Good morning and welcome to Schibsted Marketplaces Q4 results. As usual, our CEO Christian and our CFO PC will present the key developments and financials for the quarter. Before we start, some housekeeping: analysts can call in via Microsoft Teams to join the Q&A session at the end of the presentation, and if the link is not working today, please use the meeting code and the meeting ID to log in. In the presentation, all numbers, if not otherwise stated, are in Norwegian kroner, and revenue grows on a constant currency basis, and with this, without further delay, please let me hand over to Christian. The floor is yours.
Thank you so much, Jann-Boje , and good morning and welcome, everyone. Today, I want to start with something extra exciting because in early January, we announced that we are launching a new corporate brand, Vend. And all the time since the split from Schibsted Media, it has been a key priority for us to build our own identity and become one integrated company, and this new name, Vend, clearly separates us from Schibsted and also signals that we are becoming a standalone, independent, and pure-play marketplaces company. This name really connects us to our industry, and it highlights the act of selling while at the same time it's having a dual and deeper meaning because in the Scandinavian languages, the word Vend means to turn, which is then a symbol of our connection to transformation and to sustainability, two aspects that are critical to our mission.
We will transition to Vend in the second quarter of this year, but I just want to point out that our local brands, so FINN, Blocket, Tori, Oikotie, DBA, and Bilbasen, and so on, they will, of course, remain as they are. Vend will act more as an endorser brand and create clarity and structure and connection within our brand family while really allowing our local marketplaces to keep that strong local brand. While launching Vend is certainly an exciting milestone, it is just one part of our larger transformation that we have been driving over the past year. I think that Q4 really marks the conclusion of what has been a truly transformational year for us as a company, and I would say also for me personally.
This year, we didn't only start to write a new chapter, but as we say internally, it's the beginning of an entirely new book. In this, we are embracing our evolution into becoming a pure-play marketplaces company, as I mentioned. We are really stepping away from our legacy as a media conglomerate. Along the way, during the last year, we have achieved what I think are some quite remarkable milestones. We have navigated quite significant transitions, all while empowering millions of people across the Nordics with our marketplaces and to make smarter choices. In Q4, we both finalized and presented our new strategy and our new financial framework at the Capital Markets Day. That set out both a clear ambition and a clear path for our future. In this strategy, we are prioritizing to capture the potential within our four core verticals.
So that is mobility, real estate, jobs, and re-commerce. We want to do that by improving monetization and also by scaling transactional models, while at the same time resetting our cost base to align with what is then going to be a smaller and more focused scope for our company. And together, these steps will really enable us to drive margin expansion in the years to come. It will also support sustainable growth and long-term value creation. Part of this is also to simplify our portfolio because that is allowing us to focus our resources on the areas where we see the most potential. If we then turn to the results for this quarter, group revenues ended at NOK 2,103 million. That represents a 12% year-on-year increase, while EBITDA improved by 3% to NOK 337 million.
The revenue growth was driven by delivery and also by real estate, while the EBITDA growth was supported by the headquarters segment as well as mobility, and as anticipated, our performance was impacted by weaker advertising. That was partly driven by the separation from Schibsted Media, also some macroeconomic factors, as well as lower ARPA in real estate in Norway, which I will come back to. I also want to say that we have also made several strategic decisions, such as exiting jobs in Finland and in Sweden. We're also discontinuing selected products within Recommerce. That is all part of our simplification and focus agenda, but that, of course, also has some impact on the financials in this quarter. I'm happy to see that our stake in Adevinta continues to develop in a positive way.
As we communicated in December, we expect to receive around NOK 500 million in cash proceeds from the sale of assets within Adevinta. We will receive that in the second quarter of 2025. Again, the board intends to return and distribute these proceeds to shareholders as a special cash dividend, really to reinforce our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. Now, as recently as this week, we have taken major steps in Denmark as we launched DBA on our new and common Nordic platform, a major milestone, I would say. That means that all Danish users have now migrated. And already on the first day, we had more than 250,000 unique visitors on DBA on that day. At the same time as we did the launch, we also introduced the Fiks Ferdig transactional product, which includes integrated payment and shipping and so on.
It's really exciting to see that that set some records, even on the first day, on things like opt-in rate for a new transactional solution and also number of transactions that happened. In fact, we saw more than seven times more transactions on the first day compared to what we have seen in similar launches in the past. To me, this is really more than just a platform upgrade. This is the beginning of a new era for secondhand shopping in Denmark. We're introducing a number of improvements in the market, of course, the transactional solution, but also things like reviews, recommendations, and many other smaller features. Exciting times. Now, let me then go through the quarterly results in a bit more detail. Let's begin with mobility.
