Thank you. Thanks, George. I'll start again. Welcome to this presentation of the Q4 results. I know that many are following us on video, so please also post your questions and we'll try to answer them afterwards. In the normal manner, Trond and I will give the presentation, but then there are representatives from senior management here also to help answer your questions. Sondre, the Head of the Classifieds division is here, and Siv, who is the CEO of Media division, is here. Hopefully be able to answer questions and also questions you might have afterwards. The Q4 was a good quarter for Schibsted. We delivered solid growth in revenues and result compared to the same quarter last year.
We're on the steady course, but there are not any big news, really. We are following a steady course, delivering on the things that we said we were on. These are the highlights. In online classifieds, we see a good continued revenue growth and good also growth in the EBITDA. There is a positive development, I'd say especially the big locomotives in France, in Norway, and Spain is helping in driving the growth there. Also as we had advised earlier, the investment phase loss is somewhat reduced. For publishing, there is a big emphasis on digital product development. There is a number of editorial achievements also in the quarter and also going on a continuous basis, and also there a stable EBITDA.
For the Schibsted Growth, we see a continued expansion and personal finance is the one that's really standing out with Lendo delivering a very good development. They've launched also in Finland, Norway and Finland is also contributing in addition to Sweden. Right. I think we'll go right into then the classifieds and let me start with the big sites. Leboncoin, great year with great results for Leboncoin also in the fourth quarter. You can see there is a good revenue growth in the verticals, and we continue to roll out new products. The performance dashboard is a dashboard where real estate brokers and car dealers can see how well their ads are performing and how they can boost and optimize that. That has been very positively received.
As you know, real estate and car has been the two big verticals traditional on Leboncoin. Then we started the, in 2016 to monetize also the jobs, and we're seeing that also is now a good contributor. What I'm also happy about that there is the solid traffic growth continued in Leboncoin. Remember, Leboncoin is a huge site, so to drive traffic even further, there is very positive for us. Then I think no one should be surprised that the margin in this quarter is somewhat lower than in the last quarter because I actually said that quite clearly in the presentation here in November, that the Q4 will have a lot of positive marketing campaigns.
For those of you who have spent some time in France, in Q4, I'm sure you've seen it on television, that they've been very positively received. Over to Norway. Continued good performance by FINN in the fourth quarter. They continued to have volume increase, and both cars and real estates have performed well, and especially jobs. The Norwegian economy is rebounding, and so we can see that the jobs vertical FINN reflects that. We can see that the banks on the west coast of Norway are reporting good results, and we can see that also in the energy sector, jobs are coming back. Otherwise, there is a good demand also for people skilled for IT, and actually classic industry jobs.
That the product development goes on in FINN as well. That Blink, the targeted ads for real estate and jobs classifieds, where we can target also individuals and across our different sites, it seems to work well for the customers. Also in FINN, there's been spending on marketing in the fourth quarter. Over to Spain. I think in Spain, we're seeing good performance. We have two verticals that have been doing very well, is jobs. That's also a reflection of good macroeconomic situation in Spain, and cars. Cars in Coche is growing well. If you look at what is actually the penetration so far, I believe, and compare that with other other countries, I believe we illustrated that at the capital markets day.
You can see that there should be a continued growth potential. There's stronger competition in the real estate and in the generalists, as we know. I'm very happy with the acquisition of Habitaclia that we completed a year back. Also the Spanish real estate markets is developing well and that therefore Habitaclia is doing well and also then a better product development for Fotocasa. There you can see that the market spend then works the other way around, and in this quarter a little bit lower, hence, better margins. In Sweden, it's a softer quarter overall, also this quarter. The positive side there is that we have two, we then have two verticals in Sweden. It's the cars and it's the jobs.
Cars has been the market leader for a long time, has seen a good development. We're also working there to provide better tools for the car dealers, so they also have their own performance dashboard. A bit similar situation in than in France, is that we're coming from a relatively I would say modest position in jobs. That's growing very well. I think we're now the market leader in the job sector. What has been softer in Sweden, and hence the flattish development on the top line is of course the display advertisement and also the company Servicefinder, which is a marketplace for services which is dragging down the total. Blocket isolated is doing somewhat better. All right.
In the other countries that we're, we, in Italy and Austria and some of the other countries, I think Willhaben is continuing on in a positive development in Austria. Also in Italy, we're seeing a positive growth, whereas Ireland has been somewhat slower. Investment phase, I know that many follow that. We've said, we've said that 2017 would be lower than 2016. We said also it will go low, down by the quarters, but it might vary between the different quarters. The trend there is quite clear, that is lower, and that will continue also in the year to come. In Brazil, we have the OLX site, and we see solid...
