Welcome to the Quarterly Presentations and for the Full Year for Schibsted Media Group. I will host this presentation, and also Trond. There are also people from the board present. We have an Investor Day in London in less than two weeks time. Therefore, we will give a relatively brief presentations. During that Investor Day, we can go into depth about the other matters. I would like to encourage everyone who has not yet signed up for it to do so. The agenda for today is similar to what it normally is, we will spend some time on explaining the establishment of Schibsted Norge. I will also review the activities Trond will take you through the financial figures.
If we look at the Q4 highlights, we deliver a good underlying growth with an operating profit on par with last year. Please bear in mind that the Q4 results of last year saw a stronger advertisement market, also lower rollout costs for Blocket and also for other raw materials costs being lower. This indicates that this is a strong performance. For online classifieds, the large operations operate very well, have delivered strong performances. We continue to invest, as I have reported earlier, according to plan. We do have some new companies in Italy and Austria that have now crossed the break-even line and have started making money, so these are important countries for us. As for media houses, we see this a continuation of the same trend as before.
For the single copy papers, there's still a negative trend. Very strong performance for digital papers. For the large subscription-based newspaper, the circulation is stable, but advertisements revenues is slightly down. The fastest-growing business, what grows stronger and quicker than Internet ever did, is mobile traffic and revenues. I will be reverting to this, especially when it comes to the circulation trend for print papers. If we look at our highlights, we deliver a growth of 4%, same margin as the year before. If we look at classifieds, we separate between the overall margins and established operations. The established operations is FINN, Blocket, leboncoin. They deliver and report a strong growth, 18%, and also a growth in margins to 44%.
While we are expanding more, and therefore we have higher rollout costs, which we have reported earlier, and therefore the overall margin is down. For media houses Scandinavia, top line shows a level trend, but margin is slightly up. media houses international is struggling more, especially in Spain, because it's difficult to operate any kind of advertisement finance business these days. Here we have broken down revenues between the various businesses. We see it both in terms of a revenue and a bit operating profit split. What we do see is that the digital business accounts for 36% and online share is 54% of the operating profit. online classifieds, 24%. media houses online, 12%. This could fluctuate between quarters.
If we look at the full year results, we see that the digital part accounts for 35% and 55% of the profits, and online classifieds, 24% of the revenues. The online classifieds and online media houses will increase their share of both revenues and the profit over time. The news today is the establishment of Schibsted Norge. It's news, but I don't think that it will hit you like a bomb. That is because we've had a very good dialogue with our trade union reps and also those in the other maps. Therefore, this is no big surprise. What we're doing is that we combine all the Norwegian activities under one umbrella titled Schibsted Norge AS. The way we do this is that what is today Media Norway will change names to Schibsted Norway.
VG and the publishing house will be included under this umbrella. Didrik Munch, head of Media Norge, will now become the head of Schibsted Norge. Otherwise the management team will continue as before, but it will be supplemented with representatives of the VG management. There are several reasons why we are doing this. We've used this organization model in Sweden for some years, and it's worked well. I think it is a logical way to organize the group, and I feel safe that together we will also be stronger. There are some areas that we have highlighted, especially one is the online platform. We have the best online program in terms of FINN, VG, and Schibsted. Well, what has so far been Media Norway in the country. When we collaborate, we can use these forces even stronger.
We have seen that because VG has been our spearhead on the online platform. What they have achieved is something that also all the other major papers benefit from. In terms of winning new positions and the concepts that we have developed. VG, for instance, the Weight Club and also the Exercise Club, that is leading. When we acquired ADA, Well, with the acquisition of ADA, we believe that we should optimize our organization. This does not necessarily mean that we combined all these operations, but towards major large companies, we can operate with one face, so to speak, towards them, and I think we will benefit them. When it comes to online page visits, I think that it will strengthen us if we can appear under one umbrella. Otherwise, it could be confusing.
For the major papers in terms of print advertisement and online, I think that we will be so strong that we can actually offer an alternative to our subscribers and companies to compete with TV advertisements. We would like to see our organization so that we have the most forceful journalistic and also media power to the market as possible. We are also working with 2 alternatives to relocate. We will know that in about 4 years time. The 2 alternatives is Bjørvika and Tøyenløkka near here. All right, let's review the business areas and start with online classifieds. Here you see what I just said, that the larger one deliver profitable and high margins. Because we continue to invest, the overall margin is going down. That is not a concern of ours.
