Good morning, and welcome to our Q4 results presentation. As usual, Christian, our CEO, and PC, our CFO, will walk us through the performance and key developments in the quarter. This time, we will also spend a bit of time on AI to share our perspective, and we know it's a topic which many of you are interested in. Afterwards, we will, as usual, have a Q&A session with financial analysts, which you can join by Microsoft Teams, so please go to the website and find the link. Let me then just show the disclaimer slide to go through. Then Christian, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Jann-Boje, and good morning, everyone. Very happy to be here to present our Q4 results today. But I just quickly wanted to take a moment first to reflect on our 25 results as a whole. Because 2025 was a defining year for Vend. It was a year where we delivered on key strategic priorities and where we made good progress towards our financial targets, and a year where we fundamentally reshaped this company. Vend now is a much simplified marketplace company with a leaner cost base and with a clear focus on our four Nordic verticals. And I'll come back to this in just a little bit. The results that we present for the fourth quarter today are strong.
They demonstrate the resilience of our business, and they come as a result of targeted efforts in line with our strategy. Group revenues remained rather stable at NOK 1,510 million. This reflects on one hand anticipated headwinds, both in advertising and soft volumes in Jobs. But at the same time, discipline focused on monetization and ARPA was very strong with the 15%-20% growth in several of our key segments. The growth in classifieds revenues, combined then with the disciplined cost management, delivered exceptional results in terms of profitability, and group EBITDA rose with 53% year-on-year and ended up at NOK 491 million. This represents a margin expansion of 12 percentage points to 32%.
Let me also mention that the EBITDA for the full year increased 30% compared to 2024, and I think this is a good opportunity to thank my team and all our fantastic employees for their efforts to make this achievement possible. Now, in the last quarter of the year, we also continued our simplification agenda. We sold our classified marketplace portfolio, also several of our venture investments, and removed the dual class share structure. And that means that we are now operating with this one share, one vote system. We also reached a major technical milestone in November with the migration of Blocket to our common Aurora platform. I'll also mention this a little bit more in detail in a few minutes.
Finally, reflecting our solid financial position and confidence in our trajectory, we launched a new NOK 2 billion share buyback program in Q4. Last evening, the board also resolved to propose increasing the ordinary dividend for 2025 to 2.5 NOK per share, compared to 2.25 NOK last year. In November 2024, we presented our strategic agenda at the Capital Markets Day in Barcelona, and today I'd like to give a summary of our progress on this plan since then. I already touched upon some of the simplification measures that we have done with our organization. Now, first of all, our cost level is significantly reduced.
If we look at our OpEx to sales ratio and excluding COGS, that has improved by 8 percentage points, from 65% to 57%, compared to the baseline presented at the CMD. We have now also found homes, new homes, for most of our non-core assets. And I also want to say that the sales progress for delivery is progressing well. We've simplified the company structure materially. The separation from Schibsted Media has been completed, and as mentioned, we no longer have this dual class share structure. As mentioned at CMD, verticalization is really the essence of our growth strategy. We have successfully executed on a number of, let's say, vertical-specific product and pricing initiatives that resulted in a strong ARPA growth.
We have rolled out our transactional Recommerce model to all our markets. The transition to one common platform is also on track with the Blocket transition in November. On the expansion part, we continue to scale our transactional models in Mobility and real estate, and we have seen a strong growth in both Nettbil, AutoVex, and Qasa through last year. In Finland, we reached the number one position in real estate, and our focus now is to translate that leadership into a sustainable category leadership with stronger monetization. Last, but certainly not least, we have also forcefully executed on our capital allocation agenda, and we have returned close to NOK 8 billion to shareholders in 2025 alone.
Our share buyback program is continuing into 2026 as well. So now I'd like to just tie a few more comments to the platform transition. This is the slide we showed at CMD, and moving all our marketplaces except Oikotie to a common Aurora platform is something we see has several benefits. It unlocks cost efficiencies, it supports our long-term monetization agenda because it means that we can roll out pricing and product innovations and structures simultaneously and uniformly across all our markets. I would also say that it's a key to scaling our AI initiatives. It means that we can develop things once and then rapidly roll out those with few or no adaptations in all markets.
I said, this is the chart that we showed at the CMD. It shows that we still have some things to do, but all our main brands, except Finn in Norway and Bilbasen in Denmark, are now on the common platform. I also want here to remind everyone that the Aurora, the common platform, is built on the Finn technology and the Finn business logic. That means that the upcoming Finn transition is of a different nature. It's a more tech transition, which then leads to the shutdown of the old legacy Finn platform.
