Okay, welcome everybody, thank you for following our presentation of the Q1 results. We'll jump right through it. Here you see the overview. We're happy to report digital revenue growth of 6%. The total revenue growth was 3%. You see that that is led by the Nordic Marketplaces with a very healthy revenue growth of 12%. Media, more or less flat at -1%, then somewhat lower growth in Next than we have seen, but we have good reasons for that. We'll come back to it. When it comes to the EBITDA, those figures are inflated by NOK 84 million due to the IFRS 16 changes.
Roughly you could say that if you exclude that effect, margins are, and EBITDA are up for Nordic Marketplaces, down for Next, and flat for News Media. You see Adevinta, they reported their results yesterday, but they reported growth, including their JVs, of 15%, and they also saw a good and healthy margin increase, primarily due to less investments in part of their growth portfolio. Here is an overview. You see the total growth there. I'm happy when it comes to Nordic Marketplaces also to say that we see Blocket is returning to growth. In News Media, we managed a digital revenue growth of 5%, but of course, offset by the continued decline in paper.
We have very good growth in our digital subscriptions, which is an important parameter for us. In Financial Services, we do have overall growth in Lendo, although we see some differences between the markets. We have now launched in three countries in Europe, in Denmark, Austria, and in Poland, and we will follow that development very carefully going forward. We can also report that Prisjakt is continuing to do well. As most of you probably know by now, we had a successful listing of Adevinta on the Oslo Stock Exchange on April 10th, and we're happy with how that stock has developed since it was listed. If we then look a bit more in details, here are the total figures for Nordic Marketplaces.
We are guiding on a revenue growth of 8%-12% medium to long term, and you will see that we are at the higher end of that range for the moment. The growth comes from the verticals, a total of 19% in those, partly then offset by a negative development in advertising in the quarter. These figures are somewhat also improved by a positive Easter effect, because Easter was in Q1 last year, and it's in Q2 this year. When it comes to the margins here, I could add that they are growing, but if you exclude the IFRS effect, the margin would have been 43% instead of 45%, but still showing growth. You see the mix there of the verticals. This is the total figures.
As you know, real estate is then almost entirely from Norway, jobs and cars are more mixed from the three markets. Let's go to Finn in particular. Very impressive growth, I would say, of 18% for the quarter. 20% revenue growth in classified revenue. We do see a negative growth for display advertising, actually the decline in advertising is stronger in Norway than it is in Sweden this quarter. The reason that we see healthy growth is basically that we see it across the board in all three classified verticals. It's due to both volume and ARPU improvement, which again stems from both volume increases, but also price optimization exercises. For Finn, we estimate that the Easter effect is some 3% on the number.
As you see at the bottom there in the small text, the IFRS effect for Finn is some 12 million NOK. If we then go to Blocket, you will see that we saw a 2% revenue increase. This is in local currency, I should emphasize that. We have seen several quarters of decline, as you know, so we're very happy to see that the Blocket turnaround is already showing now in the figures. We saw a good growth in the car vertical, 6%. We now have pretty much all the dealers back on the Blocket platform, and we have also done some product changes and improvements, which have made it, which has had good effect on our monetization efforts.
We also see very good growth in jobs again now, 10% revenue year on year. There is a lot of activity going on in Blocket. We just launched a new vertical for travels, which is based then on a white label solution from the travel section that we have on Finn in Norway. We are working hard to integrate Qasa for real estate rentals, and we have good hopes that that will really help increase the ARPU on the real estate part of Blocket. I mentioned that the advertising hit was stronger in Norway.
We have a very slight decline this quarter in Sweden as well, but it's not as severe as it has been in previous quarters. We then move to News Media, just to start by showing you that there is a lot of activity going on in our media business. We're working hard to drive and boost the digital transformation. We do see very good growth in digital subscriptions, and obviously very important to keep that growing, both from improving the ARPU and also managing the churn, of course. I think it's fair to say that we are maybe switching a bit from a volume to a value approach or focus in these efforts. Of course, it's very important for us to drive traffic and user engagement.
We've seen very good results in personalizing and having algorithmic help in editing our front pages. In Aftenposten, we've seen a volume increase in 10% of the readership from our front page due to that effort. Of course, in advertising, it's all about strengthening our premium position, making sure we use data so we can target our ads better, and also opening new sales channels. There have been some changes in Sweden with this regard that we think will improve our numbers going forward. Of course, then we keep experimenting with new innovations, and especially within voice and live pictures, we have several interesting projects on the way.
