Well, I think it's 9:00 A.M., good morning to everyone. Welcome to this quarterly presentation for from Schibsted. We also have our AGM coming up in 10:30 A.M. First, let's go through the quarterly presentation. Trond and I, we'll now run through the presentation. Also present here from the company is the chairman of the board and several representatives from the senior management. Let me start by going through some of the highlights. It's been a positive and good quarter for Online & Classifieds. Both France and Spain are doing well, as we'll show you a little bit later. It's also been a good development in Norway and Sweden. We're seeing that emerging markets continue to do well, especially good traffic development and high engagement from users.
When it comes to the media houses, I would say that they're doing many very good things. They're producing great journalism, and what we're seeing now is also that people are willing to pay for that because the digital subscriptions are going up. When I refer to her challenging conditions, that refers to the advertisement market, and but we continue to do a lot of good things in the media houses. There's continued positive development in digital products, but we're also keeping a close eye on costs. Last time we talked about product and tech. This time, let me provide you with some examples of what we're doing. The agenda looks like this. First, the Online & Classifieds, Media houses, then I'll show you some examples of things we're doing in product and tech.
Trond will go through the finances before the summary and the Q&A session. Let me start with the traffic figures. There is a positive development still, which is important. Underlying traffic in our European sites is still growing at around 10%. If you look at outside Europe, there is a strong growth momentum with traffic growth around 50%. As you can see, mobile share is continuing to climb and we've said that for a long time. Of course, that will only continue to do so in the months and quarters and years to come. They're now on an aggregate basis, about 60%. We see all the sites are development.
For the big online classifieds sites, you see positive figures there for France, Sweden, and Spain. On an aggregate level, you can see that the top line growth is 25%. Let me point out that it's still a healthy growth though of 17%. France, very good quarter by Leboncoin. Positive development and the progress in the real estate market. Earlier on, we had Sezois, the spear on sites, where they sold the packages. Since that has expired, the previous customers of that package has now signed up with Leboncoin. It's very positive. Car vertical, still a good development, both driven by price and volume. This was also the case in the last quarter.
This is vary a little bit from month to month and quarter to quarter. We see at the beginning of the second quarter is at somewhat lower level. There is a new responsive site launched, and users really like it. You can see that the mobile traffic is high. There is a very high seasonality of spending. There was a marketing campaign in the plan for the first quarter, and at a somewhat unusually high level this quarter. As I've said previously, that we expect that the top line growth to be between 15% and 20%. What I've seen in the beginning of the second quarter is more in the lower end of that range.
I'm very pleased with Leboncoin and the development there. In Spain, our sites there, a number of them are also doing well, both in cars, in real estate, and jobs. What I'm most curious about in Spain right now is what will happen with the election, which is due in June. There is some uncertainty in the job market when the political situation has not yet stabilized. That might affect InfoJobs. A good development on, also on display ads, and we've launched the Vibbo brand, and we'll continue to push that. Back to Norway. You see a stable quarter for FINN. There is some Easter effect this year. The Easter being in April.
I would say that the job is going as we've said previously. Of course, affect oil and gas industry, which is very important for Norway. I would say it's holding up pretty well. Real estate sector, it's been a slowdown in volumes, as many of you read in the papers. Real estate in volume, and that is of course affecting FINN. We're seeing also, as you'll see later, that the display ad is relatively weak this year. Sweden, on the other hand, has a positive, well from all the professional revenues. Also the new verticals such as jobs and actually real estate. When it comes to real estate, increased uncertainty now around the acquisition of Hemnet. We have a dialogue with the Swedish Competition Authority.
Might have some, they might have some comments and objections to our, with them in the coming weeks and months, to discuss potential remedies to remedy that situation. In Spain a couple of years back. We'll see what the Swedish Competition Authorities comes up with and to be to continue that dialogue now in the coming weeks and in the next couple of months. Be more mature sites in Europe. You can see that, well, is after a somewhat weak fourth quarter back on their growth track. In Ireland, things are going, I would say, they're going as expected. The Irish economy and the real estate market is a little bit slower than expected. In Hungary, I would say that the house now out of the car vertical is developing well.
