Good morning. I'm pleased to announce that our third year as a public company was a great success. Our results are towards the top end of the upgraded guidance provided at the time of our half-year results, and we have met all our commitments, including financial, government, capital allocation, and ESG. Our revenue grew 19%, exceeding EUR 72 million. Our EBITDA grew even more, +20%, reaching over EUR 55 million, with an industry-leading margin of over 77%. Cash conversion was close to 100%, and we have significantly reduced our leverage from 1x - 0.5x EBITDA. We remain committed to our capital allocation policy. We repurchased 8 million of our own shares, and the board has proposed the final dividend of EUR 2.1 per share to be paid after AGM.
In our view, this has been arguably the best year in our company's history, as the strength of our financial performance was supported by the resilience of our operational KPIs, which were at record highs, as you will see in the following slides. We had a strong annual revenue growth across all four business lines. We initiated a pricing event for our private customers a year ago in May and then improved our pricing and packaging for business customers in autumn. The B2C segment has been of a particular note, with significant growth in both number of customers and yield expansion. We had 4% more customers in auto, 1% in real estate, + 5% in jobs. The yield has improved significantly, with 26% growth in autos, 22% growth in real estate, and 7% growth in jobs.
Overall, our core classified revenue was a major success, with both B2C and C2C contributing 90% of the total revenue. Our lead over closest competitor, which we internally consider the most important KPI, remains strong across all major portals, ranging from seven to over 36 times, depending on the portal. We were also pleased to receive a positive update in the relationship to the Estonian Competition Authority investigation in our real estate and auto platforms. Following the supervision procedures, the Estonian Competition Authority has closed its antitrust investigation in Estonia, stating that our prices were neither excessive nor abusive. Additionally, we achieved a break-even performance with our newest acquisition, GetaPro, in Latvia, after successfully launching a subscription model, leveraging our experience within the service vertical in Lithuania. BCG has achieved an impressive 70% reduction in CO2 emissions and exceeded our near-term targets in scope one and scope two.
This achievement was driven by a vast majority of electricity used from renewable sources. Furthermore, since the start of the year, we have started assessing scope three emissions. BCG has maintained a balanced gender diversity ratio with an equal 50% female and male split. Moreover, BCG was ranked within the top 10 best performance within the FTSE 250, with 50% of women in the leadership positions. We completed our annual employee engagement survey, and over 95% of employees are proud to be part of the team. This dedication and commitment is what makes BCG such a successful company, and that it directly leads to such a high average tenure of eight years, which is remarkable in such a technology-driven company. Now I'll hand over to Lina to talk more about finance.
Thank you. Good morning. We're pleased to see the continued momentum in our core business. Over the past three years, since IPO, revenue quality has improved. Listing fees as a percentage of revenue have increased from 83% to 90%. B2C revenue from contracted clients, now representing 50% of group revenue, grew 22%, and C2C individual listings, representing almost 40% of group revenue, grew 18%. Ancillary revenue, mainly from financial intermediation, accounting for 5% of total group revenue, grew 13%, and the non-core banner advertising revenue, also accounting for 5% of group revenue, remained broadly at last-year level. All four business lines grew strongly, with the excess coming from the core verticals, auto and real estate, which together make up 63% of the group revenue, grew 24% and 20%, respectively. Jobs and services business line grew 17%.
Generalist, competing against our own verticals, but at the same time bringing a lot of synergies and providing us with diversification to cover the wider market, grew 8%. Overall, the revenue growth comes from growth in the number of listings and number of advertisers, yield improvement across both B2C and C2C, and growing underlying markets, rising transaction values. Talking about yield improvement, we have continued with our usual schedule of pricing events. We started the fiscal year by introducing C2C pricing changes across most of our portals, impacting the entire financial year. In September and October 2023, we introduced B2C pricing and packaging changes for auto, real estate, and jobs portals, reflecting improvements to our proposition. These changes contributed to the second half of the year in both the real estate and auto business lines, and in auto and in jobs business line.
Since the majority of our contracts are 12 months in duration, the changes flowed through over the course of 12 months. We continue to see strengthening network effects across all business units. Here's the performance of BCG business lines across financial quarters. Despite the various macro and geopolitical shocks experienced over the last few years, each of our business lines has remained resilient and continued the growth trajectory. Our cost discipline continues driving operating leverage. People cost is the biggest part. 67% of our operating costs, if excluding D&A as presented here, is close to 16% of revenue. Programming, development, system administration are done in-house, and these costs are recognized within the salaries, and none of them were capitalized. People cost grew 18%, driven by a slightly bigger team, annual salary reviews, and also building up PSP cost.
