Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of Schibsted's Q1 results. My name is Jann-Boje Meinecke, and I'm heading Investor Relations at Schibsted. Similar to last time, we will stream the presentation fully remotely from different locations. As usual, Kristin, our CEO, and Ragnar, our CFO, will present our results and progress for the first quarter. At the end of the presentation, you have the possibility to ask questions in a Q&A session with a hard stop at 10:15. If you want to ask questions, please go to slido.com and enter the event code, which you can see on the first slide next to me. This time, it will not be possible to ask questions by phone. We will not present the disclaimer. With that, please let me hand it over to you, Kristin. Go ahead.
Thank you so much, Jann-Boje Meinecke, and a very good morning to everyone. I will start with the highlights before we have a closer look at the development for the quarter. Schibsted started 2021 with a strong first quarter, and despite continued uncertainty and restrictions from the COVID pandemic, our underlying revenues grew 8% year-on-year in the quarter. All our segments, except Financial Services, are growing their underlying revenues compared to last year in the first quarter, and all segments are growing on EBITDA. The revenues are not just growing compared to last year, where, as we know, half of March month had a negative COVID effect, primarily in Finn and News Media, but the revenues are also increasing compared to 2019.
Driven by this accelerated revenue growth combined with cost savings, we achieved a strong EBITDA of NOK 594 million, which is more than double from the same period last year and 42% above pre-COVID numbers in 2019. It's not all about the numbers. I would also like to highlight the Secondhand Effect report that we recently published together with Adevinta. I'll tell you a little bit more about that on this next slide, where we have a look at our ESG achievements in the first quarter. The recently released Secondhand Effect report demonstrates the environmental impact of reuse and proves once again the importance of trading secondhand instead of buying new products. For Schibsted's Nordic Marketplaces, we see an increase in secondhand trade during the COVID pandemic, and as a result, a positive environmental impact that has increased from last year by 8%.
The total potential saving for our users was 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gas. This is more than 50 times our own emissions in Schibsted in 2020. On the social side, we have started a project on how we should proceed from a focus on gender equality to diversity, inclusion, and belonging. This is a complex and a long-term work, but we believe there is a huge potential in a diverse and inclusive workforce, and if we provide our leaders with the right competence and tools to build a strong culture of inclusion and belonging, we can release that potential, and we can nourish collaboration and innovation that, in turn, can turn into value creation for our stakeholders. As a first step, we have started out by mapping out the current situation in Schibsted.
I would like to add that the employee engagement survey in the first quarter shows a continued high satisfaction score among our employees. Lastly, we recently launched our sustainability report for 2020 as part of our annual report, where we are very transparent in how we delivered on our 2020 targets. Here you will find our new targets for 2021 together with our more long-term ambitions on all our sustainability aspects. Let me then start with presenting the development of our businesses in more detail, and first up is Nordic Marketplaces. If you move to the next slide, please, we see that before we look at the financial results here, I would like to highlight the recent listing developments in the job vertical, which is the main driver for the accelerated revenue growth in Nordic Marketplaces in Q1.
As you see from the graph in this slide, all countries showed a solid recovery within jobs in Q1, especially Norway and Finland. Listings in Norway were not only above Q1 last year but were actually experiencing an all-time high in the first quarter. As you might remember from Q4, Sweden did not see the same recovery as we then saw in Norway. We're very pleased to finally see a start of the recovery also in Sweden in the first quarter, with volumes just slightly below last year. Looking at the start into Q2, these good listing trends have continued in April with high year-on-year volume growth for jobs in all three countries. You will find listing development for our other main verticals in the appendix. If we now look at the next slide, we will get to the financial results in Nordic Marketplaces.
We see that underlying revenues returned to a 6% growth in the quarter. This is driven by the improvement in the job vertical, where Norway is the biggest contributor, in addition to a strong March month across all countries. This positive development in revenues led to a margin increase of one percentage point year-on-year. Let me remind you that the acquisition of Oikotie is included in the 2021 numbers and is affecting the growth positively. The 6% revenue growth presented in the left paragraph is the underlying revenue development, including pro forma Oikotie revenues in Q1 2020 and excluding currency effects. Looking at the graph to the right, you'll see that jobs is the biggest vertical in Nordic Marketplaces, and Finn is the biggest contributor within jobs, as 23% of total revenues in Nordic Marketplaces are coming from jobs in Norway.