We will start, as usual, with the key drivers for the classifieds revenue, not the transactional part, but the classifieds part. Beginning with this quarter and following the Capital Markets Day, we have now improved our KPI reporting. That also means that for mobility, as an example, we are now breaking down ARPA in private and pro segments. If we then look at ARPA, the mobility segment continued to show growth across all markets. Sweden had the strongest uplift, and that was driven by both professional and ARPA growth. It's supported by both upsell and new value-based pricing model that we introduced in the late part of Q3 last year. In Norway, I should mention that we have reclassified some revenues. We have taken the dealer management system, Carweb, that was previously in other revenues. We have reclassified that to be part of the classified revenues.
And the reason is that these products are now part of the packages that we sell to dealers. But this reclassification impacts the year-on-year ARPA growth because, as we have communicated before, the Carweb product has seen some decline in revenues as some dealers have moved to another dealer management system. If we were to look at the professional ARPA without these reclassifications, without Carweb, the underlying growth in professional ARPA in FINN is actually 15% year-on-year. If we then turn to private ARPA in Norway, it was flat in Q4. I can say that it increased somewhat in December as we introduced this value-based pricing, tiered pricing model in Norway, similar to what we introduced in Sweden earlier. And in Denmark, professional ARPA grew in line with the last quarter, while private ARPA declined.
The reason for that is mainly due to lower volumes in Bilbasen, where prices are somewhat higher. If we then turn to volume in Norway, the professional segment showed steady growth. Important here to say that that is partly linked to the 2021 surge in sales of new cars that is now an inventory that is hitting the used car market. Private volumes also grew, and that was benefiting from a softer Q4 in the year before. In Sweden, it was a little bit the other way around, where volumes were impacted by strong comparables. I can say that lower interest rates and increased new car registrations indicate a positive outlook for Q1. In Denmark, it's a very strong market for the time being. That means that the cars sell fast, and for us, that means a decline in average listing days.
Looking then at the financials, revenue in mobility grew by 1% on a constant currency basis in Q4. This growth was primarily driven by ARPA from both professionals and privates in Sweden and also professionals in Denmark and in Norway. I can also say that AutoVex continued to contribute to the revenue growth, while Nettbil experienced a weaker than expected quarter in Q4, and what we see is that Nettbil, as a top-up channel, is more volatile than the underlying classifieds market, and here we were affected by dealers who were reducing their inventory at the end of the year and also lower exports driven by changes in regulations the year before. When it comes to Nettbil, I also want to mention that we are seeing a strong rebound and pickup from January in 2025, then we have advertising revenues.
And here we saw a further decline during the quarter, down 28% year-on-year. The market conditions certainly played some role in this, but the majority of this was driven by effects related or temporary effects related to the split from media. And similarly, we have sales commissions that was driven that was also affected by the split, and that also led to a 28% decrease in other revenues. If we look at OpEx, excluding COGS, this is a key metric that we introduced at the Capital Markets Day. That remained stable year-on-year, and that is despite the investments that we are making in Nettbil, AutoVex, and also Willhaben, as well as the ongoing transition to a common platform. And overall, EBITDA increased by 3% compared to Q4 last year. That was then driven by the higher revenues and resulted in a 50% margin.
If we were to adjust for the transactional models, the margin in, let's say, the more traditional mobility segment was around 57% in this quarter. Let's then move to real estate, and here, if we look at the KPIs first, total ARPA grew 8% in this quarter. That was primarily driven by strong performance in the commercial segment and for commercial buildings and also in leisure homes for sale, where we introduced new packages. As expected, the ARPA growth was slightly softer compared to previous quarters when it comes to residentials for sale, and that was impacted by downgrades in packages, as we have also communicated before. However, despite these downgrades, ARPA in the residential for sale segment still remains 1% above last year.
I want to reiterate also what we mentioned at the Q3 presentations, that from January of 2025, we have implemented product and package updates, which will improve ARPA development for residential for sale beginning from January of this year. We have Finland, where we saw a strong year-on-year ARPA increase, driven primarily by a favorable mix between rentals and for sale, also somewhat by regular price increases and good continued upsell efforts. On the upsell, sorry, on the volume side, the total number of listings was fairly strong in Norway, while in Finland, we saw a decline, primarily driven by a continued drop in rentals. I should also say that in Q4, the residential for sale segment in Finland turned slightly negative, which was reflecting the broader market development in Finland. Looking at the financials, total revenues increased by a strong 11% in the quarter.