The majority of the group's traffic is direct, with a combination of direct and organic unpaid search channels accounting for approximately 86% of total traffic. Paid search traffic is minimal. Therefore, total marketing expenses are less than 2% of group revenue. Our IT cost, being third-party services, accounts for 5% from revenue and grew in line with the market. Other costs is everything else we need in the business, including costs associated with running a publicly listed company. Cost to EBITDA, as presented here, grew 14%. As depreciation and amortization charges were in line with last year, our total operating cost, including D&A, grew by 6% this year. As a result of growing our top-line revenue 19% and with continued disciplined cost management, our EBITDA grew 20%. As mentioned, in terms of profitability, we're now close to 70%, bigger than we were three years ago at IPO.
There were no add-backs to our EBITDA. Our EBITDA margin has expanded by 1 percentage point to 77%, and we also continue to be highly cash-generative. Our cash conversion maintained at 99%. Cash generated from operations grew 23% to EUR 59 million. Net cash inflow from operations after income tax and financing-related payments grew 20% to EUR 51.2 million. Looking at other alternative performance measures, the adjustments to IFRS numbers are limited. We are adjusting for non-cash historic acquisitions-related assets, amortization, and deferred tax. This year, we also adjusted for a one-off tax credit of EUR 1.8 million, and this credit relates to financial year 2021 and resulted from a new interpretation of the corporate income tax law by the tax authority in Lithuania, following a court ruling. The adjusted operating profit is tracking closely to our EBITDA and grew 21%. Adjusted net income grew 18% to EUR 45 million.
During the year, the company purchased and canceled 8 million ordinary shares, representing 1.6% of its issued share capital at the start of the year. Adjusted basic EPS grew 20% to EUR 0.092 per share. As mentioned already, during the year, we generated EUR 51.2 million net cash from operations. At the beginning of the year, the outstanding loan was EUR 70 million and the leverage ratio of 1x. During the year, we paid final 2023 dividend, interim 2024 dividend, totaling EUR 13.3 million. We also used EUR 19.5 million in buying back company shares for cancellation. We reduced the debt by voluntarily repaying EUR 20 million, and we ended the year with EUR 50 million debt and 0.5x leverage. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. Our plan is to deploy cash we generate within the year in the same year or shortly thereafter.
We tend to turn 1/3 of adjusted net income each year by interim and final dividends, with approximately 1/3 and 2/3, respectively. The interim dividend for the year 2024 was declared to be EUR 0.01 per share and was paid in January. The proposed final dividend for 2024 is EUR 0.021 per share, bringing total dividends for 2024 to EUR 0.031 per share. The final dividend will be paid on 18th of October to members on the register on 13th September. We will continue considering value-creating M&A opportunities. All options for financing remain open, including using own cash, increasing debt, and even seeking additional equity capital. However, using own cash is the most likely and would most likely not affect dividends, but might reduce capacity for share buybacks. We intend using a combination of share buybacks and debt repayment from the balance of cash. Thank you.
Now handing over to Simonas.
Hello, everyone. In the next four slides, I will walk you through our main KPIs for each business unit. The structure of the slides remains the same as usual. Market context is provided in the top left, the C2C performance in the top right, B2C performance in the bottom right, and our lead against the competition in the bottom left. So let's start from autos. Underlying market dynamics remains very similar as it was six months ago. Car supply has normalized. Dealers no longer have difficulties importing cars from Western markets. Selling time for cars has also returned to pre-COVID levels. The number of transactions increased by 6%, and the average car price grew by 5%. This environment is beneficial for our business. The number of active C2C ads is 26% higher than last year. So we got more paid ad extensions, and we accumulated more content, so-called active ads.
The growth in active ads was so significant that the yield per active ad remained the same as last year, despite implemented pricing actions. If we look at the yield per listed ad, it grew double digits. In B2C segment, yield grew by 26%. The main reasons behind the growth, firstly, dealers had more inventory and had to purchase more slots. Secondly, our pricing and packaging event drove higher adoption of premium packages and an increase in the price per slot. In the bottom left, you can see that our lead versus closest competitor keep growing. It's seven times in Lithuania and 36 times in Estonia. Next, the real estate. The market cooled down after a normal peak in 2021 and 2022. Market is active. Average price keeps growing. Our brokers are in the business. Time to sell a property normalized.
We accumulated more content on our platforms, and that's its attainment for us. Both in C2C and B2C, dynamics is very similar to autos. Due to the aforementioned, there was significant 20% growth in active C2C ads. Again, like in autos, yield per active ad is at the same level as last year, while the yield per listed ad grew double digits. The number of B2C customers has remained stable, while average revenue per broker has grown 22% to EUR 22, primarily due to annual pricing and packaging event. We have successfully introduced prominent packages for the brokers who seek the maximum exposure and the highest number of leads. We maintain strong lead both in Lithuania and Estonia. Our platforms are respectively 17 and 19 times bigger than competitors. Let's take a look at jobs. Jobs market stays active.
The unemployment rate remained at a very low level of 6.8%. The average wage continues to grow rapidly, with a 13% increase observed last year. The market continues to provide a favorable environment for our business. Companies are investing in recruitment and retention of employees. As you can see in the bottom right chart, our customer base expanded by 5%, and average revenue per customer increased by 7%. Our job board keeps a strong lead of seven times over the closest competitor. I would like to briefly touch on the services segment. It represents the C2C part of our jobs and services unit. You can see the chart in the top right. The segment is the smallest one, but it grows very rapidly. The number of active ads increased by 32%, and we are continuously enhancing the monetization. Last year, the yield grew by 11%.
Generalist platforms kept growing as well. Our biggest generalist Skelbiu.lt increased the number of listings by 5%. This growth was organic and spread across various categories. Consequently, the impact of the implemented pricing changes was limited, resulting in a yield growth of 3%. Our lead over closest competitor in Lithuania has reached a record level of 23 times, and in Estonia, it is three times. In the next couple of slides, okay, we are constantly rolling out changes to our platforms. On average, there are 30 production releases every day. I will mention a couple of developments implemented during the last six months. Starting with autos on the left-hand side of the slide, we introduced the rating system for the highest-tier car dealers on Autoplius.lt. The system allows them to ask for the feedback from the car buyers.
This way, car dealers can build both trust and competitive advantage. Ratings motivate dealers to improve the experience they provide for the car buyers, and car buyers can make better choices based on the dealers' ratings. In Estonia, we have introduced a new product for the property rental market. It allows landlords and tenants to execute rental contracts through our platform, offering benefits for both parties. Landlords can make informed decisions at the platform, conduct background checks on potential tenants. Meanwhile, tenants receive a balanced rental agreement, 24/7 emergency service, insurance for property damage, and rental payment protection in case of inability to pay. We cooperate with third parties to limit our liabilities and the scope of our hands-on involvement. This approach offers clear advantage for our platform. By facilitating these rental agreements, we can generate recurring revenues throughout the rental period instead of receiving one-time payment.
This development is in the pilot stage, having been released very, very recently. Now, let's take a look at jobs and services. On GetaPro, we focused on improving content quality. We encourage service providers to add more information to their profiles to collect more feedback from the customers, and this helps them to achieve higher listing positions. Also, we launched a parcel self-service platform in Estonia, which aggregates the most popular parcel delivery providers. This tool is not limited to our platform, Osta.ee users. It can be used to send any item through any marketplace or any other channels, and we get a commission on every parcel sent. Now I would like to hand back to Justinas to finish the presentation.
Right. Thank you, Simonas. The Baltic region has seen a period of unprecedented growth in the last three decades. This is largely attributed to high export growth, strong trading balance, vibrant employment market, and tech-oriented economies. The region has also a strong credit profile and has seen a significant increase in overall purchasing power. This positive environment has created a great opportunity for our clients and our company to take advantage of the growth and generate greater profits. Despite the recent economic slowdown, the Baltic states are expected to be back on the growth path this year and are considered to be among the most dynamic and vibrant economies in Europe. The year has started strongly. At the beginning of the new financial year, we implemented C2C pricing and packaging changes across all our business units, and early signs are encouraging.
We plan to implement B2C pricing and packaging changes from September. The board is guiding 15% revenue growth in 2025, with Auto, Real Estate, and Jobs & Services expected to grow marginally ahead of its number and generalist below the overall group average. The board expects continued EBITDA margin expansion for 2025. The board remains committed to existing capital allocation policy, which remains focused on allocating excess cash towards reducing gross debt and the share buyback program, particularly in the absence of M&A opportunities. Thank you for the attention. And now we are ready to take any questions.
May we have a mic?