And that means that there are no kind of planned changes to the user interface or the product experience, which means that this is an initiative that carries low business risk. Then I'd like to spend a few minutes on Blocket in Sweden. And Blocket continues to come from a position of strength. It's a well-known and highly loved brand in Sweden, with lots of engagement across categories. And I think that is a very important context for what we've seen through this platform transition. Blocket, our Blocket users really care about the Blocket brand and product, and many of the users have long-established habits, particularly in vehicles. So on November eighteenth we completed the platform transition for Blocket.
As in previous transitions in Finland and Denmark, we did expect that there would be some user and dealer reactions to changes in the product and in the user journeys. But it's fair to say that the reactions we have seen have been stronger; they have been more widespread than we expected. We are also seeing some of that in the engagement on the site afterwards. Early on, we did experience some technical issues with data and ad statistics to dealers. But I also want to mention that these issues were quickly identified, quickly resolved, but they do explain, in part, some of the initial reactions from the dealers.
If we then look at the metrics, on the professional side, the number of professional sellers, the number of professional car ad, is in line, with last year. Leads are, slightly down, but that is also partly due to seasonality. But on the private side, new car ads are down, around 27%. We've also seen that the user satisfaction has recovered more slowly than what we experienced in, in Tori and, in DBA, when we did those transitions. But it's also important to say that the conversion is better, in the new product compared to the old Blocket product. And that explains why, for example, dealer leads and Recommerce transactions are much less affected than the overall traffic on the site.
I also want to say that we have seen improvements on these key metrics since the beginning of this year. Of course, improving the Blocket situation is a top priority for Vend, as we enter this year, and we are working continuously to roll out product improvements. We have particular focus on the app experience, on the search, and on the ad insertion for private ads. And, of course, also we are in parallel in continuous dialogue with both users and customers. We have increased our support as one example. And from a commercial perspective, we have postponed the planned price increases to later in the first half of 2026.
Our goal is to be a long-term partner with the, the car industry, and this initiative has been very well received by, by our customers. Our overall objective is, is, is quite clear when it comes to Blocket: stabilize usage, stabilize customer satisfaction, and then kind of restore and build on the momentum from having a shared platform. I'd like to turn to AI. I'll begin here by reminding you of the incredibly strong positions that we have across the Nordics. The brands that we operate are true household brands. They're known and used by almost everyone in our markets.
Finn, of course, is in a complete league of its own, with 99% unaided awareness and close to 30 visits per capita every single month. And I really think this matters in an AI context, because it means that our brands are really destinations in their own right. They're not dependent on traffic from other sources, whether that is from Google, social media, or other sources. Users come directly to our sites. And importantly, also, traffic from AI platforms today is negligible. Even when users use AI tools, they still go directly to our sites to act on that. And that direct relationship with users is really visible when you look at our engagement metrics.
For example, 70%-80% of our users are logged in. Half of them are even identified with the electronic ID, so we know exactly who they are. More than half of our traffic comes to our apps, which is really the channel that is the most engaging. And this combination of, you know, trusted brands, direct traffic, deep user relationships, is something that is extremely difficult to replicate, and what we believe is an incredibly strong starting point in this new AI world. And it is really against this backdrop that we are, as we've said many times before, very excited about the opportunities that come from AI to improve the user and customer experiences.
We truly believe that we have the right assets to build winning AI products in the future. In particular, I would say that we see three structural advantages that we have. First, it's about the unique data that we have. This is our most important strategic asset, and we truly believe that the most powerful AI products come from combining, let's say, general purpose models with deep, structured domain-specific data, and this is exactly what we have in our company. Of course, we will take active measures to protect this data. The approach we will take will vary somewhat across verticals and brands, depending on the strength of those.
And it's also something that we will experiment with and adapt as we see the landscape evolves over time. Now, the second structural advantage is the vertical focus. Our marketplaces really support quite complex, high stakes, and long-running user journeys. And this is really something that makes them particularly well-suited for tailored AI solutions. And we will work in particular with securing ad supply, improving discovery and matching, and supporting better decisions for users and customers. And thirdly, we benefit from scale. Common Nordic platform allows us to build once and roll out to all our markets. And already 18 months ago, we built up our department of AI that ensures that we have specialist competence across the organization.
Finally, I just want to mention again that we don't foresee any AI investments beyond the financial guidance that we have given. So turning to data and as mentioned, this is what we believe is a decisive differentiator when it comes to building the winning AI products. Of course, the actual data varies somewhat from vertical to vertical, but it broadly falls into these four categories. First, it's real-time ad data. And unlike e-commerce, as an example, all our objects are unique, and they are constantly changing. That means that the global AI platforms, if they want this data, they either have to rely on crawled snapshots, which are quite quickly outdated, or they have to rely on on-demand lookups, which are slow.