Brazil, many people ask how things are going in Brazil. We're not really that affected by the slowdown in the macro situation on the generalist sites, and this is because the there's still so much migration to be done from online, from print to online. OLX is continuing to develop well, and they're now the clear market leader, of course, in generalist, also in car volumes, and are getting also more traction in real estate market and they're experiment within different fields. That site is doing well and I'm not so worried about the. We have the investment in Shpock and. This especially in Germany and the UK. That is living up to our expectations. We've also launched this summer our. In Italy.
They've seemed to have caught some real traction in this young target group. We've run a big project because many of our users and of the environmental effect of buying and selling second-hand with an external institute helping us to calculate what are actually the savings in terms of being efficient marketplaces for secondhand goods. We now extended it. This is, we calculated the five big marketplaces in Europe, what are the effect. External institutes actually said that, well, through those five sites on a yearly basis, we're saving 12 greenhouse gas. You know, if I ask people here, what does that translate to? I guess... That is actually the same as the traffic standing still in Paris for three years.
If you take the world's biggest airplane, Airbus. Around the planet. It's quite substantial. Right. Now we can turn our the attention to the media houses. As I said, there's a lot of good product development. If you look at VG and Aftonbladet, they are with a record 230,000 plus wait club members, VG at 78,000. Most important factor for these two is the ad market. VG is more flattish and that is of course due to slower in Sweden currently. Otherwise, we continue to invest in in web TV. We're now seeing that those revenues are growing. Here, let me point out there's a good traction for digital subscriptions.
The total number of subscribers has now increased and is higher at the number of subscriptions. If you combine the digital and the, you can see the total number of digital subscribers now at 70,000. The target to reach 100,000 for the end of the year. I think they're very well on track in doing so. Also in some, also, you notice that other media houses are. We are producing a good, a lot of good co-content. Of course, what is also affecting those media houses, which is the Ad market in Norway. It's actually two things that are affecting it. One is the macro situation, and the second is structural things.
That's why we're the print advertisements is down. Also the online. Working, we're working very hard to de-develop new products that I'll show you in a minute. Doing the difficult but important balance of both investing in new products and still keeping a close eye on costs. Let me point out, there's a lot of good journalism being produced in our media houses. For those of you who follow the Swedish market, you could see that there was recently this price award for investigative journalism and Svenska Dagbladet won 2 of the main prices. Aftonbladet won 1. Of course, Aftenposten's contribution and participation in the big Panama Papers revelation has created quite a buzz.
This really goes to the heart of their mission. That makes us proud. Let me finish off this. As you know, especially in Sweden, that we're doing well on Schibsted growth. We're seeing some positive signs in Norway and France as well. It's especially in Sweden, and its personal finance is continuing to do well, as well as price comparison. Good thing is, hitta.se has been able to stabilize their situation, and I'm very impressed by their product development. If you compare it with their competitor, I think they really stand out. That's why here you can see the split of the revenues. Personal finance continues to do well in the years to come. This is the price comparison on hitta.se. Right. Last time.
He, the main takeaways from his presentation was that we're working on building new global platforms to make better solutions for marketplaces, publishers and advertisers. Admarket, this especially digital ecosystems in order to provide better users experience, both from a content point of view and from an ad point of view. Christian has received many questions. What kind of things are we doing? I thought, as a follow-up, I thought I'd provide you with a few examples of that. Examples from Norway, first there. Blink is a product. What this product does, it actually enables you to reach an audience that might be interested in. For it on FINN. We signed up several of, several important brokers, real estate brokers in Norway. This effect so far...
What we're seeing is that the one using this product actually get a 20 p. Don't use it. They're also exposed to new users that is in the target group but haven't actively searched for it. Peer-to-peer testing on FINN, that could give us flexibility. Facilitates the whole transaction. Confirmed ID has been launched on FINN last year. Climbing. It's close to 400,000 somewhere. What we're seeing is that new ads there inserted is actually used by people with a confirmed identity. Between buyers and sellers. I talked about France. Responsive site has been launched with much better user experience for those of you who try out that service. We have relaunched Vibbo. It's new and rebranded.