Thanks, Alastair Reid from Investec. A couple from me. Firstly, could you just expand a little bit more on the type of markets you might be looking at for M&A and what leverage you might be willing to go to if you did find something a bit bigger to look at? Secondly, you obviously highlighted the Estonian sort of new product with executing rental contracts on your platform. Do you see more opportunities for doing those types of things, whether it's in autos and, I guess, more broadly, do you see any potential areas where you might need to step up product investment over the medium term? Thank you.
Right. So I'll answer the first question on M&A. You know, it will help me with capital leverage or leverage thinking and then similar. With the product. You know, on M&A geography, we think more and look more at the companies rather than the countries. Obviously, we are not considering the countries which are kind of, we don't think that we are kind of good economists or a good part of the European family members. I don't know. Basically, we are looking mainly at the Baltic, Scandinavian, more Western European regions. But for us, it's much more important to find the good companies, the companies which are dominant, which have a monetization power and monetization power. And in the marketplace business, there are very little synergies. We don't need to have to be the companies kind of bordering each other, countries bordering each other.
For us, it's much more important to find the good companies which we think that we can continue growing. Would you help me with leverage?
In terms of the leverage, normally up to three would be the level where we would like to be in terms of borrowing for an M&A. But if we would need more, going above three times would also be definitely considered with a clear plan, how we do leverage and what time, because we're highly cash-generative. So that should be an option for us.
About this new rental product we launched in Estonia, it's a really new one, and we're kind of testing if it works. Of course, it sounds attractive for us to get the recurring revenues throughout the rental period. It's like a first iteration of the product. We still have some, let's say, ideas how to convince the customers to use this product, actually to sign the contracts through the platform. So it's in the process, and we'll see how it will perform, and then we'll make a decision. Will we just keep it going, or maybe we have to improve, or maybe we have to discontinue because it's not very relevant to the market? So we'll see how it will go.
Answering your question about the extension to other markets, so let's say cars, automotive is not that attractive because typically it's a sale transaction, not a rental transaction. We do have some rental propositions already because we are partnering with basically the rental companies, and we get some commission from the contract side. But we see that it's very, not very, but let's say relatively small market. It's not that easy to capture those revenues on our platforms. And about the investments into the products, so we constantly, like I would say, bit by bit increasing the product costs. Part of it is the wage inflation because everything is done in-house. And the second part, we grow our team one by one, and it's like evolution, not revolution. And I think the next year also will be very similar to what we have now.
We are focusing a bit more on the data products and stuff like that. So probably we'll grow the team a bit, but it will be very marginal, and you will not basically notice in the charts.
Maybe more I would add on the transactional model. So basically, this is our maybe first kind of version of transactional model within the rentals. But thinking about more like a long term, there are in the world models appearing where the sales transactions are being monetized. For example, we are following a few where they monetize C2C listings, and they charge not a listing fee, but a transactional fee. For us, it looks attractive. And I think that in the coming future, there will be more and more areas where we can apply these models. We are also learning. This is new, but definitely for the growth opportunity, we see a huge growth opportunity there. Yes?
Hi, Morning. [audio distortion] from Peel Hunt. I've just got three, please. If you look at C2C, the volume growth has been quite significant. Do you know what percentage of customers take your highest packages on C2C? I guess I'm just trying to understand as we go into next year how much that number can grow by. And then the second question is just on autos. I think B2C, the number of advertisers grew about 4%. How much of that is you converting C2C to B2C, and how much of that is kind of more dealers appearing in the market? Because I think your penetration rate is already quite high. And then just the last one, just so I get it right, because I think you've just answered it.
For the rental contracts proposition, so it's not a matter of the agents using or brokers paying a subscription fee to use that capability. It's a transaction. Every time they do a rental contract, you'll get paid. Is that right?
Okay. All right. So I can start with the penetration of our most expensive package. So basically, our goal is to drive the penetration as high as possible. So we're using different techniques, making the most expensive, longest package as attractive as possible. I think within the last few years, we achieved the penetration for the most expensive packages from approximately 60% - 75% currently. It may depend on different portals, but if you need an approximate number, so we did the improvement from 60% - 75% currently. The number, which we feel very happy about. This year, the tailwind of growth of number of activations will be smaller compared to last year because last year, it was a combination of both us pushing to choose the most expensive package, but also the transaction period lengthening.
So now, this year, the transaction period will be more or less, will stay more or less the same as previously in the previous year. So likely, that number of activations will grow through us pushing even more to choose the more premium package. And it's likely that we will again push another 5 percentage points further.
The share of dealers.