Regardless of these digital efforts and growth, we still need to have tight cost control, that is, of course, still a focus in this part of the business. If we then look at some overall numbers for the News Media business, you will see, as I started by saying, that the overall revenue was down by 1%. Underneath there is a healthy digital growth still, and especially within digital circulation, those revenues increased by 16% in Q1. There is, of course, still a decline in the paper part of the business. As you see, the margin looks up at 8%, but being inflated by IFRS, this margin would have been flat at 6% not been for that effect.
The overall IFRS effect is NOK 46 million for the media division. We then look at VG, there is a revenue decline of 3%. I think we should say that that's somewhat surprisingly weak. It's mostly due to a hit on the advertising side. VG continues to show very healthy growth in digital subscriptions. They were up 19% in the 1st quarter. You see the volume and the ARPU mix in the, in the graph on the side there. I should say that we are happy to say that April is already looking a lot better. We think these numbers will bounce back on the revenue side.
When you look at the margin development, there is a good explanation for this, and because we have had some changes in our allocation of central cost. The margin here would have been 16% if it had not been for that change, and this is basically moving more of the HQ cost out to VG due to some technical changes that were made at the beginning of the year. I will then move on to Aftonbladet. Aftonbladet is also delivering digital growth. The subscription growth in Aftonbladet is at 15%. Also here we have quite a hard hit on the analog side. Both casual sales and print advertising are taking a hit. We also see a slight decline in online advertising in Aftonbladet.
The same as with Blocket, we see that the decline is leveling out, and we hope that we will see better number in this area going forward. I could also mention that the IFRS effect in Aftonbladet is at zero, so these EBITDA numbers are not inflated by IFRS. When it then comes to our subscription papers, these numbers are pretty good. A revenue increase by 1% and a margin increase. This is affected by IFRS by NOK 8 million, that makes up less than 1% on the margins. There is a margin increase here. Again, we see very healthy growth in digital subscriptions. They are up 22%. We even see a slight increase in print subscriptions, which is very good. Online advertising here is flat.
Of course, we do have some decline in paper advertising. These numbers are very encouraging. I will move over to the next portfolio, and I will cover Lendo and Prisjakt. For Lendo, there is quite a lot of things happening. The overall revenue growth is 8%. We do see continued good growth in Sweden. This in Sweden, we see a growth of 14%. We do have some challenges both in Norway and Finland. In Norway, this is due to the new regulations coming in place, taking down volumes in the whole market. There is no indication that we are losing any share in this.
I would like to state that we do think despite that we see this decline in volume, we think long term it will be very healthy for this market to have better regulations. We are positive to the development, and we think that this will pay off in the longer term. We do see reduced margins. As you see, 10 % points of that can be explained by international expansion. We do also have increased costs, both due to some increased marketing and also that we are now ramping up our organization to handle the expansion that we have underway.
We also need to say that we do see poor performance in Finland, which is regrettable, and we are taking measures there as we speak to see if we can turn that around. I said that we had launched in these three countries. As you see, it's a bit too early to say, but we do see good tractions. We have signed up some 15 partner banks now, which is an important indicator for success. So far at least it looks good, and it's going according to plan, but it's way too early to state any sensible numbers or KPIs as we have only been a few weeks in the market.
Finally, I will just round off by saying that Prisjakt continues to do very well, healthy revenue growth of 12% and also a healthy margin increase. In here there is basically no IFRS effect, so that is a real margin increase that you see there. Of course, this is a good segment with strong growth in online retail that helps boost this. The Prisjakt team has also been very good in continuously developing their sites, and we see that we have good traction on the improvements that they are making. On that note, shall I maybe do Adevinta quickly, Trond, and then you can, yeah, then I'll hand it over to you. Let's just do Adevinta. I'm sure most of you saw that they had their presentation yesterday.
Just in sum, 15% revenue increase, including their JV in Brazil, 14% if you exclude that JV. A very healthy margin increase because they are now reducing spend in investment phase, particularly Shpock in Mexico. If it had not been for the IFRS effect, the margin would have been 26%, still a very healthy growth. Of course, you can see the full report and presentation on their website. I will pass on to just state again that we will continue to be a supportive and long-term owner of Adevinta. We do play an active role on the board and we have had excellent cooperation around everything that's taken place now with the listing, and we will continue to follow this ownership closely going forward.
It's obviously a very important part of our value and our management task also in the future. On that note, Trond.
Okay, thank you. Just to remind you of what is Schibsted now in this new situation when we have spinned off then Adevinta. We own slightly less than 60% of Adevinta. Just to look at, these are of course figures from yesterday with what was then the Schibsted market cap. If you take just the 59%, little bit above that we own in Adevinta, then we have an implied value of Schibsted ex Adevinta of NOK 19 billion. That's important to understand that is a totally new situation. The NOK 19 billion is of course then of these three boxes that Kristin has went through, which is Nordic Marketplaces, News Media, and the Next portfolio. That is just to remind you of what is the new Schibsted.