Quite the opposite, actually. If we look at the large online companies, they deliver strong results. If we look at FINN, Blocket, Byt bil, they have for a long time had a strong position in the market and also continue to deliver growth. 19% growth, impressive. France is, you know, a success history of its own. I will be reverting to it. In Spain, I don't think that many media houses can report growth in that market in Spain. Of course, InfoJobs.net is going through challenging days, but it continues to grow, and we can overall report 12% growth in Spain. If we look at the major companies here, we see that FINN continues its strong growth trend, and they also report good margins.
FINN is an impressive company. There is strong growth and good development in all parts of the company. A lot of very sound innovation is taking place in FINN. All of them is operating very well, and especially Jobzone is one that I may highlight. FINN continues to develop. They intend to launch an iPad app before the summer. I think that for people who is looking for a holiday home, that will be very good. Also, there's also a money app that we have developed in collaboration with Dine Penger. We also plan to launch a car insurance service before the summer. That will also be exciting news for anyone who would like to buy a used car. In terms of Blocket, the top line growth is strong. A lot of things are happening.
The fact that the margin is a bit weaker is not something that concerns me because we see that 3% or 4% can be ascribed to reduced advertisement revenues from leboncoin. The overall margin drop is also attributable to the fact that we continue to invest. Blocket has not had any presence in the couple of the verticals, and we have invested more resources into it. Things are looking good, although these are still early days. As for leboncoin, this site is developing very positively, growing by about 70%. I think that I've said it earlier, and I need to underline this, that is that the margin we see here is fantastic, but it is not tenable in the longer term because gradually the company will need to invest more in marketing and also product development.
This high margin is now. The fact that Leboncoin is a fairytale story is something that will continue. I feel certain about that. It's fascinating when we see a company that grows as fast as this one has. A year ago, it had 30 to 40 employees. Now they have a staff of more than 100, and I believe that they have been very good at actually building up the company. All the various revenue groups continue. Car dealers, real estate agents, are coming too. They pay for their advertisements. Gradually we also see that private individuals are willing to pay for, higher visibility.
We have a portfolio of companies which we divide into 3 phases, and the whole point is to get the start of companies move through what we call attraction phase, when business is picking up and over in the established phase when they start making money. During the first quarter, we said that, all right, we have 2 new sites, Subito and willhaben. They have shown a very strong growth over time. They have now established their positions, and they are beginning to make money. That is important for us that our developments continue. We have set the ambitious target for ourselves that we should be the leading position in classifieds over a period of 3 or 4 years worldwide. We need to continue that trend.
Main activities is of course in Europe, it is important for us to continue the strong trend that we have seen. The good news is that Austria and Italy have now been colored in this darker blue color since they have also moved into the established phase and taking leading positions. This time I did not intend to spend any time on commenting about Brazil. What I could say is that we have invested through the autumn. This is still early days, but so far so good. Things are looking positively. I visited them a couple of weeks ago, and we see a strong development in jobs and advertisements. I would also like to go into more depth on this for those of you who have come to our Investor Day in London. Over to the media houses.
Let me first say that I am proud of the continuous developments and the continuous product developments that take place in all our major media houses. Schibsted has a tradition, more than 150-year-old tradition of providing good content and quality, high quality, and that is also winning in terms of winning new business, and we intend to continue that trend. Of course, there's a massive development in the online platforms, but also in print that takes place in all the media houses. Something we have that all right, if you don't mention anyone, you don't forget anyone.
If I am to mention one, Svenska Dagbladet were awarded this Sign Prize last week. It is the first time a paper has been given that over the 10-year period for their coverage of the terrorism act at Utøya, Norway last summer. That is an inspiration to us all. If we look at financial developments, there is a stable development for subscription-based newspapers. For single copy sold newspapers, there's still circulation decline, but we have met that by increasing prices and also increase advertisements. The overall margin is at a stable and slightly higher level than the previous period. This is the subscription-based newspapers. You see a stable trend for most of them. Here I would also like to mention that for the Media Norge papers, Media Norway papers.
2011 was a strong year in terms of advertisements, but there was a decline in the third quarter. That for Media Norge, the print papers, there was a decline in advertisement or advertising revenues in the last quarter, but they increased 20% in the online part. I think that that is a very positive trend because in Media Norge they have sorted out the profitability issues in the digital online operations, and I intend to continue that development. In case of Svenska Dagbladet, we've also seen a stable trend. In terms of VG and Aftonbladet, there are several common features with them. Circulation is unfortunately down, I think about 9% in the case of VG and about 12% for Aftonbladet.
