Good morning and welcome to Schibsted Q1 2025 results. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Jann‑Boje Meinecke, and I'm heading Investor Relations. As usual, our CEO Christian and our CFO PC will walk us through the performance and developments in the quarter. Afterwards, I will moderate a Q&A session where analysts can dial in with Microsoft Teams and use the raise hand function. Now, without further delay, please let me hand over to Christian. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Jann‑Boje Meinecke, and good morning, everyone. I have previously compared the next phase of Vend's history with writing an entirely new book. Today, I'm happy to say that the first chapter of that book has started on a positive note with progress in the first quarter as we delivered growth across all our verticals and also continued to reduce our cost base as anticipated. In parallel, we have continued to simplify our structure, and we have now decided to accelerate the exit from our delivery business. As we announced yesterday, we have entered into an agreement to sell Helthjem. Also, consistent with our commitment to return surplus capital to shareholders, we initiated a new NOK 2 billion share buyback program in the quarter, and we plan to return around NOK 500 million in a special cash dividend linked to proceeds from Adevinta.
In this quarter, group revenues ended at NOK 2,015 million. That represents a 4% year-on-year increase, while the group EBITDA increased by 18% to NOK 394 million. This revenue growth was driven by solid ARPA development across our verticals, but it was curbed by softer advertising revenues than expected. EBITDA growth was particularly supported by exceptionally strong volume-driven revenues in real estate and also the reduced operating expenses across the group. On the negative side, the exit from jobs in Sweden and Finland, as well as the simplification of our offerings in recommerce, affected the revenue growth on the negative side. Now, next week, on May 12th, we will reach another important milestone in our history as we officially become Vend.
me, this is a manifestation of our ambition to build world-class and efficient and easy-to-use marketplaces in the Nordics, delivering value to all our stakeholders, users, customers, society at large, and shareholders. Let me then go into the details of our first quarter, and as usual, we will begin with Mobility, and we will begin with the revenue drivers for the classifieds revenues. If we look at ARPA, then Mobility continued to show growth across all markets. Sweden had the strongest uplift, and that was driven by solid professional ARPA development and also strong ARPA performance in the private segment. This was driven by continued success of upsell products, as well as the new value-based pricing model that we introduced at the end of the third quarter last year, as well as the packages that we launched close to the end of the year.
In Norway, the professional ARPA was hampered by a decline in revenues from our dealer management system, CarWeb. That was due to churn by customers. If we were to exclude CarWeb, the underlying growth in professional ARPA in Finn was 16% year-on-year. Excuse me, and that was driven by the launch of the packages in Norway. I just want to remind everyone that we decided to reclassify the revenues from CarWeb from other revenues to classifieds revenues, and that started in Q4 of last year. The strong private ARPA growth in Norway is supported by the value-based pricing model that we also introduced late in Q4. In Denmark, professional ARPA developed in line with the price adjustments that we implemented at the end of the year, while the private ARPA was boosted by the introduction of listing fees in DBA for cars below NOK 50,000.
That was introduced after we launched DBA on our new common platform. If we then turn to volume, Norway's professional segment continued to grow. It was supported by the surge in new car sales in 2021, cars that are now returning to the market, and also by generally solid sales of new cars in Norway. In Sweden, the pro volume dropped, and that was mainly driven by a change that we made in the business model from subscriptions to pay per ad in one of the subcategories, heavy machinery. In Denmark, we have seen a continued very strong market. That means fast sell rates. As many of you know, that also means a decline in average daily listings on our pro segment in Denmark.
The decline that you see in the private segment in Denmark was anticipated, and that was also a result of the introduction of the listing fees that I mentioned earlier. Looking at the financials then, revenues in Mobility declined by 1% in Q1. Revenue growth was impacted by the closing of Tory Auto by NOK 10 million and the split from Media by another NOK 7 million. If we were to exclude those factors, the revenue growth would have been 4%. The growth was driven primarily by ARPA, as mentioned. In addition, the transactional business models delivered 18% revenue growth in the first quarter, driven by strong performance in both Nettobil and AutoX. Advertising, however, declined further in the quarter and was down 30%. This decline was primarily driven by the separation from Schibsted Media. OPEX, excluding COGS, remained close to stable year-on-year.