Both these approaches lead to a weaker user experience than what we can provide natively on our sites. Secondly, we have aggregated and enriched data, which we build from both the ads and also the user behavior. This can be things like price insights, demand trends, popularity signals, things and models that are proprietary to us, and also quite difficult for these other parties to replicate. Thirdly, we have deep personal and behavioral data. Of course, AI platforms will also know a lot about you as a person, but we truly believe that we have the most detailed insight into the intent that people have in our verticals. Then fourth, we have transactional data. This is an area that is growing quite rapidly for us.
Data from fixed fare in Recommerce, from Smidig Bilhandel in Mobility, Nettbil, and so on. This really reflects actual transactions between people, including what you have bought, at what price, and so on. And altogether, this data is quite unique, I would say. It's something that we continuously develop and evolve, because this is what we believe will allow us to build the most personalized, the most accurate products for our users and customers. As I mentioned, we established this central department of AI more than 18 months ago, and since then, we have developed, rolled out, and tested a range of different AI features across the company, as you can see on this page. But I would also like to say that it is still early days.
There isn't any established best practice out there yet. Our goal and priority is to experiment, to learn, and then to scale what we see working. And we will, in particular, focus our efforts on a few areas. It's about securing and improving the quality of ads. It's about improving discovery and matching, and it's about providing users and customers with the best decision support. And I thought it would be useful, actually, to show Jobs as an example, because this is the vertical where we so far have launched the most AI features, and where we've also seen quite solid improvements in key metrics. And what we really see in Jobs is that the user and customer needs, they actually differ by stage of their journey.
And as you can see also on this page, in the consideration phase, for example, when you're early, candidates explore more, let's say, the range of options that they have, based on preferences they might have, with regards to how they want to have their life or what, how they think about their career, and so on. Then, when you come into the more active search phase, the experience becomes more tailored towards more concrete job opportunities. And then finally, when a candidate has found a relevant and attractive job, we use Job Match to analyze the fit at that individual role level, helping that candidate make a decision whether this is the right opportunity or not for them.
I really think that this, overall, vertically tailored products that we build on unique data, will outperform a more generic AI platforms in delivering the best user experience for these kind of use cases. We are confident that we will be able to develop these tailored AI products. I think we have a history where we have shown that we are willing to innovate, and we take that mindset with us also into the AI era, and we go into that shift with a quite strong position, I would say. Let's move to the more, let's say, regular part of the presentation, and let's start with Mobility. Here, ARPA growth remained strong across all markets and segments in Q4.
Professional ARPA was up double-digit in every market. It was particularly strong in Norway, and that was following the package launch, and also in Denmark, following price adjustments that we made both in January and in August of 2025. Private ARPA also showed solid momentum most notably in Sweden. This was driven by upselling, by the value-based pricing, and new packages. Denmark was softer year-on-year, and that came as a result of the reversion to freemium for cars below NOK 50,000 kroner. If we then turn to volumes, and here we have already shared the volumes for October and November in our pre-silent newsletter in December, so I think you should know the general direction. In Norway, professional volumes declined.
That was mainly due to weakness in the sub-verticals: boats, motorcycles, caravans, which is a reflection of the macro environment. Cars, however, remained stable. Private volumes in Norway was increasing quite a lot, and this was driven by the tax changes regarding electric vehicles, starting in January of 2026. Then in Sweden, and also as we mentioned on the previous slides, volumes were impacted by the platform transition. Professional volumes also declined, but this was due to the business model change that we have mentioned before in heavy machinery, from where we went from a subscription to a pay-per-ad model. Cars was broadly flat in volume. Private volumes were down broadly across our categories.
Then in Denmark, the market still remains a healthy market. That means fast sell-through rates, and that, in the model that we had in 2025, reduces the average daily listings for professionals. And the decline in private volumes reflects the introduction of the listing fees that we have mentioned before. If we then move to the financials, revenues in Mobility increased 11% in Q4. And supported by the strong ARPA growth, classifieds grew 12%, and the transactional business model delivered 23% growth, and this was driven by a strong quarter in both Nettbil and in AutoVex. Finally, I would say, advertising returned to growth in Q4, where we saw 3% year-on-year growth, following the declines that we've seen previously.
OpEx, excluding COGS, increased only slightly, and this is despite the continued investments in the transactional business and in our core product and platform. Then overall, EBITDA increased 21% over Q4 last year, and this results in a 54% margin. Moving on to real estate. In Norway, ARPA increased 22% year-on-year. This was driven primarily by residential for sale, which delivered a 21% ARPA growth in Q4. For the full year, ARPA in residential for sale was 12% growth. In Finland, ARPA increased 12% year-on-year in Q4, and it was supported by underlying drivers that we have also discussed before. Price increases, mix effects between for sale and rentals, and also continued growth in upsell. Turning to volumes.