The recovery in Norway has a significant impact on the overall top-line development in 2021. If we move to Marketplaces Norway, revenue growth accelerated. If you'd change the slide, please. Revenue growth accelerated compared to last quarter, delivering 11% growth compared to Q1 last year. The growth was primarily driven by the previously mentioned improvement in the jobs vertical, especially in March. The revenue increase is driven both by growing volume, combined with improvements in the average revenue per ad. For example, Finn has a new self-serve portal for professional customers in which it's easier to add upsell products upfront, and the sales department is also now working more data-driven, contacting customers based on the performance of their ads. In numbers, the job vertical grew NOK 52 million year-on-year in Q1, and that equals 34% growth.
While Nettbil continued to grow well compared to Q1 last year, traditional motor revenues and real estate were affected by lower inventory levels and high demand, similar to what we saw in Q4. This demand is resulting in more easily sold objects, resulting in less need for republishments and upsell products, which put some pressure on the ARPA. We have seen improved volume trends throughout the quarter. Similar to the previous quarters, the travel vertical is still negatively affected by travel restrictions, with revenues declining NOK 15 million year-on-year. Advertising revenues ended up 2% below Q1 last year due to slow start of the year, while revenues in March were increasing. All in all, an improvement compared to the last quarter. The EBITDA margin ended at a strong 50% for the quarter, driven by the combination of higher revenues and cost savings from remote work.
Let me remind you that we have started to ramp up investments again to ensure growth going forward, meaning that the margin we saw in Q1 is higher than what we expect for the rest of the year. If we then move to Blocket in Sweden, we see that we had another quarter with revenue growth. However, unlike the previous quarters, the revenue growth in Q1 is driven by a recovery within jobs and advertising. The growing revenues within jobs are driven both by volume that finally returned to growth in March, and in addition to that, we see an increased ARPA from the new price and packaging model that was released during the autumn. Looking at motor, we see a slight decrease year-on-year due to lower inventory levels and high demand, resulting in less need for upsell products. Same effect that we experience in Norway.
On the cost side, temporary measures have dampened the cost increase and, combined with increased revenues, that leads to a margin at 42%, which is in line with last year. We then move to Finland, we see that the merger of Tori and Oikotie was successfully completed, and we are now moving from the integration phase to the growth phase. You look at the financials, this graph represents the new combined company, including Oikotie in the 2021 numbers, driving the growth compared to last year. Focusing on the underlying development, including pro forma Oikotie revenues in 2020 and on a foreign exchange neutral basis, the first quarter is characterized by a good trend in classifieds revenue, with year-on-year revenue growth driven by all verticals except generalist, where we see a slight decline. On the cost side, we have increased investments in marketing, primarily within real estate in Oikotie.
We have also ramped up product and tech staffing to improve products and platforms in order to enable mid and long-term growth. This is affecting the margin, leading to a flat EBITDA year-on-year in the first quarter, if we look at absolute numbers. On the next slide, before I move on to News Media, I wanted to highlight one product update as we have reached an important milestone for the transformation to next-generation marketplaces for cars in Norway. Not all of the elements which you can see on the slide are new, effective Q1, private car sellers and buyers in Norway can now use the full end-to-end transactional process, and our numbers show that the whole transaction can happen in just 15 minutes, which we think is rather impressive. I'll give you some more detail on how this works.
For a seller, the process starts with a price tip from Finn. You just need to enter the car registration number and the mileage, and then you get a realistic estimate of how much you should sell or buy your car for. Finn will offer two ways to sell your car. You can place the ad yourself on Finn, or you can choose Nettbil to handle the entire sale for you in just a day or two. If you choose Finn to capture the highest possible price, the next step is to use a digital contract template, and this is where the magic happens.
Most of it is already pre-filled out for you, and you just follow the steps in the process, and you get access to insurance with a free trial period, digital payments on our platform with escrow, digital ownership change at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, and a new electronic toll payment tag. The whole process can be done and signed via your phone and verified with BankID, the safe identification also used by banks here in Norway. As a last step, your new car is now available under My Car. With that car profile, you get access to things like information on how much your car is worth, easy access to a digital purchase contract, tailor-made offers for your car, and possibility for safe and easy car sharing.