Yes. So we are very, very dominant marketplaces. So we think that 99% of the dealers or brokers are using our platforms. And the majority of the growth, let's say we have a low single-digit growth number of customers. So the majority of that is converting small dealers which are using C2C content into having more longer-term relationships and kind of selling them a subscription piece.
So I would say if you want to quantify 4%, it's likely that three is coming out of our conversion, and one is like a natural market growth. Would you like to answer the third?
Yeah, for sure. And actually, about those B2C and C2C conversion, we constantly actually make the examining our database, let's say, of the C2C customers. And we see that there are still some businesses and not necessarily brokers, but like small developers. For example, they are building one or two houses, and they have only one ad. And they just sell this house. But they do it for a living, basically, to earn money. So we are considering, let's say, the ways how to monetize better those who actually make a business, not just selling their own properties.
Maybe I'll just add, this is a very good point. Simonas helped me to raise. In fact, we are segmenting different customers, and the different customers have different monetization models. And we are also becoming better at identifying that this is a real C2C customer, this is a B2C customer, this is a developer, and then already approaching and applying our different products to offering different products to them. And this is where I'm more talking about the real estate and automotive where I'm telling that we are 99% penetrated. But talking about the jobs, so the jobs market is so high that our penetration is far, far lower. So in the jobs segment, there is much more to gain in terms of customers.
And by the way, fancy thing to say that we use AI for identifying those hiding B2C customers. And I will finish that third question about this rental product. So basically, it's not limited nor to brokers or to private customers. Anyone can sign, the tenant and landlord can sign the contract, and we charge the tenants a monthly fee, basically, or all those benefits he or she gets.
Hi, it's Will Packer from BNP Paribas Exane. Three from me, please. Firstly, at IPO, and since you've given us take-rate extraction numbers for the various segments, which has been very helpful. Since you last updated those take-rate numbers, you've grown revenue very impressively. While the end markets had some growth, clearly, take rates have gone up meaningfully, and the gap versus the Western European peers has closed, maybe not quite fully, but to a certain extent. Could you talk us through how you think about the next phase of growth for the group as you execute going forward now that the take-rate gap has shifted? Does that change anything for you about how you plan, and is it more product than price, et cetera, and implications there? Secondly, if we look at the European peer group, there's clearly a big premium for the vendor-paid model in property.
The market's willing to pay up for that. You have a pretty unique position where you monetize C2C and B2C at scale. You've got a particularly strong market share. Could you help us think about if you're considering that as a meaningful opportunity in the medium term? Is that something that's on the table at all? And then lastly, you have a best-in-class margin, but you do have a pretty diverse footprint and exposure to areas where there could be need for investment, thinking generalist pay and ship jobs, generative AI, which could be quite powerful in both of those areas. Should we think of that as a potential long-term headwind to margins, or is it the cost opportunity offset that? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Will. Very good questions. So I'll answer the first two, and Simonas will help me with the third. So our take rates, obviously, our take rates have increased a bit. But still, if we compare it to the international peers like Rightmove, Autotrader, they are still twice below. So we are not updating the take rates, which we have provided at IPO because it needs lots of verifications, et cetera, but we do estimate those internally. So those are still around twice below. So I think that the strategy will continue to improve in the monetization, increasing the take rates. When you are continuing improving the monetization, obviously, your kind of sophistication also increases. You start selling more expensive products, introducing bigger package, maybe adding the valid base pricing for business customers. So there are many ways of what to do to improve the monetization.
I think that for us, maybe it's a bit easier journey from two angles. First of all, I think that our platforms are very, very dominant, so it helps. Definitely, it helps to drive the change. And secondly, a lot of things are already done. So for us, we need to just be a copycat with pride. Look, whatever is done already, what succeeded and what didn't, and then what worked, just apply in our case because it's an advantage for us to follow the path of what others have already done. About the vendor-paid model. Regarding real estate, the vendor-paid model is possible where you have exclusive listings. Not multi-agency listings, but exclusive listings. In our case, among the business customers, a third of the market is exclusive, but 2/3 of the market is not exclusive.
It's unlikely yet to introduce at this moment, although potentially it could work with new developers because new developers, they own real estate. But the bigger opportunity, what we see is with C2C listings. And this is a bit similar to what I just talked before. There are models in the world which are evolving where C2C are being monetized not through the listing, but through the transactional fee. So for us, we see the vendor-paid model as equivalent to our C2C potential monetization. And the third.
About the investment. About the investments in the product, basically. So let's say pay and ship. We do have pay and ship model in Estonia for many years already. And it does have a bit lower margins, but it doesn't mean that we have to change something very radically in terms of investments.