Remember we started monetizing that site, really with professional car dealers and real estate brokers, around 18 months ago. We're seeing a positive development there. I think especially we've been doing quite well in the car vertical, so I'm optimist as to how that site will continue to develop. For Shpock, it's especially U.K., which is our growth market there. Here you can see that, compared to Gumtree, we have a bigger number of downloads. It's in fact it's high number of total downloads so far. There's a continuous product development, and the listings continue to do well. We're also starting to roll out professional seller tools, and we're starting there with the general merchandise.
Otherwise, in classifieds, let me go back to the investor day that we had in Barcelona, where Sondre and his team presented what we're doing on product. I think we're continuing that, of course. The important thing is there that we continue to do product development for the verticals. You see some examples here, and that is important for us. We'll strengthen the ties with the professional dealers and real estate brokers and recruiters. I believe that also will give good services for consumers and for these professional customers and also provide good revenue opportunities in the years to come. Happy to answer any questions you might have on that afterwards. Let me talk about the media houses.
I think we got some, a lot of very good achievements in the media houses, a lot of good work being done. Let me take two examples and of important journalism. This is just from the last week where Fædrelandsvennen from Kristiansand had a big story over the weekend covering a story that actually unsettled Norway, some time back. They really go behind the story on what happened and with how many interactions he had, did share with the police, et cetera, et cetera. Very good example of investigative journalism. Here you see also Aftenposten from last weekend focusing on the Norwegian internet abusers. When it comes to the results, you can see that it's a steady development there.
There is focus on digital development. At the same time, of course, trying to balance the cost. If you look at Aftonbladet and VG together, who are the biggest contributor to the result, you can see that there is very good digital growth in VG. There is some margin contraction due to some print decline. Whereas Aftonbladet is increasing their margin. What I like to see is that VG is working hard in the, both with their with both revenue legs, but they are also they have done very well in the digital ad market in already last year. Then, of course, we talk about digital subscriptions. Both we and our, and industry peers are focusing on that.
This is especially important for the subscription-based newspapers. That will continue to be a big focus for them going forward. Of course, we do work continuously with product development. We have the traditional models. I've talked about VG's experimentation earlier on with Snapchat. Here are some other examples. Omni, the news app in Sweden, have launched a vertical on business economic affairs, has achieved a lot of downloads and very popular. Based on the same technology, we have launched a similar service with E24 in Norway. Many people here are in the target group. It's an excellent service.
You should try it. VG is also experimenting with new services such as VG Pay, which is especially directed towards young public that normally don't visit new sites so much. It's important for us to continue this product development. Schibsted Growth. I'll keep that relatively brief. I think we have an interesting portfolio in Schibsted Growth, and you know these brand names by now. Of course there are a couple that particularly stand out. Could point to Prisjakt as having a positive development, but especially Lendo, which is an effective customer acquisition for lenders and a great service for privates.
Because for consumers, instead of having just one bank or financial institution to relate to, you actually get a wide comparison on many different banks. Therefore, a better and more competitive offer. I think this is a fully digitized service, and that's why it's going so well. I said at the Capital Markets Day that we're looking at this strategically because we believe that we are expanding this service in Norway, Sweden, and Finland in a very positive manner. We believe that there is also some potential to take it out further in Europe, in which case we'll look at some partner to help us with that. Right.
Before I round off and hand over to Trond, I'd like to also point out that of course we're as our industry peers, we're working hard to look at how are the regulatory framework for the businesses that we're in. You know, of course we want to have a level playing field for what we're doing, so we support the EU initiative initiated by the big countries, Germany and France. There was also a Norwegian initiative in parliament yesterday that we supported to investigate what could be effective taxation rules for the big international giants. We are interested in having that level playing field. We're working hard to comply with the GDPR regulations coming into force in May.
Later on, perhaps in 2019, we'll get the ePrivacy Regulation, as we also should adhere to. We're working with organizations in Brussels to make sure that this is done in a way where we can comply and still work, provide good solution for our users. Of course, we support the work in Norway by the Media Commission and look forward to politicians looking into both that and also the role of the public broadcasting. That is a debate going on. It's important in Norway and Sweden, but we see it also in other European markets.
We hope that the Swedish politicians will look to Norway when it comes to the VAT, because we're very pleased that the Norwegian politicians, they managed to cut through and say taxation VAT should be the same for digital media as the print media. They did that, although many said it was difficult, and I hope the Swedish authorities will be able to do the same. We have to answer any questions for the press afterwards on these topics. Right. I think I'll leave the presentation to you, Trond. Take care of the finance.