You can imagine from a commercial point of view, the next step is to try different ways of further monetizing along the process. Exciting developments there, and then we move to News Media. One year after the outbreak of COVID-19, it is still an ongoing news event, and our users are depending on our brands to give them timely and correct information about the situation. Our brands are continuously finding new, innovative ways of keeping our users updated on the situation, be it the overview of the number of people infected by COVID, the regulations that you need to follow, or the status of vaccination, all on a local or a national level.
The role all our brands are playing in creating critical investigative and agenda-setting journalism as a result of the authority's strict actions during the pandemic is also highly prioritized and at the core of our social mission. To be able to grow the News Media business, investing in quality content like this is essential. I'll get back to that in a couple of minutes, and I'm also very proud to say that we have won some major award for our COVID journalism recently, and I think that's well-deserved. Okay, if we then look at the financials on the next slide. Thank you. News Media delivered another strong quarter. Digital revenues showed a strong growth compared to last year, which led to underlying revenue growth for the third quarter in a row.
The solid top line is combined with significant cost reductions due to both the cost reduction program and cost savings due to remote work, leading to a strong margin of 11%. The execution of our cost reduction program is progressing well, with estimated effect per the first quarter 2021 of around NOK 260 million. We look at our main revenue streams in News Media on the next slide. We first have subscriptions where total underlying revenues grew by 10% year-on-year in the first quarter. As in previous quarters, digital subscription revenues continued to grow well. Strong volumes and growth in ARPU are contributing to the 26% increase in digital subscription revenues compared to last year. To succeed with continued growth in subscription revenues, investing in content is key, and we're very excited about our planned launch of a subscription-based podcast product across our brands.
We are proud to say that some of the most popular podcast creators in Norway will be part of this undertaking. In addition, we continue to experiment with different types of paid content. One example is the entertainment concept, [Non-English content] that means not allowed to laugh at your cabin, that VG did and which has sold a record amount of subscriptions in a very short time. We then move to advertising, I'm pleased to say that we, in the first quarter, are seeing substantial growth in digital advertising revenues in both Norway and Sweden, and that digital advertising revenues are back at 2019 levels. March is really standing out as a fantastic month for advertising revenues in Norway, showing that there is willingness to invest in marketing despite current COVID restrictions.
Video content and premium display contribute to the strong growth in both markets, and particularly, Aftonbladet and VG are performing well as they can cater for large advertising formats and deliver high reach. We see high-impact premium display being very popular among advertisers. We move to Next. We will start with Lendo, the biggest asset in Financial Services. Here we see that Q1 underlying revenues ended up declining compared to last year. The decrease in revenues was due to lower revenues in Sweden and Finland compared to Q1 last year, while the other markets posted revenue growth.
Sweden, accounting for almost three-quarters of Lendo Group's revenues, experienced an underlying 9% revenue decline compared to Q1 last year, as banks continued to be more restrictive in their lending practices. Margins are better than last year as we invested less in international expansion and have focused on efficiency in our established markets. However, we have seen that unit costs in performance marketing channels have increased during the quarter due to increased competition in Sweden. That is a trend we expect to continue. Looking at 2021 as a whole, we maintain our target on EBITDA investments for the geographical expansion. Finally, we look at Schibsted Growth, and we see the positive momentum from Q4 continued into the first quarter for Schibsted Growth. Prisjakt, Schibsted Distribution, and the marketplaces for services, Mittanbud, continued to experience increased activity levels and demand during the quarter.
Schibsted Distribution new business showed strong year-on-year growth in the quarter, with increasing e-commerce volumes driven by Helthjem and Morgenlevering. Helthjem Netthandel, the main part of new business, has delivered approximately three and a half million parcels during the first quarter, and that is an increase of 150% year-on-year. Also, Prisjakt showed a solid growth year-on-year, driven by increased traffic and clicks. In addition, advertising banner sales showed recovery and were back to growth in the quarter. With that, I'm happy to turn it over to Ragnar, who will give us some more flavor to these financial figures.
