A warm welcome to our presentation of the second quarter results. Overall, we present good 2 Q2 results. We see continued digital growth and margin improvement. There are a couple of challenges that I will address shortly. To look at the overview for our main business areas, we see strong online classified vertical growth of 11%. We see that the digital subscriptions within news media continue their high growth rate. They come in at 22%. We also see solid progress for good parts of the next portfolio. We see that Prisjakt continue its growth, comes in at 10%. We see very exciting developments in our distribution business. The overall business there grows at 14%. The new home delivery service is actually growing at triple digits so far this year.
When it comes to Lendo, it's a bit of a mixed picture. I'll come back to that. We see good growth in our biggest market, Sweden, and we do see promising results from our international expansion, with the most mature market there being Denmark. We also have high activity in our investment portfolio this quarter with several deals that we landed. To take a look at the Nordic Marketplaces, as you know, we have a target of 8%-12% revenue growth there, medium to long term. Our 11% growth for verticals is well within that. We will also remind you that this is a bit of a challenging comparison given that we have a negative Easter effect, roughly estimated at around 3% this quarter due to late Easter.
When it comes to our two main companies within the online classified sites, it's FINN and Blocket. It is exciting to see all the enthusiasm and activity going on in Blocket. They are confirming their growth trend, and FINN is continuing their strong performance. It's worth noting that we now see a slight growth in advertising in across all our three classifieds market, and that is a contrast to the decline that we saw in the first quarter. This growth that we see comes from a lot of different factors, we also see good results from renewals that we made to our product roadmap.
In Sweden, we especially see promising results from the work we're doing when it comes to the customer journey within the car segment, where we now offer a more seamless experience with contracts, with payments, with registration of transfer of ownership, et cetera. We do think these developments are very welcome as a change of ownership of private cars tend to top the statistics of consumer complaints. This is a good thing. When it comes to our Finnish asset Tori, we do see a revenue growth of 14% and improved margins as well. We come to the challenges. We have seen a quite sharp fall in display advertising for Aftonbladet. That is due to their exposure to gaming advertisements, and there has been a shift in the regulations there that has taken the volume down in that segment.
What we do is that we are on, you know, we are working constantly to try to restructure our advertising mix for Aftonbladet to make them less exposed to such changes. When it comes to Lendo, it's fair to say that the impact of the regulatory changes in Norway have hit harder than we expected, and it will take some time before Lendo Norway will return to growth. However, we will use this market situation to improve our share and our position, and we remain confident that these changes will be positive for the market and that they will gain the serious and responsible players like Lendo over time. To dwell a bit further on Lendo, we are working to expand and grow that portfolio along three dimensions. One is the geographical expansion, which is well underway with Denmark, Austria, and Poland.
There is also the work to have more relevant and frequent customer interactions along a broader part of the customer journey. Finally, we are also chasing new customers, and we have launched Lendo for Business in Sweden, and that service is showing initial promising results. On the right side here, you see a quick summary of the main regulatory changes that have taken place in Norway. It's, we're talking about more comprehensive credit checks, maximum duration on the loans, and also the introduction of a debt register. I want to stress that Lendo, in anticipation of these changes, have actually complied with this way of doing business for more or less a year already.
The impact we see on our business now comes from the change of behavior on the hand of the banks and not so much because we need to change the way we do our business in Lendo. Let me repeat, we really do believe that these changes will be beneficiary over time. We have decided to initiate an up to 2% share buyback. This is something that we have clearly communicated all the way since our capital markets day in March, that we would carefully monitor our balance sheet and the capital allocation. We are constantly working and looking for interesting opportunities for growth and M&A. We see that our balance sheet is of.
I would say our outlook is of a character that we see that we at the same time have room for this buyback and that that is the right thing to do at this moment. Finally, just a quick view of all the different segments, and then you also have Adevinta, which was presented yesterday there on the side. You see the different growth rate, strong growth in marketplaces, media doing well, especially on the profitability side. We do see the effect of Lendo, both Norway and the cost of international expansion, in particular in the next numbers. The growth, EBITDA growth numbers in brackets there are the growth figures excluding the IFRS effect. On that note, Trond, I think I'll leave it to you to go through the different segments.
