Here in Barcelona, and also thank you so much for joining us online today. My name is Yongdong Peng, and I'm heading the FP&A and IR function here at Schibsted. Our executive team and I are really excited to welcome you today to present the first Capital Markets Day at Schibsted Marketplaces following the major transition over the past year. We have prepared an exciting program, walking you through the overall strategy and priorities for the new company and for our four verticals, which is really the base for our business. This is not really a new strategy; it's rather an update on the strategy which we presented at the CMD in March last year. The whole team here is also present, and you will hear from most of them throughout the day.
And also, they're very much looking forward to some mingling after the presentation and Q&A has come to an end. And now, let's go over to the program. So, to kick off, Christian, our CEO, will present the strategy for the company on the priorities over the next years. And then we will hear from our EVPs for the four verticals on their ambitions and the milestones and building blocks to reach the ambitions they have. Robin Suwe, EVP for Mobility, and Kjersti Høklingen, EVP for Real Estate, will start. And then we will have a short 15-minute break after a Q&A session where we can discuss the questions related to their parts. And then we meet again. And EVP for Jobs, Eddie, will present the strategy for that area, followed by Cathrine, focusing on the Re-commerce business.
Finally, our CFO, PC Mølland, will present the financial framework for the new company and provide some insights on how we aim to create sustainable value over the following years to come. For the Q&A session, we have two microphones here today, so please indicate when you have questions. And for the ones falling online, please use Slido to ask questions, which I will address then throughout the day in the two Q&A sessions. And with this, it's my great pleasure to introduce Christian. So, Christian has a 20-year experience of the tech and digital marketplace industry and has a really great track record of driving transformation and value creation in Schibsted. The last transformation he's done is a change from a verticalization from the country-based to a vertical-based operating model. And prior to his current role, Christian had several key positions in Schibsted.
He was a CEO of FINN, and before that, he was Chief Product and Tech Officer for the global marketplace portfolio before the Adevinta spin-off in 2019. Christian's passion for Marketplaces, his extensive experience, and his really strong insights have shaped the value creation over the last years and will continue to do so. Welcome, Christian.
Thank you so much, Yongdong, and a warm welcome to all of you here. It's now a year and a half since we met in Oslo for our last Capital Markets Day, and I think it's safe to say a lot has happened since then. We have finally, and I say finally, been able to do what I have personally dreamt about for years, and that is to create an entirely new company, a different company solely focused on Marketplaces. And I can say that the leadership team and I, we are very eager to share with you our strategy and our ambition for the years to come. This next leg of our journey will be both exciting and, at the same time, require something new from us as a company, as a team, and as individual leaders.
But before we dive into this exciting future, let's take a quick look at the journey that got us here. It's so amazing to see all that. This is clearly a history that we are and that we should be very proud of. It is quite unique in terms of making bold and successful strategic moves. And I have to say, personally, I feel incredibly fortunate to have been part of most of this journey. We've always been pioneers at Schibsted. We have seen trends before others. We've turned those into opportunities. We have been unafraid of driving change both internally and externally. And by doing so, we have not only created one, but actually two globally leading marketplace companies. And I vividly remember when I became CEO in FINN and the challenge I faced.
The world was quickly becoming mobile, but all our users, all our products, and our revenue were still on desktop, and I decided to go all in with a mobile-first approach, even though that required enormous organizational and platform changes, and I think today that choice is obvious, right, but it certainly wasn't then. It was a bold leap of faith, but it was really something that set the stage for future success, and that triggered a wave of innovation and growth in our company, and now we find ourselves once again at the beginning of such a growth curve, and I can say that standing before you here today, I actually feel much of the same anticipation that I felt in 2009, so accelerating is really the next step for us. That is a natural continuation of the verticalization journey that we have started.
I think it has been enabled by these two transformational milestones that we have seen in the past year. First, realizing over 20 years of value creation through the majority sale of our Adevinta shares. Secondly, the divestment of News Media. This has really enabled us to reshape our entire company. I'd like to start out by touching on both these two because these are two connected events that actually have set the stage for many of the strategic decisions that we will present here throughout the day. The Adevinta transaction, that was really a page-turning milestone for us, closing in late May as the largest Nordic private equity transaction ever. Not only did that unlock great value for us and our shareholders, but it also set us up for future success.
And we sold to an investor group led by Permira and Blackstone, reducing our stake by 60% at more than a 50% premium. And that was clearly the most certain and the most value-accretive solution. At the same time, we maintain incremental value upside in what I think is a really, really great company and a company that has world-class owners as well. And this transaction realized NOK 25 billion. And to me, that is really a testament to the 20 years of value creation of being pioneers in the classifieds industry. It really proves our ability to deliver value over time. And the deal strengthened our balance sheet, obviously, but it also returned significant capital to our shareholders. And that really paved the way for the second of the two transformational milestones, the divestment of News Media.
Because it was really our public commitment to reducing our Adevinta ownership and returning capital to shareholders that triggered the Tinius Trust, which is our largest shareholder, to acquire News Media. And this transaction, which was valued at 6.3 billion NOK, was closed in June, and that really unlocked our full potential as a company by splitting up into two more focused companies, Media and Marketplaces. And now, by separating, we have been able to take really important steps to reduce both organizational as well as technical complexity. And it has really allowed us to start simplifying both our portfolio, our strategy, as well as the cost structure, as you have seen. I do want to mention also that in our agreement with the Tinius Trust, they have agreed to support the removal of the current dual-class share structure by January 2026.
And by becoming really a pure-play Marketplaces company with then a single share class, we think there will be much more shareholder alignment and that this will also increase the attractiveness to a broader investor base. So in addition to these two transformational milestones, I also need to touch upon the rationale behind the ongoing verticalization. And the reason is that the new strategy that you will hear here today is really a continuation of our ongoing verticalization. And we decided to verticalize due to evolving user and customer needs. They were really demanding more specialized solutions. And we also saw more potential in our markets than what we could realize with our old country-based structure. Because it was really so that each time we developed a new solution, we had to duplicate the effort four times, once for each market.
That, to me, is just too slow and too expensive. That meant that in January last year, in 2023, we restructured our country-based setup into four cross-Nordic verticals: Mobility, Real Estate, Jobs, and Re-commerce. We really, in a way, set our verticals free, giving them the necessary autonomy to reach their full potential, which we believe will ultimately serve our users and customers in both the best and most efficient way. Now, I can say that this transformation has not only been simple, but I also believe that we now have quite solid proof of success and that that has validated to us that we are heading in the right direction. We continue to deliver solid financial results despite a quite challenging macro environment.
We have continuous innovation of our number one positions, and that has improved our services to users and customers, driving ARPA expansion, which is really something that has been and will be key for us also going forward, and even though there is still a lot more that we both can and will do when it comes to optimizing our profitability, I also want to say that we already today deliver substantial value at the bottom line at around NOK 1.6 billion in EBITDA in 2023, and now, with our verticalization, we have actually been that has enabled us to take a more holistic view across our markets when it comes to monetization, and that has enabled us to develop more structured multi-year monetization plans.
And the result of that is that we can set a higher ambition, and we can invest more into future-proofing our business models towards our professional customers, which is so important. And the revenue growth is also closely linked to our new transactional business models. Here we are expanding proven concepts that solve both user and customer needs in better ways while at the same time enabling higher take rates. And these concepts, they have yielded more than 90% annual growth since 2020. And they are, in several areas, I would say, also leading in Europe. Let me take a couple of examples. And let me begin by mobility. Here we have the C2B model, which provides convenience both to consumers and dealers.
As a company, we benefit from having, on one side, both this high-touch model with really strong monetization, and on the other end, also having this lighter-touch model in AutoVex and Hejdåbil in Finland and Sweden that has more scalability. Then we have Re-commerce. Here we now have transactional C2C solutions like ToriDiili and Fiks Ferdig in three out of four countries, really with rapid growth and approaching best-in-class take rates as well. Then finally, we have Qasa and HomeQ in real estate, in rentals. They are really leading the way in the Swedish market, solving clear needs among both tenants and landlords. I would say that a lot of our momentum and a lot of our success hinges on the ongoing verticalization. I think we have done really great work over the last two years to build much stronger vertical capabilities.
We have really strengthened vertical expertise as one example, and that has enabled us to respond more forcefully to user and customer needs. And a crucial part is, of course, the platform consolidation. Today, we still operate with a lot of different platforms. And again, let me take mobility as an example. Here we have six different platforms with six different business models. And that, to me, is just too expensive, too slow, and really not the best way forward. So completing this consolidation onto one common platform is really something that we see will both streamline our technology, our processes, and really pave the way for much more operational efficiency. That means that we can then develop solutions once for all of Nordics. That provides, of course, scale benefits and also cost reduction as a result.
It also improves both our speed and our innovation, again, enabling us to roll out solutions across several markets more or less simultaneously. And I would say that we are progressing really well with this consolidation. We had a really major milestone earlier this year when we rolled out Tori in Finland onto our common platform. And Cathrine will tell you here a little bit later that we have really seen solid progress and positive traction of that during the first six months, matching what we saw in Norway when we rolled out Fiks Ferdig there. And I also want to say that we have come quite far when it comes to having one app across brands and countries. We now have both the app in FINN, in Tori, and in DBA built on the same solution.
Talking about DBA, that's what we are working on right now when it comes to the consolidation, and we aim to launch that on the common platform in Q1 next year. So I think in sum, we can say that we are really well on our way to become a pure-play marketplace powerhouse. We are more ready than ever to accelerate our business. So with that, I really want to switch gears from talking about what we have done to what we will do as a new company. So what will we then do as a new company? Well, I want to start out by saying that it feels a little bit odd to present this with an old name, a name that will certainly change. And I can say that we are thinking of this, Schibsted Marketplaces, more or less as a working title.
It serves a purpose for now, but we aim to launch our new name and our new brand in the first half of 2025. And to me, this new name is really a very tangible symbol of becoming a very different, a new and very different company. And I can also say that we aim to capitalize on this launch of the new name and brand, the momentum that we think that will create both internally as well as externally. So as I said, we do well business-wise, but we also do good for society. And we think that sustainability is an underlying megatrend that we will benefit from in the years to come. Consumers demand this, and regulators will really favor sustainable businesses. And by being really a purpose-driven company, we will continue to attract top talent in our markets as well.
And we are in a really fortunate position because all our brands are really well positioned as sustainable solutions out there. Some of them, like FINN and Tori as an example, they are even considered the most sustainable in our markets. They have both won the Sustainable Brand Index several years in a row. So I think we can say that sustainability will continue to be a core part of our overarching mission. We strongly believe that we can continue to make a positive impact on society and the planet at large by empowering people to make smart choices for themselves and future generations. Now, as we discussed at our last Capital Markets Day, we see kind of two dimensions of growth for our company. First, it's about addressing new user needs, new user and customer needs, non-consumption, as well as new segments.
That opens up entirely new, large, and growing markets. Secondly, it is about optimizing our core classifieds and scaling our transactional models. Both of those contribute to higher take rates. And in sum, these two really increase our total addressable market as a company and give us a really significant growth runway for many, many years. And that leads us to our strategy, which we call Accelerate Future Winners. And in essence, that means that we are focusing on our existing leadership positions. We will be allocating resources and capital to the areas where we see the most potential. And secondly, we will bet on what we see as future winners. That's areas, positions, and concepts that have a positive trajectory and where we also see that we have both the playbook and the capabilities needed to win those in the future.
This strategy then outlines these three value creation levers. Simplify, a simpler organization, a simpler strategic agenda really allows us to respond both more quickly and more forcefully to market changes and market opportunities. That means we will streamline our portfolio, our organization, and our strategy to really focus on these winners, but also to reduce complexity and embed cost discipline and cost efficiency into our culture and into our ways of working as an organization. We have verticalize, and it's really essential for us to understand and serve user and customer needs better than anyone else. That is needed to deliver superior products in the market. We will deepen our vertical expertise. We will innovate at scale on one consolidated platform, and we will boost monetization with a more commercial approach, a more commercial mindset in a way. Finally, we have expand.
This is all about investing in what I said, these future winners, areas like mobility, C2B, real estate rentals, or real estate in Finland as an example. We will really focus on the Nordics and opportunities that we see in the markets because this is really where we see that the investments we make, they really strengthen and build on each other, so to speak. In total, we believe that this strategy will really trigger a new wave of innovation, growth, drive, commercial intensity in our organization, but also that it will lift up and increase our focus on efficiency internally. This strategy has consequences for our portfolio, and we will be simplifying that. We will increase, as I said, our focus on marketplace winners such as mobility and real estate as examples.
That also means that we will exit positions that we no longer consider core or where we don't really see the clear path to a leadership position. Some of this we have already done. For example, we have already sold Rocker. We have shut down Honk, Tori Autot, and Rakentaja. We have decided to exit jobs in Sweden. That is Blocket Jobs and Jobbs afari, as well as jobs in Finland where we have a dialogue to sell Oikotie Jobs. We will also exit Lendo Group, Prisjakt, Mittanbud, Servicefinder, Remppatori, 3byggetilbud, as well as the majority of our venture portfolio. And for all of these companies, we will now be looking to sell them to new owners. And I really want to say that we still see a very bright future for these companies. They are great companies.
It is just that their potential is even greater with owners who can really give them the full attention that they deserve as companies. When it comes to Delivery, we will retain that for now. We do think that it plays an important strategic role in the buildup of Re-commerce in Norway. That said, if we look over time, we actually think that this company will become a really great and solid and attractive standalone e-commerce Delivery company, and that it will then be able to stand on its own two feet in a different ownership structure of some kind, so with that, let's turn to our amazing Marketplaces, and as we are now focusing on winning positions, I think it is crucial to begin in one important place, and that is to recognize the importance that strong network effects have.