A lot of new product features on that. In our London lab, and of course, that enables local advertisers. We started in France. Local insert their own ads and choose it by geolocation. Let me finish up a couple of other examples. Of converting all our storage of our inventory to AppNexus, which is in the solutions. That facilitates many things for us because for instance, for our. They want to buy different formats, and they want to buy across all our sites. All the formats and the. To go in and order exactly the formats you want on across all of our sites. Where we know that the coverage of our sites, so especially FINN and VG.
Strength in combination, that if we're able to offer that product, where they can themselves go in and order it in a programmatic fashion. That will be, that will. That benefit from that coverage in a much better way than they've been so far. As it was, we're speeding up our classifieds platform. The point here is that we're. Is of course developing many competitors have global platform. To have a central rollout of product and tech. This will enable us to have a faster innovation. For instance, for the improved messaging products, instead of reinventing things many times, we're now making it with much higher speed. For the advertisement and ecosystems, of course, it's important: gender, age, interest, intent, and at the same time we're doing that.
Privacy is important for us, and that's why we're also now developing a privacy dashboard, so the users themselves should be able to... This just to illustrate why it's important for Shipt ... Tech, and, we are much more a tech driven company now. I'm very satisfied with the progress we're making and the talent. Right. I think actually that sums up the most important part for me, Trond.
Thank you, Rolv Erik. If you look at the third quarter, it's a good quarter for Schibsted. You see that we continue to grow the revenues. First of all, I would say that we are happy with the classified operations, both established and the older established and also in the investment phase companies. We do see strong underlying growth as well. A good development in Sweden and in Norway, it's a little bit more mixed due to, first of all, a little bit the macro situation and especially on the West Coast. Looking at the gross EBITDA before the investment we're making, we have NOK 635 compared with NOK 508, which is an underlying good improvement in our operations.
We then have depreciation and amortization at about the same level as last year. We have share of then loss in JVs, which is, first of all, investments that we are doing in emerging markets. The JVs we have there. Of 20 minutes in France, which is included in Q1 figures. Compared with last year, we had this in emerging markets, so it's not really comparable figures. If you look at underlying in Norway. We have taken the investments. If you look at the underlying development, growth in our classified operations, France, good development, +79 compared with. We see a continuous growth.
Spain and also other I would point out is actually now you can see that it's This, like then Austria, Ireland, Italy and others. We have in the emerging is continued to do well, which also we will see more of that in Norway, a little bit I would say. Then of course, we have stepped up somewhat investment in product and tech, which we believe is the right thing to do. To grow our business. We are long-term industrial players.
In Shpock, which is really showing promising development like in U.K., Germany, and ending as a result of the JVs that we established with Naspers. We have guided the market, this is just to keep you updated, that we will invest EUR 80 million-100 million. A part of what we charge to EBITDA and what we have as included in Variable to 150 in 50. If you look at the key financial figures for Schibsted. Underlying development in the key figures. First of all, if you look at the cash flow, we have First quarter is a little bit weaker cash flow-wise than other quarters. We're happy with what we see here. Compared to the EBITDA. Investments.
All in all, strong key financial figures. Of course, our tax rate in France of 34% and in the 20s in Scandinavia. For the tax benefit of some of the losses, of course, that we have as a result of investments leads to a strong, stable financial position with debt maturity that we believe is healthy and good for Schibsted. We will continue to do, as we have said, in market consolidation and strengthen our position. If you look at our dividend policy, this is proposed. Dividend of 1.75 per share, which is a sum of NOK 395 million. To have a payout ratio of 25%-40% of cash flow over time.
To grow our Schibsted as a growth company. I think that was a run through of the key.
The highlights, again. We see a continued positive development for online revenue growth in France and Spain. There is a stable...
Okay. Is that better? Good development for online classifieds. Good and steady markets growing better. We continue to develop our vertical positions, You can evidence that by In France. Media houses, many positive things happening, but a tough advertisement market. Still keep an eye on cost. Of course, I've been through the product and tech investments. That's to drive that development.