Thank you, Kristin. If we go to the Nordic Marketplaces, I'm happy to report that FINN continue to grow in traffic. Traffic is, of course, the most important longer-term basis for revenue. They had an 11% growth in traffic. Also, if you look at the different verticals, FINN had 15% growth in real estate and 13% in job. Also FINN broadening the customer journey. FINN continued to deliver quite well in this quarter, and it's around 10% if we adjust for the Easter effect. Going to Blocket in Sweden.
Year trend in Q1, continued in Q2, that we saw now growth in the verticals, both the professional car market, the job, and also we saw some improvement in advertising. The CASA integration also contributed in May/June quite well. So Blocket is on a different trend as we see it. They have invested some in product and tech that has taken a little bit down the margin from 53% to 47%. But the margin varies a little bit also between quarters, depending on marketing and other activity. If we go to news media. The news media, I mean, it's quality journalism, that's the most important, of course, and that's the basis also for having the revenue and people are willing to pay for it
We have had kind of different journalists writing both in Sweden, like in Aftonbladet and in Svenska Dagbladet, and the same we have had in Norway with VG and the subscription newspapers. That is something that we are really proud of, and that's the basis for, so to say, delivering longer-term revenue growth and healthy margins. If we then look at the news media in total, you see that we had, we have guided to the market that we will have a fairly flattish type of EBITDA development. Also, we have the same for the total revenues. What is important here is that we are able to deliver on the digital subscription that is up 22%.
We are still hurt by the weak advertising market, especially in Sweden, with the display. There are differences between Norway and Sweden when it comes to structures and price levels. Sweden is more challenging, right to say, on display advertising. If we then look at VG. VG continued to deliver. They had strong margin also in Q2. Also the important growth in the, both in the ARPU and the subscribers is something that is also important for VG to continue to deliver healthy results. In Aftonbladet, we have had some more challenges, fair to say, both that, as I said, the display advertising market has been more challenging.
At the same time, we also have some changes in the regulation when it comes to advertising, meaning that gaming is now more regulated. And that has penalized somewhat the advertising revenues in Aftonbladet. Again, we are focused on increase in subscribers. In 2018, we had the World Cup, and that boosted, so to say, the digital subscribers. It is more underlying healthy this year. We have adjusted for that. We have also some growth on the digital subscribers in Aftonbladet. Going to the morning newspapers in Norway. Also there, I'm happy to report a very solid result, and that we have increase in ARPU with 19%. We see that people are willing to pay for good quality journalism.
That also has led, of course, to improvement in the EBITDA in this quarter. If we go to the financial services and growth, we see that Lendo, as Kristin mentioned, has been, so to say, under pressure in Norway due to the changes in the regulations, and also that the banks now are holding back the somewhat heated consumer loan market. That is something that we are working on the longer term trend to have a transparent and good service for comparison, and we believe that is sustainable over time. Lendo in Norway, although we have seen weaker results, we have continued to do some marketing. We believe that is a longer term, well positioning of Lendo Norway.
Sweden has delivered 10% growth, also there we are continued to do some marketing in order to gain market share. Lendo in total, of course, weaker result, first of all, as a result in Norway, but the trend in Sweden has in a way turned back to healthy growth. Another good performer in our growth segment is the Prisjakt. That's a price comparison. We see also there a 10% top line growth, and we believe this is well-positioned to have a transparent price comparison, first of all for products in Norway and Sweden in the future. Distribution was mentioned as one area that we believe we can further capitalize on the distribution network.