This was then driven by a 9% increase in classifieds revenues, supported by ARPA and volume growth. Transactional revenues also had a strong development and growth in the quarter, driven by growth in what we call GMV and transactional revenue in the Qasa and HomeQ products. Looking at traffic, I'm very happy to say that FINN real estate, for the third consecutive quarter, achieved all-time high traffic, which really, to me, reflects the incredibly strong market position that we have in Norway, and similarly, in Finland, we're very pleased to see that our continued efforts into investing in marketing and product development is translating into solid development in key metrics such as brand awareness, top of mind, traffic, and content, and we aim to continue these efforts to really make sure that we strengthen our leading position in Finland to reach our long-term ambition in this market.
OpEx, excluding COGS for real estate, increased year-on-year due to these investments, both in Finland and in transactional models. And this led to an EBITDA decline of 3% compared to last year and a margin of 28%. If we adjust for the transactional models, margin in traditional real estate was around 37% in the quarter, and that then includes also the investments in Finland. So next is jobs. And here, after the decision to exit Sweden and Finland, we are now focusing exclusively on Norway. If we look at the KPIs for Norway, we continue to see solid ARPA growth that is driven by the segmented price model that we have discussed before, also continued good development in upsell products. On the negative side, it was a decline of 8% in volume, and that was primarily driven by, let's say, the overall market conditions in Norway.
So if you then translate this to the financial results, the financial results in jobs were, of course, impacted by the closure of the businesses in Sweden and Finland during the quarter. And when we did that, the revenues were lost immediately upon closure, while some of the associated costs take longer to materialize, to take out. That also means that in Q1, some costs will still remain as Finland continues to operate throughout February, while Sweden is already fully exited. If we then look at Norway only, we saw an increase of revenues of 4% compared to last year, and this is then despite the volume increase decrease that I mentioned.
In line with the strategy that we communicated at CMD, we have also here in Jobs implemented changes in the pricing in this segmented price model from January and onwards, along with certain CPI adjustments on other products. These changes that we have then implemented are expected to contribute to double-digit ARPA growth in 2025, very much in line with the levels that we saw in 2024. OpEx, excluding COGS, decreased 10% in this quarter. That was driven by the exits in Finland and Sweden, as well as reductions of the number of FTEs in Norway. Overall, the reported EBITDA declined by 9% year-on-year, impacted by these exits, as I mentioned, and resulted in an EBITDA margin of 42% in this quarter. Lastly, we have Recommerce. Also here, we have introduced new KPIs to follow going forward.
We have GMV, or gross merchandise value for transacted goods, so not all listed goods, but transacted goods, and take rate for those. And if we look then at the transacted GMV, it continues to develop well across all three markets, driven by then higher underlying transactional volumes and also an increase in average order value in Norway and in Finland. And take rates remain relatively stable overall. There are some shifts between the markets. In Norway, a higher share of high-value items has led to a slight decrease in take rate, while in Sweden and Finland, we have seen slightly higher take rates due to fewer shipping campaigns. And let me just remind you of one thing.
As you see, the Swedish numbers, the Swedish take rate is slightly lower than in Norway and Finland, and that is due to a different mix of categories and a much higher average order value. If we then look at the financials, revenues in the Recommerce vertical grew by 7% in this quarter. That was driven by the transactional business model, of course, and primarily by Fiks Ferdig in Norway, and that was driving the volume growth. I should say that the revenue growth was softer than in previous quarter. That reflected exits that were made in Plick in refurbished electronics. We have also discontinued certain products in Denmark in preparation of the consolidation of DBA on our common platform. It's really about focusing on fewer and better products.
We also had an accrual for VAT on shipping that lowers the transactional volume in this quarter by approximately NOK 10 million. Then we have advertising, and also similar to mobility, we saw a decline in advertising revenue in re-commerce. That was 20% year-on-year. Again, market conditions played a role, but it was intensified by the temporary effects related to the split from Schibsted Media. OpEx, excluding COGS, declined 4% compared to last year, and that was primarily then driven by FTE reductions. Overall then, EBITDA decreased by 13% compared to last year due to this revenue development, and the margin landed at minus 35%. With that, I'll hand it over to PC to go through the more detailed financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. So let me take you through some more details on the financials for the fourth quarter.
In total, revenues for Schibsted Marketplaces ended, as mentioned, 12% above Q4 last year, mainly driven by delivery and real estate. Total EBITDA for Schibsted Marketplaces ended at NOK 337 million, 3% up from the same period last year, driven by other HQ and the mobility segment. Christian has already covered the development in the verticals well, but let me give you some perspectives of the performance in delivery and other HQ. The total revenue growth in delivery also includes the newly acquired delivery business from Amedia, contributing revenues of NOK 84 million in Q4. If we exclude this, the underlying revenue development in delivery is plus 8% in the quarter. This revenue growth underlying is driven by a strong volume increase in the parcel delivery service, Helth jem, of 52%.