Thank you, Kristin, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to give you some more details on our strong financial results in the first quarter. I will start with commenting on the consolidated result for the Schibsted Group. Underlying Q1 revenues grew 8% compared to last year to NOK 3.4 billion. This quarter, EBITDA was very strong and more than doubling from last year to NOK 594 million, resulting in a margin of 17%. In the graph on the right, you can see that all business areas are contributing to the improved EBITDA. Similar to last quarter, News Media is standing out as the biggest contributor to the improvement, driven by the continued strong growth in digital revenues and cost reductions.
For Nordic Marketplaces and Growth, the EBITDA increase is primarily due to higher revenues, while the increased EBITDA in Financial Services are driven by improved cost efficiency combined with lower geographic expansion investments. Moving to the income statement. Operating profit for the quarter ended at NOK 346 million, an increase of NOK 229 million from last year. Operating profit was impacted by increased net other expenses of NOK 21 million, which mainly consists of transaction costs in connection with acquisitions of eBay Denmark and integration costs connected to Oikotie. In addition, amortizations have also increased year-on-year, That is due to the acquisition of Oikotie. This is also the main explanation for the increase in net financial items. The reported tax rate in the first quarter of 24% is quite close to the nominal tax rates in the countries that we are present.
Loss from discontinued operations are figures reported by Adevinta, adjusted for the effect of not recognizing depreciation, amortization, or impairment of assets in Adevinta. In addition, in this quarter, loss from discontinued operations also include a loss related to Adevinta's disposal of the operations in Chile. Adevinta presented their results yesterday, for more details on their results, please refer to the presentation available on their website. Looking at our operating cash flow in the first quarter on the next slide. Thank you. It tripled compared to the first quarter last year, driven by the increased EBITDA and reduced tax payment in the quarter, partly offset by an increase in working capital. Our CapEx was NOK 20 million higher than last year due to increased investments within product and tech, but also at HQ due to ongoing implementation of a new group-wide ERP system.
Looking at our financial gearing and targets. Looking at our leverage, it increased to around 1.7 following the acquisition of Oikotie in the third quarter last year. It has gradually improved to 1.3 by the end of Q1 due to the strong EBITDA and cash flow. Our cash balance at the end of the first quarter was NOK 1.1 billion. A bond of NOK 600 million will be repaid at maturity, which is today, the 6th of May, we will consider issuing a new bond later this year. To finance acquisition of eBay Denmark, we have signed a bridge loan facility of EUR 350 million, following this acquisition, our gearing will increase at closing, as it looks now, to just below three.
We have received consent from our banks for a temporary waiver of a financial covenant from closing of the transaction until the bridge facility is repaid. I will end my presentation by giving you an update on our financial targets and policies. New this time are our midterm targets for News Media. On the back of the good underlying trends and our strategy in News Media, we have updated the target by adding a guidance on annual revenue growth. We expect revenues to grow low single digit in the medium term. We have also raised the EBITDA margin target from 8% to 10%, to the 10% to 12% in the medium term. The more positive sentiment is due to a more positive outlook on revenues, combined with the effects from the NOK 500 million cost reduction program.
Please note, however, that both the top line and margin target assume a normalized advertising market, and that this target is a range where actuals are expected to vary in the periods ahead. Looking at Nordic Marketplaces, we keep our medium to long-term target to grow annual revenues by 8%-12%. Based on the trends in Q1 and April, we expect the revenue growth to be close to the upper band of a target range in 2021. Otherwise, our policies remain unchanged. Over to you, Jann-Boje Meinecke. You will guide us through the Q&A.
Yes. Thank you, Ragnar. Quite a lot of questions coming in here this morning. Let me just start with the first one, guidance for News Media. At the CMD in March, you didn't change the guidance. Now you changed it to a higher margin and include the target for revenues. What has changed? Why do you introduce that now?
Ragnar, you can do that one, please.
I think it has been important for us to, let's say, have better visibility in the ongoing trends. That is one of the reasoning, and then we have also worked quite thoroughly with the management in News Media to look at the expectations for both this year and for next year. It's, in short, building a little bit more confidence in the trends that we have seen over the last three quarters.