Here you see that first of all deliveries with parcels and utilizing our network has contributed to a quite strong growth. That's also something we see promising going forward. Adevinta delivered their quarterly report yesterday. That was more or less as expected, fair to say. Still continuing to do well in France, Spain, and some other European markets. The display market is also a challenge in the Adevinta markets, so. The underlying verticals, which is the most important, also continue to do well there. Schibsted will continue to be a supportive long-term owner of Adevinta. We will of course have representation with Kristin in the board. It's a lot of activity going on in the classified space for time being.
We believe that our Adevinta position is quite strong and have many opportunities also in that market going forward. We turn to finance, if you look at the changes between the two years, Nordic Marketplaces has contributed. Of course first of all, FINN, News Media, again, digital subscription is the biggest contribution there, weak in Sweden. Financial Services has been then under pressures, first of all, Lendo Norway. The Lendo expansion goes well. It goes according to plan. We have given guidance of NOK 70 million-NOK 100 million in expansion cost internationally, and then Denmark. It's the first market. The KPIs there are very promising. That's something that we believe could be further developed in some key markets.
That gives of course slightly weaker results as a sum of the explanation I've given. If we look at the income statement, for this is Schibsted excluding Adevinta, but of course we do consolidated figures as we own 60%. These are Schibsted isolated. You see that we have result, which is operating profit of NOK 557 compared with NOK 518 last year. Not much of special items to mention. Of course, we have the IFRS 16 effect now in 2019 as all other companies also following IFRS. We have some special Adevinta spin-off cost that also is in the accounts for second quarter. The underlying tax rate is around 24%, and that's a mix of the tax rate and situation, first of all in the Nordics.
Just to reiterate what we have said on the financial targets, we believe they are well-funded and funded and still is, of course, something that we strive to deliver on and also that's Nordic Marketplaces with 8%-12% top line growth. News Media guided on stable margins for that segment. We also see several M&A opportunities in the markets we're operating. The dividend policy is continue as a stable to increasing dividend. When it comes to leverage policy, we have now also initiated a buyback program that we have communicated to the market. Just to say that we have changes in the Management team, I'm stepping down as long planned situation for my early retirement.
Ragnar Kårhus, coming from Telenor will take over as CFO as of September 1st. I will still work with Schibsted and work on some projects, part-time going forward. Happy to do that. On the IR side, Jan Bøye , which has been working on financial performance reporting to me, is now changing and being the new head of IR as Jo Christian is now also stepping down. He has also been long with the company, so that's for him, an opportunity to start in corporate communication. Also Espen Risholm will also step down. There are changes, but I'm sure that these people that will come into this new position is high quality. It will be also good for Schibsted.
Key takeaways, Kristin, would you like to take them?
Well, I can do that. Yeah, I'm sure you could do it too. I have to say, this is actually Trond's 84th quarterly presentation. It's quite amazing. Oh, yeah.
Okay, okay.
We're very happy he'll stay with us for a while longer. Anyway, as you've heard, healthy growth in online classifieds, digital subscriptions in media are growing well, solid progress in several parts of the Next portfolio, challenges in Lendo Norway and digital advertising for Aftonbladet. We have resolved to initiate a share buyback program that we will start now in the third quarter. I think that was the quick sum-up, and then we're very happy to take some questions.
Thank you. Oliver Pisani, Nordea. just a quick one on Lendo, because I think you were speaking about seeing a more healthy momentum in Sweden as well, but I know that that growth in Q1 was about 14% in Sweden and fell to 10% in this, in this quarter. What should we think about the growth pace in Sweden for Lendo going forward?
Actually, we had a few weak weeks in April due to a change of marketing concept. We redid that and we were back to the same level. That's what you see. You shouldn't read much more into it.
Very good. Thanks.
Okay, we can take some questions from the webcast. First, there are a few people asking a little bit more about the buyback program. One question is more philosophical or related to the policy of capital allocation. We were issuing equity only a few years ago. How do you sort of think about now starting to buy back equity only a short while after that? That's the one question. The other question is more specific. Will you buy back B shares or A shares or pro rata As? Can you say something about the plan there?