This is, as we have seen also before, somewhat offset by declining volumes and revenues from printed newspapers, while Morgenlevering saw a flat development compared to the same quarter last year. EBITDA ended at NOK 17 million, slightly down from a very strong Q4 in 2023. Other in HQ had an EBITDA of minus NOK 71 million in the fourth quarter, an improvement of NOK 28 million versus the same quarter the year before. And this was mainly driven by cost reductions from our downsizing process that we executed last year, while TSA revenues from the media separation still are at a high level. So let's move over to cost development in the quarter. This slide shows OpEx, excluding COGS for Schibsted Marketplaces, excluding delivery. So the same visualization that we used at the CMD in November last year.
Cost development and workforce reductions are progressing as planned and in line with the earlier communication. Total OpEx, excluding COGS, declined by 1% versus last year. Despite 5% around there, salary inflation, personnel costs reduced 9% in Q4 versus last year, and this is driven by the significant FTE reductions from our downsizing process, combined with closing down Jobs business in Finland and in Sweden. In addition to the 100 reductions that we reported during Q3, during Q4, we have seen additional 140 reductions in FTEs throughout the quarter, so if you look at total workforce and exclude delivery and also employees on gardening leave, our organization today is around 1,750 FTEs. Marketing cost increased, as expected, by 7% in the quarter, mainly driven by the investments to strengthen our position of Oikotie in the finish market.
Other costs increased a bit different reasons, but the main driver is an increase in computer and software costs compared to the last year. Overall, this results in a 3 percentage point improvement in OpEx, excluding COGS over revenue from 70% to 67%. So let's move to the income statement. EBITDA improved slightly compared to last year and ended at NOK 337 million. Our operating profit for the year, however, ended at almost -NOK 1.4 billion. This is due to an impairment loss in our marketplace operations in Finland of -NOK 1.1 billion, in addition to NOK 196 million in total in other expenses that is driven from restructuring costs of NOK 144 million from the organizational changes that we have talked about, in addition to NOK 21 million in restructuring costs related to the media separation.
Financial income is impacted by a fair value adjustment of our stake in Adevinta, and the 14% ownership stake has increased in value by NOK 1.1 billion from NOK 20.7 billion to NOK 21.8 billion now in Q4. The value increase is entirely driven by improved Adevinta performance and expectations. Operations in Lendo, Prisjakt and our skilled trade marketplaces are, as we earlier communicated, from Q4 presented as discontinued operations, and the comparable information is represented accordingly. In totality, net loss for the group ended at minus NOK 260 million. On cash flow from operating activities ended in Q4 at NOK 279 million, up NOK 42 million versus last year. The increase is related to a slightly higher EBITDA, improved net interest and paid taxes, partly offset by working capital and provisions. CapEx in the quarter ended at NOK 157 million, down 25% versus last year.
The decrease is due to lower investments in product and tech in our core business, but also lower PPE investments in our delivery business. The majority of our investments in our core business is related to the ongoing transition to a common tech platform. There were no refinancing activities in Q4, and due to the significant cash balance that we have, we have deposited a total of NOK 3.8 billion in short-term liquidity funds to achieve a slightly higher interest rate than bank deposits. Net cash amounted to NOK 2.5 billion at the end of 2024. This slide provides a capital return overview, highlighting paid out and planned cash dividends, as well as the status on our ongoing share buyback program. In 2024, ordinary dividend of NOK 2 per share for 2023 was paid out.
In addition, following the divestments of Adevinta and the sale of Schibsted Media, Schibsted announced, and we are now executing on a capital return package consisting of 20 billion NOK in extraordinary special dividend and 4 billion NOK share buyback program. For 2025, the board has proposed a dividend of 2.25 NOK per share for 2024 to be paid out in May this year, and as Christian mentioned, we expect to receive around 500 million NOK in proceeds from sales in Adevinta, and we expect this to be received in Q2. The board intends to distribute these proceeds as extraordinary dividend, reinforcing our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. On September 9 last year, the first tranche of the share buyback program was initiated, aiming to repurchase our own shares of a total amount of 2 billion NOK by 2 May 2025.
As of 3 February 2025, Schibsted has acquired 4.6 million shares at a cost of NOK 1.6 billion, now owning 2.1% of total outstanding shares. Before we move over to Q&A, I want to remind you about our medium-term targets that we presented at CMD and provide some color on the outlook we see for Q1. We remain on track to deliver on our medium-term targets, supported by continuous ARPA expansions, growth in our transactional businesses, combined with our ambitious cost efficiency agenda. In the shorter term, we expect solid underlying ARPA development in Q1, driven by updated prices and product launches across our verticals. However, we expect total revenue growth to continue to be muted in Q1, and this is mainly driven by two things: advertising revenues, that is, as we saw also in Q4, expected to be negatively impacted by the separation and disintegration from media.