In Norway, residential for sale actually returned to growth in Q4, and that was after a decline in the quarter before, so we saw 3% year-on-year growth here. And this capped an exceptionally strong year for residential for sale, where ad volumes reach an all-time high, ending up 6% for the full year. Total volumes for Norway declined 4%, and this was driven by lower activity in the rental segment, together with commercial and leisure homes. And in Finland, total volumes were down 4% year-on-year. Residential for sale actually grew, but the rental volumes continued to decline further, which is a reflection of the ongoing market dynamics in Finland.
So in total then, classifieds revenues grew 15% in Q4. This was driven by the strong ARPA growth and also the high volumes in residential for sale in Norway. The transactional business, led by Qasa and HomeQ in Sweden, continued to develop well also, and here, transactional revenues were up 31%. And these businesses, of course, they continue still to be smaller in absolute terms, but they are actually becoming now increasingly so, and a meaningful contributor to the growth in real estate. And then on costs, OpEx, excluding COGS, declined 4% year-on-year, and this is despite the marketing investments that we're doing in Finland, which I think reflects the solid cost control that we have in real estate.
Overall then, as a result, EBITDA reached NOK 123 million in the quarter, and that is up 60% from the year before. Then we have Jobs. Here, Jobs continued to deliver exceptional ARPA growth of 21%. This was, as before, driven by our segmented price model by adjustments to volume discounts and better upsell of the distribution products. Same pattern as before, also on volumes, continued to decline due to challenging macro. And again, I just want to say that if we compare our volumes to, let's say, the available numbers from Statistics Norway, our numbers reflect what we see in the total national market.
Then, in Norway, Jobs delivered 7% underlying revenue growth in Q4, and that means that the strong ARPA growth more than offset the 11% decline in volume. And OpEx, excluding COGS, decreased 22%, and this is primarily a reflection of the exits from Sweden and Finland, as well as some FTE reductions in Norway. And in total then, EBITDA grew 33%, and this resulted in an EBITDA margin of 56%. And then finally, we have Recommerce, and here we saw transacted gross merchandise value continue to grow. Finland, in particular, delivered solid GMV growth in Q4, while, as mentioned before, Blocket's GMV declined, and this was a reflection of the temporary impact of the platform transition.
In Norway, we also saw transactional volume growth that improved to 15%, year-on-year, and take rates remained solid across all markets, which is a reflection of the scalability of the model that we have in Recommerce. In total, Recommerce revenues then increased 4%. That means that the strong transactional growth and the private growth offset a 19% decline in advertising, as well as the continued phase out of low margin and non-core revenue streams. Transactional revenues grew by 23%, and we also had a continued improvement in the transactional gross margin. This was supported by both lower COGS, as well as pricing initiatives.
Here, it's worthwhile to remind everyone that in Q4 last year, we had a one-off of NOK 10 million on VAT accrual that reduced the reported transactional revenues. That means that the underlying year-on-year growth in transactional revenues and in the total revenues for Recommerce then will be somewhat lower than what you see reported here. OpEx, excluding COGS, declined 6% year-on-year, driven by both FTE reductions and increased AI automation. EBITDA then improved by 44 million, which is an equivalent to 16 percentage points margin improvement. With that, I will conclude my section and hand it over to PC to go through the financials in some more detail.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, and welcome, everyone. Let's move to the financials for Q4. In total, revenues, on a constant currency basis, ended 1% below Q4 last year. This is driven by decline in the other HQ segment, offset by solid underlying revenue growth in Mobility, real estate, Jobs, and Recommerce. Total EBITDA ended at NOK 491 million, 53% up, compared to last year, driven by positive developments in all verticals. Christian has already covered the vertical performance, but let me give you some additional insights for the other HQ segment. The year-on-year decrease in revenues in other HQ was, as earlier quarters, driven by a change in allocation model, combined with revenue decline following the termination of the TSA revenues, linked to the split with Schibsted Media.
At the end of 2025, TSA with Schibsted Media were fully terminated. Other HQ had an EBITDA of NOK -76 million in the quarter, compared to a loss of NOK -71 million in the same quarter last year. We have accelerated our cost reductions and delivered ahead of our original plan, but we're not fully able to offset the declining revenues in the quarter. Now, let's look closer at the cost development in the quarter. As before, this slide shows OpEx excluding COGS. During the second half of 2025, we have been able to accelerate the cost takeout ahead of our original plan. This is a combination of earlier termination of the TSA agreements with Schibsted Media, but also a somewhat higher-than-planned cost takeout across our organization. In total, OpEx, excluding COGS, in the quarter declined by 17% compared to last year.
Personnel costs were down 11% year-on-year, driven by significant FTE reductions, mainly from the downsizing process that was executed in 2024, combined with closing our Jobs positions in Finland and in Sweden, but also ongoing FTE management throughout the year. Total workforce continues to decline, so it's slightly down, and now stand at 1,669 FTEs. Total marketing costs were down 15% year-on-year, driven by the job exits, partly offset by higher marketing costs in real estate and Recommerce. Other costs have decreased 26%, driven by general cost reductions in addition to the mentioned termination of the TSAs with Schibsted Media. Overall, this resulted in more than a 10 percentage points improvement in OpEx, excluding COGS over revenue, from 67% in Q4 last year to 57% in Q4 2025.
