For Schibsted Second Quarter. I'm happy to see that so many people are actually present here in the middle of the summer season. I know that even more people are following us on the video link. Trond is here with me to give the presentation and Didrik and Camilla and a few others also from the group management will be present and help answering questions. It's been a good second quarter for Schibsted. Let me start by some of the key developments. Our classifieds business continue to expand, and we continue to deliver on the strategy that we have outlined, and that consists of several pillars. It's organic growth that's been an important driver for us for many years, and you can see that throughout our portfolio now that organic growth is good in this quarter.
In Spain, for instance, growing by 70%. The second pillar is really to do bottom acquisition and agreements where that makes sense. We have this quarter announced a structural agreement in Ireland. I'll get back to that later. We've also recently completed the acquisition of Anumex in Mexico. For the media houses, it's a bit more rough waters in the sense that the economic development is tougher in the ad market. They're doing great in journalistically and also product development. The advertisement markets are tougher now than what we have seen the last couple of years. I'll get back to that also.
Strongly linked to that is our tech ramp up, because we are investing now heavily in hiring smart people in advertisement technology and building new platforms for media houses and for Speed and also for the marketplaces business of course. Shareholders know that we have split the shares in A class and a B class. I'm happy to see that was completed on June first. That gives us the tools that are necessary for us to participate in further M&A activity that might take place in the classified space. We've also initiated and actually completed some divestment processes. For instance, Dagbladet is in the process.
20 minutos Spain and France is in the process. I expect those to be completed soon. Then Schibsted Forlag Publishing House is already completed. I would say that the common denominator for this is that we found good owners for those businesses that are very interested and willing to invest in this business and has a lot of competence in the respective fields and will develop these businesses further on. Right. Okay. The, let me move into the presentation and we'll start with the classifieds and then continue with the media houses and then Trond will take care of the financial part. For online classifieds, it has been a good quarter, it's a good business. But we're seeing many interesting developments.
We have outlined earlier on that, throughout our expansion in the last 15 years, actually in the field of online classifieds, it's 15 years now since FINN was started. It's been a combination of organic growth and of M&A activity. We're continuing to do that. That has been evidenced in this last quarter as well with the transactions I just mentioned. Growth in traffic has always been important for us. That is sort of the engine that drives everything. That will eventually also lead to monetizations, where we keep our eyes focused on those metrics. You can see that both in the European portfolio and not least in the more investment phase outside Europe, traffic development is going well. Right.
Let's go into the individual businesses. I'll start with France, with Leboncoin. Leboncoin is continuing their steady growth path that we have seen for the last years. They're they have a good development for their main business. What I like is that the display ad market has actually been rather tough in France this quarter. We're continuing to take market share. We're the third player now with behind Facebook and Google. And there's continued growth there of 24%. Of course our business is dependent on what's happening with public holidays, those kind of things.
We're seeing in May actually that there is a number of public holidays, meaning that May is somewhat weaker than the other months in the quarter. That doesn't change the trend or the underlying business of Leboncoin. We've also pointed out earlier that the margin will vary somewhat from quarter to quarter. I think it was very high in the first quarter, it's above 70%. That time we didn't have any marketing campaigns. This quarter, we've run a number of marketing campaigns, and that is of course affected the margin. I'm very happy about the development of Leboncoin. They're continuing their steady growth path. Looking ahead for Leboncoin, I think it's The prospects are enticing and interesting in the real estate field.
We're seeing that we have captured a lot of new customers this year, and I expect us to be able to capture even more customers next year. Fourth quarter this year will be important because that is when actually most sales processes and annual contracts are renewed. For those who expire with the bundle with Le Figaro, interesting to see how many of those will then go over to solely Leboncoin. I think if you look at more in the medium term, so looking one to two years ahead, you're going to see that we're going to look more closely at the job market. If you look at the position in for Leboncoin in jobs, we are really the number one player in terms of number of listings.
It's a free service, and that is, of course, contributing to the handsome volume. I think we can do more there also in terms of launching new products that could be good both for the companies and also for Leboncoin, of course. That's more one to two years from now. Spain, interesting market, interesting development. I'm hoping for a continued positive macro development in Spain. That is, of course, affecting our business. If you look at the business now, you can see that InfoJobs, the job market, continuing to grow well. It's around 20% increase both in terms of sales and new sales and revenue.
Also Fotocasa is doing well, and Segundamano is also doing well in, when it comes to revenue development. Of course, the interesting part is for us to integrate the Milanuncios with our other businesses, and that is actually developing well. I think it's fair to say that we're also watching the competition closely in Spain, and there are other players in real estate, and there are some new native app players in the mobile space. We're going to keep our eyes very closely on them. That's why we said also that we're going to invest quite some money in marketing also in the second quarter in order to further strengthen our position.
Traffic-wise, we're doing well in Spain. You can look at all those sites, Segundamano, Fotocasa, and Coches, and Milanuncios. This is a split of the web, mobile websites and, of course, the app. The interesting part to note is really is that Milanuncios hadn't had any app until very recently. You can hardly see it on this term. It has been launched a few weeks back, and it's actually now the number one in downloads. In Italy, I don't think there's any very big news here compared to last quarter, except that we continue to invest and do well in traffic terms.
If you look at the at the relation to the second biggest generalist, which is called Kijiji, which eBay own, we're actually pulling away from them, both in terms of downloads and in terms of traffic, and I think even more so if you look at the time spent on the site. We have said also that we'll continue to invest in Subito, and it'll be interesting to see what we can do there in the verticals. I've seen in private cars, we're already doing very well. Interesting to see what we can do in professional cars and also real estate. Back to Oslo. I think this this is FINN's results, and as you can see, they have a very good margin this quarter.
Of course, FINN is so big that they have that they're influenced much more the, by the economy than many other sites. You can see that FINN is continuing to do well in real estate with a good growth there. Of course, the recruitment volumes now in Norway has a downward trend. I think the volumes there are approximately 15% lower compared to the same period last year. That will will affect FINN, and especially then on the West Coast, and be interesting to see how that will develop in the last second half of the year. It's a good growth in traffic on the on the generalist on on Tori.fi.
I know they're working very intensely also in FINN to develop new formats. They're doing better this quarter in the display ad market, and they're working hard to develop new products also for the mobiles. Moving over to Sweden, Blocket has a good quarter. I think what we're seeing in Sweden is the cars, is that a big part of the car market, second-hand car market is being taken care of by the car dealers. They have somewhat lower revenue per unit than in the privates, that is affecting us somewhat. On the other hand, what we're seeing is that there's a good growth in the new verticals.
I'd like to stress the new verticals for Blocket are, of course, jobs, and real estate. Real estate is growing very well for Blocket. Let's move to Ireland. I'm very excited about this deal that we just very recently announced with the Fallon Brothers. Some very successful and smart entrepreneurs that built up a good business in Ireland. We have the DoneDeal, they have Adverts and Daft. If you look at the DoneDeal and Adverts together, I think we can create new and better marketplaces that will be better for the Irish consumers. They are combined the number one in private cars. Interesting to see what they can do in the professional motor market.
Daft, that was owned by the Emmet Brothers, and has been developed by them, is the clear market leader when it comes to properties. You can see there that nine out of 10 Irish properties are listed on the site. I think there's interesting to see what will happen with the Irish economy because, of course, with the hardship they've been through the last few years, the number of transactions taking place in that marketplace has been very low. If the economy recovers, I expect the number of transactions to go up. I think it's always good for Schibsted to collaborate with successful entrepreneurs and I think Ireland will be a good example of that. Moving over to the investment phase.
Here, we can see the traffic development for the investment phase. That is of course helped by the joint ventures that we're having with Telenor and Naspers, especially then the traffic development is in Brazil is contributing to a good picture here. If you look a little bit behind those numbers, I'd like to take a few examples. Hungary, if you remember Hungary, that was announced this February that we acquired Naspers' business in Hungary, whereas they acquired our businesses in Romania. I think this is another good example where we're creating better marketplaces for consumers, and you can see here also that there's been a very strong traffic development after the merger with OLX.
The Jófogás, our site is now on a very good path towards better monetization and a positive EBITDA. Használtautó, which has been our car site for several years, that's doing well. It's it has high margins and be interesting to see what the combined site also can do in other verticals in Hungary. In Mexico, you've seen that we at the end of second quarter announced the deal to acquire Anumex. Anumex is a successful site, especially in the important state of Jalisco, which has been built up by some Swedish entrepreneurs. We agreed to acquire it. I think that will strengthen our leadership position in Jalisco. I think it's fair to stress it's an emerging market.
It's relatively early days. I'm sure there's going to be many players interested in this market. I think that we started our site really for full in 2012, so a few years back. With this boost, first taking over OLX and now also Anumex, this has given us a boost for the further development. Interesting starting point to see for expansion for us in Mexico. In Brazil, the things are going well. The merger with OLX has gone well, and the whole getting all the technical things right and the migration has gone well. I think it's fair to say that it's an emerging market, several players.
We seem to be doing very well in the general list. Of course, the macro in Brazil is not very good right now. The real being devalued, et cetera. That shouldn't affect us too much because I think there's still a lot of migration from print to online. The development there looks promising. Finally, on the classifieds, let me talk a little bit about Shpock. You can see that several of these native mobile marketplaces for remote are developing around the world. We have actually a leading site in Europe, Shpock, which was started in Austria and Germany, is by far the market leader there, also doing very well in the UK. That's also a successful couple of entrepreneurs running that site.
We're now looking to prepare to launch in some additional markets, some markets that we're already in with other businesses and possibly a few others as well. That is the that was the the classifieds. Let's move on to the media houses. I said it's been a bit rougher times. That has to do with the development in the advertisement market. We start out by VG and Aftenbladet, and you can see that I'd like to point out that these two businesses have a great standing in their respective markets. That's by far the market leader in digital news services. They're continuing to develop that position with growth in several platform, not least mobile, of course.
I'd like to stress also that these businesses are cornerstones, of course, for Schibsted in building our national ecosystems in Norway and Sweden. We're seeing much tighter collaboration now with Blocket respectively for Aftenbladet and for FINN and Aftenposten and the other newspapers and VG. There's been some rumors in the newspaper that someone wanted to buy Aftenbladet. Well, what can I say? Every, I can understand that people would want to buy a great company, but that company is not for sale, and we've said that. It takes two to tango. That's. I think we can close that discussion.
If you look at VG, they have had the toughest quarter of the two, and that is because we also compare with an extremely strong quarter, second quarter last year. Then, on the digital space, they have lost a few big customers this second quarter. There's also been some structural changes which allows advertisers to choose many different, more different channels. I'm confident that VG is will continue to do well, and this is also of course related to why we're investing a lot in technical platforms, allowing us to deliver much better products. We have an interesting roadmap for that moving ahead. Aftenbladet has a good quarter. Both of them are experimenting a lot with web-TV.
I think that this is kind of a balance because they have good development in viewers, and then we need to control the cost side. Moving over to the regional newspapers in Norway, you can see that the total circulation revenues are stable. The print advertisements for this whole industry in Norway has been going down approximately around 20%. I'm happy to see that we have good cost control and advertising revenues online are going up. I think if we should be a bit more granular, I could say that I think Aftenposten has delivered actually a good quarter. I think the same goes for Fædrelandsvennen, which has transferred to a kind of a new model.
I think it's fair to say that Dagens Næringsliv Aftenblad are suffering more this quarter due to the slowdown in the oil sector and tougher local advertising markets. I'd like to stress that we have this vision and a goal of building long-term digital media houses world-class. We strongly believe in what we're doing, and we're seeing very many interesting development, both in digital description, subscription in web-TV, and we're investing in mobile and tablet platforms. Our tech platforms, which has started to roll out to facilitate much of this. Very enthusiastic as to the future of the business.
There's great journalism being done, and that is at the bottom of this. Okay. Let me look a little bit on the, on the growth business. There, as you know, it's Sweden really is the strongest player. You can see that in personal finance, we're doing well, and also in price comparison, Prisjakt. Personal finance, that's especially then companies like Lendo and Compricer that are contributing well. Ztory has had a somewhat slower quarter than last year. But the price comparison side, Prisjakt, is actually developing an interesting business. We are here by far the market leader in Sweden and Norway, and also started experimenting some other markets like Ireland and the UK. It's of course a very scalable model.
If you get it right and you get the market leader position, it's an interesting business. With good margins. Be interesting to follow up what we can do there in years to come. Right. That was the run through of the operation, and I'll leave the financial part to you, Trond.
Thank you, Rolv Erik. If you look at the development in the second quarter, I'm happy to report that this quarter is one of the best quarter ever. Driven, of course, first of all, by the development in classifieds. There we've really focused, first of all, building long-term position, traffic, and then later revenue growth. We have continued that path. If you look at the development compared with last year, you see that Norway is somewhat down, but Sweden doing better. Then we have many positive development, first of all then in the classified sites. We see the difference from NOK 574 up to NOK 642.
If you look at the income statement for this quarter, it is nothing special effects in the figures I would say. We have recognized again, we have sold out in Switzerland. We had a 50/50 partnership there, which is then taken in as other income and expenses in that line. That's a positive on NOK 97 million, driven by first of all sale in Switzerland. We have some normal fluctuations on currency that goes different ways from quarter to quarter. It gives an profit before tax which is significantly up compared.
If you look at the different key figures, you see that we have underlying strong cash flow, and CAPEX is kept at maintenance CAPEX, kept same levels as before. As comment on the net interest-bearing debt, that has gone slightly up. I mean, the second quarter is dividend quarter paying out, and also we have consumed the Anumex acquisition in Mexico. We have a prudent accounting policy, meaning that we don't recognize tax losses in countries that we're actually building and investing in.
If you then split out the different elements of the tax costs, you see that we have an underlying tax rate around 30%, which is actually equivalent to, I would say, the tax level in many of the countries we are operating in. We continue to do digital investments, and we of course do it in the spending in online classifieds. We have guided the market that it will be around EUR 100 million, 2015. That's remained unchanged. We continue to build the web-TV, first of all in VG and Aftonbladet.
Also we're building, as Rolv Erik mentioned, we're building a really strong ad tech team, both in London and in other parts of Schibsted that we should be able to capture the future revenue streams much better by then matching with the alternatives that you see out in the market. That will be rolled out gradually, of course, during this autumn and first of all into 2016. Just to remind you, we have listed and split Schibsted in an A and B share. The B shares were listed from June 1st this year. That gives us of course a flexibility to pursue further M&A activities going forward.
But there are no current plans as such to use that. Of course we will then monitor the situation and look it into it in the future. We have conducted several M&A activities. It's been a rather busy quarter and first half year. We have concluded the DoneD eal that was in the beginning of July this year, which is then a strong position in Ireland. We have the Anumex acquisition in Mexico. We are in process with Hemnet acquisition in Sweden, and there we have an exclusivity with Swedbank controlling 50%, and we are in good dialogue with the two other 25% owners. We're positive to have that to happen going forward.
Of course, Svenska Dagbladet also, we have there a letter of intent and working on to find a solution in Sweden for Svenska Dagbladet, which we believe could be a good future position for that company. We have also sold a few companies. Switzerland, I mentioned Tutti. The publishing part in Norway. We have sold also 20 minutos in Spain. France, we are in a process. Both these two will of course be closed, France, if it goes according to plan, of course, then it will be closed now in Q3. I think that gives a status with the finance, I give the word back to you, Rolv Erik, to go through the summary.
Thank you, Trond. Well, just relatively briefly. For classifieds, we continue our growth and our strategy there to expand both organically and also through bolt-on acquisition and structural agreement where that makes sense. I think the B shares there have given us the flexibility to participate in value creative M&A. Then I think for the media houses, we continue to believe that we are going to create world-class digital media houses. We have great media houses, great journalists. We're investing heavily in technical platforms and development now. These companies are also very important for in our in the ad market for the ecosystems, especially here in Scandinavia.
We'll continue to invest in technology, and we believe that that will create better services for advertisers to also create much better services and targets for consumers. That was our presentation, and now I'd like to open up for questions. All right, some microphones here in the room. Here's someone on the third row here.
Hi, it's Pål Gunnar Nord from Arctic Securities. It seems that the cost base in FINN clearly has been a focus this quarter. Could you give us more color on the cost efficiency measures you've put in place and what we could expect from that going forward?
You're talking about which-
FINN.
FINN. Yeah. Well, I think FINN is a mature site, but continue to do product development. At the same time, of course, or being also more mature, they're also looking into, of course, the to monitor cost side. I would say that FINN should be a more stable organization going forward. Then it will be from time to time some marketing activities, but there are no specific cost plans and measures other than monitoring and keeping good cost control.
I would also say that, you know, you shouldn't emphasize too much, one quarter. It's more important to look at, you know, the long-term trends. That goes for FINN, that goes for the other classified sites as well.
Again, a second one, if I may. On the Hemnet acquisition, do you have any expectations on the timeline from when the remaining shareholders will make up a decision whether they will accept your bid or not?
Well, I think a lot of that will be clear during the third quarter.
Thank you.
Uh, Markus Bjerke with SEB. Uh, in France, uh, you mentioned a recruitment site. Um, I think since December, you more than doubled the number of listings, uh, on that side, and I think it's around two hundred thousand now. Um, that's a very quick ramp-up in, uh, in the number of positions. Could you say something about the, the quality of those, uh, those volumes, uh, and maybe relative to some other similar markets?
Yeah, I think in France you have kind of several players in that market, but there's not really any very clear market leader. Might be Monster has the highest revenue. I think it's I think it's fair to say that the volumes that we're having is lots of should I say is rather broad. It's not like the top echelon that headhunters are looking at that are easiest to monetize. Typically, our sites will have more a much broader volume. But I think the size of it makes it attractive to look into to look into starting charging for it and make more targeted product.
I think it's fair to say that Leboncoin is also they're very good at execution and now they're working very hard in real estate, and then it'll take some time before we're ready to really to develop those products, but that's why I said one to two years from now. It's, you know, it's those are high volumes, but it's not the easiest one to monetize at start. Of course, as the volume grows like it's doing now, then the opportunities becomes multiple. Further questions. Preben.
Two short ones, I hope. First on the cost base in Spain. Seems like it's come down in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. Where should we expect the cost base to be in Spain going forward?
I mean, some of these countries, first of all, I would say that marketing activities could shift from quarter to quarter. I would say that Spain, you also have seen a little bit between the quarters there. I think you should see some continuous in marketing activities. I wouldn't say that it would be any material differences from what we have seen historically over the last couple of quarters.
The cost base, I'd like to stress that the cost base is influenced of course by personal cost, but what you're seeing, the swings are to a large degree dependent on the marketing activities. I think actually, you're going to see quite some activity there as we're planning to do some new product launches in the second half.
A bit of the same in Italy as well. Did you see a positive EBITDA in Italy this quarter?
Well, I think it was around breakeven, and that's why I actually said on the slide that in the second half we're going to invest more in marketing.
What about Italy next year? Should we start to see positive EBITDA?
Actually, let's get back to next year when we see how that market develops. Right. Any further questions, Harris, from the web?
Yes, we have a few questions from viewers on the web. First, could you help us understand the growth of FINN excluding Mittanbud in the second quarter?
Yes. It's a minor effect in FINN in the revenue figures from Mittanbud. The underlying development is positive in FINN.
There is the... It's a bit of a mixed development with FINN. Real estate is going well in the second quarter, and jobs are going more negatively. Then on the display market, there's also been a partly positive trend. It's a little bit of a mixed rounded development.
Okay. One question on mobile development in more general. What are you doing to develop mobile functionality apps in your online classified markets? How is the mobile traffic compared with newer and more mobile-focused players like Wallapop?
Yeah. Well, good question. I can tell you we're doing a lot. It's what we're focusing most on, is really developing the mobile services. We're developing mobile apps for existing services, and we have something called the next generation apps that we're rolling out. Those are for our existing brands. In addition to that, we have the Shpock, which I believe that if you mentioned Wallapop, I think actually Shpock was the motivation for launching that. We're developing Shpock even further and also preparing to launching that in other markets as we're seeing it's a good product.
Okay. I'll do one or two more here. What drove the proportionate EBITDA loss increase in the investment phase compared to first quarter? What are the main geographies responsible for this increase? What drives the cost increase in France?
Sounds too complicated for me, Trond.
Well, I can take it. I mean, as we stated in the report, I mean, France, we have done some more marketing activities, second quarter compared to first quarter. You also see that impact on the margin. I think we have seen also a quite good traffic growth in as a result also some of these activities in France. When it comes to the investment, because that was investment in classifieds, I believe, I would say that, I mean, that's also fluctuates somewhat from quarter to quarter. I mean, there is no specific things in this second quarter. I mean, you know that we concluded the deal with Naspers in January.
Of course, there, we spent somewhat more in first quarter in certain regions there than we actually did in the second quarter. Again, this could fluctuate a little bit from quarter to quarter.
Okay. Lastly, you've previously talked about NOK 100 million-NOK 200 million of group tech investments in 2015. You no longer highlight this. Are the plans intact or are there any changes?
No. I mean, this is just that we haven't really restated it, but it's the same, as we have said in Q1 report. It will still be investment in that level going forward. We're really focusing on new platforms, new tech systems, et cetera.
Thank you. Any other questions here? If not, I would like to thank you for coming. I remind you that we're available throughout the day. We'll also have a conference call for those interested at 2:00 P.M. this afternoon. Thanks for coming. Have a great day.