptions there.
All right, thank you. How do you assume the pricing in advertising markets to be impacted by the gambling market opening? Do you think that kind of increased demand for advertising will lift the prices, or are you assuming kind of increasing more aggressive competition from that point?
We assume that the prices will increase in categories where there is limited supply. This means linear TV, radio, and overall in sports contexts. That we have seen in other markets as well. In TV, when we look at the other experience from other markets, there the price increases have been the most pronounced, but there has been a lot of variations between the countries, but they have always been double-digit growth.
All right, thank you. The last one from me regarding Media Finland, you mentioned the productivity investments and kind of actions you have taken to improve the efficiency through AI, for example. How much are they kind of already visible in your numbers as profitability contribution and how ready are you currently with your AI capabilities to support your employees' work?
Yeah, they are visible in our financial targets. The AI, when it comes to productivity, is part of the continuous productivity work that we do. We have there a lot of actions ongoing, but we know also that it does not happen overnight. The kind of productivity improvements will be more pronounced towards the end of the period. Like I said, first we will see impact in external spend when we can replace that with internal work. Part of that productivity gain or productivity benefit will be also reinvested into unique content and differentiation.
All right, thanks. That's all for me.
Thank you. Yes, thanks. The next one, please.
Thank you. This is Pia Rosqvist from DNB Carnegie. Reflecting upon your previous target in Media Finland of reaching a margin level of 12%-14%, I'm trying to now grasp why you stepped away from that, given that you now signal a clearer step change ahead.
Yeah, it's a good point because if you do the maths, then you will see us getting probably quite close to the 12%-14%, if not in it. We honestly believe this is a better way of reflecting where the business is now going and also to have that transparency on how we see it being impacted by the two key elements, the continuous digital transformation and then the opening up of the gambling market.
Thank you. Within Media Finland, you are in transformation and there are businesses which have not been as successful as you planned. I am thinking about the events business. Are you still committed to the events business?
Yeah, we are committed and currently are working to improve the profitability of the business. For example, the agreement that we have, cooperation agreement with Warner, helps us to improve, let's say, the attractiveness of the business and then also remove the overlap of the cost that we might have in the production of those events. That is a constant work that we do.
Thank you. Maybe reflecting upon any risks or downside potential to your current targets, anything we should be aware of?
Yeah, I think that's of course a very important point. If you look at it from the two businesses, on the media side, it's very clear. I think it's the advertising market and as Pia highlighted that stabilization and then hopefully some improvement. That's of course a key element here. On the learning side, we are in a really, really good position to deliver on the new curriculum changes, the personalized learning, etc. Of course, that's a position we need to defend and further build on. Competitive pressure is of course always one of the elements there. I think when it comes down to the fundamental funding of the markets, I think we are in a really good position if you think about that continuous funding and increase from the governments as well.
Thank you. That's all for me.
Thank you. Any further questions from the audience? If not, I take one from the chat. It's for you, Rob. You operate two quite different divisions, learning and media under the Sanoma umbrella. Could you update us on the synergies you see from this structure and how these have evolved in an increasingly AI-driven world?
Yeah, very good points. Of course, I mean, to give a bit of a feel, the direct synergies are in the order of magnitude of about EUR 6 million. So they're not to be sniffed at, but also at the same time, not very big, right? If you look at AI, actually, the teams are really trying to learn from each other. Charlotte presented on AI, of course, the team on the media side, really we work closely together on that because when you think about productivity gains in particular, there's a real opportunity to learn and also to roll out in some cases similar kind of solutions. I think that's from the AI perspective really an opportunity. If you look at it overall, these are two strong businesses, that's what I started off with, where we have really exciting growth prospects going forward as well.
I'm very pleased to have both as part of the overall Sanoma structure.
I think this is a good place to conclude the Q&A. We will hand over to you, Rob, for closing remarks, please.
Thank you. Good. At the start of today, where are we? At the start of today, I promised you to be as engaging as possible with our team. I hope you really have seen that today, bringing to life all the sort of key elements that we talked about. Just fundamentally, of course, if you look at the years ahead, it is about growth. It is about growth on the learning side, build on that very unique position that we have as an organization, but also really shaping the market in K-12 education. That all comes from this robust kind of position we now have on the balance sheet and being able to grow there as well. The role of media, as we touched on even in that last question again, is of course a really strong one as well. That digital transformation will continue successfully.
At the same time, we see real opportunities for strong growth there because of that opening up of the gambling market. I very much look forward to continuing the conversation with all of you on this topic and on the growth within Sanoma. For now, thank you very much for joining both here in the room as well as online. Thank you very much. Thank you.