Our operating profit for the quarter increased to NOK 234 million, from a loss of almost NOK 1.4 billion last year that was impacted by the impairment in Finland. Adjusted for impairments recognized in 2024, the positive development in operating profit reflects the improved EBITDA, but also somewhat lower depreciation amortization cost and lower net other expenses. The reduction in other expenses is mainly due to lower costs related to restructuring and separation. The fair value of our 14% stake in Adevinta has decreased from NOK 18.9 billion Norwegian kroner in Q3 to NOK 16.1 billion Norwegian kroner now at the end of Q4.
Based on the updated valuation, a loss of NOK 2.8 billion was recognized as financial expense in the quarter. The decrease is due to multiple contractions in the industry, partly offset by improved performance in Adevinta . Our valuation methodology is kept totally unchanged. In totality, net loss for the group ended at -NOK 2.5 billion. Now let's move to the cash flow from continuing operations in Q4. Cash flow from operating activities ended at NOK 555 million, compared to NOK 245 million in the previous year. The increase is driven by the improved EBITDA, but also positively impacted by lower restructuring payments, positive development in working capital, lower taxes paid, partly offset by some increased net interest expenses.
Cash flow from investing activities ended at NOK 68 million, mainly related to proceeds from sales activities, linked to our venture portfolio, offset by CapEx of NOK 137 million Norwegian kroner in the quarter. And finally, cash flow from financing activities ended at -NOK 1.2 billion Norwegian kroner, which includes repayment of interest, bearing bonds of NOK 681 million in the quarter, and the share buybacks of NOK 448 million. With our solid operational cash flow and significant investments during 2025, we have, in accordance with our principles for capital allocation, returned a material amount to our shareholders throughout the year. We have paid out cash dividends of more than NOK 1 billion Norwegian kroner.
Additionally, we have bought back own shares amounting to almost NOK 7 billion throughout ordinary share buyback programs, but also the reverse book build that we executed in June. Despite these significant distributions, we ended the year with a net cash position of NOK 210 million. During 2025, we have repurchased Vend bonds for NOK 753 million, of which NOK 681 million in the quarter. As of January 30, 2025, we have around NOK 1.1 billion remaining of our ongoing NOK 2 billion share buyback program. The board has decided to propose an ordinary dividend for 2025 of NOK 2.50 Norwegian kroner, or around NOK 537 million, to be resolved at the upcoming annual general meeting in April.
This is fully in line with our policy of paying a progressive dividend, and a slight increase from the levels of NOK 2.25 in 2024, and NOK 2.0 in 2023. The Scope rating of BBB+, with a stable outlook, confirms Vend as a solid investment grade company. Now, let's take a step back and look at our medium-term targets and how we are performing. Despite 2025 being a transition year, we have made solid progress towards the medium-term targets. At the CMD in November 2024, we highlighted ARPA improvements and transactional revenues as our key growth drivers. In 2025, ARPA has improved significantly across Mobility, Real Estate, and Jobs. Transactional revenues within Recommerce, Real Estate, Rental, and Mobility has increased more than 20%.
In 2025, the strong underlying growth was partly offset by decisions to close down revenue streams, the separation from Schibsted Media, and some volume headwinds. The announced and partly implemented product packaging go-to-market initiatives for 2026 across all our verticals are expected to support revenue growth in line with our medium-term targets. Despite somewhat muted revenue growth, the vertical EBITDA margin has improved significantly throughout the year. Mobility, Real Estate, and Jobs already have EBITDA margins around the medium-term target levels, and Recommerce shows significant progress towards becoming having positive margins in the medium term. Looking at our cost development, we are pleased to report strong progress against our targets. OpEx, excluding COGS over revenues, ended at 57% in 2025, compared to 65% at the time of the CMD. CapEx ended at 8%, compared to 9% at the same time period.
The improvements in these ratios have been delivered on broadly flat revenues, showing a significant cost reduction. Going forward, revenue growth is expected to be the main driver for further ratio improvements towards the targeted levels. Wrapping up, I'd like to reiterate that our strategy, our medium-term targets, and our capital allocation principles that we presented at the Capital Markets Day remain unchanged. As we enter 2026, we have a sustained ARPA momentum across our verticals, reflecting our go-to-market initiatives, and as I mentioned, we expect these actions to support revenue growth in the verticals in line with our medium-term targets. Visibility on volume remain limited. At the same time, the underlying health and resilience in our marketplaces is strong. In other HQ, we expect revenues to be reduced by around NOK 300 million compared to 2025...
primarily reflected determination of the TSAs, but also effects related to the ongoing divestments of our non-core assets. On cost, following the accelerated delivery of cost reduction in 2025, we expect our absolute cost base, excluding COGS, to remain broadly stable in 2026 compared to 2025. Overall, we remain committed and confident in our ability to deliver on the medium-term financial target, supported by our growth initiatives, the simpler portfolio, continued platform consolidation, and a sustained cost discipline. With that, thank you for joining, and let me hand over to Jann-Boje to take us through the Q&A.