That is despite the continued investments in the new transactional models in Nettobil, AutoX, and Wheel Away. If we look only at the core business, then OPEX declined, and that was driven by the closing of Torget AutoX, as well as the effects from the reorganization that we did last year that resulted in lower FTEs and lower common costs. At the same time, we are investing in marketing. We are investing in product development. It is worth mentioning that in the first quarter, we had higher marketing costs in Mobility than we did the year before. All in all, EBITDA increased by 3% compared to Q1 2024, and that resulted in a margin of 49%. Adjusting for transactional models, the margin in the traditional classifieds business in Mobility was around 57% in the quarter compared to 55% before. Let's go to Real Estate.
For real estate, the total ARPA in Norway grew 12% in the quarter, primarily driven by price changes in residential for sale, but also in rent and leisure homes for sale. The ARPA development in residential for sale is still hampered by package downgrades, as we have mentioned before, but it is good to see that it is now at 6% growth compared to 1% when we reported Q4. The growth in this first quarter was driven by changes both in the pricing and discount structure. It is worth saying that the real estate market in Norway is very vibrant and has been so in Q1. As usual, that leads to a lower need for visibility products, which also hampers the ARPA somewhat in Norway.
In Finland, 11% year-on-year ARPA growth was driven by a favorable mix between for sale and rent, some price increases that we introduced, as well as better upsell. If we look at the volume side, it's very clear that the Norwegian market experienced an exceptionally high ad volume in Q1. We have actually now been looking back at data all the way back to 2003, and we have not been able to find such exceptional volumes as we have seen this quarter. The timing of Easter has been one effect, but mainly this is driven by exceptionally high activity in the market. I do want to say here that throughout history, volumes in real estate have proven to be quite stable, and they've only fluctuated by a few percentage points year-on-year if we look at the full year basis.
While it is quite hard to estimate right now, we are preparing for a similar development as that in 2025 as well. Finally, if we look at Finland, the for sale segment had double-digit growth year-on-year, but the rental volumes continued to decline, and as a totality, we moved to negative territory in volume development. Looking at the financials, total revenues increased by a strong 20% this quarter. This was driven by an 18% growth in classifieds revenues due to both the ARPA development and the exceptionally high volume growth in Norway, but also the transactional revenues had a strong quarter driven by the development in both Casa and HomeQ. Now, looking at traffic, I am very happy to see that the Finn real estate achieved for the fourth consecutive quarter an all-time high in traffic.
To me, that continues to demonstrate the strong position that we have in Norway. Finn Real Estate is truly a loved service by Norwegians. As many as 93% of all Norwegians know about the service. On average, every single Norwegian is using Finn Real Estate 40 minutes every single month. We have all the listings on our site. I just want to be very clear that we see no signs of our market position being affected by the efforts by Hjem in the market. In Finland, we are pleased to see that our investments in marketing are paying off. We see good development in key metrics such as brand awareness, which is record high. We will continue these efforts and these investments to continue to strengthen our market position to be able to reach our long-term financial goals in Finland.
OPEX, excluding COGS, declined year-on-year, and that was despite these investments in transactional models and in the accelerated marketing and product development in Finland. This led to an EBITDA increase of 97% compared to last year and a margin of 42% for real estate. If we adjust for the transactional models, margin in the traditional real estate area was at around 49% in this quarter. To jobs. Here, following the exits in Sweden and Finland, we are now exclusively focusing on Norway. Here we continued to see strong ARPA development, mainly driven by price increases in the segmented price model that we have introduced, as well as upsell efforts that we have strengthened. That is related to distribution products. As you can see, volumes are hampered by a continued soft macroeconomic backdrop.
It is worth saying here that the late Easter actually had a positive volume effect in the first quarter compared to last year when Easter was in March. Looking at the financial development, and let's here focus on the blue bars that represent Norway. As you can see, revenues increased 5% compared to last year, and that is despite this 10% volume decline. That is obviously due to the positive ARPA development. I'd like to mention here that we are also continuing to strengthen our product offering in jobs. One thing that we have launched is an AI-driven ad insertion that is helping our customers. The exits that we have made in Sweden and in Finland will continue to impact our reported numbers throughout 2025. They will have a negative impact on revenues and positive impact on the cost side.
If we then look at the costs, the total cost base decreased by 32%. That was driven by the mentioned exits in Sweden and Finland, as well as lower FTEs in Norway. Overall, the reported EBITDA increased by 17% year-on-year, and that resulted in an EBITDA margin of 59%. I do want to note here that Q1 is usually a strong quarter for jobs with higher margins than we usually see for the rest of the year. Finally, recommerce. Here we had transacted gross merchandise value, or GMV, increasing across Norway, Sweden, and Finland in Q1. That was driven by transactional volumes, but also by higher average order value in Norway and in Finland. We have still less than a full year of history in Finland. Here we are comparing with the quarter before.
Q4 is seasonally a stronger quarter than Q1 for recommerce. The underlying development in Finland is very solid. We have also seen positive development in the take rate in both Finland and Sweden, while it has remained stable in Norway at 16%. Let me also here remind you that the take rate in Sweden is lower than in the other markets due to a different category mix in Sweden that leads to a higher average order value. For the first time, we have included Denmark in this overview, and that is following the platform transition of DBA onto our common platform. It is obviously still early days, but we have come off to a good start.
As a result, we, of course, do not have any comparison figures either on quarterly or annual basis, but we are looking forward to provide those as we move forward. The financials, total revenues for recommerce declined by 6%. That was negatively affected by the phase-out and deconsolidation of certain non-core revenue streams, as well as the challenging situation that we have in advertising. Advertising was down 42% for recommerce. Classifieds revenues were also negatively affected by the discontinuation of certain listing fees in DBA, as well as some impact on Tory Professional. The transactional revenues continue to develop well, and the growth was 30% year-on-year in this quarter, driven by the increase in GMV and the higher take rate, as mentioned. With the launch of the transactional model in Denmark, we are now transactional in all four countries.
That is a significant milestone to us and really sets the stage for scalable growth going forward. We are now able to launch new features simultaneously in multiple markets. One of the things we have launched is an AI-driven ad insertion in several of our markets. On the cost side, OPEX, excluding COGS, reduced by 17% compared to Q1 2024. This was a result of several things: fewer FTEs, platform consolidation, AI automation, and other targeted cost-cutting measures. EBITDA then improved by 12% year-on-year, landing on minus NOK 72 million, and the margin improved by 3 percentage points for recommerce. With that, over to PC for a deeper look at our financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Let me present some more details on the financials for the first quarter. Total revenues ended 4% above Q1 last year, mainly driven by delivery and real estate. Total EBITDA ended at NOK 394 million, 18% up versus Q1 last year, driven by real estate and jobs. Christian has already commented on the verticals, but let me give you some more flavors on delivery and other HQ. Total revenue growth in delivery also includes the business that we acquired from Amedia with effect on 1 July 2024. This is contributing with NOK 85 million of revenues in Q1. If we exclude this, delivery revenues grew 5% in the quarter. The growth in the quarter is lower than the growth that we have reported in the previous quarters. This is a result of significantly lower growth volumes related to Temu. EBITDA ended at negative NOK 20 million versus plus NOK 1 million last year.
We have initiated measures to adjust our capacity and our cost levels to adapt to the weaker trend in terms of parcel volumes. Other NHQ had an EBITDA of minus NOK 101 million in the quarter compared to minus NOK 77 million in the same period last year. Lower revenues are partly mitigated by cost reduction in all our common functions. Now, let's move over to cost development. This slide shows OPEX excluding COGS and delivery. The cost development and workforce reductions are on track, and total OPEX excluding COGS declined 9% versus last year. Personnel cost is reduced 21%. This is driven by significant FTE reductions from a downsizing process that we executed last year, effects from closing down Jobs in Sweden and Finland, and some effects related to the media separation. Total workforce excluding delivery now stands at around 1,730 FTEs.
Marketing costs decreased as planned by 23% in the quarter, mainly as a result of the exit of Jobs in Finland and Sweden, but also a lower campaign activity level in Recommerce compared to Q1 last year. Other costs increased, mainly driven by higher cloud, software, and computer-related costs. Overall, this results in a 6 percentage points improvement in OPEX excluding COGS over revenue, from 69% to 63% now in Q1 2025. Let's move to Income Statement. Our Operating Profit for the quarter increased to NOK 183 million from NOK 73 million last year. This is due to improved EBITDA, lower depreciation and amortization charges, and also a decrease in other operating expenses. Financial income is impacted by a fair value adjustment related to Adevinta. The value of a 14% stake in Adevinta has decreased by around NOK 2.4 billion, from NOK 21.8 billion to NOK 19.3 billion now in Q1.
Our valuation approach and also the underlying financial performance in Adevinta is kept unchanged. The decrease is entirely driven by a change in peer multiples, combined with a strengthening NOK versus EUR at the end of Q1. In broad terms, you can say three quarters of the effect is related to the multiple, and one quarter is related to FX. Since the end of Q1, both the peer multiples have improved, but also the NOK has weakened again versus the EUR. If we have done the assessment as of today, 7th of May 2025, this will not have resulted in any reduction of the value at Adevinta compared to the value at Q4. In totality, net loss for the group ended at minus NOK 2.2 billion. Let's move to Cash flow.
Cash flow from operating activities for continued operation ended at NOK 257 million versus NOK 10 million in Q1 last year. The increase is related to EBITDA, improved net interest, lowered paid taxes, and improved working capital. Cash flow from investment activities in Q1 ended at NOK 198 million, down 51% versus last year. With CapEx at NOK 125 million, similar level as Q1 last year. As before, a majority of our CapEx is related to the ongoing transition to a common tech platform. Finally, Cash flow from financing activities is impacted by the significant amount of share buyback of NOK 1.2 billion that we have executed on in the quarter. Moving on, in March, Schibsted purchased own bonds of the amount of NOK 72 million. Except from this, there are no other refinancing activities during the quarter.
Due to the significant cash balance, Schibsted has deposited a total of NOK 3.6 billion in short-term liquidity funds to achieve a slightly higher return than bank deposits. Net cash amounted to NOK 1.4 billion at the end of the quarter. Shifting gear a bit, and on the next slide, to build on our CMD messages from November last year, let me provide some additional flavor on our growth and profitability agenda for the years to come. The Q1 results are a good indication that we are already on our way to execute on the portfolio simplification, cost reductions, and ARPA growth agenda, which are our most key value creation levers going forward. The chart on this slide provides an indicative sizing and an indicative timing of the EBITDA effects related to these initiatives.
Although we see good ARPA growth and also a good transactional growth momentum in 2025, we plan to accelerate this significantly in the years to come. Drivers will be increased impact from product pricing and packaging agenda following the completion of the platform transition, as well as continued growth momentum for our transactional businesses in Mobility, Real Estate, and not the least, Recommerce. Becoming a smaller, simpler, and a marketplace-focused company has some disinitiatives. In addition to the pressure on advertising revenues that we have talked about, we expect revenue to be impacted by the phase-out of TSA from media, as well as discontinuation of certain central services to date charged to Prisjakt, Lendo, and Delivery. As mentioned at several occasions before, we expect an increase in transactional revenues, particularly in Recommerce, and that will come with an increase in COGS related to increased shipping volumes.
As we complete our platform transition and also execute on other structural cost initiatives, we expect to see an increased impact on net cost development. In totality, our cost agenda is expected to more than offset negative effects from our portfolio simplification and also expected cost and salary inflation. I want to once again reiterate our strategy, our medium-term targets, and the capital allocation principles that we laid out at CMD in November last year. In terms of portfolio simplification, we are well on track. Yesterday, we announced that we entered into an agreement to divest Precell with an expectation to receive around NOK 500 million in cash consideration as a result of the transaction. Also, we have decided to initiate the sales process for delivery. The intention to do so has been communicated earlier, and we are now ready to move on with this initiative.
We plan to launch the process after summer and expect to present delivery as discontinued operation and deconsolidate from Q2 onwards. A couple of messages related to outlook before we go into Q&A. In the midst of the current very uncertain macroeconomic environment, it's not easy to have a clear view on the outlook for the remainder of 2025. We expect solid underlying ARPA growth to continue, driven by the updated price and package launches across all our verticals. However, we do expect total revenue growth to continue to be muted, driven by, first, advertising revenues negatively impacted by the synergies from media and put a drag on particular Mobility and Recommerce revenue growth. In addition, I will also say an increased uncertainty on the macro situation may hamper the advertising business even further.