Even though we continue to develop our products, there is no sign that this trend will be picking up again or that it will change. At the same time, for both these media houses, their online position, their digital positions are envied by everyone else. What is the fastest growing segment is the mobile platform. We have seen this for a while, but mobile is growing faster than the online versions ever did. I know that VG saw a significant change in smartphone traffic just from December to January. It could be the Christmas effect that also the older generation has learned from the young one. I'm sure that we have representatives here in this room who can answer questions in the hall and outside. These companies have also dealt seriously with the single copy sales trend.
They have been able to reduce cost and at the same time increase their online versions. Aftonbladet has seen a very strong fourth quarter compared with the previous quarters, and that is because advertising revenues increased, but also because their cost improvement program is beginning to take effect. All over the group, we continue our experiments with user charges and user paid products, and we do this differently. Aftonbladet has been doing this for the longest period, and they have actually been able to transfer most of their users to their Aftonbladet Plus, the web premium content. Aftonbladet is also using this. You can get iPad services. In Media Norge, we see that we also have online subscribers, and we need to continue our experimentation to see which models work the best.
In our last presentation, we mentioned how the various parts of the group collaborate, what benefits that give us, and both for the classified sites and the other online sites, and what it means to have them under one umbrella when we are to launch our services. This gives you an updated status from week five that shows us the strength we have in online services, especially in Sweden. In terms of traffic volumes, we have almost 50% of the top 25. In Norway, around 30%. That gives us strength when we launch new services and products. In Sweden, we have taken this the furthest. We have partly started, but also invested in marketing sites online. We mentioned this, and in the case of Tillväxtmedia, our web-based growth companies, we have taken out Hitta because it's so big.
This is a rather sizable operations, and it will be making good money. I'm not at all concerned about the reduced margin in the last quarter. That is attributable to a number of one-off costs. We believe that some of these companies will give her the growth. I believe that the launch of Schibsted Norge will also give us growth by having all the sites collaborating. This is a very interesting and exciting trend, and I believe that we will have news to give you from this venture every quarter. I give the floor to you, Trond, to take us through the financial figures. Thank you, Erik. This is a satisfactory quarter for us, and we have good cost control. At the same time, we report an underlying 4% revenue growth.
The Q4 reflected special features, the technical adjustments in the accounts of leboncoin. Therefore, the bottom line figures are not actually representative for the underlying operations, because that operations is actually improved if we take into account our investments in new operations. Our operating profit, EBITDA, was NOK 549 million, compared with NOK 562 million last year. As I said, we spent NOK 85 million more in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the same quarter, 2010. This means that there is a strong underlying improvement. If we look at the profit, then also depreciation was charged against the profit, and we need to make continuous evaluations. There are some issues affecting Spain, where that we have just decided to depreciate because the situation is challenging there.
We read about it daily in papers. We have made a depreciation associated with 20 Minutes. We have adjusted the cost base. They're doing very well in the online services. The print-based services is, of course, a difficult market. Therefore, we have written down goodwill and that item. In addition to this, we have also depreciated the share that we charge to online projects in Spain to be more transparent and to make it similar with other activities. Therefore, we have a depreciation and amortization which is marked by one-off items. We've also initiated the cost improvement program of NOK 200 million. That has also been charged against the profit. That is linked to pensions in Norway and also what we did in Sweden with regard to the reduction in headcounts, especially regarding Aftonbladet.
We have adjusted the cost base in both these two operations, and a significant proportion of that has been charged against the income statement in the fourth quarter. All right. If we look at the tax positions, we see that we have an underlying tax rate for the full year. Here, we need to look at the full year of 34.6%. There's depreciation or amortization effects. Our cost base has nothing to do with the taxes. We have invested in new operations that we recognize in the accounts, so that means that we do not recognize the deferred taxes. We're a bit conservative here, and therefore the underlying tax rates will probably be around this level as long as we invest so much as we do in new ventures. If we compare developments in EBITDA with the...
Well, quarter- on- quarter, fourth quarter 2011 with 2010, we see a strong development in many areas, especially an increase, as you can see here, in media houses to a certain extent, but not least in terms of classifieds, the classifieds established, but also that we have spent NOK 84 million more, which of course account for a great portion of the changes between the two quarters. We have also implemented a cost reduction program, which was completed, that we announced in fourth quarter, that affected Media Norway and VG. Therefore, the benefits have been better than what we said in our program. In Sweden, we've also seen a good effect, and we are on track in terms of the program that we have set ourselves goals to implement in Sweden and Aftonbladet in particular.