Thanks, PC. I can see many of you already connected here on Teams. First up is Håkon from Kepler Cheuvreux. So Håkon, please go ahead and unmute.
Thank you for taking my question. Two questions from me today: With the Blocket migration completed and stabilization phase underway, when do you expect Aurora to start contributing more clearly to revenue or cost efficiency? And also, on the other Adevinta valuation, it was revised down due to peer multiple compression. Should we interpret this as a purely market-driven, or have there been any changes in underlying assumption we should be aware of in the period?
Yeah, so I can take the Blocket question first. So, yes, the migration of our sites to a common platform is a key pillar of our strategy, contributing both to cost efficiency and to revenue growth, as you say. And I would say that now that we have most of our major sites on this, it is already a driver to to let's say increase the innovation capacity and so on. So and but we have also before said that most of the cost efficiency of it will come in 2027.
Then on your second question, as I mentioned in my section, the modeling and evaluation model is the same. It's entirely due to market factors. It's actually offset a bit by improved underlying assumptions related to Adevinta.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thanks, thanks, Håkon. The next in line, we have Will Packer from BNP. Good morning, Will.
Good morning, thanks very much for taking my questions. Three from me, please. Firstly, could we talk about your plans on ChatGPT integration? We've seen the likes of Scout and Hemnet sort of submit apps for the forthcoming app launch in Europe. I suppose your position is potentially a little bit different because of the huge traffic from Finn generalist. So any kind of insight as to how you're thinking about that strategic question would be useful. Obviously, the context that traffic is very low currently is very clear. Secondly, in the context of all the noise around AI, I think it's fair to say that the job segment is in particular focus. Could we just talk a little bit about the sustained weak inventory trends?
So if I look at the Norwegian economy, we've seen three years of solid GDP growth, especially in 2024 and 2025. We've seen low unemployment, and yet we've seen a double-digit CAGR in decline in Finn Jobs inventory. Is that just because genuinely there has been a 10% per annum reduction in available new Jobs? To me, that sounds surprising. Is there some underlying market share loss to alternatives? Just some kind of commentary there would be helpful. And then on a related note, it feels like AI is not necessarily having a productivity positive impact within the job segment. You've got, like, you know, talk of an AI slop tsunami, AI applications, AI job screening. It's not making the market more efficient. How do you see that as an opportunity for Finn Jobs? How can you exploit that?
Just a little bit of color there would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. First on the ChatGPT question, I think we have extremely strong confidence in the strength of our positions. And based on that, we don't see it as the, let's say, that it's necessary to be the first mover on having an app in ChatGPT. But we are... So that means we don't have any current plans of launching a ChatGPT app. That doesn't mean that we're not evaluating it. We are evaluating various options for, let's say, controlled data distribution through these AI platforms, and that includes apps as one option also. So let's see where we end. We are following the evolution and yeah, we will come back to that later.
Then on Jobs, first on the volume part, it's important to remember that there was a huge boom with the COVID, and it has actually been a negative trajectory since then, and we are now back to volumes that are more, let's say, in line with the volumes that were before the COVID boom. If we follow our volumes compared to the national statistics, they are very much in line. So there are no indications that we are losing market share as such.
In fact, if you look at many of the parameters that we have, let's say, in awareness and things like that, we are actually coming out stronger in the Jobs area than we did before. Then, on the more broad question around how will, let's say, the overall job market evolve with AI and so on, and what kind of opportunities does that mean for us? Well, it's hard to kind of say in general, how the job market will evolve, but I actually see many opportunities for us to leverage AI to make the entire job market more effective.
It provides a lot of new tools to be better and more targeted at matching consumers and recruiters in a very good way. I think the tools that we showed were indicative of that. And we actually get a lot more insight into candidate preferences as an example.
Thanks, Christian. And then next in line, we have Giles from Jefferies. Giles, please go ahead.
Thank you. So it was inevitably pushing back on the AI fears, and thank you for the comments and the content today. It'd be useful to hear... I guess it's a different way of asking the same question around Jobs, but it'd be interesting to hear you talk about how you see the risk and the opportunity, I suppose, for each of your four verticals. Which vertical are you most worried about? Which are you most excited about? And the second question then is on Tradera launching in Mobility. And if we look over to Spain, obviously, Wallapop's been very successful at disrupting and Recommerce as a platform to disrupt coaches in, in Mobility. So I'd like to hear why, why it'll be different for you in Sweden, especially given the recent botched migration.