Well, when it comes to the mix of As, that's something that we will report to the market when we have done the buybacks, so we're not disclosing that up front. I mean, Schibsted and Adevinta has been through several quarters of strong earnings, improvement of the capital structure. In order to fulfill, so to say, over time also of financial leverage policy, we believe it's right to initiate a buyback program. That is, and it's quite a long time since we actually did that equity raise you're referring to.
A couple of questions on Lendo. Given the performance of the last few quarters, are you more or less confident in the business case longer term and specifically regulatory risk in new markets?
Well, I mean, Sweden is a good example. They have been long in that market, performing quite well. We believe that it is and should be a place for a transparent comparison model in all the markets that also over time will be something that will be, continue to deliver in Norway, although the regulations for time being are hampered by, of course, this new situation that we have explained. Denmark, very promising results for time being. Then we are exploring other opportunities in Europe. We do it stepwise. We do it, gradually, see that we have some traction in Denmark, and then we may also consider different markets depending on the development.
Can you say anything about the revenue development in Norway, specifically in Q2, how much was it down? Can you say anything about the volume development post-implementation of the personal debt register?
I mean, the debt register is newly implemented, so we don't see any effect of that. Of course, the consumer banks has prepared for this, so that has taken down the volume. I would say that we're not disclosing directly how much we are down in Norway, but it is of course so a special situation, I would say, in Q1 and Q2 this year.
Okay, I can do a couple more here. A few questions around Aftonbladet. Could you please elaborate a little bit more about the market impact there from gaming? What's the nature of this business, and why does it have such a strong impact on revenue? Also more specifically, can you say anything about the revenue mix? How much of the revenue is from advertising in from gambling advertising in Aftonbladet?
I mean, the situation in Sweden, and it is for Aftonbladet and other news media, is that there has been some changing regulations when it comes to gaming. Meaning that we need to have certain approval in order to deliver in this advertising market. I mean, it's a large portion of our advertising revenues in Aftonbladet, but we don't disclose exactly how much coming from gaming. All I can say is that we are doing a lot of mitigating actions in Aftonbladet. Also changing somewhat the advertising mix over time in order to improve the longer term trend in Aftonbladet.
I think the fact that it's segment specific, explains why Aftonbladet is hard hit while the other entities in Sweden are actually improving since Q1.
Okay. There are a few questions on Blocket. You highlight a good growth in professional cars and jobs and display advertising. Can you elaborate a bit on what's dragging, since the total growth is 2%, specifically on private cars, can you say anything about that? Also on the margin, can you say a little bit more about the margin decline there, any reasons for that and going forward?
Well, as I explained, the margin decline is due to the fact that we have invested somewhat more in product and tech and hired somewhat more people in that area. That is something for the future, so that's the right thing to do in order to broaden, so to say, the value chain. Right to say that we have healthy growth in the verticals, but the private car is slightly down, so that's the reason for the total of 2%. Also we have some slight Easter effect in Blocket as well in Q2.
I think there's one question, one more question on Lendo. Can you say anything about Poland and Austria, the launches there?
It is early days, we are still in the process of, let's say, tweaking the concepts and getting everything in order. We haven't put on the marketing blast there yet. It's really too early to say because we're still in that tweaking phase.
Yeah. One more came in regarding M&A opportunities and in-market consolidation in the Nordic Marketplaces. Can you comment on that, especially on the Hemnet?
Normally we don't comment specifically on different targets, potential targets. I mean, we had an issue with the competition authorities on Hemnet. We thought that was okay according to the best advice we got in Sweden. The situation now is that they're owned by a private equity player. What they will do in the future, it's really up to them. We have to see if we, at a later stage, could be in a position or not. That's something that we can't. I mean, it's too early to say. One thing I would like to say about the market in Sweden is that we believe over time that it also could be some opportunities in the real estate, regardless of Hemnet.
Final question for now here is, regarding the management of Nordic Marketplaces. Can you give any update on the succession plan, there?
Not right now.
I think we're done.
Yes.
Yeah.
Good. Okay. Happy summer, everybody.