These programs will, of course, also take effect as we go forward. We saw some effects from the fourth quarter in 2011, but we will also see it going forward. We exercise a good cost control, and we focus on maintaining lower costs in the entire media group. If we compare the media houses, the, in terms of cost from fourth quarter 2010 and 2011, and as you will see here, we have a good cost control, but we have invested NOK 190 million in new growth companies. This is a significant material that we charge to operations. What many companies do is that, of course, they acquire companies, and then they can capitalize them on the balance sheet. We have not done that. Earnings from online have increased.
If we look at how the various operations in Schibsted develop, then we see that EBITDA online is slightly down, but EBITDA offline is slightly down, but the cash flow is good, underlying operations is good, and we believe that we will be able to maintain that also going forward. If we look at EBITDA online, we see that SCM report a significant growth in the middle graph or the middle diagram. We've also seen that we've increased our online share, especially in the media houses. You can also see to the right, our investment cost. There's a significant development from offline to online, but with a strong cash flow and developments from our established activities. We see further proof of this here.
If we look at the various business operations in the group, just to show you how great a proportion of online that gradually is coming from our media houses. We see here in the case of VG and Aftonbladet, it is actually 41% and 46% respectively that can be attributed to online activities. We also see a change because online advertising revenues is gradually exceeding the print revenues in these two activities. Online revenues increased significantly, but at the same time, print revenues are relatively stable. We believe this is satisfactory. We also had Erik comment upon the strong performance of Media Norway and also online activities.
As for Tillväxtmedier, actually, we see, as you can see here, that the activities in Tillväxtmedier, Lendo and also other activities, tv.nu, that is doing very well in the Swedish market, and we also believe a strong performance can be expected going forward. For the full year 2011, we have had a strong growth in cash flow. We see that CapEx has been limited. We have provided guiding that we have invested in around NOK 400 million a year. We were slightly down from this guiding in 2011.
We have come to a point where we spend most CapEx on technology, IT systems, and also similar IT systems across the companies in Media Norway. We believe that will also help us to see further gains going forward. Our financial position is comfortable, while capital expenditure is what you can see, and also our net interest-bearing debt is NOK 1.6 billion. We see that EBITDA at NOK 0.8 billion. In our activities, we can also be a bit blasé, well, in terms of our key figures during periods. Our liquidity reserve is good. We have a sufficient long-term financing, and we'll also offer and issue a loan, a bond, a loan in the market.
We believe that the market is relatively attractive at the beginning, and we want to diversify our loan portfolio. In the next few days, we will actually raise NOK 200 million through bond issues and then with a longer-term maturity profile. We would prefer a loan with a 5-year maturity, and it remains to see if we can achieve that. We also have a shadow rating of BBB, which is stable, and we have further strengthened our key figures. This is something that we will announce and go to the market with shortly. Our dividend policy indicates that we propose a payout of dividend of NOK 3.50. Apart from the financial crisis year, we have succeeded in increasing dividend.
In the 2010, we paid out SEK 3, and the board has now proposed that we pay out a dividend of SEK 3.50, and we believe that the dividend should be stable and be continuously increasing going forward. That is the proposed payout dividend, namely SEK 3.50, and this is a 17% increase since the previous year. As for our key financial figures, we still see a strong cash flow from our operations. Lower maintenance investments in the fourth quarter, maybe slightly lower than what we normally would see, and our net interest-bearing debt has also been slightly reduced. Good opportunities going forward. This shows that our cash flow has increased significantly in previous years. This shows the increase from 2008 and to 2011.
While we, during this year, have also implemented a program where we have tried to focus our activities, we have implemented a cost improvement program, cost reduction programs, which has enabled us to reduce net interest-bearing debt significantly. Should there be cyclical fluctuations going forward, we feel that we are also comfortable and have a comfortable base to deal with any such fluctuations. Important for those of you who analyze the Schibsted financial performance, we see that in our online activities, we have capitalized more than we have done in our SCM in Spain. We expend a lot of the salaries, and we are very careful of doing this along with the international accounting standards, but also in line with Schibsted principles. We have tried to sort these matters out.
We have adjusted the 3 first quarters in 2011. The figures are slightly adjusted, and that may be, and you may want to note that for analysis purposes. You see that the NOK 3 million EBITDA, there is a rather strong effect between EBITDA and amortizations throughout 2011. All right. Those were the financials. Then back to outlook. It's difficult to predict the future, so I will a bit cautious in doing so. As for the strategy, we will continue as we have done. For the media houses, it is important that we continue to innovate, continue to develop our products, and to establish our online positions as well as exercising a good cost control.