And then lastly, and I think it's probably a short answer, and we all instinctively know, but the shuttering of Wheelaway, it feels a little bit odd because you had the playbook from AutoVex, you got the dominant position in Mobility, it was the asset-light model. It just feels odd that you would choose to shutter this one, at all. So, a bit more on your decision there. Thank you.
Yeah, those were quite big and broad questions. But on the first one, on the, let's say, the strength of the different verticals in the AI era, I'm not going to say that one is stronger than the other. I think they all have their different strengths. In general, I would say that they all support, as I also mentioned in my introduction, quite complex and, let's say, high-risk transactions for users that also take a long time, and as such, they are very suitable for quite specific AI solutions as we mentioned.
I also want to say that the, that, for example, in many of our verticals, like in, in Mobility and in Recommerce, we have, a strong element of, consumer content, private content, which is also strengthening the position, in, in, in the AI, let's say, era, because that, that is kind of harder for, for these platforms to, to, to get hold of. So, yeah, so I, I think they all have their, their strengths. Then,
Tradera.
Tradera. Yes, we have heard that Tradera is launching a car site. We haven't seen it yet, so I think it's too early to say anything about that, but we are confident in the strength of the Blocket position. It is still a very, very strong brand and has a very strong traffic situation as well. So, we are confident in that. Yeah.
And then the Wheelaway.
And Wheelaway was the last question. And yes, we shut down Wheelaway after attempting to approach the Swedish market with the C2B model. We had to conclude that the competition in the Swedish market was a lot tougher than we expected, and that also many of the car dealers have a quite, let's say, mature approach themselves to how they source private cars, which made it harder to kind of enter with that kind of model in the Swedish market.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you for good questions, Giles. And then we have Marcus from SEB. Marcus, please go ahead.
Thank you. So two questions from me as well. So digging a bit more on the OpEx side there into 2026 and your comments on flat costs. If I look at the Q4 level and try to adjust for seasonality and even some inflation, considering you don't have these TSA costs, etc., why shouldn't costs be substantially down in 2026, given the level that you are exiting 2025 of? What are the offsetting factors? That's the first one. And then if you can also elaborate a bit more in Jobs, would be helpful on the ARPA growth there. It's very high. You mentioned some changes to the discount model and some upselling, but is there any mix here, or how should we think about the ARPA into 2026 in Jobs?
Shall I start on the-
Yep
... on the cost side? Yeah, so you are correct. We are now guiding on a broadly stable OpEx, excluding COGS base, in 2026 compared to 2025. And I think, as you also mentioned, you need to remember there are seasonality if you look at the sequential development on a quarterly basis, particularly from Q3 into Q4. But also remember that a lot of the, let's say, the positive development we've had in 2025, it is either connected to us serving the TSAs that is no longer there, so that will not repeat itself in 2026. But also, we did a lot of measures in 2024, both on downsizing and shutting down Jobs, that we haven't, we don't have the similar initiative executed in 2025.
So just keep those in mind. We will continue to work on our cost agenda, and we will continue to implement structural cost efficiency initiatives. We will continue to push and leverage AI to become more productive. And we expect, as we have said before, that we will be fewer at year-end also going forward. And then a bit later, you will also start to see more effect coming from the platform transition. So I think that's the combination of those, you know, of efficiencies will be likely offset by general cost inflation. And also, we are investing into our growth businesses that has been mentioned by Christian, as you also can see partly in the numbers in Q4.
On the Jobs ARPA, I think we have to separate 2025 and 2026. 2025 is very much driven by three factors. One is kind of a general price increase, the second is changes to the volume discount structure, and the third is better upsell of distribution products. There could be some mixed effects also from quarter to quarter, but that is not driving the kind of big numbers here. Those three are the main drivers. Then going into 2026, there will be slightly different drivers. There will be a more modest, let's say, price increase in line with the CPI adjustment.
There will be some changes to the volume discounts also here, but, let's say, the new distribution product with the Plus product that we have launched in the market will have a bigger, let's say, impact. And overall, you should expect a somewhat more modest ARPA growth in 2026 than what we have seen in 2025, but in line with our guidance.
Thank you.
Thanks, Marcus. Then next, we have Silvia from Deutsche Bank. So, Silvia, good morning.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I would also like to ask three questions. The first is on the Blocket platform transition. Could you provide more specific insights into the current volume trends since the start of 2026, and what is your expected timeline for accelerated growth from the announced platform? Is there any risk that, related to this, the price increase could be delayed further into H2? Then the second question is a follow-up on the guidance for costs that you were just discussing. So while you guided for the cost base to remain broadly stable in 2026, can you also comment on your prior message about the temporary EBITDA headwind that you expected for this year? Has anything changed on this front, and can you perhaps share more color on your expectations for OpEx in 2026, and also perhaps about the COGS?