If we look at the development between 2018 and 2019, now I'm talking only about Schibsted ex- Adevinta. Of course, we have to consolidate our figures, the comments that we now go through is based on the Schibsted-only figures, excluding Adevinta to make it simple because Adevinta had its own report yesterday. If you look then at the changes between the two years, we are very happy to see that the important digital revenue continue quite well in this quarter, especially of course Nordic Marketplaces with Finn, that continues well on all the verticals. Also we see now that Blocket on the vertical side are having a slight increase, that is a turning point, I would say in this quarter News Media flattish.
We saw a surprisingly weak display market in Q1. That goes not only for the Schibsted, but it goes for the total market in Norway, I would say, and also in Sweden. I think we are happy with the figures, knowing what has happened in the display market. Of course, we have invested in Financial Services. We are continue to do marketing both in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and also we have expansion of Lendo into new markets. Denmark is of course now being something that looks promising for time being based on couple of months that we've been out in the market.
That could be a good value driver in the future. We ending up in EBITDA, which is 334 NOK compared with 418 NOK, and then of course we have the IFRS effect. If you look at the details of the income statement, we have as we have stated here for AF 418 NOK, and that's of course the IFRS effect of 84 NOK, and it is explained by that the last page that I showed you on the especially Nordic Marketplaces contributing to strong results. We also have some IFRS effect on the depreciation and amortization. We have also in improved our EBITDA and operating cash flow and also reduced our CapEx.
We have a solid and strong financial situation, which, of course, we also need to monitor closely to, in a way, optimize according to our policy. Looking then at the cash flow ex Adevinta, I think that this shows that we have an underlying strong cash flow in the company, and also that we have a positive effect, of course, of the working capital. We have made some investments, like we have increased our stake in Bynk and De Hypotheker, which is in Financial Services. And also those are performing very well. We continue to do some investment, first of all, in the next portfolio. We have an underlying tax rate of 24% in new Schibsted.
I think that going forward, it is expected that the tax rate will be at this level or slightly lower, due to the mix of the tax rate between Norway and Sweden. Just to remind you, we have a solid balance sheet in Schibsted, ex- Adevinta. We have a target of up to three times net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA. We, of course, have received the proceeds that brings into close to a debt-free situation. We have, in a way, then, a situation where we need over time to look at mitigating access to bring, so to say, the capital structure more in line with what is then the target rate for Schibsted. That is, of course, either through dividend or through buybacks.
There are different means that we can use in that context. Just to remind you what is our financial targets. We have the Nordic Marketplaces with 8%- 12% top-line growth. We are delivering on that and even doing certainly better in Finn. News Media, we are guiding on a flattish type of development. We do see strong growth in the important digital part. Of course we will look at the capital allocation and dividend policy as talked about before. We have then the consolidated figures. I'm not going through those because that includes, of course, the consolidation of the Adevinta figures, those were reported yesterday.
I think that sums up, so to say, the financial situation. Kristin, I can just sum up, or would you like to sum up the? Because we do see that the digital revenue continue very healthy in Q1. The Nordic Marketplaces, as you said, we are very pleased with the Finn situation and also that Blocket is turning. Also Tori is doing quite well in Q1. News Media, I said, surprisingly weak on the display. We do see some improvements that Kristin talked about in April. We continue to do some investments that we believe will bring value, first of all in the next portfolio. That sums up the presentation. I think we're ready for Q&A.
Any questions? Yes.
Hi. Frida Borin from SEB. I'm wondering if you could say a little bit more about the outlook of display advertising and advertising revenues in general for Schibsted.
As we said, it looks better in April, which is a good sign that maybe advertisers were slow to get the year started. We also know that there were some major agency competitions going on that might have affected it a bit. We hope and think that it will come back to the level where we have seen it lately. Of course, it is also an area that is hard to predict long term because there are changes in this market.
All right. We have one question from the webcast, regarding the Easter effect. Can you quantify the Easter effect on total for the group? Is it primarily in Finn, that refer to the 3%?
Yeah. The 3% refers to Finn. It is hard to estimate a precise effect of Easter, and that's why we have not done so overall for the group. In Finn, you know, they were able to mine it so specifically that they thought 3% would be a more or less accurate estimate. That's why we gave that number. It actually varies a bit. For some of our entities, Easter is good news, and for some it's bad news. It's not unanimous effect either. Any other questions? I guess we were exceptionally clear then.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.