How do you see the competition with Wallapop also, since we understand that
we're keeping a close eye on them. It's a very similar service to Shpock that we have ourselves, so we know how these services work, and it's something we're taking very seriously. That's why we also rebranded the Vibbo, and we'll continue to push in marketing for that. I think that, you know, our position in Spain with Vibbo and Milanuncios purchase is pretty strong in the car market, so I think we got a good starting point and a good position. It's a competition that we take very seriously.
It's also fair to say that we see limited, like Wallapop, so we are not so concerned in that segment as a result of that.
Monetization-wise, they.
Fredrik Steinsland from Pareto Securities. Can you indicate somewhat what the level of margin for Leboncoin would be if you had more of a normalized level on marketing spend for Q1?
We are not guiding on margin levels of Leboncoin. We get a lot of questions on that. The only thing we can say is that is seasonally high margins due to. Going forward, fair to say so, that's also what.
Thank you. One more question, if I may. In terms of the Hemnet and clarification there, is ninth of June still the date we'll look at? Or what do you think on timeline there?
I think that by that date, we'll be able to know more about the situation, certainly.
Yeah. It's, it is at least, we expect it to be June, whether it's 9th of June. It's, that's a little bit wait and see. It will be a dialogue and then it's a question on how the dialogue will work and if they can stop the clock in that dialogue or not. Expect it to happen, sometimes in June, the result of that.
Thank you.
Frederic?
Yeah. Frederic Langsosen, Carnegie. Also a few questions on France. Can you say something about the... and the growth year-over-year? I have a follow-up.
Well. It is certainly a fairly healthy growth also in the real estate, comparable figures, even though we had the P3, which was also was fairly successful in its own. We had 90%. It's actually little bit better than also what we planned for when we initially. You can say the biggest effect is done in the early part of this year.
That was my follow-up, because I thought the biggest pickup would be in the second half of this year.
Well, I would say that in October to December is the most important signing of new yearly contracts.
Thank you for that.
Yeah. I think that that will also typically be the pattern, this year. The growth will come towards the end of the.
It's a bit strange you're saying revenue growth in Leboncoin is 15%-20% this year if you're making almost 20% this quarter, and we should expect a pickup in the second half.
Well, that may be the case. It's fair to say that it fluctuates on first of all the display ads in Leboncoin uptake in display in Q2 this year. It will fluctuate somewhat that part of it. This is partly campaign driven and the market may go up and down from quarter to quarter, and that's why I said that the start of the second quarter is more in the lower end of that range. Total.
Okay. Okay. We have a few other questions. You mentioned that Italy is back to a better growth rate. Is it back to the pre Q4, and how close are you to profitability in Italy?
Well, what I can say is that we have more healthy growth in Q1. It's also that we saw of 40%, but not too far away, but we won't be too precise on that. Looking to how to monetize, first of all on the car.
Operations. Do you see mobile limiting or expanding your monetization opportunities and how in that.
The there is several effect of the mobile. The one is that there is much more frequent... On the display side, of course, the screens are bigger, so that's smaller. That's a somewhat more limiting factor. I think there are things working in both directions there. Okay, a couple more. Can you talk through your plans to monetize Shpock? Well, we are, you know, you can monetize Shpock... classified sites. One could be by selling better exposure products to the formats. In addition, perhaps you can go into the transaction part of it. These are, I think-. All right, last one for now. Have you seen any change in the competitive situation in Italy?
I would say that we continue to do well. We are, if you compare us with eBay and Kijiji, it seems that we have a very positive development. Our native app, Shpock, is also getting good tractions. I wouldn't say there are any important changes right now. Okay. Those were questions from Webcast. Are there any more questions here's from Bjorn?
Hey, Bjorn from Dagens Næringsliv. What can you say about talks with other Norwegian media companies about collaboration regarding login solutions and?
Solutions. Good thing if we can collaborate more with other media players in Norway. I think we can have more common systems. We've had some discussions to see if we can find some common solutions and common login platforms. That's a little bit in the early stage, but we're working on it, and we'll continue those. Right. Okay. No further questions. Thank you so much for coming. I will remind you that there is the AGM starting here at 10:30 A.M.