Very good. Going to Nordic Marketplaces, we've seen an acceleration of revenue growth now in the first quarter. Can you give some color on what has happened in April, the start of Q2? How are volumes trending, both in Norway and Sweden here?
Yes. As I mentioned, we see the continued strong growth in jobs in all three markets. That continues in April. We also see good volume trends in both motor and real estate.
Very good. Maybe more to the financials. Looking at EBITDA, for the first quarter was very strong. More than doubled from Q1 last year. It's also because costs have been not growing so much. I think they're up 2% year-on-year. How sustainable is that? Let me phrase it differently, what should we expect when it comes to costs when people will go back to the office after the summer, during the autumn? Have you an estimate or an idea how this will impact costs here?
Yeah. You want to do that one, Ragnar?
Yeah. I will also give a precise guidance on exactly how it will influence the margins. It's correct that the present mode of operation carries lower costs since we are not in the office. We expect some increased costs when we are back in a more normal situation. That said, we also expect, for instance, traveling costs and so on, to be at a significantly lower level than before due to the fact that we have learned to work more digitally. Some increased cost we expect, but not all 100% back to the levels that we had of overall cost prior to the pandemic.
Very good. Maybe we can just stay with costs a little bit. I think the report states that News Media's on track with a cost program of NOK 500 million. Could you just highlight what are the stages? How much of these NOK 500 million have you reached so far?
Yeah. By the end of the last quarter, we had reached 180, and we delivered another 85 in Q1. Meaning that we have now delivered a total of 265. We are definitely on track to deliver the 500 by the end of 2021, as we have previously communicated.
Maybe staying with News Media a little bit. I think during the quarter especially, the digital development has been very strong. Looking at print, at what point print margins will be negative, and when margins for the print will be negative, would you consider shutting down print and just focus on digital? Can you elaborate a bit on that?
I think we will be able to, let's say, prolong the profitable life for print. Now, of course, with the success that we see in e-commerce distribution, that will have a positive, let's say, scale effect on the cost of distributing newspapers. There's also a potential to significantly increase our efficiency around print. When a lease expires in a couple of, three years' time, we will have the possibility of doing that in a more cost-efficient way. We believe that we will be able to run print with profitable margins for many years to come, actually, due to those changes coming.
Good. Another question on News Media. Digital advertising has been quite strong in Q1. I think the growth was positive in Q4, accelerated even in Q1, and seems stronger than the development for advertising in marketplaces. Do you have an explanation, like why is there a different dynamic between these two segments for the advertising business?
It has a little bit to do with the type of environment that you have. For example, the fact that travel is very low, can somewhat affect it and things like that. It also has a little bit to do with how programmatic advertising is distributed, et cetera. I would say that in general, I would give credit to our News Media for having been able to create very good environment for contextual advertising, for video-based advertising, and also different premium formats that are easier to run in a media setting than in a marketplace setting. In Sweden, for example, Aftonbladet has made a huge effort of diversifying their content to accommodate more, let's say, branded goods marketing, and we really see the effect of all of this. Also, some new formats that have been introduced that have been successful.
Good. I hope that answers the question. Maybe one more on News Media before we go to Nordic Marketplaces. News Media hasn't seen strong growth when it comes to digital subscriptions now in Q1 and over the last quarters. Can you comment a little bit on the balance between volume and ARP? What is really driving that growth here in News Media currently?
Yeah. It's a very good combination of both. Especially in VG and Aftonbladet, we are nowhere near exhausted on the volume side. The example I gave of this entertainment concept that sold a lot of subscriptions in a short time period, of course, that comes also with some degree of churn, but it's really valuable volume in the sense that it's basically new and young subscribers that we get a new customer relationship with in terms of subscriptions. There is strong growth on the volume side. In addition to that, we are constantly becoming better at bundling and upselling current subscriptions. It's a nice mix of the two. I would like to add that we are quite confident that we will be able to continue that positive trend going forward.
I think you answered a little bit on that one, but looking at the development growth with this churn, is it a change in trend which you've seen currently, or is it rather stable?
Yeah, no, churn is actually very stable. Given the fact that we increased quite a lot subscriptions in relation with COVID, et cetera, we see that the churn levels are very stable, which is a good thing. Let me remind you that the cost of achieving a new subscriber is almost zero because we basically upsell on people already being on our media sites, and then we upsell them to subscriptions. We don't pay anyone externally to attract those subscribers. It's important to remember that when we talk about churn.