Additionally, also as we saw in Q4, strategic decisions such as exiting jobs in Finland and in Sweden, focusing, slimming down, and simplifying our product offering, particularly in re-commerce, are expected to give some negative effects also in the first quarter, and with that, I hand over to you, Jann-Boje, and take us into Q&A.
Thanks, PC, so as usual, I will start with questions on Teams, and then we can see if we also have some written questions which we can address here. Looking at Teams, I think first up is Eirik, so Eirik, please unmute and go ahead.
Yes, hi guys, Eirik from Carnegie here. I hope you can hear me. If we can start off whereof PC and also Christian, you commented that you said you wanted to reiterate the comments given at Q3 on ARPA growth for real estate. And if I remember correctly, you said I think double-digit growth for ARPA in 2025 based on the actions you're taking. So my first question would be, could you just confirm that me remembering Q3 and double-digit ARPA is correct? And if that's also the case both for Q1 and for 2025 as a whole. Thank you.
Yes, we can confirm that we aim for double-digit ARPA growth for real estate this year. It can be slightly lower in the first quarter than in the rest of the year, but overall, you're right.
Okay, thank you. And also a follow-up on real estate. And if I've understood it correctly, there's a three-month, you could say, notice period on the downgrades. Is it fair to kind of assume that the baseline on mix is basically reset going into 2025? You guys started talking about downgrades already at Q2. I think it was last year we saw ARPA gradually coming down for Q3 and Q4. And is it kind of a fair estimate that that baseline for mix going into 25 is, yeah, reset? And what I'm asking is, do you expect acceleration of downgrades now, or do you think it's over?
What we have seen is the downgrades, as you say. And we are now at a point where most of the customers who are involved in our competitor have downgraded to medium package going into 25.
That's very clear. Thank you. And just a final question from me, please. The 30% ARPA growth in Sweden private mobility, is it fair to assume that Norway private should see sort of the same type of uplift from Q1 based on similar alterations from the first of January in Finland, or how should we think about that?
Yeah, so as you saw, it was really strong results in Sweden. We see, let's say, similarly strong results in Norway. But it is important to point out that Sweden and Norway come from different starting points where the average revenue per ad in Sweden was at a lower level when we introduced this than it was in Norway. So it's a little bit, I wouldn't compare it entirely, but there are also good and strong results in Norway.
That's very clear. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll jump back in the queue.
Thank you.
Thanks, Eirik. I think next up is Silvia. So Silvia, please go ahead with your questions.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I would also like to ask three questions. The first is on the advertising revenue trends within mobility. We understand that there is an impact due to the split from Schibsted Media.
Can you elaborate a little more about the other effects, in particular the underlying advertising market trends? Can you comment about your growth in comparison to the market? Then the second question is on the delivery business, where revenue, so significant growth, partly helped by the acquisition while the EBITDA development was a bit more muted. So can you help us understand a little more the cost drivers within the delivery segment that led to these different margin profiles? And then just finally on the competitive dynamics, you already mentioned the developments in real estate. Is there anything else to be aware of or to be reminded about, anything perhaps impacting re-commerce beyond your strategic actions being taken? Thank you.
Yes, I'll take the first and the last, and you'll take the middle one, PC. So when it comes to advertising, and not only for mobility, but also for re-commerce, yes, there is a smaller part of it that is related to, let's say, a weaker macro environment and weaker advertising market. But I would not put too much weight on that in your analysis because most of it is driven by the split from media, where we knew we had some very strong products and so on that we are now kind of out of. And we also have to rebuild sales teams and so on that are going out to advertisers and building new relationships, selling these products and so on. So this was expected, and it's something that we also expect to see gradually come back throughout this year. Then we want to take delivery.
Yeah, on delivery, I think the main effect is that if you look at the quarter results for delivery in 2023, you see that there is a very plus-minus zero and a very strong Q4. So we are comparing against a strong quarter. That is actually the main reason. And then just remember that the growth is partly coming from including a media distribution. In totality, that helps EBITDA by five. So it's positive, but it doesn't add that much on the bottom line. And also, a lot of the volume growth in the parcel delivery business is related to Temu, which of course is positive on a net, but it's slightly lower margins in a way. So I would say that the delivery business is in a very good shape and continues to deliver good underlying results.
And on the competitive side, I will not comment on all our positions, but overall, I would say we are in a very good situation. If we take real estate in Norway as one example with high interest, as I mentioned, we are continuing to strengthen our position a third consecutive quarter where we have all-time high in traffic, really showing the strength of that position. You also asked about re-commerce. And of course, here we have, over the last couple of years, seen the entry of Vinted into the Nordics in Sweden and in Finland and in Denmark. They are using a lot of advertising money to strengthen their position. And I'm very happy to see that we are keeping up well in that competition with Vinted with significantly less investment. And finally, our real estate position in Finland, here we are continuing to strengthen our position.