Really, by having these leading positions in two-sided Marketplaces with both consumers and professional customers. When you are in such a winning number one position, really the value you create multiplies, and it attracts more users, more customers in this amazing flywheel effect. And that in turn really opens up new innovative ways that we can deliver value to users and customers. And if you look at this portfolio here, it's pretty clear that we have a very impressive portfolio of positions across the Nordics that all exhibit these kinds of effects that I just explained. So in mobility, we have solid number one positions in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. FINN in Norway has 83% top-of-mind awareness, and in Blocket, we have 60%. In real estate, we have a solid number one position in Norway.
I would say we are ahead of our FINN's competitor, Etuovi, on many of the key metrics that we measure in the battle for the number one position. We have top-of-mind of 80% and 37% in Norway and Finland, respectively. We also have in Sweden the number one position in Real Estate rentals. Here we have a 31% top-of-mind. We have Jobs. Here we also have a solid number one position in Norway with a 66% top-of-mind. Finally, we have Re-commerce. Here we have number one general list positions across our four markets. We do face strong competition in certain categories by niche players, I would say, especially within fashion. As you can see here, we retain extremely strong top-of-mind, particularly in Norway and Finland with 81% and 72%, respectively.
I mean, we obviously think that there's so much value creation potential from this portfolio. In mobility, we will innovate to create monetization opportunities within both professional and private, and we will win C2B in the Nordics. In real estate, we will grow our existing position and a leadership position in Norway. We will expand our position in Finland, and we will scale the Swedish model for real estate rentals to Norway and to Finland. In jobs, we will innovate and optimize our business model in Norway, and we will exit the jobs positions in Sweden and Finland. Finally, for Re-commerce, we will continue to grow and monetize the leading positions we have, and we will simplify and increase our efficiency to reach profitability in Re-commerce.
Now, to execute on this strategy, we also have to continue to simplify our company and address many of the legacy complexities that still exist. Even though, as I said, the platform consolidation is progressing really well, and I would also say that the simplification of our portfolio, of our organization, has really brought us miles forward in this. I do want to also say that we are still not as simple and as efficient as I would like us to be as a company. The separation from News Media that will be finalized in 2025, that will allow us to do further simplifications, let's say, in our cross-vertical Foundation. And then we have the consolidation onto our Nordic and FINN-based platform. That will, as we have also said before, take somewhat longer time, but it's also one of those projects that will deliver value as we move along.
I would say that beyond these two, both the Media separation and the platform consolidation, we also face a complex legal structure. We face a lot of fragmentation when it comes to, let's say, back-office systems, processes, and many other legacy complexities. There is substantial work to be done to resolve and simplify these legacies. But I also want to say at the same time, rest assured, we now have a really solid and structured plan for how to tackle those complexities. Let's also deep dive into the platform consolidation. We are approaching this in a brand-by-brand manner. We started with Tori in Finland. That's our simplest asset with only focus on Re-commerce.
We are now really leveraging all the learnings we made from that as we plan and execute on brands with more complexity, more verticals, and more revenue, and also which also represent a higher share of our financial value. And as you can see here on the page, each consolidation consists of three major milestones. First, it's the launch of the consumer-facing marketplace. That allows us to have faster innovation as well as reducing, let's say, duplication of development effort. Secondly, it's the harmonization of the professional tools that allows us to have additional products in the market and also further reduce the duplication of development. And then finally, we have the shutdown of the legacy system that eliminates the duplicate cloud costs that we have. And what we can tell today is that we aim to be done with most of milestone one during 2025 or early into 2026.
We also aim to reach milestone two for the portfolio in scope by the end of 2026. We're very aware of the challenges that these kinds of projects usually entail, but I also want to say that we now have quite some experience here, and we are quite confident that this plan is achievable, that we are tackling complexity in the right way. A key to our success has really been treating this as a, let's say, top-priority business initiative. It's not an IT project. It's a top-priority business initiative that has the support and involvement of the entire leadership team, as well as a rather broad involvement across our organization as well. I really want to ask for your patience as we continue on this path. We really already see the contours of a new company emerging at the other end of this.
It will be a faster, more efficient company with more scale in the verticals to deliver these superior products that we really can win and monetize our markets with. So we are confident that this strategy positions us both for growth and margin expansion. We will capture the revenue opportunity by improving the monetization and by scaling the transactional initiatives, which both contribute to higher take rates. At the same time as we're doing that, we will reset and restructure our cost base to be fit for purpose for a smaller and more focused company scope. And we aim to capture this revenue opportunity without a corresponding growth in the underlying operational expenses. And in total, this will support a significant margin improvement in the years to come. So that means the following financial targets.
For Mobility, the financial target will be 12%-17% revenue growth and an EBITDA margin of 55%-60%. For Real Estate, 12%-17% revenue growth and 45%-50% margin. Jobs, 5%-10% revenue growth and margin above 55%. And finally, Re-commerce above 20% revenue growth and single-digit positive margin in 2027. So with that, I do want to say that to succeed with this, we are really going to build on our legacy. We will continue to be a front-runner in the classifieds industry. And we will Accelerate Future Winners by simplifying our portfolio and organization, focusing on the existing leadership positions. We will deepen our vertical capabilities and deepen our scale to deliver superior products. And we will accelerate positions where we have the playbook and the capabilities needed to win. Thank you so much.
With that, we will go over to our verticals, and we will start with mobility with Robin. I can say that Robin started his career in Schibsted in 2009. During his time, he has held several senior management positions, both in Blocket, in Adevinta, as well as in Nordic Marketplaces. In fact, Robin was the one who brought Nordic Marketplaces together with a unified strategy. I sometimes say that the Nordic Marketplaces and now Schibsted Marketplaces probably wouldn't have been the same company as it is today had it not been for Robin. Take it away, Robin, and please welcome him.
Thank you, Christian. Thank you for that introduction. Over the next 20 minutes, I'll give you an introduction to our current state in mobility and also our future plans.
I'll start with an overview of the markets that we operate in and our positions in these markets, and also the key trends that are currently shaping our business. And from there, I will outline our strategic direction and dive deeper into three of our main growth areas. And then finally, we will conclude with the financial outlook. So let me start by giving you an overview of the markets that we operate in. So in the Nordics, we serve the combined population of 27 million people and three million used car sales annually. And these markets are global leaders when it comes to digital infrastructure and fleet electrification. We hold the leading positions in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark with trusted and beloved household brands such as FINN, Blocket, Bytbil, and DBA and Bilbasen.
Across our Nordic mobility platforms, we support 400,000 active listings every month, and we work with close to 100% of all dealers in these markets. And the strength of these positions is clearly illustrated by our user engagement metrics, generating over 78 million monthly visits on average each month, and FINN outperforms its closest competitor with more than 100x. For Blocket and Bytbil, those numbers are 70x, and for our Danish operations, Bilbasen and DBA, the lead is more than 20x. Also, in the growing C2B segment, where private consumers sell their cars through digital auctions to dealers, we have the number one positions with Nettbil in Norway and with AutoVex in Finland. And this year, we have also expanded the AutoVex concept into Sweden with Wheelaway, establishing essentially a startup position to further expand our footprint in the region.
And looking beyond Marketplaces, we also have the leading dealer tools with Carweb in Norway and with Bilinfo in Denmark. So we truly are the leading destination for used car sales in the Nordics. So with that, let's now move on to the key macro trends that are shaping our industry. So as you know, the broader automotive landscape is shaped by multiple mega trends, creating both challenges and opportunities. Despite pressures from higher interest rates and currency fluctuations, the Nordic used car market continues to perform well. And although these conditions certainly have made things more difficult for both consumers and dealers, we see that the Nordic demand for used cars remains strong. And while this continued volume stability is positive for dealers, the growing presence of EVs in the used car market and the shift towards agency models for new cars are creating complexities for dealers.
We believe that in this environment, our value proposition of having access to the largest base of consumers, having tools to source more used cars, and to provide data and insights about the market development is a very attractive value proposition for our dealers to both manage their inventory and to stay competitive. Additionally, we have seen a multi-year decline in C2C trade, driven by both consumers' demand for increasing convenience and for the increased importance of the used car business for dealers. As the industry landscape continues to evolve, we are ready to support our users and guide them through this change, and also to provide more tools and access to more insights to dealers to grow their business. With that, let's now review our financial performance. Last year, we delivered total revenues of NOK 2.2 billion with an EBITDA of NOK 1.1 billion.
Overall, the total revenues grew by 12% on an FX-neutral basis, with classified revenues being up 16% and transactional models growing by 62%. This growth was then slightly offset by a slowdown in advertising. Historically, our ARPA growth, in other words, average revenue per ad, has been driven by annual CPI adjustments. As we laid out in our last Capital Markets Day, we have now taken a much more structured approach to pricing, and you can see the development here with solid developments both for privates and for professional customers. Let me just give you two recent examples of how we're now working with this. In Sweden, we have now introduced new premium products for private consumers, and in September, we've launched value-based pricing, resulting in a 20% uplift in ARPA for privates.
For professionals, we have increased by, on average, 15% across the Nordics, driven largely by removing legacy discount agreements. So to sum up our point of departure, we have fantastic positions in a highly attractive market, and we are delivering solid financial performance. Now let's look into the strategic direction ahead and our growth opportunities. So we operate two key classified networks for privates and for professionals, and our strategic direction is really designed to ensure the long-term relevance and the quality of these two networks to really prepare ourselves for the next phase of growth. And at the core of the strategy, you see three main foundational elements. And first of all, is that we're building one platform, and this will enable us to innovate faster. It will enable us to go faster to market and to increase our cost efficiency.
By using our unique marketplace data, we can also bring more convenience, more relevance, and more trust into the market, helping users make more informed decisions. Our data-driven insights are especially valued by dealers looking to manage their inventory and to attract customers to a larger extent in a highly competitive used car market. Then finally, with deep vertical systems, we're enhancing services along the entire user journey, moving from listings towards the transaction to become a more integral part in the daily operations for dealers. Together, these elements allow us to increase our pace of innovation and to be more valuable for both our professional and our private customers. Particularly for our professional customers, we're really proud about the ways we plan to enhance value going forward.
First of all, we're adding a lot more depth to our pro services, including increased capabilities within lead and sales attribution so that dealers know exactly the kind of value and effect that our platforms deliver. Secondly, with the increasing need to source used cars to grow their used car business, our C2B auctions in Norway, Sweden, and Finland will offer dealers a wide selection of cars sourced directly from consumers. Thirdly, we are reinventing our advertising solutions following the divestment of Schibsted's Media business. We're now creating new advertising products that are tailored to the needs of the automotive industry. For consumers, our mission is equally rewarding. We're working to simplify and to support their journey, either if it's buying a new car or selling their car.
With more car options than ever, diverse drivetrains, more brands, more forms of ownership, it can be quite overwhelming to buy a car. We're proud to be a neutral and trusted partner to support our users to make smarter mobility choices. Additionally, we plan to enhance the search experience for car buyers on our platform by leveraging AI to improve matchmaking and to make the experience of our products much more personalized. Finally, when it comes to selling a car, we recognize that we need to provide different solutions based on consumer preference and on the attributes of the car. For this reason, we both offer more of a hands-on approach to C2C listings, but also a hands-free and convenience alternative with C2B auctions.
So this strategy will continue to grow our impact and deepen the value that we provide to all market participants, and that will ensure that also in the long term, we are the destination for used cars in the Nordics also in the future. Looking at our major growth opportunities, we see three ways to attractively grow the mobility revenues in the years to come. For professional, we are focusing on delivering measurable value to dealers through unique data, new dealer packages, and enhanced platform tools. For privates, we're optimizing the experience of both buying and selling cars while also transitioning to a more diversified and value-based pricing model. And in C2B, we will strengthen our number one positions in Norway and in Finland, as well as scale our success across the Nordics. So let's now dive deeper into each of these three opportunities, starting with the professional classifieds.
We see a clear opportunity to develop our new solutions while also simplifying our offering to dealers. Over the past year, we have achieved an 18% increase in ARPA from car dealers by streamlining our prices. We have removed outdated agreements, and by that, allowing us to create a more transparent pricing structure and leveling the playing field for all dealers. Now we're taking the next step by introducing tiered dealer-level packages, starting in Norway in January 2025. These packages will provide even more value to dealers with essential tools like car valuation, data insights, value-added services, and premium branding products. This tiered approach will let dealers choose the package that best suits their needs and help them to manage their business while driving incremental revenue growth for us.
And this product-led ARPA growth strategy will give dealers more tools to thrive, and it will also grow our business. So we're really excited about these new packages and about this new way of working to grow our business. So let's look a bit closer at the logic of our packages and focus on the four key areas: insights, platform tools, branding, and lead attribution. And with insights, we will provide dealers with data about the market development, about their inventory, and also about the specific car. And by January 1st, our own car valuation algorithm will be available to all Norwegian dealers included in the basic package. With branding, we're introducing advanced branding options like the extended dealer profile with additional content marketing capabilities, trust badges to increase the visibility of the dealer, but also to build credibility towards the buyers.
With enhanced platform tools, we connect the insights that we provide with actions and how they will be able both to manage their inventory, but also to source new cars. And as the primary source of leads for dealers, we understand the importance of transparency in terms of tracking the performance that we deliver, and we believe that improved lead attribution will help dealers with measurable return on investment and hence also to be able to optimize their spend on our platforms. So together, these four elements will deepen the dealer engagement on our platforms, creating a more scalable ecosystem of services that will align the success of our business with the success of our customers. With that, let's now move on to the growth opportunity within the private segment. So across the Nordics, we see a wide range in monetization levels, and Norway currently stands out.