For online, we believe that our existing portfolio will also present good growth opportunities, and we have proved to be rather resilient to economic fluctuations and turmoil. New countries are emerging positively, and we continue to invest according to the plans that we have presented earlier. As for the advertisement market, it's difficult to predict the future. We see that the TRM forecast predict a slight increase in Norway and Sweden. Stable for print and also slight growth for online. All the major media houses say that it's difficult to predict the future. We also see that the various media houses have seen a slightly diverse trend in the first month of the year. We look forward with interest, but we feel that we are resilient and in a good position to deal with any difficulties.
We also believe that for online media, the trend will continue. The strong trend will continue. All right. I would like to conclude this presentation by reminding you about our Investor Day that takes place in London on the 28th of February. Here, you will also see the names of the representatives who will give presentations in the group. We have seen a significant amount of international interest in this day, and we hope that you in Norway will also follow us. These were what we intended to present in terms of our business performance. Are there any questions? You need to wait for microphones, please. Danske Markets. First of all, congratulations with a strong performance in Q4. First question: You mentioned that the first month of the year had been a bit mixed.
Could you please elaborate a bit and also comment about the relationship advice to Schibsted Classifieds and leboncoin? Could you please comment on the revenue split? Well, compared with our competitors, we believe that we show a lot of revenue split, and we don't really want to show any more split. What we have seen is that there are some good sources of revenues. There's paid products, also Google revenues, gradually we will see professional players paying for online classifieds. We have said that the performance and trend is strong, we do not want to offer our competitors any more information. Well, only a few weeks of the new year has passed. January is still marked by the Christmas holidays and therefore it's early. The situation is volatile for print and okay on online start.
We do not want to give any more specific guiding than that at the present moment. Thank you. Which margin can we expect for online newspapers and which cost do you intend to see in terms of developing new content, especially for iPad going forward? Well, this is an interesting discussion. We continuously discuss that in-house, and we have combined activities in VG. I believe that long-term, we will have one overall target for the media houses. Of course, it's worth noting that 2011, we've seen that Aftenbladet and VG Online have a performance levels that are almost in line with what they used to be. We see a strong trend for our online businesses and therefore. We also have a good cost allocation between online and print.
I believe that the online performance are actually de facto results for those businesses. Do you expect this to continue or what? Well, we engage in a lot of product development. We want to find solutions and to be paid for that. If we can find solutions for doing this, we believe that we will see good results. We're also seeing a strong growth on mobile. It's interesting markets, and we expect good margins going forward. We have all along said that we have a long time perspective on our innovation in terms of developing new platform, and we maintain that. Nordea Markets. You mentioned it, but can you please explain a bit more about the timelines and the process around the Norwegian merger? Yes, I can.
These proposals have now been discussed and processed by the various boards of directors, and it will formally be implemented and completed in the second quarter. The effect will probably be from first of January, but at a group level, this has no material effect. This is an in-house reorganizations, and it will be washed out at group level. As I said, it will be finalized in the second quarter. You showed for online classifieds, Schibsted Online and leboncoin that one of them. You showed FINN and leboncoin. Shouldn't FINN really have a higher margin of the two because they have the most mature position? I don't think that you can call FINN a mature company when they're growing their revenues by 20%. I don't think you can say that.
I believe that FINN is a strong growth company. I don't fully agree with you in your characteristic. These companies are different in terms of structure, and the Blocket margin is going down because they have opted for a broader portfolio similar to FINN. When FINN invests in new verticals that raise this, we cannot expect a margin over 50% of this. Everything they do creates value. I mean, you cannot actually compare these businesses. Christian, were you happy with that answer? If not, I mean, please add some comments. Bjørn Lindahl, Svenska Dagbladet, you say that the mobile platform grows faster and stronger than online activities ever did. Can you give us any figures?
What I did mention was that, all right, they have grown from small, from lower levels, but Aftonbladet and VG has grown their revenues by 300%. Although from a low starting point, what would you like to give us any information about the increase in traffic? In terms of new readers on mobile, it has grown by 96% for VG in the last year. 257,000 readers of VG, and there are only two print papers that have more readers, VG and Aftenposten. I believe that that picture actually will change in the course of a year or two. Any further questions? If that is not the case, we would like to thank you for your attention and for coming here. Please note the date for our Investor Day.