And other positions are more or less the same, I would say.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Silvia. Then we have Frederik, who's up next. So please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Christian, and good morning, PC. Thanks for taking my questions as well. I would like maybe one to Christian and one to PC. So Christian, on the changes you are making in several of your units in terms of pricing and how you work with that, it would be interesting to see if you could elaborate on the risks with pushing prices on various parts of it and how you mitigate that and how you monitor if you get adverse effects, just how you work on a daily basis with these sort of business changes. And then PC, you had a good slide on costs, slide 20.
Could you elaborate a little bit on how we should view Q1 and Q2 in what sort of EO costs you might have on your transition way here and right-sizing so we sort of could get that right? It would be interesting to hear that kind of elaboration as well. Thank you.
So on the price point first, first of all, I want to say that in all the three verticals where it's a B2B effort, so mobility and real estate and jobs, in all those three verticals, we have, let's say, long-term strategic plans for how we intend to increase our monetization and kind of what are the steps involved in doing that and what kind of capabilities do we need to build and so on. So that's kind of the first fundamental that needs to be in place.
Then, as you rightly point out, there are, of course, important tactics and important processes in actually executing on it. We're doing that in relationship with our customers. We are in dialogue with them. We have strengthened our go-to-market practices significantly. And that has also led to, for example, in the fall, a very successful go-to-market for both mobility and real estate in Norway as one example, where we see that we get very positive feedback from many customers that the value in these packages is there. And that we also, to a large degree, reach the distribution of packages that we desired. Yeah.
Thank you.
And then on your second question, so thanks for the feedback. I'm not going to go into sort of quarterly outlook statements on the cost as such, but let me give a couple of, let's say, reflections around it. Now we did a lot of steps in 2024 to reset our organization. So that will, of course, also help us in the coming quarters. Most of it is already starting to, when we enter the year. So that will be a positive effect in Q1 and the rest of the year. We are not planning any sort of major changes like we saw last year either closing down businesses or significant changes to our workforce.
But of course, we will work day by day to optimize and make sure we gradually become more efficient. Marketing costs will fluctuate. So I'm not going to give that. That depends on, let's say, product launches or campaigns or things. So that can move up and down. And other costs we expect to be able to no big structural changes this year, but gradually bring it down. All of this is at the same time we have a significant growth agenda. By just maintaining the cost base, we will continue to see improvement in OpEx in relation to sales towards the 40% sort of indication that we gave at CMD.
All right. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Frederik. And always good to see you in person with the camera. Thanks for this. Next up in line is Will. Will, please unmute and ask your questions.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Sort of two areas for me. Firstly, yeah, as a vendor-paid player, your kind of tepid revenue growth in the quarter is quite a standout. We had Hemnet 40% growth for their property business. REA just had numbers growing big double digits and you're flattish. Could we have a bit more on what you see is actually going on in that market? We see snippets in the trade press, in the local press. We hear about the new competitor. We hear about the downgrades. But could you give us a bit of a state of the nation as to what's actually going on at the coalface? And I suppose there's kind of two things to kind of explore there.
One would be, isn't it quite dangerous to put for a big fat price increase in January with an aggressive package upsell? We've seen what happened with Trade Me in their market where it had very negative long-term ramifications. On the other hand, I think the evidence is quite clear that you offer huge value for your vendors. And so isn't there an exercise to be done to communicate that more to the vendors? It's surely not in their interest that some of these agents are downgrading packages on their behalf and ultimately perhaps imperiling their sales, so a bit of context there would be helpful, and then secondly, on the advertising side, could you just, the numbers are very weak, but you'd flag that. Could you separate what's underlying, what's disposals, and what's the separation from the media business, and when should we cycle out that? Thank you.
Take the real estate part first. I think there's no big change now compared to what we have said before. We have a very strong position in the market. We continue to strengthen that. Yes, there is a competitor where some agents have an ownership interest. Those agents, they have then decided to downgrade the packages to reallocate investments to Hjem. That is all expected from our side.
What is really important for us now is to be transparent about our prices, about really communicating to our agents the benefit that they have from being in the large package. And we see that there is a clear benefit. You get 15% more effect as an example. And we have also taken measures in the tactics of how we have introduced new pricing this year, where we have included more value in the large package. We've also changed the discount structure in such a way that it favors those customers who have chosen the large package. So the price difference between the large and the medium is slightly lower in a way. So yes, we are aware of all the situations that you mentioned in a way, and we have taken measures to counteract those.
Shall I take the second one?
Yes, please. Yeah.