However, when we compare ourselves with best in class, we still see a 3x opportunity. And this highlights quite a substantial opportunity for us to grow across our markets. So to seize this opportunity, we're refining our pricing to better match the needs of the customers by introducing both a more differentiated and a value-based pricing logic, while also streamlining and making a more consistent approach across the Nordics. Another key growth driver within the private segment is Smidig Bilhandel, our transactional C2C solution in Norway, which has shown excellent traction this year. And year to date, transactions have grown by more than 129%, with over 4,000 monthly transactions as of September. And user feedback has been very positive, with high satisfaction ratings indicating that Smidig Bilhandel saves them time and simplifies the selling process.
This is really a proof point that we're meeting real user needs with this product. Combined with Nettbil, our Norwegian C2B asset, we are now a major player when it comes to being a selling destination in Norway. In September, 10% of all the ownership changes in the country flowed through our platforms. By refining our listing model and by growing our private transactions, we're also improving the private seller experience. Our goal is simple. We want to solve the underlying job to be done for our consumers. We want to help them sell their cars more efficiently, no matter the channel. Whether they choose an ad, a transactional journey, or a C2B auction, we will help them. We will be transparent, and we will give them the best options that suit their needs.
So let's now take a closer look at what we're already doing with this seller journey to make it better for our customers. We're focused on providing tools that empower sellers then across these different channels. So one example that we have now done is the new car selling guide on FINN, which guides sellers through a questionnaire to recommend the best sales channel for them based on their preferences and based on the attributes for their car. And this transparency will then allow users to choose the most suitable option. And the car selling guide has quickly become a really valuable lead generator for our transactional products. So it's a clear example of how we're helping our users make informed decisions while also supporting our ambitions in growing, especially in C2B.
Okay, so we're really excited about the growth potential in C2B, and we believe that it's a significant opportunity for us. In Norway and in Finland, we have already helped 100,000 consumers to sell their cars to a dealer through our auctions, and we expect continued growth as we expand across the Nordics. And I want to really highlight that we are responding to the underlying need from consumers for increased convenience and on the dealer side for the growing importance of the used car business as the new car business is being transformed. And since our last Capital Markets Day, we have strengthened our operations to support future growth. For Nettbil, this includes a successful founder transition and improved focus on product and technology to boost and drive efficiencies. And this has been successful in Nettbil.
We see strong results, a 10% take rate, and a 20% EBITDA margin year to date. Meanwhile, for our Finnish C2B platform, AutoVex, we have enhanced the product offering. We have doubled the take rate from 1% to 2%, and we have entered Sweden with Wheelaway. And with a 2% take rate, AutoVex has achieved break-even this year with continued strong growth. Sweden remains a critical market for our ambition to win in the Nordics. And with Wheelaway, we are still refining our model to find product-market fit before we put more resources and more efforts into the scaling. So based on our experience in the C2B market, we're now focusing on three levers to grow our C2B assets. First of all, we're really focusing on growing our existing positions in Norway and in Finland, where we are number one.
Both Nettbil and AutoVex have established strong brands, and we also see an uptake in organic traffic. Still, the market share is only 6%, so we believe that there are multi-year growth leeway for them ahead. Secondly, we will continue to build synergies with our Marketplaces, as illustrated, for example, with the FINN seller guide, and we will also integrate them closer with our dealer tools to build synergies and to unlock new growth. And thirdly, we will scale C2B across the Nordics. Our immediate focus now is to nail Sweden, but we also see opportunities for cross-border trade and to enable exports to further boost growth. So with the proven track record in Norway and in Finland, we are well positioned to grow in this segment.
Mobility is positioned to meet our medium-term targets of 12%-17% revenue growth and an EBITDA margin of 55%-60%. And as previously highlighted, this will be driven by significant growth in our core classifieds through the launch of our dealer-level packages for professionals and through differentiated and value-based pricing for our private customers. And then we expect expansion of our transactional offerings, such as Smidig Bilhandel, but also C2B, to be sort of a growth booster to increase growth even further. So to conclude the part on Mobility, we hold exceptionally strong leadership positions in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Our markets are attractive with high digital maturity, high EV adoption, positioning us well for the future of the automotive industry.
We have attractive growth opportunities, and we're really confident in our ability to deliver on our financial targets while also increasing the value that we deliver to both dealers and to our users. We see great progress in our C2B operations, and we have a clear plan to continue to grow this business, and we believe that we can become the leading player in the Nordics at attractive margins, and lastly, our transition to a common Nordic tech platform will accelerate innovation. It will give us faster go-to-market, and it will also give us cost efficiencies, helping us set up for long-term success, so with that, I will now hand it over to real estate and to Kjersti Høklingen. Kjersti joined Schibsted in 2022.
She came from the role as EVP of technology and digital channels in DNB, and she was also the board member of Eiendomsverdi, a real estate tech and data company. And Kjersti has been an extremely valuable addition to the leadership team. She has a proven track record in building new market positions in highly dynamic environments, and she demonstrates strong and engaging leadership. So with that, I'll hand it over to you, Kjersti. Warm welcome up on stage.
Thank you so much, Robin, for that kind introduction. And hi everyone, I'm Kjersti, and I'm the EVP of Schibsted Real Estate. And as Christian has said, I'm really excited to be here today to share with you our strategy for how to strengthen our leadership in the Nordic markets.
Over the next 20 minutes, I will take you through key insights and plans for how to drive further growth and value in the real estate vertical. I will start also by giving you some overview over our position and market dynamics. Today, we hold trusted leadership positions across Norway, Finland, and Sweden, leading in both inventory and traffic in all markets. In Norway, with FINN, we have a leading position in both for sales and for rent segment with over 40 million visits per month. In Sweden, we hold leading positions in rentals with Blocket and Qasa, and this was further strengthened this year by the acquisition of HomeQ. Looking at Finland and Norway, we also have a leading position across segments, however, in a market with strong competition.
Since our last Capital Markets Day, we have grown our traffic leadership, now having 14% more visits than the closest competitor. Across all our markets, our listing model has proven resilience in economic downturns. Despite fluctuations in property transactions, listing volumes have grown across most segments, and this highlights the attractiveness of our Nordic positions and markets. Now let's move over to financial performance. Our real estate business has delivered over NOK 1 billion in revenue in 2023, reflecting a 24% year-over-year growth, and in the last 12 months, we reached a revenue of NOK 1.14 billion. Norway accounts for 80% of the revenue, while Finland and Sweden contribute equally to the remaining share. Double-clicking on Norway, the for sale segment is the key driver with 57% of the revenue.
However, the business has a healthy balance with categories such as rentals, commercial properties, and leisure homes accounting for 35% of the revenue. Across markets, our classified revenue delivered a solid 25% growth in 2023, and our transactional service is also performing well with 103% growth. So all in all, we are pleased with recent financial performance and also with the balanced growth we have between core classifieds and our new transactional models. So with that, I'll take you into the real estate strategy. And at the core of our strategy lies the commitment of empowering all stakeholders to make informed decisions on our platforms. Our ambition towards professionals stays the same. We are committed to helping the real estate agents to grow their business. For home seekers and homeowners, the buying and selling or renting a home are major decisions.
And to empower informed choices here, we have over the last two years strengthened our presence across more parts of the housing journey. Our competitive advantage lies in leveraging unique marketplace data to drive our product development and price strategies, and now with AI unlocking new possibilities. And with our team of highly skilled real estate experts across the Nordics, we are now building deeper vertical expertise, effective solutions, and user journeys. And in addition to this, being a Nordic marketplace, our ability to leverage synergies across our markets is boosting innovation speed and operational efficiency. And here I would like to give you some examples. The first example illustrates how we can leverage synergies across our markets. For all of us searching for a new home, location is an important factor.
FINN has an extensive neighborhood solution with all the information you need, including nearby schools, public transportation options, and also user reviews of the neighborhood, and providing superior neighborhood insights is also very relevant for the FINNish market, and this year, we scaled this solution to our users in Norway, which has boosted engagement significantly, and with the same synergies we see in the professional segment, here we also have several offerings to our agents connected to market insights and lead gen products that will be scaled from FINN to Norway. The second example illustrates our unique marketplace data, and let me just show you a demo of an upcoming feature with interactive floor plans. The feature enhances user engagement and makes listings stand out.
But in addition, it provides more structured property data to our platform, enabling new search filters such as room size, number of bathrooms, and much more. And richer property data combined with opportunities of AI will unlock new innovative ways to connect users with their ideal properties in the future. So overall, we see a really strong synergy working across Nordics, and our vertical operating model has in fact enabled us to double our product development speed over the last one to two years, and we are very pleased with that. And now I will take you into the value levers in our strategy. In the real estate strategy, there are three main value levers. In Norway, we see further potential to grow our already leading position. And in Finland, we are now accelerating to achieve a clear market leading position, building on strong momentum.
The third lever is to transform our leading rental classified positions across the Nordics into profitable transactional models. Together, these three levers represent an addressable market of NOK 13 billion. To provide you a little bit more insight into each and every one of them, I will now go into everyone, and I will start with FINN in Norway. FINN continues to be Norway's undisputed marketplace leader in real estate. Our traffic numbers have never been higher, recently increased with another 5%, and this is despite new competition coming into the market this year. FINN benefits from very high user engagement. Last year, more than 1 billion notifications were sent out to our app users. Every Norwegian, we spend 40 minutes every month on FINN real estate. We are also maintaining a high satisfaction score among agents and solid relationships with key stakeholders.
FINN holds strong positions across segments, as I said, with the for sale category being the most valuable. Now I will share with you the performance and potential within this segment. We have seen a robust ARPA growth in this segment with a CAGR of 36%, ending 2023 of an ARPA of above NOK 4,330. Year-to-date ARPA has grown around 10% and reached above NOK 4,700. This is despite packaging downgrades from some agents due to new competition. To understand the business potential, it is important to understand the Norwegian vendor-paid advertising model. Norwegians, they spend on average around NOK 20,000 in marketing when selling their home. Agents, they are bundling several marketing solutions into an agent-branded marketing package, where the FINN listing is by far the component that is providing the majority of the value, hence the buyers to the home sellers.
In this, we consider FINN to be highly cost-efficient. As you can see in the middle of this slide, the cost of FINN listing is only 5% of the total seller cost today. We believe that this price today is not reflected in line with the value we deliver. Additionally, when comparing FINN to the transaction value to best practices, the FINN ad is only 0.11% of the transaction value, indicating more growth potential in this market. With this potential, we believe in continuous growth, and we are now aiming or refining our value-added pricing and packaging strategy. As we announced in our Q3 presentations, we are making significant updates to our product packages. There are three important elements into this change. First, we are optimizing our content and packaging structure to enable clear distinction and healthy balance between tiers.
We are also revising our price and discount model and now introducing a tier-based discount model. This is to simplify the structure and to give stronger incentives to buy our premium products. Secondly, our biggest change is that we are now introducing a new value-based pricing model, which now will factor in both regions and property prices. This makes our pricing more reflective of the true value creation. The new model will now serve as a Foundation for us for more price measures going forward. In our future packaging roadmap, we will keep refining this model with a strong commitment to support agents' need for efficient systems. Thirdly, another key step we are now doing is that we now have clearer consumer communication and transparency on our product offerings.
Because in a more competitive market, it is essential for sellers to understand the return on investments of our services, highlighting both pricing and product effectiveness. Overall, and based on this strategy, our ambition is to sustain strong ARPA growth medium term in line with the performance of the last two years. With that, I will move into FINN and Norway, sorry, Finland and Norway. Our position in Finland is one of our most exciting growth opportunities. In real estate markets, as many of you know already, a winner-takes-most dynamic often applies where market leaders significantly outperform competitors in value creation and monetization. In the FINNish market, the classified take rate as a part of the total transaction value remains low compared to other markets, and we see substantial growth potential by securing a clear leadership position.
And I'm pleased to say that we have strong momentum to accelerate growth in Finland now. Because since the acquisition of Oikotie, we have made strong progress, and with this year's development continuing in the same direction. This year, we have again delivered growth across all key metrics. Traffic has increased by 15%, and the for sale content has increased by 6%, and brand awareness has improved by 18%. And growth in all of these metrics has resulted in us now seeing a 28% increase in leads generated to agents from our platforms. So we are pleased to see that our investments have resulted in strengthened market position. Compared to our closest competitor, our leading nationwide now shows a 14% advantage in traffic, 5% for sale listings, and a 50% higher brand awareness than the closest competitor.
In addition to this, our latest market research shows that we are clearly the preferred marketplace in important areas representing more than 50% of the FINNish housing transaction value. One example of this is that in the capital area and southern regions, we now have a 2.5 times higher top of mind than the closest competitor. Building on this strong momentum, we are now focusing on three key areas in our strategy for Finland. First, our ambition is to have a superior product offering with high engagement, and we have increased our investments and focused here by building on our cross-Nordic advantage. Our recently launched neighborhood concept, as I told you about, is just one example of this, and we aim to launch more new services building on FINN's extensive product portfolio in the near future.
Secondly, we are increasing our investments in brand and marketing, building on our already successful marketing campaigns, and finally, our aim is to be the most efficient marketplace in Finland, and we are closely monitoring progress in lead attribution, and we will have focus on providing value for users and customers, so going forward, we will use our Nordic know-how and commercial playbook, creating value for agents, which will enable higher monetization levels, and to sum up Finland, our recent performance reinforces our confidence in our winning strategy, and we will accelerate our investment to secure our position as the clear market leader, and we are committed to a long-term perspective in this journey, and now I will move into the final value lever with transactional rentals. While home ownership rates remain high in the Nordics, we expect rental living to increase, mirroring trends in the international markets.