Good one. Again, like I said, Nordic Marketplaces, couple of questions. Maybe first one on Finland, if you can explain a little bit what is really the short-term strategic objective or objectives here for that year, and how we should be think around margin for Finland in 2021 and maybe also going forward?
Yeah, I can start, and you can maybe supplement me on that, Ragnar. In Finland, we have an ambitious agenda, and there are many things we want to achieve. We want to grow our position and our ability to monetize in the verticals. Further down the road, Finland is also a candidate for going for a transactional model in the generalist, but it's not our first priority right now. We're focusing on the verticals. We see that we have good momentum in both increased classified revenues, and we have very strong growth in traffic and ads in Finland, which is a good fundament for that future growth. When it comes to margins, we are in a growth phase and an investment phase. We need to invest more in product and tech. I think we have signaled that all along.
We knew that when we took over Oikotie, that that would require some investments in product and tech. We have not a focus on margin short term. We will have a focus on growing revenues and strengthening our position in Finland. I don't know if you want to add anything beyond that, Ragnar.
Oh, I think that's quite precise.
Okay.
Maybe a question for you, Ragnar. I think you mentioned today that for Nordic Marketplaces, you expect that revenue will be at the top end of the range, 8%-12%, this year due to the rebound from COVID. Is that underlying or reported? I suppose it's related to FX neutral. Is it FX neutral, or is it reported growth which you refer to?
That is the underlying, let's say, underlying organic growth rate that we expect to be in that range or that level.
Very good. I think over the last quarters, we got many questions on Hemnet. What is happening with that asset? We saw the listing a couple of weeks ago. I think Ole Jacob at the CMD was, in his introduction, rather firm, I would say, that it's up for discussion that we spin off Nordic Marketplaces. I think given the substantial valuation of Hemnet above Nordic Marketplaces, is that something which the board is reconsidering? Can you comment on that, Kristin?
Yes. The board is not reconsidering that, despite the Hemnet development.
Very good. Maybe two smaller questions, I would call it. One is any progress on the Nettbil, and what is your strategy if you are not allowed to keep that asset? The second one, when it comes to the Shpock trademarks, are you controlling them in the Nordics or is it something which sits with Adevinta today, which will basically get sold to the new owner?
Yeah. On Nettbil, we should have a ruling during the month of May, so we are eagerly awaiting that, and we are very hopeful of a favorable ruling. Far, we don't want to focus on the alternative for Nettbil. When it comes to Shpock, we have no plans. I think also the brand sits with Adevinta, and we will not be involved in Shpock in the Nordics in any way going forward.
Thank you. Margin-wise, Finn was quite strong with 50% in Q1. Sweden was flat with 42%. What should we expect for the year going forward, Ragnar, maybe also Q2? Also like what Kristin presented when it comes to next-gen products and the progress you make on My Car, is that impacting the margin this year in Finn?
Normally we do not guide or give any particular comments on the margins as such. The margins in the second quarter was strong, and also in Blocket, we will ramp up the investments somewhat in the next quarters, particularly focusing on the transactional side, both on the generalist and part also to strengthen the car vertical. I think you must expect some added investments into product and tech in Blocket. Yeah. The second question, what was that, Jann-Boje Meinecke? Can you repeat that?
The second question was maybe related to that. Kristin presented the progress on cars in Finn with an end-to-end solution. Are these initiatives impacting margin this year for Finn, or are these costs taken, basically?
On the car transactional in FINN, let's say the development costs are to the large extent already taken. Now it's more about probably also you will also see some added cost on marketing of the service. That is part of it. That is common, probably also be a part of the cost base of FINN going forward. The focus in FINN on further product development will then be on other features and other verticals.
Great. Lendo. A question here, I think we highlight in the report that there's increased competition for Lendo in Sweden. Can you comment, what is happening? Why is competition increasing? What is your planning going forward? Maybe also if competition has increased, are you still positive about the case or have you changed your mind here on Lendo, what that means going forward?