So on advertising, we still see a market that hasn't fully recovered, but less of a drag compared to what you have seen in some of the quarters over the last couple of years. If I'm going to give you kind of a guidance, I would say two-thirds of the decline is linked to the media separation, and probably one-third is more of the overall market situation, just to give some perspective.
That's very helpful. And just to follow up, so we should see from your comments, we've now digested the negativity around some of these agents prioritizing their own linked platform. And so we should be at an inflection point going forward where revenue growth accelerates, and that should be at the core of our expectations. This is now digested, and now we're back to the core business of offering products and price to drive revenue growth going forward.
As we have said before, we expect double-digit revenue growth in residential for sale this year. So I mean, yes, if you now see a lower growth now, it will, of course, then increase going forward.
Thank you.
Thanks, Will. Before we move on to the webcast, I will just look a little bit in the written questions. So starting maybe with re-commerce, probably a question for you, PC. First one, you have high losses in re-commerce this quarter. Should we expect this to increase from the current level given the ramp-up in Finland and Denmark, or will it stay on the same level?
Yeah, good question. So I'm not going to, again, go into any quarterly kind of outlooks on the different verticals and the cost items. There are specific reasons why we have a relatively low EBITDA in re-commerce in Q4.
Looking ahead, we link to both competitive situation and our campaigns. There might be some swings in the marketing costs and so on, but we don't plan any major changes, so I think if I'm going to guide you, you shouldn't sort of include any significant changes in the trajectory that we are on to become positive on EBITDA in 2027.
Thanks, PC, then back to you, Christian. We talked about real estate, but here's a question on mobility, so you introduced new pricing models for cars in Norway. How has the response from the dealers been so far, and how has it compared to our expectations?
The response has been very positive, I would say. The go-to-market process has been executed in a very good manner, and the feedback from dealers is that these packages make sense, that they are really valuable. We have ended up with a distribution between, let's say, the basic and premium and plus package and so on in line or slightly better than our expectation.
Thanks. Very good. I take one more here on the webcast. One for you, PC. You reiterate your midterm targets for the CMD today, but don't provide guidance for 2025. Could you provide more color on the expectations for revenues and EBITDA in 2025 and how you expect to progress towards the midterm targets presented at the CMD?
Yeah, different ways of asking us to give an outlook for 2025 that we said we're not going to give, but let me try to give some perspective. We're very much on track. I hope you see that we are executing on the agenda that we laid out at CMD, even if it's still early days. We are very much on track to deliver on those targets. Remember also what we said at CMD: there will be a transition during, particularly now in 2025. It is a very heavy transition year where we need to complete the separation from media.
We have a very high intensity in our transition to a common tech platform, what we have done now in February in DBA, and we are now planning the next major steps or Blocket. We also are in the midst of exiting both positions that we have and also companies that we own, and we are executing on several structural initiatives to make us more simple and more cost-efficient going forward, and a lot of that is not going to give a financial impact in 2025. So I think what you need to see is that it will take us some time before we are where we want to be when it comes to the efficiency level.
But all of that is things that we believe is the right thing to do to create value for our shareholders. So in a way, no changes from what I said at CMD. If you look at the sort of latest consensus, for me, it seems like the consensus is in a very good place when we're looking at 2027. But it seems to be a bit aggressive in the phasing on how fast to get there. I think I'll leave it with that, Jann-Boje.
Thanks, PC, for the color here. And then I think we can move on to Teams again. So next up in the queue is Marcus. So please unmute and go ahead.
Thank you. So, Marcus, has to be. So, I understand you don't guide specifically on the quarters on cost, but can you confirm that cost excluding COGS will come down year over year in 2025? That's the first one. And the second one is on the phasing on HQ revenues through 2025 and into 2026. Can you provide some flavor on how you expect the revenues to phase there? And the final question is on the dealer management systems that you've lost in 2024. Will that be a headwind for mobility in 2025 as well?
Yeah, so three questions there. I think if you start from the last one, we saw a gradual reduction in the revenue from our dealer management system throughout 2024. So you will continue to see some headwinds on that, particularly in the first half of this year. On your second question on phasing on revenues on the HQ other segments, so the important part there is the TSA revenues that is still at a high level.
It will remain relatively high throughout 2025. It will go down a little bit as media is exiting the TSAs, and then it will go quite a lot down in 2026. In terms of the cost development, I don't want to give you an exact answer in terms of the absolute development of cost. I think I'll come back to that. But what I hope that you see is that we continue to work on our cost base. We are addressing the organization, marketing. We can go a little bit up and down depending on what we do, and also other costs will be under tight scrutiny every single day.
Thank you, and just a short follow-up on the TSA. Is it possible to provide details on roughly how much of the Hjem revenues in Q4 are from the TSA?
I don't think we've provided that before. What we have said, I think we said at CMD that we have roughly NOK 300 million in yearly revenues on TSA. So I will use that and then take a sort of a slight reduction from that going forward.
That's clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Marcus. Good questions. And then next up in line is Petter. So Petter, please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. And if my questions have been already asked, I'm sorry, I was a little bit late into the call. Nevertheless, for mobility firstly, OpEx there, if we exclude COGS, it's down, I think, 1% year over year. It is flat. These are slightly down. OpEx is also something that we should expect for mobility in the coming quarters.
We will not give you cost guidance specifically on each vertical. I think we're giving quite a lot of color now, but where we are, our agenda ahead, and also a bit of color on the overall cost development.
Okay. And then for jobs, you are exiting Finland and Sweden and saying that revenues were obviously negatively affecting growth in the quarter. But if I understood it correctly, we're also saying that costs have not been fully taken out. Is that something that we should expect being taken out already in Q1, Q2, or will this drag on?
Yeah, so happy to say. So what we said last year is that we expect to lose NOK 160-170 million in revenues in 2025, and we are able to reduce the cost in a similar way. So it should be neutral on absolute EBITDA and then, of course, improve the margin because it's a smaller business. So what we've seen in Q4 is most of the revenue reduction is coming. There will be some more revenue reduction coming in Q1. Happy to say that the cost measures are now already executed and should have full effect now already from Q1, and there might be some smaller cost items also in Q1, but the majority of the effects is already taken out.
Okay, thank you. I'll drop back. Thank you.
Thanks, Petter. The next up is Håkon. If you can hear us, please go ahead and unmute.
Yes, hello. Just a quick question again on the real estate, the different packages and the trading, the real estate agent trading down. I'm just wondering, now that you increased the prices, is there a risk for the real estate agents to trade down to the smaller package? Can you please elaborate your thoughts on that? And also, given your solid market position in the real estate market in Norway, why do you have three packages? Can't you just force everyone on the large one?
Well, to your first question, is there a risk to go down to the small packages? I don't think that is a meaningful risk. Today, it's like 2% who choose the small package because the medium and large packages are so much better in a way. And to your second question, should we just force everyone onto the same package? We don't think that is the right approach. We think we want to give optionality to our customers to choose different options. But of course, we want to put most value in the larger packages to incentivize customers to choose that, of course.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thanks, Håkon. Then we have Giles waiting in the queue. So Giles, please go ahead.
Thank you. First one was back on competition in re-commerce. And if I understand it right, Vinted not yet launching in Norway is actually more a function of customs rules than anything else. So it'd be interesting to get your comment on whether you think Norway being outside the EU is going to hold Vinted back forever. And on the assumption it's not, then what are you doing today to prepare for that competition in the most important market?
The second question, I suppose, is an extension of that, and it's coming back to a topic I remember raising at the CMD, which is, can we have an update on how you're seeking to exploit regional scale benefits in re-commerce, of course, cross-listings, cross-border listings being the main one? Then thirdly, back on real estate, back on Hjem, we had management change at Hjem already. So what are you reading into that? And also, they've been public that they've reached 50 million visits since they launched in April. And what do you think about that level of traffic attraction over that period of time? Thanks.
Yeah, so when it comes to your first question about Vinted, I obviously don't know about Vinted's plans, so it's hard for me to say. I think from my point of view, I think it's very encouraging to see that we keep up in the competition with significantly lower investments in marketing than they do. That's a sign of strength of our brands and our positions. I would also say in Norway that it is, as you say, it is outside of EU. That makes it slightly harder for Vinted to operate in Norway, as we see it at least.
And I think we are continuing to develop the product, develop the position in Norway so that we are prepared should they decide to do that. To your last question about the Hjem in Norway and the traffic levels that they have, it's important to note that a large portion of that is acquired traffic, not organic traffic. If you were to count it as only, let's say, the organic traffic to Hjem, so where users choose to go to Hjem, it would be significantly lower. While on our side, it's almost entirely organic. So that signals even more strength on our side, and the second part was.
Oh, yeah, sorry, second question, yeah, please. Cross-border listings.
Cross-border listings. That is something that we are contemplating. It's not on our short-term roadmap.
What are the challenges there? Why is it further down the track than an immediate priority?
Well, to do it, I mean, as we move now towards one common platform, that becomes easier to do. So that is for sure. We are for sure moving in the right direction to achieve that. But of course, it includes some changes in the product, and we have to then assess those investments to other things that we could do to improve that product. And so far, we see that there are other things that might be more important for the product than that.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you, Giles. Then I don't see more hands up here. And looking at the time, we have to conclude then for today. So thank you so much for tuning in. And if you have questions, just follow up with Zamal and myself. We are happy to take your calls.
Thank you.
Thank you.