Our strategy within rentals is to combine our strong classified brands with superior transactional models and capture higher take rates. And in Sweden with Blocket and our transactional service in Qasa, we have done exactly this. So since 2021, we have achieved solid growth in GMV transacted with a CAGR of 103% the last 12 months, and in the last 10 months, we reached NOK 1.7 billion. Earlier this year, we also acquired HomeQ, which is the leading B2C rental platform in Sweden, and we now have a comprehensive value offering in the Swedish rental market. So with Qasa and HomeQ, we are now providing seamless and a hassle-free rental solution across the entire rental journey. These solutions enable us to monetize along three key value levers in the Swedish market, and each of them is supported by attractive business models that generate strong take rates and high gross margins.
I will just explain these business models to you. First, we have Qasa, which handles all major pain points in the rental process for both tenants and private landlords, and they take a monthly service fee charge of the rental value. Second, HomeQ is used by professional landlords to manage inventory and the rental application process. HomeQ has a SaaS business model with a fee charge for every apartment the landlord has in inventory. Finally, our recently launched tenant-focused product aimed at simplifying rental access for tenants has shown promising results the first month in the markets. In this model, tenants pay a monthly subscription fee. All in all, these levers represent high growth potential, and going forward, we will now scale transactional rentals across existing markets.
Our clear competitive advantage here lies in leveraging our strong brand, as I said, with high traffic and rental inventory. We have now streamlined our operations, enabling cost-efficient scaling. This year, we started scaling to Finland, and by mid-next year, we will have rolled out transactional rentals across all our existing markets. Financially, our Swedish position is expected to have positive margins in 2025, and we expect continuous growth and improved EBITDA in the next years across all our markets. At scale, this represents a NOK 1 billion market opportunity with attractive EBITDA margins. That was our exciting levers, and now I will take you into our financial targets the next years. Real Estate targets revenue growth at a range of 12%-17% with an EBITDA margin of 45%-50% in medium-term perspective.
The main revenue driver is continuous growth in core classifieds in Norway and the effects of an increased market position in Finland. In addition, our scaling of transactional rentals across our markets is expected to have a substantial revenue driver. Margin expansion is driven by revenue growth and a disciplined cost agenda. So with that, I will leave you with the key messages from this presentation. Our real estate portfolio remains resilient with leading positions across Norway, Finland, and Sweden, and we are leveraging these strong market positions to drive further growth and value. We are continuing to expand across the housing journey to strengthen our network effect and empower stakeholders. In Norway, we are elevating our offerings with product packages, and in Finland, we are accelerating efforts to expand the number one position.
Building on our success in Sweden, we are scaling our transactional rentals across all markets with significant growth potential. That was it from real estate.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Kjersti. Then we're ready for our first Q&A session. We have roughly 15 minutes now before the break, and we have two microphones here, so please indicate if you have a question, then we can find you and help. Maybe you can start with Marcus in the front.
Hi, it's Marcus Diebel from J.P. Morgan. One question to Christian. Clearly, Schibsted came a long way in regards to portfolio, lots of changes. At the same time, you still talk about investing to future winners. I know we're going to hear more about it in this year four section, but from your point of view, how do you actually think about new investment decisions?
How are they done internally? How are they discussed compared to your role that you had before? It would be great to share a little bit sort of like what has changed in this regard at Schibsted, if you can talk maybe about this.
Sure, absolutely. I think the changes that you see in our portfolio now is a result of, let's say, a stricter and more disciplined approach to what kind of things we invest in. We had a different strategy in the old Schibsted. You see now that we exit several positions, not only, let's say, in the portfolio outside of Marketplaces, but also within Marketplaces.
And that is a result of kind of being more focused on really just investing in those positions, in these new future winners, where we see that there is really a solid trajectory, like the examples that have been given here today, and where we really see that we have the necessary things needed to win those. So I would say more disciplined is the short answer to it.
Thanks. Ed Young at Morgan Stanley. My question about ARPA. There was lots of great detail in the presentation about the opportunities for ARPA, and you said that most of the growth is going to come from better growth and monetization in core, but you've chosen to guide the group on revenue, not on ARPA, as some of your peers do.
I just wondered if perhaps you could touch on why you've chosen to do it that way rather than spotlight ARPA as a focus going forward.
I think maybe we will come back to some of this when PC has his section, so I suggest you hold that question until then.
Do you have a microphone, Henriette? We can hear you?
Henriette Trondsen, Arctic Securities. If we compare the midpoint on our financial target with the OPEX sales guidance of 40%, we struggle a little bit to match the figure. Should we assume a stable gross margin, that revenue growth is back-loaded, and the comments would be helpful? And also, how should we think about the central cost HQ number going forward?
I think if you have the very detailed financial questions, I suggest you hold those until we have the financial framework in place, because I think a lot of those will be answered in the second part, so that we also have a Q&A section after that. Prioritize the strategic choices more in this round.
Can I go ahead? Yes, Eirik from Carnegie with some operational and strategic questions. First one for Robin. Have you started to kind of receive any indications on what type of packages the different dealers are looking to opt for? And also, you've removed a bunch of these legacy contracts. How are you structuring negotiations going forward? Will individual dealers be able to opt for individual packages? Will it be more of a centralized negotiation? How does that w
ork? Yeah, thanks. So excellent question.
We canceled all the outdated central agreements both in Norway and in Denmark as we entered into 2024. And we now have a fair and transparent pricing structure that's sort of available online, so there are no sort of special deals. And that's the way we sort of foresee it going forward as well. When it comes to the launch of dealer-level packages in Norway, we announced that just a couple of weeks ago, and we're now out discussing this with all the major dealers in Norway. And we're receiving some pushback on yet another price increase, of course. I think that's quite natural. But we're also hearing a lot of positive feedback and a lot of engagement around these new products and this sort of like our new structure. And then the process would work as follows.
So the dealers will make a choice before the end of the year, and then that will be sort of in effect from 1st of January. So it's a bit too early yet to give you more nuance on the penetration of these different packages.
Thank you. And can I go with one more, please, for Kjersti? Have you started to see real estate agents become a bit more sophisticated on how they price their marketing packages after you've made alterations to yours? And have you helped them out in any way, you know, trying to figure out maybe how they could pass through more of that, or is that up to them to decide?
That is, we see that the agents are doing it differently. They are bundling quite differently in the marketing package now.
We haven't seen any major changes to that, but we are constantly having discussions with our customers and the agents on how they can utilize FINN in terms of optimizing their package. That is a very interesting discussion also now when we are introducing the value-based pricing model going forward. That's a continuous discussion that we have with the agents.
Hello. For mobility, isn't the horizon closing the transaction within your Marketplaces and make the payments, give more qualified leads, maybe use your scale to give a better financing or take a bit of that from the transaction?
I assume you mean from dealers, right? Or do you mean also from privates?
Yeah, close the transaction within your marketplace. So it's a more qualified lead or you make the payment. So yeah, the customer makes the payment in your website or something like that.
Yeah, that's a great question. So we see how more and more of the user journey is becoming digitized. Still, the journey of buying a car is quite long, and it's both touching offline elements and online elements. So typically, the research phase, for example, has already been digitized through our channels and through reviews, etc. But then when it comes to actually closing the transaction, we still see that consumers really want to do the test drive, for example, and to see the car in practice. We have done some experimentations on Blocket to provide more of a reservation flow that has been really valuable both for consumers and for dealers. So for example, we've seen a 10x uplift in conversion rate compared to a normal lead.
We do believe that going forward, it will be more of a sort of an omnichannel approach to buying a used car. We will invest more into it once we are sort of on one common platform. For now, it's just been experimentations on Blocket.
Thank you. On real estate, on the 20,000 marketing spend on marketing. FINN is not cheap in some way. What are the agents spending 75% of that marketing dollars? Where are they spending the money? If it's wink, wink, actually part of their commission in some way, it's not as straightforward.
That is not as straightforward. With the marketing package in the different agents, as I said, they're bundling it quite differently. The FINN is a component that, as I said, by far is providing the, we believe, the most value in the package.
They are also taking in their own kind of marketing audience extension product as one example and photos and such. But they are having margins on top of the products that they're bundling in the marketing package as of now. And they do it differently.
Hi, it's Joe from UBS. A couple from me, please. On the auto side, we saw very different take rates and gross profit margins between AutoVex and Nettbil. Could you give us a little bit of color if there are structural differences in the businesses or whether it's a stage of development thing?
Yeah, so there are quite structural differences between Nettbil and AutoVex. And in Nettbil, it's a much more managed model.
So we pick up the car, take it to a test center, do quite a thorough test and test report by a third party, take photos, and then take that car into the auction. We then also take care of the ownership changes and facilitate the payment between dealer and seller, and then sort of ship that car to the dealer. So it's a quite sophisticated and managed approach, while AutoVex is much more of a digital pure play digital model. So very much like the marketplace, you put in all your details in an ad insertion form, you add photos, and you do a sort of a self-assessment of the status of the car, and then it goes out to an auction. So we are not facilitating Delivery, we're not facilitating ownership changes, and we're not facilitating payment.
So hence, the margin structure is quite different, or the gross margin. We believe that going forward, we'll probably see a combination of the two. There's probably opportunities for Nettbil to decrease or sort of digitize larger parts of the process. And for AutoVex, we believe that there can be parts to deliver even more value by taking it over for either the consumer side or for the dealer side.
Very helpful, thank you. And with regards to Delivery, you spoke about it being able to become a great and solid standalone e-commerce Delivery business. What are you waiting to see there? Is it just that you need it to develop further so that it can improve underlying economics? And what's your view on timeline?
First of all, the key element in what I said was that right now it serves a very important purpose, and that is to really strengthen the growth in our e-commerce business in Norway. So that is really the importance that it plays in our portfolio right now. But at the same time, as it is a business that is showing solid growth, it's actually now also profitable. So it is really something that we see. We will continue to develop this. We will see continued growth in it. And it's really about also having a positive cash flow. But over time, as I said, we think that this will become a pure play, let's say, e-commerce Delivery company. Remember, I guess this is maybe not clear to everyone, but this company came from being the newspaper Delivery company.
It has been transformed from that because the volume of newspapers is going down every day. But the e-commerce parcels, that's going up every day, right? So over time, it will become a pure e-commerce Delivery company. And then it will be a really attractive company, and that can also be in a different ownership structure. And right now, we don't have a clear timeline for it, but we have been quite clear that we don't see this as an asset that we will sit with forever. That's pretty clear.
Hey, it's Andrew here from Barclays. I've got one for Robin on mobility and Denmark, which you didn't talk much about in the presentation, and I think runs on a separate pricing model to the other countries. Can you talk a bit about the timeline to migrate the platform in Denmark with others?
What that means for the pricing model when you do it, and how you kind of think about monetization in Denmark specifically over time in cars?
Yeah, excellent question, so as I mentioned, we have a very strong position in Denmark with both Bilbasen and DBA, almost 20x nearest competitor. It was part of the acquisition from EB Classifieds in 2020, and the pricing logic is different, as you point out, so in the other Nordic countries, we charge per ad based on sort of a volume discount, and now also adding the dealer-level packages. While in Denmark, we charge per car per day. And as we then transform into one product and one platform, we will harmonize our pricing structures, and first out now is DBA that we will launch in sort of Q1 next year.
And then we expect the majority of our Marketplaces to be through transition by the end of 2025 or early 2026. And by doing that, that is of course then also includes Bilbasen. And as we transition, we will also shift the pricing logic. It might be that we are able to shift the pricing logic even earlier, but I would say that's sort of the latest timeline.
Are you thinking about that pricing model change as being a net accretive thing to monetization when you do it?
We try to see it in sort of a holistic view. So it's both about what kind of leads are we developing or are we delivering, when are we introducing the new package structures. We do have packages in Denmark already.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be a driver for our growth, but we see it as part of our yearly sort of monetization plans. And I think most importantly, it also aligns the success of the dealer to a better extent than it has before. So now, for example, if it takes longer time to sell the car, it's more expensive. So we really want to move over to our Nordic approach.
Thank you.
This is Giles Thorne from Jefferies. My first question was on the news flow we're seeing around the breakup of Adevinta, which effectively brings to a close their verticalization strategy. So it's a question for Christian. As a major shareholder, were you supportive of that? And what is it that Permira is not seeing in the verticalization opportunity for Adevinta that you are seeing?
And then my second question is on real estate and the comments around clearer communication to the consumer of the value of FINN. Should we see this as a milestone towards moving Norway onto a vendor-paid advertising model similar to Sweden?
Well, let me take Adevinta first, and I will obviously not go into any details of Adevinta's strategy. We are a supportive owner of Adevinta, obviously, but we don't run the company. We are a minority shareholder, and we don't have any influence on the direction of that company. I think there are some differences between Adevinta and Schibsted Marketplaces. I think one key difference is that for Adevinta, in totality, a very large company, right? So for the private equity players to realize the value, they will probably see the different parts standalone more than we do.
And the second thing is that, remember that we operate in significantly smaller markets. If you take the Nordics in total, it's about half the size of either France or Germany. So of course, the need for scale in our case is significantly larger in a way. So there are different reasons for having different strategies.
Yes, and to your second question, I think the Norwegian pay-per-click advertising model has worked very well historically, and we believe it will work well also going forward, us being a part of the marketing package. But as I said, due to competition and new market dynamics, I think it's very important that the sellers actually understand the value of our product.
And that's why we want to be more transparent and communicate that to the market, because that is a very essential part for them when they are selling their home, having the understanding of the value. So I don't think you can read it as a step to a Hemnet model as such, but it's more of transparency in the same model that we have had so far, and we don't foresee any changes in that in the future.
Okay, then I think we have time for one or two more questions before the break. There are many online, but they're more like CFO-related, so we take the online questions a bit later. And I have two more questions, please.