A couple of customer support or complaint managers and maybe a couple of technology engineers, and that would be our investment, basically, because we definitely will not take any liabilities. I know we're not building the shipping company or the payments platforms or platforms, something like that. We still want to stay like a platform which connects buyers and sellers, and we just provide the tools for the basically self-service operation, transaction, whatever. So it won't be huge investments in any case. Would it have an impact on margin? It would be very marginal, and we are growing. We are investing every single year more and more, and you don't see the negative impact, let's say, on the margins. So given that our cost base is very low and we have a big, [audio distortion] , gap between the costs and.
Maybe I would add a bit here.
I think that there are a few people who think that our high margin is because of underinvesting in the product. But I think that this is completely wrong. I tried to do my best explaining that our high margin is because of high efficiency, huge synergies in the portfolio among the verticals and generalists, which allows us to save on marketing. The mentality in the organization of being cost-cautious, these are the key criteria where our margin is why our margin is 5%-7% bigger than the best other performing classifieds. This is the key thing why it is not because and we are investing in the product the same as everyone else does. I mean, it's in our payroll. A third of our team is in IT.
We are constantly developing. I don't know, 30 releases a day we do in our product, 30 releases a day. I don't know, 1,000 a year. So I want just kind of to be very, very clear that this is high profitability comes mainly of efficiency, synergy, and being cost-cautious.
And there are some technical decisions that we made, and still we stick to it, which helps to reduce basically the complexity of the technology of the platforms. As an example, mobile applications, you can build like native ones, which slows down the development of the platform because of the APIs of the new versions and so on. But so we chose a different strategy to have like web apps. It's still in the App Store and in Google Play everywhere. Users don't even recognize it's native or not native.
We have native features which are needed, like shares, push notifications, and stuff like that. So it definitely keeps our cost base and our technology team smaller than you could find somewhere else. So it's made on purpose to be agile, to be more centralized, and so on.
Thanks. Morning, Gareth Davis, Deutsche Numis. Two left from me. The first one, a small segment, but you've always said it could be as big as the others. But could you expand a little bit on what's going well in services, whether your view on the kind of scale of the opportunity there has changed, and what we should be thinking in terms of the kind of growth trajectory over the next sort of 12 months - 18 months? And then going back to the first question, really on M&A, CoStar were pretty noisy about sort of looking at assets all over Europe, not just in the U.K. I just wondered in the context of the markets you're interested in, particularly Scandi, do you feel there's a risk that that's something of interest to them, or are they just fishing in sort of different areas?
So maybe I'll start with the services. Last year, services grew over 40%, 43% or 45 %. So it was the fastest growing vertical in our portfolio. We think that the potential in services is huge because the market is very big. We continue to grow in both the number of customers and also yield expansion. And also, when we are comparing the yields among the different verticals, we see that actually the yields could be much bigger here because we are dealing with business customers. We are helping them to find the leads, to find customers. And on average, we're charging EUR 20 per month. It can be much more. So that's why we think that the services, the potential of service industry is much bigger. And also this year, we're expecting that services will continue growing the fastest in terms of percentage-wise.
We are kind of very optimistic on the services. About CoStar, I don't know. I don't dramatize. I mean, in Scandinavia, [audio distortion] of other competitors for M&A, including Schibsted, Alma Media, many other companies, PAP, private equity firms. I mean, it's just another player. I don't think it changes anything.
Hi, it's Will Packer from BNP Paribas Exane. Again, just a quick final question from me. Since the last update, we had the Estonian Competition Authority's summaries on the ongoing investigations. And having done my best to read via Google Translate, they looked like you were given a clean bit of health. Could you just confirm that all the appeals and potential appeals are out of the way there and in your other markets, that there are no further ongoing competition investigations? Thank you.
Yes, we can confirm that. The investigation was terminated. I think it was in the beginning of May. The appeal period was 30 days. So the period lapsed at the beginning of June. So the case is closed.
Operator, over to you, please, for the conference call questions.
Thank you. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When prepping to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally.
No questions. I guess it's a good sign.
Yep, we currently have no further questions, so I will hand back to the management team to conclude.
Yes, so thank you very much for coming to this results presentation. In general, we think that it was one of the best years we had in company history because it's not only financials grew so strongly, but all the underlying things like KPIs were so strong. Also, the operational developments, like I don't know, the Competition Authority case closed. The Apax did this year several successful placements, reducing the overhang. So I think that this year was really a very successful year, and we look forward to next year with optimism. And we started the year well.