Additionally, as in Q1, our strategic choices to simplify the business, such as exiting jobs in Finland and in Sweden, phasing out and deconsolidating revenue streams in recommerce, but also shutting down our mobility operation in Finland, is impacting the growth momentum short-term in some of our verticals. Finally, given both historical data, but also the trends that we observed now in April, we expect that exceptionally strong volume that we have seen and reported in real estate in Norway is likely to be normalized throughout the year. We expect our cost base to continue to decline throughout 2025 compared to 2024. However, the pace and the level of the reduction will slow down with significantly lower year-on-year reductions in the second half of this year. With that, I will hand over to Jann‑Boje Meinecke and go into Q&A. Okay,
good interest here on Teams this morning. First in the queue is Håkon from Kepler. Håkon, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you so much. On your CMD, you previously stated that the delivery is non-core, but it was not included in the initial group of assets marked for sale, like Lendo and Prisjakt. Can you clarify what triggered the tightening right now? Was there a strategic shift, incoming buy interest, or changing performance that accelerated the decision?
I guess I can comment on that. The answer is no. There are no big shifts or reprioritizations on our strategy or in the buy landscape. When we had the CMD in November last year, we were not ready to commit that delivery could be sold within 12 months. That is why we put it on the...
We were quite clear that we do not see ourselves as a future owner of a delivery business in Norway, but we need some more time. I think we have worked hard to progress on the initiative, and we are now ready to move into the next phase, and that is why we are announcing that today.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, Håkon. I think next in line, we have Eirik. Eirik, please go ahead.
Yes, hi guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I will do them one at a time, and I can actually start where we just left off on delivery. Should we read anything into your kind of recommerce conviction on the back of this and kind of how strategically important has, for instance, Helthjem been for Finn Fixferdig?
No, you should not read anything into our recommerce conviction from this announcement on delivery. I mean, as PC just said, we have already said before that delivery is not an asset we see ourselves as the long-term owner of, and we can certainly operate the recommerce business without also owning the delivery network, as we are doing in the other markets than Norway. Of course, we will have and have a good collaboration with Helthjem and the delivery network, and we will have a partnership with them probably also in the future.
That is very clear. Thanks, Christian. On the display ads, PC, you called it out as lack of visibility now with the current macro and everything. When I just look at the kind of run rate right now, it is ballpark or almost 50% below full year 2023 levels. Again, appreciate seasonality, macro, and everything. Could you help us think around absolute levels, maybe internal ambitions when you expect these trends from the synergies to turn? Just any color there would be great.
Should I take it? You read it to me. I guess we both can comment on it. I think it is fair to say that we are not happy where we are right now on our advertising business. Also, we need to remind ourselves of what we are going through of separating. This was announced a year and a half ago when we discussed the separation from media to be the area that would have the biggest effect. Now we are in the midst of that. As we have said before, our internal ambition is to be able to recover and get back to the levels that we saw before we started to see the negative effects.
That is still a bit ahead of us, right? I think we still need to deliver on that and show that going forward. I'm not going to give you another sort of outlook on absolute ambitions, but I think we have a good starting point where we are now, and we use that as a reference. We need to show how we are progressing and sort of recouping the lost advertising revenues. As you said, the joker in all of this is the overall, let's say, macro and market conditions that we are not in control of.
That's very clear. Thanks for the color. There's just one final one for me, a housekeeping question. Would you be able to split out the impact of computer and software cost growth versus the one-off linked to the company-wide event?
Yeah, so what we have talked about before is that becoming a new company, we took all our employees three days and gathered them as a real kickoff. That was a great investment, I would say, but that was a one-off of nature. We have set around NOK 25 million of cost of that, and that's not going to recur. The rest is more sort of running-related cost.
That's great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks for the good questions, Eirik. Good morning, Ed. Happy to have you here, and please go ahead.
Good morning. I've got three. I'll ask one at a time as well. First of all, on the OPEX, excluding COGS, down 9%. You said that that will be down, but maybe not as much in H2. I don't know if you just give a bit of color on that. Presumably, that's percentage terms you're talking about rather than absolute in terms of run rate. It is obviously very different across different divisions, sort of broadly stable in Mobility and down very heavily in Jobs. Is there any sort of color you can give on the mix of that as we go through the year?
I think what I can add is that we reported 9%. Keep in mind, what really helps us there is that we have full effect year on year from the FTE reductions that we executed on last year. If you remember last year, we got some effect of that in Q3, and we got quite a lot of effect of it also in Q4. Year on year, you'll not have the same effect in the second half. The closing of Jobs, we saw a good effect of that in Q4.
You are not going to see the same year-on-year effect in Q4 related to that. There are also some costs that we are carrying in the first half related to media that are not going to be there in the second half, sort of in 2024. I think that mainly it's a big shift between the first half and the second half. We will not have any intention to increase our cost base. It's just a sort of reported year-on-year decline that we just want to manage expectation that you are not going to see 9% throughout the year. Beyond 2025, of course, we will see new impacts from more structural initiatives that we have talked about before.
Okay, thank you. The segments on jobs margins, obviously that's where the biggest impact was. You spoke about some of the changes there, but you're now already above your CMD target to be above 55% margin. Obviously, you haven't seen volumes recover in that business yet. Could you talk a little bit about how we should expect margin to trend over the medium term as it gets to maybe a more normalized picture between volumes and price over time?
I can comment on that. As I said in my section, Q1 is usually a very strong quarter for jobs where we also see high margins. Keep that in mind. Plus, we had a positive effect from Easter in this quarter. You will also see that in this quarter, we had some lower FTEs in jobs than what we will have from Q2 onwards. You should not expect to see the same margin level throughout the year and will probably end over the course of the entire year below the 55% that we have communicated before.
Okay, thank you. Finally, as you mentioned, real estate for sale, ARPA improved decently sequentially. I appreciate you made some comments there around very high volume. I guess some of it will depend on how volume trends for the rest of the year. Is your expectation that can continue to accelerate from where you see the picture now?
The volume or ARPA? What did you mean?
For sale, ARPA.
The ARPA. What we have said there before is that we expect a double-digit ARPA over the course of the year.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Ed. Good questions. Next up in the queue is Giles. Good morning.
Good morning. Thank you. I had two questions, please. The first one, I think Christian, for PC. The first question was on real estate in Norway. The trade association data suggests that the volume growth that we saw in the quarter was market-driven rather than anything to do with, again, enlisting share by Finn. In the same period, or maybe just after the Q1 end, we have had the bad relationship between Finn and the Norwegian Real Estate Association spill into the local newspapers again. Not coincidentally, we have also had Hjem in the public domain talking about how their progress is going better than they expected. It is a very direct question, but are we reaching a point where there needs to be a reset in relations between Finn and estate agents in Norway? Deliberately provocative question there, but some thoughts would be useful.
Then the second question is actually much simpler, housekeeping question. The special dividend of NOK 500 million. Will the proceeds from the Vilharden stake sale by Adevinta be part of the funding for that, or does that sit somewhere else? Hopefully, that makes sense. Thank you.
First on real estate, the volume growth is not driven by increased market share because we have all the properties on our site. It is driven by extremely high market activity. When it comes to the, let's say, the press and activity in the press that you have seen related to contracts, for example, I would say that the majority of our customers, we have an agreement in place with them. It is just a minority of customers where there is an ongoing discussion, and we have a constructive dialogue with them and with the industry association on this.
It is a little bit elevated in media, I would say. In general, we have a good collaboration with our real estate customers. Of course, it is a little bit more challenging with the owners of Hjem, clearly. On your second question, the announced NOK 500 million is the same as we announced at the end of Q4, which is related to the sale of Distilled. We have not, and Vilharden has nothing to do with that. If and when there are additional proceeds coming from Adevinta, we will then update the market. Just to repeat, our capital allocation principle is that if we have more cash than we need to run our business, we will distribute that back to our shareholders, either in the form of share buybacks or extraordinary dividend.
Perfect. Thank you. Just to follow up on the real estate question, are you happy to reiterate that you're confident that the marketing spend that was allocated elsewhere by the founder shareholders here will ultimately come back to you, any later thinking there?
We do not expect the downgrades necessarily to come back from medium to large. We are now planning for a different distribution of packages, but we are certainly confident in our ability to, over time, increase our, let's say, share of wallet in this market and the monetization in real estate. Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Charles. Still a lot of hands, which is good. Good activity. Next is Fredrik from Handelsbanken. Fredrik, the floor is yours.