Thank you. So Marcus Heiberg, SEB.
Back to mobility and the growth that you're seeing in the transactional vertical, you haven't specified how much of the growth is coming from the transactional model compared with real estate. It seems that you have a firm view on the potential near term. Can you elaborate a bit on how much of the growth you think is going to come from the transactional models?
Yes, I can. So I mean, the mid-term target for mobility is 12%-17%. And as I stated, we expect the majority of the revenue growth to come from our core classified business, really driven by dealer-level packages and by the differentiated pricing. And then for C2B and for Smidig, we see that as sort of a booster. And maybe around 4% or 5% on the total growth would come from C2B.
That's very clear. And just a follow-up.
Apart from the gross margin or the COGS that you have, is the margin profile quite similar to the other online classifieds business that you have when you scale them? Or are there structural differences in the model that?
You mean compared to classifieds and C2B, for example?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so as I mentioned with Nettbil, for example, it's a much more hands-on approach. We have test costs, we have transportation costs, and it's also quite a hands-on model where we give advice to customers over phone. So the overall profitability, long-term profitability will be different compared to core classifieds. As I mentioned, we've seen great performance improvement in Nettbil this year, taking it to 20%. I think maybe the long-term ambition could be at least 30% EBITDA margin, but not as we have in Marketplaces.
That's clear. Thank you. Thanks.
Okay, then I think we have to wrap up the first session now due to time.
One question with the mic that I have over here. Final question on mobility, Robin. You showed the ARPA gap with peers, best-in-class global peers of about 2X. But then you also showed that the revenue growth opportunity in B2C core mobility classifieds of, I think it was 8X. So more of the growth coming from things other than ARPA or pricing. What will be the other big categories of growth long-term?
I think our sort of immediate focus is on delivering more value to our dealers. And as I pointed out with sort of the structure of the packages, it goes a lot around providing more market insights, provide better lead attribution, to provide them with better branding opportunities, and also through enhanced platform tools.
And then, of course, for a dealer, it's really about sourcing cars. And there we have the C2B segment, and it's about selling that car as efficiently as possible. And for us, that's both about ensuring that you sell that car to the right price and at the right sort of velocity. But it's also about attaching value-added services. It could be through financing, insurance, and other sort of service, for example. So we do see a lot of potential going forward. But our immediate focus is on driving the ARPA.
Okay, thank you, Robin. Like I said, then we have a short break, roughly 15 minutes, before we come back and continue with Eddie's part on jobs.
So, welcome back from the break, and we will now continue with the strategy for Jobs presented by Eddie. Eddie began his career in Schibsted in 2011.
We had several management positions in FINN before he took over Jobs, most recently CEO for FINN. I would argue few people have such a profound understanding of Marketplaces, and he has been a driving force behind our new strategy to Accelerate Future Winners. With this, please welcome Eddie.
Yeah, thank you, Yongdong, for the introduction, and great to be here and present the Job Vertical: Present and Future. Due to the portfolio considerations announced earlier about exiting Sweden and Finland, I'm today presenting the status and the forward-looking plans for the Norwegian market only. The data clearly shows that we have been able to substantially improve the position in the Norwegian market and our competitiveness. We have an all-time high in top-of-mind and brand awareness and a very significant gap to the nearest competitors.
We have an all-time high in monthly visits, and through our very successful aggregation, we have almost doubled the number of opportunities for the candidates without impacting their revenues negatively, and we are truly creating value to our customers by providing 6.5 million applications a year from our platform. Moving over to the revenue side, to the right, we can see a positive and continuous growth in ARPA, and that has been our focus regardless of economic cycles, and the numbers tell us that our efforts are paying off, showing a yearly growth of 10% over time. Historically, we can clearly see that the Jobs vertical has experienced a continuous growth over economic cycles, and there's clear evidence of strong bounce back after economic downturns. We are well aware that the strong market position in Norway, and we do have a healthy monetization.
At the same time, it is very clear to us that we have also an interesting growth potential going forward. To put it simply, there is an increasing number of job switches. The value of each job is increasing, and we still, in our mind, have a small share of the total marketing spend into the recruitment market. So we are definitely aiming for more growth. And this is the strategy guiding us forward. The core purpose is to create equal job opportunities for everyone. And we are unleashing the core growth through value-based business models, the audience extension products, and new offerings to our most professional customers. And we secure innovation through deeper and longer relationships with the candidates and by using new technology to improve the offerings. So let's start by the value-based business models.
This illustrates the value-based business models and is one of the main drivers behind the positive ARPA development. By leaving the old one-price-for-all model and introducing a more value-based pricing, we are tapping into new growth opportunities. The first steps were relatively simple. We used our data to segment the customers into four different groups based on their willingness to pay. In 2023, we introduced this model to a small part of the customers and a small part of the product portfolio, and we gained a lot of insight. Based on this insight, we decided to roll out the model to almost all our customers and all the products entering 2024. This has proven to be a huge success, and we have monetized substantially while remaining or retaining high customer satisfaction levels, and going into 2025, we have this model now on all our customers.
But in our mind, we have only started the journey. We have gained new insight, and we know a lot more about the price sensitivity and the willingness to pay amongst the professional customers. And going forward, we will use this insight to refine and sophisticate the models even further. We can have increased granularity, and that gives us the opportunity to be even more tailored to more segments. We have real-time and predictive matching of supply and demand that will give us the opportunity to set the right price in advance. We can use AI and more complex data analysis to improve the models even further. And adding salary data will make us able to focus more explicitly on value creation and even take rate.
Having the cost per application model in the portfolio gives us more flexibility to target different groups with more sophisticated and tailored price models. I will also add that aggregation is a powerful tool in this process. Now we are able to have the ad on our platform anyway, so we can experiment more actively and more boldly with pricing without the risk of losing long-term market position. To conclude, we are confident that we can increase value by focusing on developing these models even further. Moving over to the audience extension products. This initiative is important both to generate revenue, but also to make sure that we have a good offering to reach the increasing share of passive candidates.
In this area, we are increasing our share of wallet in the recruitment marketing space, tapping into a potential that not necessarily is within the reach for a traditional job board player. There has been good growth in this area over time, showing that there is a demand in the market and a willingness to pay. We will continue to develop this product area, and there are several clear directions to deliver new revenue growth. Because even though the growth has been impressive, only 15% of our paid ads have this upsell alternative at the moment, and that shows us that we have large upside potential. The underlying market is growing. We are working on scaling the product to new customer groups.
We have introduced subscription models with low sales cost and low churn, and we can, of course, use our data to make the products even more targeted and more cost-efficient. So also in this area, we believe in growth going forward. As we have just been through, we have two strong value-driving levers: short and medium term in the value-based initiatives and the audience extension products. In addition, there is a more medium and long-term potential in serving our most professional customers better. The enterprise customers, the recruiters, and the staffing agency are all, in our opinion, underserved and under-monetized, and we are only tapping into a small portion of their recruitment spending. So to us, this is yet another growth opportunity, but more medium and long term. Let's move over to the candidate side.
Of course, our ability to deliver and monetize value to our customers is fully dependent on our ability to attract and deliver the relevant and the right candidates. As I explained in my introduction, we have strengthened our position in the Norwegian candidate market when measured in terms of the more traditional metrics like top-of-mind and traffic. This goes for both the active and the passive candidates. The surprisingly, to someone maybe, strong position towards the passive candidates is, of course, due to the strong FINN brand in general and the engagement from the users across all verticals. International aggregator platforms have successfully disrupted traditional job boards in other markets. However, in Norway, we have a proactively addressed aggregation over the last few years. We are offering the most job opportunities and are effectively reducing the risk of disruption.
So a substantially stronger competitive position compared to what I presented 18 months ago. However, I am happy to also add new means to create a closer and more cost-efficient long-term relationship with our active and passive candidates. To us, this represents a strategic move, not only relying on the traditional classified metrics, but rather building a more long-term relationship with the candidates and to inform and to engage along the way. We will have a lot more insight and data about the candidates, and this will create a more loyal candidate pool, but also more efficient communication from our side. We have now already reached 650,000 unique candidate profiles. These are a combination of data that candidates share with us and the search pattern and priorities we experience from their behavior on our platform.
Adding our high login rates and the high app usage, we have a lot of data to improve our efficiency and the candidate experience. And we can also share that this is not only a conceptual shift, but also initiatives that create immediate and substantial candidate engagement when we have logged-in candidates with profiles. They explore seven times more ads, they apply for more than twice the number of positions, and they come back more often to explore our content. And this is clearly showing that the profiling initiatives have proven to be a strong addition to the more traditional classified approach. On AI, some describe the job market as a wall of text on both sides, both the job ad and the application letters and the CV.
We believe from our side that AI will create value to the candidates, to the customer side, and also make us able to be more efficient in our operations. Our ambition is to be a forerunner in this area, and we have already several different solutions out in the market. One example is on the candidate side, where we have introduced new search methods, and the results are promising, increasing the apply rate by 80% by giving a better and more tailored overview to the candidates. We will continue to search inspiration internationally and to test and deploy in the Norwegian market. We are on a journey to drive a more fair and transparent job market and to deliver on the core purpose to create equal job opportunities to everyone. On the relationship side, we host events and provide insight and playbooks to our professional customers.
This is very much appreciated, and we build a dialogue with our customers on new topics in addition to the traditional focus on products and price. On the product side, we have introduced salary comparison to give more transparency about the value in the market as candidate or employee, and we remove discriminating ads by utilizing AI-supported tools. This is an important part for jobs and our contribution to the sustainability agenda we share across Schibsted Marketplaces. The financial targets are on the revenue side, 5%-10% growth. The main drivers are the value-based business models and audience extension products short and medium term. As I stated, the initiatives towards the professional market, more medium and long term. The margin target is about 55%.
This margin increase is a consequence, of course, of the revenue growth, but also of having good cost control in the operations. So to summarize from the Jobs vertical, we have improved our position and we are ready to tap into the growing recruitment market. We are deepening the relationship with the candidates. We are expanding in a growing market with new innovative business models, and we are continuing our journey to create equal job opportunities for everyone. Thank you. Now I'm about to introduce the next speaker, Cathrine Laksfoss, who joined Schibsted in 2013 and is our EVP of e-commerce and Delivery. Cathrine's deep commitment to circularity, combined with her expertise in combining scaling growth and cost efficiency in low-margin businesses, has made her a valued colleague in our team. So please join me in welcoming Cathrine.
Thank you for a warm welcome, Eddie.
I will walk you through the exciting journey in the dynamic e-commerce space, a rapidly growing market which is central not only to Schibsted and e-commerce, but to Nordic families, and allow me to begin by looking at the broader context, as this is maybe what sets e-commerce apart from the other verticals. The e-commerce market is expanding rapidly, and it's fueled by some powerful trends. Consumers are more eager than ever to sell and buy secondhand, driven by affordability and sustainability concerns. We see strong investments into new business models and product innovations making selling and buying as effortless and convenient as selling and buying new products. Circularity is also top of mind among regulators, and they are working on initiatives that will fuel growth in the resale market further, so what about the Nordics?
If we look at more mature markets like France, Poland, and Russia, we see that those markets have five times as many resale ads per capita as we see in the Nordics. We also know from the Norwegian market that only 5% of all parcel shipments stem from Re-commerce, and there is stronger growth than in the e-commerce market, so the powerful trends together with the lower maturity in the Nordic markets tell us that there will be strong growth in the Nordic Re-commerce market going forward. We are in a rare opportunity where we are in the early creation of a market and with huge growth opportunities for many years and maybe even decades to come, and we at Schibsted Marketplaces are extremely well positioned to capture the opportunities in this growing market.
We are the overall Nordic leader amongst generalist e-commerce players, and we hold the top positions in Norway and Finland, where we continue to experience strong growth momentum. In Denmark and Sweden, we continue to maintain resilient positions despite an increasingly competitive landscape. Our leadership is rooted in our commitment to seamless customer experiences, product innovations, and leveraging the strength of our trusted Nordic brands. E-commerce has become an integral part of the daily life in the Nordics, and 25% of all people living in the Nordics visit our e-commerce marketplaces every month, and they visit us with high frequency, on average, every second day. Traditionally, the goods category, what we call e-commerce, served as the purpose of keeping the flywheel going in our horizontal marketplaces. However, two years ago, we embarked on a new strategy that enabled e-commerce to start building a standalone and financially attractive position.
Since then, we have made solid progress. From the start, our revenues have grown by 50%, primarily driven by a strong growth in transactional C2C revenues by more than 300%. At the same time, we have been able to turn our Pro business, earlier declining, back into growth, and this business is an important contributor to our bottom line. We have also continuously reduced our costs in this period by enhancing operational efficiency while maintaining our growth. Our EBITDA margin has gone from -49% to -35%. Although this margin is still negative, we have increased our margin steadily, and we are on a clear path towards profitability. While we have worked relentlessly to grow and monetize the e-commerce business, our role as the heartbeat of all of our Marketplaces remains unchanged. We deliver strong competitive advantage to the other verticals.
We are also the key driver of user engagement across our platforms. The e-commerce users have the highest frequency and longest duration of visits across the Schibsted portfolio, and we deliver valuable leads for the other verticals to monetize on. E-commerce is the main reason why users log in, download, and use our apps, and this is critical for our user data capture that benefits our entire company. While this contribution is important for the success of our verticals, the value creation is not reflected in the P&L of e-commerce. Now, looking ahead, our purpose remains clear. We want to make circular consumption the obvious choice, and this means the obvious choice for consumers by making selling and buying secondhand goods effortless for them, and it means being the obvious choice for businesses as we help them grow and succeed within the circular economy.