Just a reminder of how to think about the gross margin development as you further expand into transactions. And then finally, just on the advertising revenue trends, Q4 results still show the diverse picture for advertising revenues. So I wanted to ask if you could share your updated outlook for advertising revenue growth in 2026, in light of the current macro environment and how the TSA agreement has expired. Thank you.
Yes. So on Blocket first, and what we, what we see into this year. I think, just a reminder first that, on, let's say, the professional volumes, and also professional sellers, it's, it's kind of broadly stable, right? So it's in the private side, the private ads, that we see a decline. That decline, we also see going into 2026, that continues from, from 2025. But it's also fair to say that, with all the, let's say, initiatives and product improvements and so on that we have done, we also see, let's say, an improvement, week over week, since the beginning, of the year. So, at the current time, we don't expect any, let's say, further, delays in, in the price increases.
We've said that, that they will come later in, in the first half of, of this year. Then, then I also take the advertising, thing. So we, we saw in Q4, that, that, it was- it came back to growth in, in Mobility, for the first time. Still a decline in, in, in, Recommerce. Going into this year, I, I think the, the trend will, continue, but it's- it is hard to predict, as we have also said before. But for example, we could expect the, let's say, going into the year, that, for Recommerce, that it's broadly, let's say, on a stable level, as, as what we saw in, in, in Q4. Yeah.
And then on your second question, there was multiple questions in that, but let me start. On the HQ Other segment, in Q3, we gave an update that we, you know, given the significant revenue reduction in 2026 compared to 2025, we could see a negative drag up to NOK 100 million in 2026 compared to 2025. Now that we have a bit more information and we have seen quite a good progress already in Q4, we have somewhat increased visibility.
We still don't have perfect information because we're still exiting some of our companies, but if I'm gonna give you a kind of an updated assessment from my side, I gave you, you know, the revenue we expect to be around NOK 300 million lower on an annual basis. That has not materially changed. But then I think given our cost progress as of now, I think a better update now will be up to NOK 50 million drag, is what you could expect for that segment in 2026. Then you have a question around COGS. Remember that the main part of our COGS is related to the transactional revenues, particularly then in Recommerce.
So we haven't given specific guidance and color on that, but you can see the trends in the data that we have provided for 2025. And then as transactional revenue is growing in Recommerce, you should also, you know, increase COGS in a similar way, right? But we have been able to improve the margins on that in 2025, and we will continue to try to do that also going forward. Then you asked about second half. I'm not gonna give any more color on the phasing of the cost development throughout 2026.
Thank you.
Good. Thanks, Silvia. Then back to Oslo. We have Halvor here from Arctic. Can you hear us?
Yes, good morning. I have two questions. So the first is with regards to Blocket and the delayed price increases for 2026. How should we kind of? Is this due to the pushback, and how should we look at this going for the rest of 2026? And my second is related to Adevinta. So Adevinta has quite some leverage now, and given that the value fell approximately 15% quarter-over-quarter, how should we approach this? Because given the leverage, I would assume that the value would have dropped approximately 30%. So some more color on the performance and maybe leverage as well.
Yeah, first on Blocket. I wanna say that we have worked a lot with our car dealers. Before we made the transition, we had a lot of, let's say, positive engagement and so on from the car dealers going into this, and still have. Then, of course, as I also mentioned in my presentation, there have been reactions. There have been some issues that happened as we launched on the new platform. And we felt that in this situation, it is better to have a long-term view on, let's say, the partnership that we have with the car industry, and don't push ahead on this pricing agenda, but rather kind of just push it a little bit forward in time.
And still do it, of course, but kind of make sure that we stabilize, and we prioritize delivering value to our customers at this point in time. And this has been very positively received by the car dealers. So it's part of our building trust and let's say, Net Promoter Score and so on over time with the industry.
And then on Adevinta, I cannot give you too much details on the questions. But just to sort of be clear that our models is the same as before. As I also said in my comments, that the contraction of the multiples also reflecting the leverage situation is a clear negative in the quarter compared to Q3. But that this is somewhat offset by underlying improvements in the performance of Adevinta, and that is coming from both closing on a strong 2025, but also increased visibility and confidence into the performance now as we have entered 2026.
And then remember, we do evaluation now on a combination of the multiples for 2025 and 2026, and also looking at both EBITDA and also EBITDA minus CapEx. I cannot give you more color on the leverage situation at Adevinta, other than what was communicated in Q2 last year.
Thank you.
Thanks, PC, and thanks for the questions. Then there is a hand from you, Giles. I don't know if it's a new or old one. Seems like it's an old hand from, from you, Giles, and then I don't see any further questions, and we can round up for today. So thank you much for-