Thank you. And thank you for taking my questions as well. I hope you are all good. Just wanted to touch a little bit on mobility. The trends in it, you did not really see any growth in the quarter. ARPA is doing fine. If you take Sweden as one of the items in that, do you see an increased sort of competitive landscape? Do you see any sort of pullbacks from you changing your pricing structure on Blocket on the automotive side, for example? It would be interesting to hear sort of your thoughts on the dynamics in that part of Mobility. Thank you.
I would say that we do not see any major changes in the competitive landscape in Sweden. One area where there is competition is in the transactional space, the C2B model. The Swedish market is quite competitive in that area where we have Wheel Away. In the, let's say, traditional classifieds, Blocket is a clear, clear leader and continues to be so.
We have been able to work with the monetization levels, both in the private segment with great success with these segmented price models, and also in the pro segment where we increased prices going into this year.
The volume is merely an effect of that you had a very strong Q1 last year. It is a sort of comps issue
. In the pro segment, as I mentioned, in the pro segment, we did a change in business model in one of the subcategories, this heavy machinery category, where we changed from a subscription to a pay-per-ad model. That reduced the volumes, which then impacted the total NAA numbers.
All right. Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Fredrik. Switching over from Sweden to the U.K. Will, the floor is yours.
Hi, Ed. Will Packer from BNP. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. At Finn Property, could you update us on the efforts to reform the package structure to disincentivize spin down? Are those new features in place? Is the limited ARPA progress year to date more a symptom of the cyclical backdrop? My understanding is there have been some regulatory interventions to ensure that agents with an economic interest in Hjem share that information with vendors at the time the marketing envelope is determined. Could you update us on what's changed and is that having an impact? In terms of your medium-term guidance, which you've reiterated from the CMD, could you remind us of the underlying inventory assumptions that underpin that? It feels like there's quite a lot of volatility there. As we head towards next year, that could be a source of upside or downside across various segments and geographies. Thank you. All right.
Let me see if I remember all the questions. On the volume question, the third question, we have assumed flat volume development over the years. That is the assumption in our guidance. On the regulatory requirement for the YEM agents to disclose their ownership, that is a clear case. Whether they are compliant with it or not, I'm not entirely sure of. They are required to disclose it. When it comes to your first question, I didn't entirely catch all of it, but we are, of course, working continuously with the optimization of our packages and the offering to the agents.
One of the key things that we are working with right now is to show the difference in value between the large and the medium package, showing that you get, for example, 25% more traffic when you have the large package versus the medium one, and also that you get more leads to have new sale tasks as an agent. That is kind of the focus that we're working on right now.
Thanks for that. Just to confirm, the changes to the packages have been instituted that disincentify spin down. Now it's a question of just that playing out and impacting vendor and consumer behavior. You're happy with how the packages look today?
The distribution of the packages between large, medium, and small is okay. We're working now with that distribution to see how can we optimize that structure or that distribution in the best possible way. Of course, it would be ideal if some of the agents would come back to the large package, but we are not assuming that in our plans.
Thanks very much.
Thanks, Will. Next up is Henriette. Please unmute and go ahead.
T hanks, Henriette Thomsen-Ardvik. Two questions, if I may. First on the Adevinta buyout. I understand this was due to peer pricing and FX. Could you provide any insights on the underlying fundamentals? Also on Jobs, ARPA growth at 18% was strong. Could you give any color on your ARPA growth expectations going forward? Thank you.
Yeah, on your first question on Adevinta, I cannot go into details of, let's say, the underlying performance in Adevinta. As we have said before, and that still holds true, we are happy with the financial and operational and strategic performance of Adevinta. That is also what is reflected in our valuation.
On the jobs side, you're right, 18% was a very strong number for jobs on the ARPA side. We expect continued double-digit ARPA growth throughout this year. We also continue to believe that there will be challenging volume development, maybe somewhat better by the end of the year, but do not expect any big changes on the volume side.
Okay, I think that was your question. We can move to Stephanie. Stephanie, please go ahead.
Thank you for the great questions. Three for me. Firstly, in the phasing of the OPEX, I think that's clear, but maybe if you could give us a bit more color in terms of your plans for the marketing spend and hiring for the rest of the year. Secondly, a bit more color maybe on the April volume trends across the different verticals and how that's trending versus Q1. My last question is on the Blocket transition, how that is progressing and has it already started? What do you expect any additional costs that you might incur for the remainder of the year because of this?