In e-commerce, we are in the fortunate situation that our purpose goes hand in hand with the opportunity for financial value creation. We are focusing on two key levers for success. First, growing and monetizing our winning e-commerce positions. And second, driving simplification and efficiency through the Nordic operating model and AI. And now I will guide you through our progress on these levers and the opportunities we see going forward. Our C2C transactional business has proven to be a strong growth engine. In Q3 alone, we have seen a staggering growth of 88% year on year in number of transactions, with close to four million transactions being completed across our platforms during the past 12 months. We will soon expand our business into all four Nordic markets, and we believe we can increase the number of transactions by three to four times within the next three years.
Our future growth has three main drivers. As I outlined earlier, the e-commerce market will continue to grow fast, and we are well positioned to capture growth. Secondly, we are focused on scaling transactions by attracting more users and increasing the frequency of the use of our playbooks of our Marketplaces through our new growth playbook. Last, our new platform enables us to replicate our model across every Nordic country, as we soon will launch in Denmark and then in Sweden. Now, let's zoom in on our scaling and monetization of FINN so far, and the transactional service in FINN, which we call Fiks Ferdig, has been the front runner in our transformation towards transactional services, but also helped us build our playbook for how to scale our transactional model. We are a two-sided marketplace, and we rely on user-generated inventory.
Even in our largest marketplace, FINN, we see a steady growth of new approved ads of 8% year on year last quarter. This has been driven by a strong focus on top-of-mind awareness by product innovation on the seller side to make the seller side effortless and increase the success of our sale. Here on the screen, you can see. Oh, if you go back, you can see how we work on increasing our inventory through our new AI-enabled ad creation. We have also managed to increase our opt-in rate by 20%, meaning that more and more sellers are enabling shipping and safe payment on their ads. This improvement reflects our effectiveness in our communication and also of our service as a whole. Here we see a large potential in making the entire inventory transactable.
In the next step of the funnel, we focus on our ability to convert inventory into transactions. With a steady 7% growth in conversion rate, we are increasingly more successful in transforming inventory to transactions. And this is a result of optimizing our search and recommendation experience, our experimentation with pricing models, and also by offering users incentives through different campaigns. We have also delivered a 7% increase in average order value building from already high levels. Here we use our generalist position to our advantage, working on different customer segments, different category mixes, and also in gaining our users' trust in transacting increasingly more valuable objects through our platform by, for instance, enabling insurance solutions. As a result of all of these improvements, we have achieved a 40% increase in number of transactions and a 48% increase in year-on-year growth of the gross merchandise value sold on FINN.
There is still potential for continued growth across all of these levers, and we are confident on our ability to grow from here. In parallel with this volume growth, we have also made notable progress increasing the monetization of our services. Today, we monetize exclusively on the buyer side with charges for safe payment, shipping, and optional insurance. We have a healthy take rate of 16% on the gross merchandise value, which is reaching best-in-class levels in the Re-commerce generalist space. This is strong proof that our users are satisfied with the services we deliver and the value of them. Over the past year, our take rate as a percentage of the item value has increased by 27%, and the increase on revenue per transaction has increased by 50%.
Looking ahead, we see that there is still potential for growth here by working on our pricing models, by adding more value-added services, and also by working on optimizing our category mix. I have now shared the success of our transactional model on FINN. What is even more promising for our future growth is that our model can be replicated across markets. During April this year, we launched our transactional model called ToriDiili in Finland, a more competitive market than Norway. The result of the first six months has not only matched but also exceeded the outcomes of the first six months in the Norwegian market. This is true when measured on all important metrics. Also, only after six months in the market, more than 50% of the Finns know about the ToriDiili solution.
With these results, we believe that our playbook can be scaled across all four Nordic markets as we prepare to roll out our platform and transactional model to Denmark and Sweden soon. Of course, growth is vital for our value creation. However, achieving profitability requires strong focus on cost efficiency. Re-commerce is a scale-driven business, and the Nordic operating model is a game changer for us. Accordingly, we have been leading the way implementing it, and we are already starting to see benefits. Moving towards a single platform and one Nordic operation have allowed us to accelerate our speed to market while using less resources, both in terms of employees but also consultants. Now, we develop solutions once, roll them to two markets, soon three and four at the same time without duplication of effort.
Another example is marketing, where we were streamlining our operations, has improved the content and number of campaigns by three to four times using the same resources, and there are further opportunities also on the cost side, as we will consolidate all of our four Nordic positions into the same platform. We will innovate and grow faster, and efficiency gains will drive profitability. Another key area that has helped us to scale cost efficiently is AI and automation, and our customer service team has been the front runner in this area, and we have already seen a 50% reduction of our customer service cost per transaction thanks to our new AI-driven solutions, and this is just the beginning. We are pursuing additional automation opportunities across our services and functions to further enhance efficiency, and let's turn your attention to our financial opportunity.
We anticipate strong growth in revenues in the coming years with a clear path to profitability. Our target is to maintain revenue growth above 20% and reach a single-digit EBITDA margin midterm. And we believe that we can do that by staying on our current path, focusing on scaling C2C transactions, expanding our transactional model into the four Nordic markets, sustaining our B2C and advertising revenues, and by focusing on simplifying and increasing the efficiency in our operation. And by doing that, we are well positioned to achieve our ambitious targets. So, to wrap things up, let's revisit the key takeaways. First, Re-commerce is a fast-growing market, and we expect the growth to continue for many years. We are the Nordic Re-commerce leader, and we are strongly positioned to capitalize on this growth. Secondly, Re-commerce continues to be the heartbeat of our Marketplaces.
With the traffic, the user frequency, and the data that Re-commerce brings in, we feed valuable leads and insights to the other verticals to monetize on, and we also increase their demand-side defensibility. Third, our strong growth playbook gives us the capability to scale and monetize C2C transactions across all Nordic countries, which will further solidify our position in this expanding market. And finally, the Nordic operating model is an important enabler for our success, providing the speed and scalability we need. By leveraging AI, we will continue to improve our efficiency and ensure a clear path towards profitability. So, in short, we are ready to lead and grow in this exciting and meaningful space. And now, to present the financial framework, please welcome Per Christian Mørland, or PC as we call him, and he's our CFO.
Before joining Schibsted, he was Group CFO in Telia Company and has broad experience from the telecommunications industry. He has held various positions within Telia and Telenor in Asia, Europe, and Eastern Europe, and the Nordics. His experience shows that PC has an exceptional ability to manage complex and diverse financial positions, which Schibsted Marketplaces certainly is. Please give PC a warm welcome. Thank you.
Thank you for the introduction and the kind words, Cathrine. Hello, everyone. It is great to be here, and I'm excited to summarize everything that you have heard today from Christian and the vertical leaders into a complete financial framework for Schibsted Marketplaces. Over the past year, Schibsted has made several key steps to transform ourselves and focus ourselves into becoming a pure-play marketplace company and really create substantial shareholder value on the way.
At CMD in 2023, we laid some of the grounds we are now capitalizing on. We moved from a country-based operating model into a vertical-based operating model, where we're really sort of deepening the competence and the capabilities within the vertical as a key value driver. We also announced our intention over time to reduce our exposure to Adevinta. And then in November last year, we backed the voluntary offer from the private equity consortium with Permira and Blackstone to take Adevinta private. And as a part of that, reducing our stake that we had of 28% by 60% in the transaction and rolling our remaining stake into the private vehicle. And this resulted that we now have a 14% stake in the company post-transaction. A few weeks later, in December, we announced the transaction of News Media to Tinius Trust, our largest shareholder.
The proceeds from these two transactions together amount to NOK 29 billion in proceeds. A capital return package was communicated and announced in Q1 this year, where we promised and have now delivered on distributing NOK 20 billion in extraordinary dividend. We allocated NOK four billion for a multi-year share buyback program, and also NOK five billion was reserved to strengthen the balance sheet. In April this year, we consolidated our core marketplace operations in Norway by acquiring Polaris Media's 9.99% stake in FINN.no, where we now have a 100% ownership. In Q2 this year, the executive team that you have met today was announced, and we also initiated a reorganization and a downsizing process, reducing around 250 roles. Recently, as part of our Accelerate Future Winners strategy, in October, we announced plans to further reduce our portfolio by exiting all our non-core assets.
This decision really underscores our commitment to become a pure-play marketplace company. In addition, we are also in the process of exiting several smaller marketplace businesses, where we don't really see a feasible path to a leading position. Through these actions, we are positioning Schibsted Marketplaces as a leaner, more focused company dedicated to deliver long-term shareholder value and to protect and strengthen our leading position in the region. Following this announcement, our portfolio now looks like this. Our focus will be fully centered around our core business in mobility, real estate, jobs, and Re-commerce. As mentioned, over time, Delivery will be divested and deconsolidated, but don't expect anything short-term. It serves a purpose for now, supporting our transactional offering in Norway called Fiks Ferdig, and it needs to transform into a pure partial Delivery service and also have a financial profile that is attractive for a transaction.
We have started to prepare the exits of other non-core assets, including but not limited to Lendo, Prisjakt, and also our skilled trade marketplaces. These are great assets, but they're not really our core business, and as Christian also mentioned, we don't really see ourselves as the best owner of these assets going forward. Finally, let's not forget our 14% stake in Adevinta, now operating in a private setting and valued at around NOK 21 billion. For us, this is a financial asset where we see great potential for further shareholder value creation. Given the initiated exit processes, we will report Lendo, Prisjakt, and our skilled trade marketplaces as discontinued operations with effect from Q4 this year, i.e., they will no longer be consolidated in our group revenues and our group EBITDA. This allows both us but also the financial market to fully focus on our core business.
Our financial segments going forward will be structured around our four core verticals, but also Other HQ, and in addition, also Delivery while it's still consolidated in our numbers. Splitting and reporting our business in four core verticals provides the market with information that is largely consistent with how other comparable companies run their business and also report their performance. The Other HQ segment includes TSA revenues and costs toward Media. It includes a small travel business and also common functions and ownership costs. The majority of these costs are allocated out to the other segments, but not ownership costs like corporate strategy, corporate M&A, and also parts of the sort of executive leadership cost. In Other HQ, we also have the negative synergies from becoming a much smaller company, and last 12 months, this amount in total to -NOK 316 million.
The both ownership costs plus the negative synergies. During the transition that we have outlined today to become a significantly more smaller and more focused company, we are expecting to see this deficit increase before it starts coming down. This is due to the negative synergies that I mentioned. As mentioned, Delivery is over time expected to be divested and deconsolidated. It is a sizable business with revenues around NOK 2 billion. It has started to generate positive EBITDA. If we look ahead, we expect continuous growth in our Delivery business. The key focus really for the Delivery team is the transformation of the business, as we commented on earlier today, but also to sustainably generate positive EBITDA and positive cash flow. Let's now fully focus on our core business.
As already covered well by Robin, by Kjersti, Eddie, and Cathrine, we have significant growth opportunities across all our verticals. This increase will mainly be driven by monetizing our classified offering, with a corresponding significant increase in ARPA across the board, as well as growth from our transactional models within Re-commerce, mobility, and real estate. Let's move over to cost and efficiency. Even after executing on the now completed restructuring and downsizing process, we still operate with a cost structure that is not fit for purpose and is coming from, you know, being a different company with a different complexity, is coming from a different strategy, but it's also coming from operating in a different business environment. So in addition to our revenue growth agenda that we have outlined here today, we have an ambitious cost efficiency agenda to execute over the coming years.
But let's start with where we are today. And all the numbers I now refer to are the core business, excluding Delivery. Reporting-wise, we will, from Q4 this year, split our cost base into four categories: cost of goods sold, i.e., COGS, but also personnel cost, marketing cost, and other operating expenses. OpEx, excluding COGS, last 12 months amounted to NOK 4.1 billion. A bit more than 50%, NOK 2.2 billion of this relates to our personnel cost. NOK 0.5 billion relates to marketing cost, and NOK 1.5 billion relates to other operating expenses. And this can be broken down again to NOK 0.6 billion, which relates to software, hardware, and cloud-related costs. NOK 0.4 billion is related to consultants cost and other costs like sales commissions, travel costs, and other various costs. CapEx, which mainly is activated development cost in products and tech, is a bit more than NOK 0.5 billion on a last 12-month basis.
CapEx in mobility and Re-commerce is a bit more than NOK 100 million, while in real estate and jobs, a bit below NOK 100 million. In other HQ, which includes all the central functions, share resources, CapEx stands for around NOK 150 million. Looking at our FTEs, as of end of September, we were 1,950 FTEs. This includes around 70 FTEs that have signed exit agreements but still are included in the numbers. Around 850 employees or FTEs are directly in the different verticals, so this is vertical management, vertical sales and marketing resources, vertical product and tech resources, but also people working in our transactional business models, particularly then in mobility and real estate. Around 100 FTEs are related to customer service, supporting all verticals, but the majority is supporting the Re-commerce vertical.
A bit less than 150 FTEs relate to our common marketing and sales function, supporting all of our verticals. And today, almost 500 FTEs are in our common product and tech unit that we call Foundation. And you should expect, as we transition towards a more common platform, a relatively higher share of our resources will be fully dedicated to each of the verticals. In total support functions, we have in finance and people, we are around 200 FTEs today. And the other category on the slide here includes the mentioned 70 resources on the way out, plus some FTEs for our Polish product and tech unit. So building on this cost structure, let me provide some color on our ambitious cost agenda ahead.
Despite the considerable revenue growth that we are targeting, plus inflationary pressure on our cost base, we have a target of reducing our absolute OPEX, excluding COGS. This decrease will come from lower personnel costs from fewer FTEs, but also from lower other operating expenses related to system consolidation and cleanup and simplification on that side, but also lower costs to consultants and other activity-related costs. Despite increased efficiencies within the marketing domain, we expect marketing costs in absolute terms to increase somewhat to support the revenue agenda. OPEX, excluding COGS in % of revenue, is targeted to go down from 65% today to around 40% over the medium term. CAPEX, as previously mentioned, is today at an elevated level due to the complex tech stack that we operate, but also the fact that we are in the middle of this important transition to a common platform.
As we progress with the consolidation efforts and close down our legacy, CapEx in absolute terms is expected to go down, and the percent of revenues to go down from 9% today to 5% in the medium term. So that's all fine, but how are we going to deliver on this? So let me provide some color. We see today, and we continue to see positive effects simply by just putting cost and efficiency higher on our agenda, by being tougher on prioritization, by being tougher on resource allocation, and simply by having a stricter cost control. In addition, we see three key structural levers to address the cost and efficiency situation. First, reset support functions to be fit for purpose for our new strategy and our new company.
This is about simplifying, cleaning up our legacy structures within the support functions, but it's also to set the right ambition level for our strategy and company. A big part of the agenda in support functions is to offset and mitigate negative synergies from becoming a much smaller company. And then when we benchmark ourselves to the industry in general and our peers, we see that today we are in the bottom quartile if you look at total cost over revenue for support functions. And our target is during the midterm to go from the bottom quartile to the top quartile in the medium term. Then the second lever is to complete the platform consolidation. Current cost base and investments are inflated, as we have talked about.
Once we have come further in the transition, we will see several positive effects on both our cost, but also our investments. We will use less resources to plan and execute complex business transitions. We will use less resources to operate and develop and maintain one common platform. Also, when we reduce and eliminate the legacy structures, we will see cost reductions. Some of these effects we will see as we go along, but the biggest effects you will see in 2027 and onwards. Also here, when we benchmark ourselves to the industry and peers, if we take our product and tech cost today and in relation to revenue, we are twice as expensive as our key peers that we compare ourselves with. With this agenda, during the medium term, we expect to close this gap.
The third and final key strategic lever is to improve our commercial efficiencies. We are not as efficient today as we'd like to be in our commercial functions. For customer service, this is very much around continuing to improve customer experience and reduce the number of transactions, but also to elaborate further on what Cathrine said, really to utilize AI and other technologies to reduce the cost per transaction. In marketing and sales, our effort is very much to a larger degree than today, be more data-driven in our operation and utilize advanced analytics and AI, and also to secure a better return on our marketing investments. If you look at total marketing costs, as I said before, we expect marketing costs to actually go up slightly during the period, but in relation to revenue, to come significantly down.
The combination of our revenue growth agenda with our cost and efficiency agenda really supports significant margin expansions in the medium term for all our verticals. And this is represented by the midterm targets that you now have seen several times: mobility from 52% to 55% to 60%, real estate from 39% to 45% to 50%, jobs from 45% to above 55%, and also the impressive turnaround, I would say, in Re-commerce from -35% to a low positive single digit in the medium term. This will put us in a much better position than today, but also versus the industry. And remember, in these targets, we include continuing to build transactional business models in mobility and real estate. We have a relatively high resource allocation and ambition level when it comes to developing future products and services because we think that is very important in the long run.
And also in these targets, we include building and strengthening positions that we believe have significant value potential also beyond the period that we here are looking at. The best example of this is our position in real estate in Finland. So let's move to capital allocation. We might make selective acquisitions related to our four verticals if we see it creates further shareholder value. And our focus is clearly in the Nordics. We target to pay a progressive annual dividend, and the board has an ambition to propose to the AGM a dividend for 2024 of 2.25 NOK. Any surplus cash posted above will be returned to shareholders over time, either through extraordinary dividend or through share buyback, very much in line with how we have dealt with the process from the Adevinta and the News Media transaction. And lastly, we will maintain a conservative balance sheet.
As of Q3, we have NOK 3.4 billion in net cash, and as outlined in our capital return package, we will utilize this to complete the ongoing share buyback program, but also to complete the second tranche of the multi-year share buyback program starting next year. We have no plans to accumulate cash, and we have no plans to aggressively increase our leverage, so to sum this up, we have set our new strategy, Accelerate Future Winners, where we allocate resources and capital to the areas with the biggest potential for creating shareholder value, either our current leadership positions or positions where we believe we have the capabilities or the playbook to win. This is enabled by our three value creation levers: Simplify, Verticalize, and Expand, and this strategy is expected to deliver significant growth and margin expansion, as represented and reflected in our medium-term targets by vertical.
A disciplined capital allocation combined with improved operational cash generation, expected proceeds from our transactions and sales of our previous growth and investment portfolio, but also over time, expected proceeds from the Adevinta ownership stake enable a significant return to shareholders over time. And with this, please let me hand back to you, Christian, to wrap up the presentation and the final Q&A for today.
Thank you so much, PC, for a comprehensive overview. And I will just very shortly wrap up. So as I started with this morning, we have really been pioneering the global marketplace industry since the '90s. And we have some of the strongest and most trusted marketplace brands in the Nordics, and I would argue in the world as well. They are highly profitable. They're asset-light models. They have deep competitive moats, and they offer significant proprietary investment opportunities.
And now we are becoming a pure-play marketplace company with a much simpler and more focused agenda for value creation. As said, we will simplify the organization, we'll streamline the portfolio, we will reduce complexities to improve cost efficiency in everything that we do. We will verticalize to serve our users and customer needs better than anyone else, really to deliver superior products in the markets and monetize the value that we create and deliver. And finally, we will expand by investing in these future winners where we really see that we have the capabilities and the playbook needed to win. And we will focus on the Nordics, where our investments strengthen and build on each other. We're also committed to doing good while we are doing well.
We will work to maximize our positive impact both on society and the planet at large by continuing on our important mission to empower people to make smart choices for themselves and future generations. So we have really been making history in this industry for more than 25 years. And I have to say, I think the next 25 years are going to be equally exciting for us. So that actually concludes our presentations for today. Thank you so much for listening in. And with that, I think we will bring some chairs up on the stage, and I will invite back those who have been presenting on stage for our final Q&A session.
Okay, I think then we're ready for our second and last Q&A session. I think first in line is Andrew. If you just wait a second, the microphone is not on.
Can you hear me now? Perfect. Amazing. It's Andrew here from Barclays. My questions are about the phasing of cost reductions between kind of near-term and the medium-term. And I guess that relates both to the OPEX as a % of revenue target more broadly and specifically within the HQ and other line where I think you said that might increase a bit initially before then coming down just to make sure I've understood the phasing of cost. And I guess as a follow-up to that question, you guys haven't spoken at all about 2025 today. How do you feel about where consensus sits as it stands today around, I think, 2.8 billion NOK of EBITDA for 2025 when we think about the phasing of cost reductions? Thank you.
I guess they go to me.
They were waiting for you.
So just some reflections on the phasing on our costs.
So first of all, I mean, we have provided a lot of color today on our ambitions for the medium term, and that's our sort of key focus. And we have been quite clear on some of the levers, both on the revenue side and on the cost side that's going to take us there. But if you look at the, and if you can read, you know, I said that there are some key levers here. If you look at the system consolidation on the common platform, you know, that will take some time, and we will see most of those effects coming 2027 onwards. Then there are some important effects on streamlining and simplifying, but what they are really depending on, one, we need to complete the TSA with Media, and that will take most of 2025.
We need to complete the sale of our growth and investment portfolio. Let's see when that comes. Our expectation is that hopefully a lot of that is achieved during 2025. And also, you know, to really restructure our support functions, we need to simplify and consolidate some of our support systems. So a lot of work will happen in 2025, but we're not really seeing the full benefit of it. So there is a phasing, you know, towards the latter end of the period we are talking about. But if you look at relations to revenue, of course, that will gradually improve as we sort of expect to see a good revenue growth and a sort of a curb growth on our cost side. Then there was a question on HQ losses, right? So last 12 months, NOK 316 million.
I said we should expect it to go temporarily up before coming down. It's a bit hard to be very exact because there's a few moving parts. One is how the TSA goes, one is how the sales process goes, how we execute on our cost agenda and so on. But I think what you should expect, it could go up NOK 100 million-NOK 200 million in the near term before it starts coming down. Then on 2025, and that kind of builds in a little bit to 2025. I mean, first of all, now it's a bit hard to know where the expectation is completely. We have come with a lot of new structures and new information today. But if I try to look at where consensus is, as far as I understand it, it seems to be in a good place when you're looking at the revenue.
Maybe we are slightly above the revenue generation, and I think we seem to be in a good place when looking at the total margins and the cost expectation for 2027 or the midterm, medium term. There might be some gaps if you're looking at the phasing of how fast the costs will come down, and that's probably maybe related to the message I just have around the NOK 100 million-NOK 200 million increased deficit in other HQ. So I think that's where you should see it. It will take some time before that goes down to a lower number than what we have today.
Okay. I can ask a question: It's Petter from ABG Sundal Collier? So that goes to Robin or to PC regarding the financial targets for mobility.
If I plug in the mid-range on sales and margins and also assume fairly stable gross margins, the implied OPEX CAGR is around 8%-9%. The question then is, isn't there more leverage in the operating model? Should I take it?
Yeah, no, I can start and then you can build if you want to add. So I mean, first, I'm not going to go into too much of the technicalities and modeling and different assumptions. From our side, it hangs quite well together looking at the revenue ambitions and also the margin expansion ambitions. We will work with efficiencies and costs within the Mobility segment as well as all the common costs that we have talked a lot about today. Exactly how that will play out, I don't think we will disclose more at this point in time.
But I don't know if you have anything to add. I think we should,
oh, sorry, should also acknowledge that we've had an expansion of margins during this period. And in our last CMD, we guided that we would move towards the upper end of the range. And I think it's fair to also assume that in the next period, we will gradually expand towards the upper end.
Thank you. I can just add another question, if I may, to Robin. And that goes for the professionals and the outcome that you're showing. You show that you're lagging the European peers, right, on the best in class. Do you think the new package structure that you are introducing is enough to start to close that gap in, let's say, in the medium term? Thank you.
We think this is the most important step that we will take.
By introducing these packages in Norway during next year and then to roll out those packages as we harmonize our platforms. As Christian presented, we expect the majority of that to be done by the end of 2025 or early 2026. That will be a driver also for growth in Sweden and in Denmark. Then we will, I think we will, as I pointed out in the presentation as well, continue to develop our packages to both provide more value and to drive our growth from 2026 and beyond. That's our main lever.
Yeah, Marcus, J.P. Morgan. I also need to have a question again a bit around investments.
I mean, what happened for other classified players that they also had to invest in tech in the form of acquisitions because they felt there were some areas that didn't cover well, which gives them an edge on technology? How shall we think about it? Yeah, one question is, for example, here in the context of jobs, yeah, when I look at Indeed, StepStone, obviously in other markets, they invested into Appcast. They really focus a lot on the passive market, yeah, and try to go beyond the kind of like listing model, but they felt they had to invest and buy effectively technology. Do you feel that you are broadly there or can we expect also investments, not in new business models, but really in technology, which basically means you generate your revenues, but you need basically to invest more to get there? There will be one question.
And then the second question is on Re-commerce. Yeah, obviously you highlighted a lot of trends and your focus on AI, but I think the real opportunity, as I see it in Re-commerce, is that everything that falls under the consumer experience umbrella. So when are we there that consumers just take a picture, the system generates the price, the description, it takes 20 seconds to place an ad. That's, I guess, is the future. And when is it actually coming? Because I think that will really boost that segment. Thank you.
Right, let me begin first on the acquisition question. First of all, I want to say that right now, our primary focus is on the simplification agenda, right? That said, as we mentioned, we might do some selective acquisitions, but it has really to fit with the, let's say, the Accelerate Future Winners strategy.
It has to fit within one of the verticals, either being a winning position or supporting that in some way. So yes, there could be things that are more technical or in the value chain, but we cannot comment on kind of the details of that. And we will only do it if it is value creative for shareholders, obviously, and we will only be focusing on the Nordics. But as I said, simplification is the top priority for us as it stands.
Maybe just adding a couple of perspectives on it. I think that the plans that we have outlined today, it's not depending on us making any acquisitions. So we can deliver the plans here with our current assets that we have. And the second is, if we do something, I don't think it will be a sort of big from a resource capital allocation perspective.
And then it was Kjersti. Sorry, it was Cathrine. Yes, so thank you.
Very good question. And I don't know whether you saw it, but I tried to show our AI-enabled ad creation model on the screen, which is obviously quite small. So we have launched this in Norway and Finland already, and it's already predicting category and subcategory of the ad to an 80% correct. Then this is obviously on our playbook. We are working on enabling all of the text and also coming up with the suggested prices. And we have an extensive playbook in what we are going to do going forward, but we are also heavily invested in doing transition. We've done Finland. We are heading on to Denmark really soon and then on to Sweden. So that takes our resources too.
It's always a juggle between the transition, which is truly important, and developing products. But this is coming quite soon.
For mobility, the C2B, how is the market structure? And if there is an asset-heavy player that buys the car with their own balance sheet and can offer the money right away and therefore potentially be a better value proposition, like We Buy Any Car in the U.K. or any other player like that or auction houses?
Yeah, so there are a few sort of incumbents, and we see it both in the Nordics and in Europe. I think the auction-based models have proven to be generating a higher sales price for the consumers and to be more sort of convenient for dealers as well. And hence, sort of I think it's also part of creating a better inventory mix.
So our platforms have more attractive cars than some of the incumbents. Looking at the U.K., for example, where there's quite fierce competition, we see Motorway also sort of winning over We Buy Any Car or BCA, for example. So we have quite a confidence in the model.
So we're currently at 6%.
Sorry, repeat the question.
Yeah, good point. So what kind of market share do we sort of target? We're currently at 6% in both Norway and in Finland, and we're growing quite quickly. We don't really sort of guide on what we believe we can sort of accomplish, but I think it's sort of double digits at least.
Yeah, thanks. Before we continue with questions, there's like a few ones from the web just to clean up a few questions for PC, I guess.
So first, if you can clarify PC, what do we mean by mid-term or medium term? And then second one, also when it comes to our revenue guidance, it's quite a range. So how should we think in the near term? Are we in the lower end, higher end, 2025 and 2026?
On the last one first, I mean, we just announced today a target range, and I think it will be a little bit strange that we now start to guide you up or down in that range. What we can say is that if you look from the revenue side, it's not like we, of course, the underlying expectation is that we should be somewhere around that during the period, but not sort of for every quarter or every year. There might be reason to deviate, but I think that's what I would say on that side.
Yeah, that is a question. What do we mean by medium term? I mean, honestly, for all practical purposes, what we're thinking about is around 2027. So there's nothing sort of majorly different there. We just don't want to fully lock ourselves into the calendar year.
And then maybe one more before we continue with questions here. So I think Ed also asked this morning, why do you guide on revenue growth and not ARPA? And I think also related to the question on the web here, what are really the building blocks if you break it down? How much is price change? How much is volume change? So what is really driving the range which you're guiding on? If you can elaborate a bit on this PC.
Yeah, I think it's the different pros and cons of choosing different metrics to put medium-term targets on.
I think our view is now when we now have revenue targets for each of the verticals. I think that works really well. Then we provide an actual reporting that we now actually are breaking down even further on what is the current ARPA levels. And today we have shown you what we see as the potential and also the path to get there. So of course, ARPA is a super important value driver for us, but we don't feel that that is the right metric to put out there because then it will be even less complete than today. And then so I think that's the background for that. Then on the revenue breakdown, so I saw there was a couple of questions on this.
So we have given quite a lot of color on this today, but if you remember what I said, there are two key drivers overall. One is monetizing our classified positions and businesses leading to ARPA growth. So that is the biggest driver when you look at them in mobility, classifieds, real estate in Norway, and also in jobs. In volumes there, we are actually quite stable. So we don't in the plans here anticipate any significant volume increase or volume reduction. So that can go both ways. Then if you look at the transactional models, which is the second key driver overall, of course, that is much more tied to volumes as we have commented on today, both in Re-commerce, but also in C2B and also in the rental business in real estate. And then we have overall the total 12%-17%.
I think we've been quite clear in mobility that that's around a four percentage points impact from C2B, and the rest will then basically be ARPA driven. You should expect somewhere around the same for the real estate vertical.
Thank you, PC. I think then we can continue with you, Ed.
Thank you, and thanks for addressing the ARPA question. In terms of the margin targets you've given, you said that the platform will largely come through in 2027 and beyond. When we think about the margin targets you've given, should we assume that that's essentially the complete position you'll be in, accepting the impact of the, if you like, margin dilution from incubating some of your transactional growth projects, or is that platform a material benefit to go into out years?
It's just thinking you're capturing essentially all of it in the medium term in terms of how you guide. And the second question is, where are HQ costs in the medium term? You said they'll go up into next year. Can you just give us a medium-term view given that's how we're capturing most of the guidance? Thank you.
Yeah, so two questions. One was, will we capture all the benefits of the platform consolidation in the medium term? I think a little bit early to be 100% precise on that answer, but I think we are really working hard to capture as much as we can on the cost and efficiency benefits of it. And then I think you will see that that will enable us to continue to innovate and be faster on launching new products and services. And that doesn't stop in the medium term.
That will continue, but I wouldn't expect any kind of another big drop-off in terms of cost and efficiencies. Yeah, so question on HQ and other in terms of providing some outlook. I don't think we should be extremely precise on that. It is NOK 316 million today. It's going to be lower than that. But I don't think I will give you an exact answer for that because there are a few moving parts there, but lower than the current level.
Thank you. It's Joe from UBS. On Re-commerce, you showed an increase in take rates of 27% and revenue per transaction of 50%. I think I've got those numbers right. That's obviously due to a substantial ramp-up in average order value. What's behind that? Is that a function of the rising take rate causing smaller items to drop off, or why is AOV going up so much?
It's question one. And then question two, just the guidance on jobs. Is that based on your full current portfolio, or does it exclude the assets you intend to sell?
Yes. Now to answer the question on the average order value and the take rate for Re-commerce, and that was the numbers for FINN. We see that after a while having the solution in the market, we see that the consumers trust the solutions more and more, and they are more willing to transact items of higher value. And also, when we introduced the optional insurance possibility, then we saw that this was increasing.
We're also working on category mix because the advantage of being a generalist player is that we have all kinds of user segments, and we know them pretty well, and then we can actually play to our advantage on the category mix and the different user segments.
Maybe I can take the jobs question. Of course, 2027 is clearly focused on the Norwegian business, which is the entire scope. In the transition from where we are today into next year, we will lose around NOK 160-170 million, and we will see a corresponding reduction in cost more or less on the same level. As we have said before, we expect it to be EBITDA neutral, but of course, it will impact the total reported revenues from this year into next year.
But the underlying growth of 5%-10% is on the Norwegian business going forward. Excellent. Clear.
Thank you. And so then just on the Re-commerce side, so you are not seeing any reduction in listing volumes in lower value items because of the way you're monetizing?
No. No, it's in fact growing all over, and it's growing most steeply in what we call families categories, like toys and clothes and so on. And those are the lowest average order value categories we have.
Wonderful. Thank you.
While we wait, I can have just two questions from the web again, like for you, PC. Just if you can clarify first, like what's your leverage target? Are you saying we're aiming to keep it close to zero net debt going forward? And then second question, there weren't any details today on the planned share collapse on the A and B structure?
Can you provide any update on the process here going forward?
Yeah, so on the second question first, there's not more to say at this point. There will be a process during 2025 to get ready for 1st of January, before 1st of January 2026. It needs to be approved by the shareholders, so we will come back to the timeline on that. If there are more specific questions, I think we can refer to the old Q&A we had when we announced it. Then leverage target. I mean, we don't really set the specific leverage target. So the ambition that we are clear on is to maintain a conservative balance sheet. Then I also added a statement that, I mean, we will not sit in accumulated cash or be in a permanently net cash position.
On the other side, we also will not go and aggressively increase our leverage as we see it right now. So I think it's a good assumption to assume that we will be somewhere around net zero.
Thanks, PC. I think then we can continue on the left side here.
Thank you. It's Giles Thorne from Jefferies, and it was two questions on Re-commerce. The first one was, it'd be interesting to hear your commentary as to how well you think you're exploiting your regional scale and particular aspects that come to mind, cross-border listings or volume rebates with your logistics suppliers. And then the second one, it'd be again inviting you to comment on your ambitions to move into higher cost-to-serve verticals, be it high-end fashion or electronics. Thank you.
Yes, so I didn't really get the first question. Could you repeat?
Your regional scale.
Yes.
How much are you exploiting the benefits of operating regionally in Re-commerce? Cross-border trade and.
Oh, yes. No. Well, for now, we don't have a cross-border trade. We operate individually in each market, and this is a result of how we treat the data in Schibsted. So. Will that change? We are looking at it. Of course, we see that there are benefits of cross-border trade in our industry specifically. The second one was the, what was the second?
It was, yeah, it was appetite to go into higher cost-to-serve verticals, so consumer electronics and luxury.
Yes. Obviously, we have all categories on our Marketplaces because we're coming from the generalist positions. Of course, going forward, we will verticalize more or be more specialized around the categories that are more interesting.
But I can't promise that we're going to do that through 2025. We are moving on some of the categories today, but not all of them. We have to finish up the transition, and then we can move for all countries at the same time. Thank you.
Thanks, Giles. While we wait, maybe take two more questions from the web. First one on Delivery. So you mentioned there could be different ownership structures going forward over time. Could you elaborate a little bit? Who could be interested? What kind of ownership structure could that be? And then second question, I mean, you talked today a lot about ARPA on the classifieds business, and you don't have a huge exposure to advertising, but how to think about advertising development in the medium term?
I guess I can take those. In terms of Delivery, we've been quite clear today.
We don't see ourselves as a long-term owner of a Delivery business. Speculating into what kind of structures that we might end up with, I think it's way too early, and also to speculate what type of buyers there could be. You can see different types of buyers being interested in a 100% parcel Delivery business with an attractive financial profile, but our starting point would try to be don't end up in any complex structures because we don't see ourselves as a long-term owner, but I think we have to come back to that at a later point in time, and then there was, what was the second?
Advertising.
Yeah, on advertising.
So we haven't talked a lot about that today because when we're looking at the medium term, we don't really see it as a key growth driver for us, but we also don't see it as a major issue. So the underlying assumption is that we will be able to maintain a relatively stable advertising in totality. Then you can just recall what we said at Q3. We're going through a phase now where we are basically resetting and restructuring our entire advertising stack and organization as part of the separation from Media. That is yielding on some issues in the short term. So you might see a continued drop now in Q4 and also going into the beginning of next year. But over time, we actually expect to mitigate that. So we don't expect any permanent dissynergies on the advertising side.
Question from Marcus again.
Sorry, I just got the opportunity to ask one more. And obviously, you're about to dispose of some of the non-marketplace assets, and clearly makes a lot of sense. I think most of us in the room agree that it's a logical step. But looking back, some of the assets were for sale in the past, and you haven't sold them, I guess, on the argument that either on price you decided, or the company decided to keep them. How do you think about this now? Because I think some assets are very attractive, but some assets you might struggle potentially a bit more to sell. So what is a sort of plan B? When we have the next Capital Markets Day, will we still see half of the portfolio? How do you actually approach this? Thank you.
Yeah, so I mean, none of us were here at the last time. Looking now, I think it is a clear part of our corporate strategy that this doesn't fit. I think it was a bit more sort of, let's see if there is someone that's willing to give us a lot of money for these assets, and then we were not happy with what we ended up with and decided to continue or put them on hold. I think for now, we have clearly put them on the sales list. And on the other side, I mean, our task is here to create shareholder values. So we are not in a rush to just sell them to the first and best buyer independent of price. But that's the balance. We really want the portfolio simplification so we can focus on our core business.
But we also have a responsibility to make sure that we get as much money for these assets as possible. So let's see. We will use 2025 as well as we can to progress on these transactions. And we're already sort of started now on Prisjakt, and that's in the market. And you could expect Lendo and the service marketplace companies to be in the market in the first half of 2025.
And just to add, I mean, it's always easy to look back at things in hindsight. But I also want to remind us that at the time, we had a very different strategy. We had a very different company, a very different strategy with a different logic for having these assets, which of course led to the different conclusions at the time.
And now we have a different strategy, and we are very clear on our target to divest these assets.
About Delivery, why do you believe it is strategic? So in my opinion, it is. So Vinted is thriving because of this InPost agreement where they can send packages across border at cheap prices. And also the Delivery cost is a high part of the AOV. So at the end, it's crucial. And in the case of Allegro, for example, in Poland, where also InPost is playing, it's considered that it's their biggest strategic risk, a mistake, not doing Delivery. And Vinted is also now integrating, vertically integrating and building their own lockers. So why potentially getting rid of this business that it could be like it's very strategic for the C2C? Cathrine, do you want to briefly sit around it?
Yes, I can start. So yes, it's true.
And the Delivery for us with the Helthjem service that we have in Norway only is really important for us for scaling the business in Norway. And also they have a great solution that we have actually developed together. So this is good for us. But if you look at the Delivery companies that we own, they are only present in Norway. And looking ahead, if you look at how this company is composed, most of their revenues come from the e-commerce business and not from the Re-commerce business. So we think that by putting them up on their own feet, and they are really well on their way doing that, they will actually be a standalone profitable company with success in their market. That does not prevent us from working close together. And we have been a family for a long time, and we know them well.
So I think we can continue this by business agreements.
I think there was a question on the left from Marcus.
Yeah, so Marcus at SEB, just to clarify on OPEX, excluding COGS for next year, do you expect that to decline considering all the initiatives that you have been taking? And the second question is on the target gross margin in Re-commerce. Are you happy where they are today, and what's the sort of target level or where the gross margin should be on the transactions?
Will you take the gross margin question?
Yes, you want me to start or?
And then on the OPEX, so if the question was on OPEX excluding COGS, we're pretty clear that we expect that to go down in absolute terms during the period. And then in relation to revenue from 65% to 40%. So that's correct.
But I think it's 25%.
Yeah, we haven't given any specific guidance on 25. So I think I'll leave it with what we have said in general, the revenue development, then the cost development, and then the kind of some negative synergies to expect in an HQ overhead with the amount that I said before. Okay.
Yes, and then on to the gross margin in the Re-commerce business. So we are in a period of change. Historically, our revenues have been coming from advertising, the pro solutions, and C2C transactions. Obviously, the gross margins from advertising and the B2C solutions are higher than the C2C transactional gross margins. Right now, while we are really scaling the C2C transactional model, we see that the gross margin is declining. It's going to continue for a while because we are scaling quite fast.
Right now, we see that we have a gross margin of around 42%, and we will need, while we grow, this will also increase if you look at only the C2C transactional part because we will leverage our size when making contracts with shipping providers and also payment providers. We see that going up, but for a while, it will go down because the other part is so large or has been.
Okay, thank you. Let's see if there's some more questions here in the room, or it's a bit dark, difficult to see. You want to sleep? No, but I think there are also no pressing questions on the web. Then I suggest, Christian, you can wrap it up for today.
Yes, then I just want to say thank you so much, everyone, for being present here today and also all of you on the video stream.
I hope you are as excited as we are about our journey ahead and that you will follow us in that. So thank you so much. And let's meet outside for some mingling. Thank you all. Thank you.