Yeah. I think the main reason for the increased competition is that two of our competitors were merged and then taken over by a new owner with ambitious plans. Basically, what we see is that there's more competition for the key search words. The price for that has increased. We expect that to continue for a while going forward. We are a strong believer in Lendo, and I think the fact that competition is increasing is just a testimony to the fact that this is an attractive market, and we are set to win that competition and continue our progress with Lendo.
I think related to that, the players here which were acquired were Advisa and Sambla in Sweden, like you said, by private equity. What makes you comfortable that Lendo will be the winner going forward? What is the difference here, if you want to comment on that?
We have a strong position, we have a strong team. We have a lot of experience. We have made some mistakes with Lendo that we have drawn great learnings from, we don't have to repeat those mistakes. I would also say that we have very good expansion possibilities. We are experimenting now with new products. We have launched a secured car loan concept in Denmark. We have the PSD2 license, which opens up for new product opportunities. We have success with Lendo for small business in Sweden. As you know, we are cautiously expanding geographically now, mostly working with Spain after having seen good success and momentum in Denmark for a while now.
Great. Thank you for that. Going back a bit to Nordic Marketplaces, I think revenue growth has accelerated now in Q1, like we said before. Can you expand a little bit? Is that volume driven? Is it ARPA driven? If you can comment a bit on that.
On the what? The profitability of Lendo?
No, sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. On the revenue acceleration in Nordic Marketplaces, what is driving the recovery here, which we've seen in the first quarter?
The recovery in revenue in Marketplaces? Yeah. As I was clear about, it's very much driven by the recovery in jobs in Norway and being quite a substantial, 23% of the total portfolio. When you see that strong growth in a vertical like that affects the whole area. That is the main explanation. We saw a good increase in momentum throughout the first quarter, so several factors, but that's the one main explanation.
I think also regarding the question here, is it volume or ARPA driving the growth? I think it differs a little bit from vertical. I think like you highlighted in your presentation, Kristin, in Norway for jobs, the team has also worked on new initiatives to drive ARPA, so it's a combination of both. I think if you go to the appendix in the presentation, you also see the volume development in the first quarter per vertical. You really see an uptick in volume in the other verticals in Q1, which is the main driver, I would say except maybe jobs in Finn.
Yeah. We can also mention that we have a new price and packaging model in Sweden that's proven successful that we launched in the autumn, and that's giving us good effect now.
Going to transactional services a little bit, you presented today that private solution for cars in Norway. The first question is here, could this be replicated for professionals to use it also for that segment? The second question is when it comes to generalist transactional services, I think Adevinta reported some updates here. Do you have any news to share?
Not so much. It's a high priority, and we're working on it, and the main focus on generalist transactional actually being Blocket now more as our pilot. I would say we're progressing well, but it's a lot of work, high focus, but I think it's a bit too early to report any news on it.
We got some pushback here on your comment from the board who said we are not considering listing on the marketplaces. I don't know if you can elaborate more why the board is not reconsidering that one, looking at creating value?
Yeah. Well, I think I should be careful speaking for the board of Schibsted, but I believe that there were a lot of discussions leading up to the decisions back in 2018 when we decided to keep the Nordic Marketplaces within Schibsted and not spin them off together with Adevinta. I believe that decision was made for the long term, and that temporary market conditions that we see now is not going to shift such a fundamental decision that was made back at that time. That's my interpretation of it, and then I should be very careful speaking on behalf of our owners and the board.
I think there's one more question currently here in the Q&A feed, and that is, again, News Media, podcast subscriptions. Do you have any information on the price point you're aiming for, or is it too early to comment on that one?
It's too early to comment. As I hope you could understand, we're excited about this opportunity and the signings that we made and all the top-notch podcasters basically joining this effort. It's going to be an exciting road ahead for the podcast. Hopefully by the end of this year, we will be able to show you something.
Yes. Currently, there are no more questions in the Q&A feed, so I suggest we wait maybe just five, six seconds if a new question pops up. I think otherwise, we can just round it up here. No, I think it seems like you covered all questions here. Thank you, Kristin and Ragnar, and also everyone for taking your time. I don't know if you have some closing remarks, Kristin, before we switch off.
Just thank you all for good questions and for your continued support in that I think we have a good momentum as the results show, and April is looking good. We are excited about the future here on our end.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you.