Shall I start on the cost at least? You can choose. I'm not going to talk more in detail around marketing. That will vary from quarter to quarter, and it will be between the different verticals as well.
I mean, I don't expect any major changes to the underlying run rate that we have seen across the different verticals. When it comes to hiring, we have reduced our employees quite significantly over the course of the last, let's say, six months in particular. We are continuously reviewing and assessing every single hiring. We were meeting on a weekly basis to assess if someone is leaving, do we need to replace them? If there is a new need, could we sort of redistribute with internal talent and so on? Don't expect any major changes in our employee compositions in the short term, meaning the rest of this year. I think that the levels that you see now is probably a good level to expect for the remainder of the year.
What was the second question again?
April volumes.
April volumes, yeah . Keep in mind that April volumes are affected negatively by Easter. It is a little bit hard to compare those with Q1. For example, if you take real estate, you see a clear impact of that, and it is more flat volume development in real estate for April as one example. The other markets are, let's say, equally impacted. I do not know if I want to add anything. On the Blocket transition, yes, that is ongoing. It has started. It is progressing according to plan. I think you should also expect that, as we have said before, when we do this transition, we have an elevated level of resources using or implementing those initiatives. That will continue.
We have also said before that we plan to be able to launch, let's say, the consumer-facing side of the marketplaces on this common platform by the end of the year or slightly into next year.
Thank you.
Thanks for your questions, Stephanie. The next in line is Sylvia. Sylvia, good morning. I think you're muted.
Hello, can you hear me now?
Yes.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I have one question left about the E-commerce segment. Especially if we look at revenue, less COGS, the gross margin decreased year on year. I wanted to ask if you could please help us understand what were the drivers here, considering in the presentation you showed higher GMV and take rate. Can you comment about whether you're running any promotions that impact the unit economics, or is it due only to the mix effect in the revenue streams?
Maybe related to this question within transactions, are there certain categories gaining more traction that you can highlight? Could there be any impact of the margin from different categories at this stage? Thank you.
Yeah, in re-commerce, transaction volumes are continuing to grow, as we said. Also, the take rate is remaining at a high level and even increasing in certain markets. However, as we said also very clearly, advertising is down 42% in re-commerce, and advertising is a higher margin business. That will impact the G ross Margin,
at least impact the EBITDA margin. If you only isolate around the Gross Margin, keep in mind we also have initiated Denmark and Finland into the mix now versus before it was only Norway and Sweden. That has some impact. The question was, Christian, in terms of categories, are there any sort of additional information around what is driving the growth and is that impacting the margin?
Not any additional flavor on that. No. Thank you, Sylvia. I think the last one with questions for today, as it seems, is Marcus. Marcus, please go ahead.
Thank you. A couple of questions for me. Firstly, on the professional in Norway, you mentioned underlying 16% ARPA growth. I would have expected a bit higher given the price changes that you announced. Is that due to upsell or less republications, or how should we think about that number? That is the first one.
It is good that you point out that 16% is the underlying ARPA growth in Finn if you exclude the CarWeb revenues. I do not think I will comment more on why it is 16% as of now.
That's fair. Then on transactional in Mobility, is it possible to say anything about AutoVex compared with Nettobil? Are you seeing traction in Sweden, for instance?
AutoVex in Finland is growing very well, with actually the highest growth rates of the assets we have in the C2B space. Wheel Away in Sweden, which is based on the AutoVex model, is still, let's say, at an early stage. That is a more competitive market, it's fair to say.
Thank you. Then final for me is on the number of employees going out of Q1. Is it possible to elaborate a bit on how that is looking compared with Auto2024, has it been stable or any changes?
Yeah, we continue to see a slight decrease. There are no sort of big changes during the quarter. Of course, comparing to previous quarters is a big change. During the quarter, month by month, we see a sort of a slow decrease in the number of employees. I think that is also, it will go maybe a little bit up and down depending on what month you look at. For the year, you should expect a similar level over the next couple of quarters. That's clear.
Thank you.
Thanks, Marcus. I think this concludes our Q&A session for today. I think then we can say thank you so much for tuning in. Good questions and talk to you soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.