Thank you, Rolv Erik. The fourth quarter is a good quarter and it's a stable course, continued the development that we have seen throughout 2017, happy with that. You see that our media houses are stable more or less also on the revenues and on the profit, and certainly continue the growth in the classifieds section. That is good to see. If you look at more of the details in the fourth quarter, you see that we have a gross operating profit of NOK 945 compared with NOK 682 last year than 2016. We have slightly higher depreciation due to some increased activity in the product tech, and also that we have done a couple of minor acquisition during 2017.
We have had some cleaning-up cost in the JVs line of NOK 29 million, and we expect of course that to continue to go into positive territory going forward as we have Brazil and Austria in there, which is certainly doing well. In the other income and expenses, we have some restructuring and also some one-off gains. This leads to an operating profit after these items of NOK 479 compared with NOK 295. We also have some minor currency losses in that fluctuates somewhat between quarters. It's a good quarter as such. Looking then at the development between the two years in Q4, you see that we increased from NOK 501 up to NOK 695 in EBITDA. Again, France is an important contributor there.
We also have Finland, Norway doing well. The underlying development in the verticals, Blocket is also performing, I would say, good. Then Spain, good to see that also doing well. That, compared with the development in media and also some increased product tech leads to a quite good increase in the EBITDA. If you take the different countries and looking at the revenue and the growth and EBITDA margins, it is as Rolv Erik said, France, 55%. It is as we guided for that it would go somewhat down in Q4 due to increased marketing spend. We have as a result of this seen quite good development in traffic and also the continued development of that in January.
FINN, 18% top line growth. Sweden, the underlying vertical, as I said, has performed as expected. Spain, especially the job and the car section, has a good position in the market. We have a balanced portfolio. If you look at the breakdown of our portfolio and revenues, it is certainly then France being the biggest contributor. Also Spain and Norway and Sweden is important in the develop phase in the classifieds. Also corresponding development in the EBITDA. If you look at the investments phase, we see a strong growth on revenue and also continued decrease in then the losses from that portfolio. That will continue to go down.
As we have said, when it comes to the guidance for Schibsted, we restate our 15%-20% top line growth for the online classifieds. That is maintained over the next three to five years. We will certainly focus on continuous then operational leverage and focus on cash flow and profitability improvement. As I said, the online classified investment phase will continue to go down. As you also know, Brazil will certainly be in positive territory in 2018. Media houses, we have seen a strong development in the digital part. Of course, the print continue to decline. Also you may expect some contra-contraction as a result of that. Looking then at the key financial figures.
We have reduced our net interest-bearing debt. We have continuous good cash flow from operations and a fairly stable CapEx as the quarter shows. Looking at our financial position, we had an equity issue in Q4. We have now a net interest-bearing debt of EBITDA of 1.0, which gives us the possibility to continue to do some expansion. We would like to do, as we have always said, some in market consolidation and be positioned for further growth. The board has proposed a dividend of NOK 1.75 per share. That is 32% of the cash flow and is a stable dividend. That has also been the dividend over the last years, as you see.
In 2018 and going into Q1, we will do some adjustment for the segment reporting. The main change there is that we will split out Growth segment as a separate segment in our reporting. We believe that is an important part of Schibsted to highlight now, and especially Lendo, but also some of the other promising activities will then be highlighted more in our reporting going forward. We have underlying tax rate around 30%, so that is more or less as before. As you know, our activity is that we are prudent in the way that we don't recognize tax benefits from losses of investments in countries that we're building up activity. That concludes the financial Rolv Erik, and for you to go through the highlights.
Yes. I will. I think I've been through this already. It's a good quarter for Schibsted. We continue on our steady course. I think we'll just open up for questions. Anyone here? Otherwise, I'm sure we have something on the web. Here, it's here on the front row.
Okay, we'll take one question from the web. Please can you confirm your guidance for headquarters and other? Do you still think tech investments will be less than in 2018 compared to 2017?
Well, what we have said there, is that we expect 2018 to be at the same level or slightly down, in 2018. There is no changes of that. In Q4, we had some higher cleanup costs, which is not relevant for, I would say, the level and guiding going forward.
Okay, we can do one more here. You had suggested that Brazil would be break even in 2017 or towards the end of 2017, but it sounds like it hasn't happened. Why not? What did you reinvest in?
The OLX site in Brazil was break even in Q4, but they have also started a new site, a real estate site where. They sell a bundled product. It's listed on both sites. It's the cost of that new site, which is a new investment, which we believe will be a very good investment that makes the totality not in break even, but OLX is in break even in Q4.
Also fair to say that it has started well off in 2018. Pleased with the development in Brazil.
Any other questions? If not, I can remind you that there is a telephone conference for investors in the afternoon also with the U.S., more U.S. markets present. That's at 2:00 P.M. Please phone into that. Otherwise, we're here and you can also take the opportunity to come and chat with the senior management and also the chairman here for those interested in that. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming.