Welcome to the presentation of the results for the third quarter 2012 for Schibsted. I'm so pleased to see so many of you here today. There are lots of important things going on in the world today. It's easy to be inspired when you hear Obama giving his victory speech. I don't have a speechwriter for the presentation today. I'm not going to try to copy any of that rhetoric. We got a little bit more facts here. We will stick to the agenda that we usually use. It is Trond Berger, the CFO, and myself, Rolv Erik Ryssdal, the CEO, that will be presenting today. You know this agenda, it's familiar to you. I'll go through most of it. Trond will take the financial aspects.
We have a lot of the members of the corporate management here so that we can answer your questions afterwards. This was a quarter without any great surprises on our part. For classifieds, things are going very well. The big sites are delivering. The exciting thing is what we call the emerging leaders. They're starting to do very well. We're going to talk a little bit more about that today. We continue to invest in new markets because we see that we're making good headway there. The top line growth and the profit margins are good for classifieds. As regards to the media houses, this is a more demanding situation. It's a more demanding market. We see the restructuring of the market moving from print to online, and this has picked up the pace.
This is something that characterizes the situation, so that this is why we're going through this reorganization restructuring. They're growing well, online is growing well, and not least, these emerging, the growing media. This is doing very well. Very briefly, the main figures, the highlights, top line growth of a couple of %. Behind that, we see that online is growing faster and print a little slower. We have chosen this time to show the EBITDA results, both before and after investments, because there are some people in this room that have asked us to be more clear about this during this quarter. You can see the difference between these is NOK 126 million, which we used in this phase for organic growth.
This is. Otherwise, we're stable compared with the same quarter last year, but this can vary somewhat from one quarter to another. As regards the revenues and the way they are comprised, we see top line growth there. What's interesting to note here is that the online part is growing considerably, in fact. Compared with Q3 last year, it was 42%, in fact. The EBITDA, you can see online classifieds accounts for a little more than half. Media houses online is also contributing. Then we see the contribution here from the print segment. Let's start with classifieds. At classifieds, you see that there's good development trend here. We see good development in the top line and margins, and the various contributors are doing well. Here is what we see the established operations. FINN.no, FINN is the largest site here.
Le Bon Coin is the second largest, and they're doing well. We have Blocket and the other established. The other established consists mainly of Spain, but also Italy and Austria, as well as Ireland. I'm going to say a little bit more about Spain. It's a very demanding market. There we have two main activities, Anuntis and Segundamano, of course, it's car, and then we have property. They're continuing to grow on the top line despite the demanding market. They're doing this through dedicated efforts and product development, and then there's still migration from print to online there. The other large site in Spain is InfoJobs, which is a very clear market leader for working. It's fallen back slightly in the third quarter. When you're that big, it's kind of developed.
There's a link between that and what's going on in the economy. They did not lose any market share. Quite to the contrary, they have been named Spain's best workplace, in fact, by a survey published fairly recently. They're looking at niches, they're addressing niches, and that's where we see that they are growing as well. Let us take the largest sites. As I mentioned last quarter, there was slightly weaker growth in Blocket and FINN. Well, this is nothing we're worried about, and we see that they have bounced back here to higher growth rates. The most important thing here is the operations in the organization itself. These are very vital and strong companies, very dynamic. FINN has become so large that they are dependent on the economic cycle, the market, the whole market.
Jobs have been a little bit weaker volume, by volume. Cars is down a little bit. What FINN does then is that they keep working with product and price development so that all of the large verticals for FINN are showing good growth. The same is also the case for this market, marketing section and travel section, which are the newer verticals. For Blocket in Sweden, we see the same picture that we've seen in previous quarters. There's investing in new verticals. There's a slight decrease in the market for new cars in Sweden. Blocket has taken note of this. They've seen this. They sell a lot of the second-hand cars. This is also changing as product and price development makes headway.
I'm also very glad that the efforts that they've made in jobs and property, housing, we see that we've got a lot of really big market share there, especially in the large cities. Leboncoin is growing very well, almost 50% growth there. What is worthy of note there? They have started taking some of the market for professionals. We can say the dealers, the car dealers, and property realtors. Last year in Q3, we saw that this was when this really picked up, so that now we are meeting tougher comparison figures. But nonetheless, they're doing very well, growing strongly, so that really we can say that Leboncoin is still in an early phase of the professional dealing with the professional customers. What is otherwise taking place in that organization is that there's a further professionalization, and I'm very pleased with that.
Among other things, they're reinforcing their sales force and they're focusing on training, and we're very pleased with that. Today we're talking about the next phase. We're starting in Austria. This is the country where we have the FINN model that we're following. We work with an Austrian media company, Styria, and we own 50% each in this. We started working together and this joint venture works very well. What I really am pleased with here is, first and foremost, that this company on the surface has taken some leading position and achieved good results, but they're still building their positions. What I'm really pleased with here is the traffic development that we're seeing. They started with the market, the general area and the generalist area. Now they're largest for real estate, and here they're also very big in cars.
Real estate, when you take the leading position from the bottom, it takes a little while for the realtors to get used to this. Perhaps Austria is a little conservative here. They have to get used to having new habits here. This is something that is really good and promising development that we've seen here. When it comes to cars, we have tough competition with another player. We're the largest for the private cars, personal market. We see they are larger with the dealers. We're catching up. Here we have some other sites that are in the same kind of situation. These are the ones that are in leading positions and that are continuing to build their positions. We feel they still have a lot to gain.
Subito, Italy. Then we have a sister there, a Blocket sister, it's still growing significantly in traffic. 1 billion page views, 1.1, that's a lot per month. This is really good, so that they have the number 1 position in the generalist and number 1 in cars, so that there are good prospects for further development in the years ahead. Bilbasen, I've talked about. We have DoneDeal in Ireland, this is also very similar to Blocket. We bought this in Ireland last year. We see that the organization is growing. They're number 1 for the generalist services and first and second when it comes to cars. This is exciting.
It's a fairly small market, as we've talked about before, but we can see from our efforts that we've made in Scandinavia, even in small markets, leading positions are very interesting. We have this service in Malaysia, which has taken a leading position in several of the different verticals, so it will be exciting to see how this continues to grow. We are making investments, about NOK 166 here, you see, and a little higher than the same quarter last year. Accumulated, we're higher, and we have said that we will be spending about NOK 500 million this year. Brazil is a market where we have two major programs. The one is a Blocket copy, and it's called Bom Negócio, and the other is a site that is a recruitment site, it's called InfoJobs.
What I would say about this is that both of them are developing very well in terms of traffic, and it's going to take a little while before they really pick up. There's tough, stiff competition. Both of these services have one main competitor, but as we've done in the Blocket copy, they are in some cities, and what we're seeing now is that they're using a lot of money on TV commercials, and now we're doing this. What's happening is that both of the competitors are building up the market, and I think that this is positive. It's going to be just a long run, and I'm very satisfied with development as it's gone so far. InfoJobs has developed this site for recruitment, and it's a little different, concept than what we have, but the development looks very good.
Both of these sites are already among the five largest sites in Brazil. I'd like to say a little bit here. I want to talk about the new markets, and we're seeing some new efforts are being made in Europe and in Latin America, and we have chosen to follow the Blocket model for those. We're very satisfied with the fact that this simple model that was developed by, I'd say one person, but not quite that way, but it's someplace over in Skåne in Sweden, and this model has worked very well. It's working very well in Sweden and in Europe. It's interesting to see that it works also in other countries, and our competitors are saying the same thing so that they're copying us. I think that we still have a great advantage when it comes to product.
I'm very satisfied to see the management also. There's good management, good skills that we have there. The reason that everybody isn't here is there's someone who's leading a meeting for the European managers. We are looking forward to first positions here, and we're not collecting a lot of first, second, third, and fourth positions. What the point here is to take leading positions in the market where we operate. This is what we wanna do, and so that we are going to strengthen our activities further in the countries where we're already established. What we're doing then is that we expect that we'll have increased activity. Increased activity and more investments in the years ahead. They feel that it's exciting, and it's really paying off. Results are good. That was about classifieds.
Let's take a look at the media houses. There's a lot of activity going on in the media houses now, I'll say right away, on our part as an owner, the most important thing is not that we're talking about saving expenses. That's a necessary part, certainly, the important thing is that we're going to build digital media houses that are world-class. This is the task that we've been assigned by our board, we're working with it. It's an exciting journey. It's a demanding journey right now. We have faith in the media houses in the long run, that they are going to be very exciting businesses. We've owned them for 150 years, it's going to be exciting in the time ahead as well, both for the community, the countries, and for social nation-building.
Let's start with VG and Aftenbladet. They've come very far on this journey already. For VG and Aftenbladet, they have very demanding situations when it comes to circulation. The circulation is continuing to decline. In third quarter, it's a little higher. This is because this is a difference between quarters and what happened last year in the third quarter. The Breivik case in Norway, the terrorist case in Norway and so on can affect these figures, it's fairly steady development. What's good with both VG and Aftenbladet is that they have leading positions that they have managed to carve out. In online, and especially in mobile services, it's really important to be number one.
You see also with these figures, they have higher digital advertising revenues than they have in print revenues, higher online revenues than print revenues, and this applies to both of them. For those who need some reading this weekend, I would recommend the last issue of VG Helg. It indicates that VG is going to continue to increase its sales on Saturdays. For the large subscription-based newspapers in Norway, they are the ones that are going through a very demanding restructuring. With all respect that this is demanding, I would really praise everyone that is involved in this. They're doing a great job, and they are following pretty much the schedule that has been set up. At the same time, they are engaged in product development.
The market is such that even though online here is growing percentage-wise, compared with the print sector, for the moment, the online advertising isn't a huge amount here, so that the results are declining somewhat, the profits. We have a very good control of expenses, of our costs, and we have good control of our circulation revenues. This is exciting. Most of you here probably live in Oslo. You need to know what's going on. Use oslocity.no, osloby.no in Norwegian, to find out what's going on. This illustrates a little bit what problems we face when it comes to the restructuring in the media houses, and this applies to all of our media houses. During Q1, our online revenues grew a little bit more than print declined.
I said, I don't think that that's going to continue the rest of the year, and we see that that was indeed the case. Even though we have significant growth in online revenues because of both the economic cycle and the transformation of the digital services, the online services, we're seeing that this is reflected here. This is why we are running these programs, these campaigns, and we have achieved great headway, made great headway in Spain and Sweden, and also we're right on target with the Norwegian activities. As regards the print subscription, online and print subscription, this is something that we're very focused on. Fædrelandsvennen, the newspaper, is a pioneer there. They were the first ones to implement this model. To have the digital subscribers, and you can do this on all platforms. We had hoped for a good conversion.
What we saw was that 62% of print subscribers have become digital users. I think this is really more than you had expected. I see Harald is in the back here. This is far more than you expected, I think. It's outstripped your expectations. What we see is that the circulation trend has also been positive, so that today there are more subscribers to Fædrelandsvennen than when they started this subscription system, and there are more than there were at the beginning of the year. This is a very exciting development trend, and we're following along with this very closely, and both in Stavanger and Bergen, but not least in Oslo. For Aftenbladet, we've chosen a different model. We now have 150,000+ subscribers to the premium editorial service, and we've have some real exciting programs that we're working on there.
We have facilitated this through our own payment system, the Schibsted payment system, that has several hundred thousand registered users in Norway and Sweden. We're going to continue working with the other newspaper houses to convert their users as well. We're going to continue working with FINN and Blocket so that we can get payment solutions there, so that when you're having transactions with others on Blocket or FINN, then we can help with the financing. This is something that we're following along with closely. This helps us to build up a very exciting database of our users. I believe that in a year or so, we'll have a couple of million Norwegian, a couple million Swedish users registered there. As mobile services are concerned, VG has the largest production of services.
I think that we're seeing Bergens Tidende is growing most quickly. They're Aftenbladet in mobile services. Aftenbladet just passed, surpassed the Expressen's website, and that's really good. That's wonderful. It's not just Facebook. We're talking about how can we earn money on the mobile services. We see that revenues per user are now at a level. This is indexed, an index scale. It's now at a level that's twice as high as what it was just one year ago, or at the beginning of last year, rather. This, combined with the growth in mobile use, is a really good development trend for income, for revenues. This is all of our online income that this contributes to these online revenues. This picture was taken right outside here, outside the headquarters.
It was taken during the court case for this terrorist. The court case was last summer. Here you see this great big national broadcasting corporation, has this very expensive equipment, this big bus that's parked there. You can see TV 2 in the back there. VG has this little old used Ford Transit. I was in there, and it was pretty bad air in there because we were on top of each other. They were so enthusiastic the way they worked. Who had the most viewers? Well, VG had more than twice as many as the other national broadcasters combined. This is exciting.
When we're talking about world-class digital media coverage, live pictures on the Internet are going to be a big and important part of this, so that VG and the other sites are working very intensely with this. This applies to all our media houses. They're working very intently to develop this strategy. What can we offer the advertisers? What can we offer our viewers and readers? This is going to be really exciting to follow along with in the years ahead. I'm going to conclude this segment by talking a little bit about the growth media. I'm going to start. They're starting very strongly into sales of NOK 250 million. This is the Swedish business, and they're doing very well. The margin is a little bit lower, and this is because of a very deliberate campaign that we've been engaged in.
Things are going very well with the building up the new products and the new branding, they're in a very good situation, a fortunate situation that they can use our print channels and our online channels, we can buy some services there. That this is a good way to do things. Lendo, for example, is the largest in its niche and is taking new positions. We see others are doing this. Prisjakt is doing very well, and they're becoming more efficient in growth. For new companies, they're doing very well. This is an exciting portfolio that we have here. Lars, who is responsible in Norway, is sitting there. I hope I'm not saying too much if I say that we're going to be doing something more after Christmas.
Lendo will be coming to Norway and a few other countries, and this is really something that we're looking forward to. That was what I wanted to say about our business activities, and then I will give the floor to Trond Berger, our CFO. Rolv Erik, he turns 50 today. This is his birthday today. Mr. Rolv Erik Ryssdal, the CEO, turns 50 today. It's a good day for Schibsted. Third quarter is a quarter that seasonally is often a weak quarter, especially for the subscription newspapers. The advertising volume declines in the summer half of the year. We are then delivering figures that are still somewhat up for the sales for the whole group, 2% in classifieds are delivering right on target with the growth that we've seen. We are still satisfied with the underlying growth.
FINN and Blocket are already have a lot of traffic, we're still seeing strong growth in Le Monde. In Norway, we also have underlying 2% growth, loss in the media house, the advertisements. Our subscription newspapers still have a larger underlying decline in advertising. Nonetheless, we managed to compensate for that through other income, not least the digital, the online services. We're seeing the same thing in Sweden. In Sweden, we've seen a tapering off, flattening out, somewhat a slower economic cycle, so that on top of the structural changes, we're seeing some cyclical effects in Sweden during Q3, and I think that we probably have to expect that a little bit in the quarters to come as well.
If we look at the EBITDA development in Q3 compared with year-on-year, we see that there's a slight dip in Norway, but good growth in classifieds, and we are continuing to invest significant amounts. No major explanation variables here other than what we have commented on previously in the growth between the two quarters that we're comparing. We have good cost control. We follow up the costs in all of our business areas, and we're following up with a large restructuring program, which is taking place in the media houses in Norway, and it's right on schedule. That is going to lead to some high restructuring costs as we move into 2013, mainly in Q1.
It may be that these costs can be a little bit higher than what we indicated previously, of NOK 250 million-NOK 300 million. I believe that that's, it's correct to say that. We're going to come back to that then during Q4. We have good cost control in the media houses. Here we have growth companies. It's important to emphasize that we're really focusing on the online areas. We have Speek as an example. We have new CRM system in Sweden. We are focusing on building up new mobile services, new services, so that there's an underlying product development that's good. Schibsted is big, and we're getting bigger, and we expect that we're going to have future profits generated by these investments. This means that we have to take the investments that are related to this.
Underlying, there's very good cost control. If we take a look at the income statement, then again, there's an EBITDA of NOK 514 compared with NOK 522 year-on-year. We have net financial items that are about on the same level or slightly lower because we have less liabilities, lower liabilities. Our tax percentage is about 34%-35%, that's also approximately where we can expect it to be as a result of the fact that we have deficits that are not then booked because of the efforts that we're making in classifieds abroad. Again, we have a strong underlying cash flow, this also shows that we have this in our media houses and not least in classifieds, and that we're also investing significantly.
The underlying figures here are investments in maintenance that are remaining fairly stable from quarter to quarter. We don't have any major investment programs in the large media houses, except for the digital campaigns, where we're doing a lot, as we've mentioned. We have a strong, stable, strong financial position. We have a very good diversity in our debt structure, the gearing ratio and so on. We have a good distribution from 3 to 5 years for the credit facilities that we have. This is something that we are working with now and always. We'll come back to this soon and be reporting more on this. Our key financial figures, again, as in previous quarters, a strong underlying cash flow. What we've seen here in Q3, there's not a lot of financial news there.
In the fourth quarter, we have already announced for Polaris that we're going to end up with a 29% owner share along with the Swedish owners, LVT System. They're going to have a little bit more than 14%, so that this is a new ownership structure in Polaris. After what happened in October, and this is going to be reported then, of course, in the fourth quarter, we're very well satisfied with this solution, and we think that it'll be a good solution also for the company as we go forward. I will give the floor back to you, sir, to take us through the outlook for the future here.
Thank you. With a view to classifieds, we are continuing with what we've been doing for several years, and we can divide it into the major established sites.
They are cultivating their programs and moving further with them. FINN, we're looking at new markets, new opportunities. For those who are not in the number one position, we are trying to get in the number one position. That leads us to continue to focus on the countries in which we have operations. We feel very confident that our development is going to continue in the right direction there. As regards the media houses, there we are continuing to have this structural shift that Trond has talked about, and we're working with a long-term perspective for building the online media houses, digital media houses. With a view to the financial development trends in our markets, you know that we'll have to follow along and see what happens. We see that there may be a weaker economic cycle in some of the markets.
Sweden might be on its way into a recession, and Spain certainly has its financial problems, as we know. We also have these structural changes so that we have to expect that we have weaker margins in the media houses than what we have seen in the past couple of years, which have... I think we'll open the floor to questions, Q&A. This is congratulations on your 50th birthday, first of all. I have a question about the investment level in new ventures. It's very positive to see that you see good opportunities, that you're increasing your investments in 2013 compared with 2012. Do you wanna say anything more about that? No, I don't wanna say anything about that right now. We'll come back to that later.
It will depend on the development trend in the markets. We feel very comfortable with the positions that we already have, and we're prepared to do what has to be done to get into leading positions everywhere. A question about media houses in general. If I remember correctly, I think you said that there was the trend was accelerating between offline and online already in Q1 and Q2, and we see the same kind of comment now. Does this mean that the trend is continuing according to your budget, or is there a continued further acceleration there in the shift? I'm not sure exactly what we have said, what nuances are involved here.
What we can say is that the trend that we've seen earlier this year is continuing, and I think it's going to continue to continue in Q4, and I think that we'll see this also going forward. Thank you. Another question? No? Okay, I would just remind those who are following along with us by webcast, you can send your questions in on the website, and we would be happy to answer them. You said that 62% of the subscriptions of Fædrelandsvennen subscribers had continued or were now subscribing. Where's your break-even point there for profitability? Answer: Either you are a subscriber for the whole package or not. When I said 62%, I meant of the existing subscribers on paper, they've also activated the digital option. It's not such that it's entirely new model.
Is that enough that Fædrelandsvennen is earning a profit there? Yes. Could you give the microphone to Harold here, who's the CEO of Fædrelandsvennen, and he can answer that. It's correct, as Rolf Erik points out, that this is the conversion of existing paper subscribers to also being registered digital subscribers. We're not talking about a separate digital vertical here. It's difficult then to say that exactly where the break even is, what we're really satisfied with is that we've increased the number of subscribers significantly since we launched on the 14th of May. Today, we have more subscribers than we had on the 1st of January.
Normally, we have a decline of 3%-4% each year so that now things have reversed, and we're seeing a positive subscription trend and not least also a positive increase in the paper subscribers as a result of this, and we're very pleased with this. In the long term, I feel that this is absolutely, most definitely a good project. Question about online classifieds and new ventures, especially when you talk about increased activities and increased investment level next year. Does this mean more focus on the sites that you already have or is it also new ventures, new markets, rather? In that case, which? Answer: First and foremost, we're going to be focusing on the markets where we're already established and continue to build our activities there. More questions? Question. We have gotten a question from the internet and UBS.
Can you give any details about the different advertising trends divided, broken down by the different markets and what we can expect in Q4?
Okay. Mr. Berger, a little bit as Rolf Erik said, we see a weaker trend in Sweden. It's a little more cyclical effect, in fact. There were no bigger changes here except for Sweden, where the trend is, we're seeing a dip. Any more questions? If not, I will say thank you all very much for being here and for following.