Welcome to our analyst conference. We are very pleased to see you here at our headquarters in Zurich, and we also welcome the ones in the call. My name is Ursula Nötzli, and I'm, among others, responsible for the investor communication. This morning, we have published our full year report, and we also have published a new strategy for Tamedia. Both we will explain in the following minutes, and as you can understand, we have a very intensive program, and that's why I really make this introduction very short and hand over the word to Pietro Supino, our Chairman and Publisher.
Thank you, Ursula, and welcome from my side. Me too, I will be short, so we'll have more room for questions if you have any. First of all, I would like to ask for your understanding that this time we have prioritized the internal communication and the general perception of the communication, given the fact that we have announced the loss of 300 jobs this morning in our group. The result for the first half year is mixed. As you have seen, SMG is on track with all high expectations. That is very positive. JobCloud and Karriere.at in Austria, in line with the global development, have not developed positively, have shown a negative development. However, both offers are in a very strong position, and the outlook is unchanged, positive. The media and the advertising businesses are under continuous pressure.
That is not new, and it is not unexpected. The good news is that each of the three companies, Tamedia, 20 Minuten, and Goldbach, are working on their reinvention and are not shy of taking radical measures. In the transformation, we can already see positive developments. Goldbach has been able to build up a new, very important source of revenue and profit in the out-of-home business. Tamedia has grown substantially in the digital subscription, with almost 10% year on year, and 20 Minuten has expanded its leadership in the digital audience. For all three, the integration of the advertising sales in 20 Minuten and Tamedia is a positive perspective. Also for Goldbach, who remain a partner in the digital field, but through that development, can focus and concentrate on its strength and on its more profitable businesses.
So all in all, it is a difficult day today for us, as we have announced the loss of 300 jobs, but mid and longer term, I remain very positive for our group. I am convinced that we'll be able to deliver on the goals we have announced last year, and I foresee a good development beyond that for our group. With this, I would like to hand over to my colleagues, and as mentioned, we would like to use the time today mainly to answer your questions. Thank you for your interest.
We will go to Wolf. [Foreign language]
Good afternoon. My name is Wolf-Gerrit Benkendorff. I'm the CFO of the TX Group, and I will briefly present the financial development of TX Group for the first half of 2024 . In the overview, you can see that revenue was stable and EBIT adjusted, and profit margin slightly increased. The equity ratio is more or less unchanged, while net liquidity is around zero. The reduction in net liquidity is mainly driven by the dividend payout of CHF 66 million to TX shareholders in 2024 . I will explain the change in free cash flow before M&A later on. If you start on the left, you can see that revenue is stable. Weaker performance from Tamedia and JobCloud are offset, thanks to the inorganic growth of Goldbach Out of Home, since previous year for Clear Channel Switzerland comprises only three months. EBITDA and EBITDA margin improved clearly.
Main reason for this are lower cost of material and lower OpEx due to cost control and restructuring. EBIT adjusted also improved. Compared to EBITDA, the improvement is lower because amortization increased due to additional capitalized lease contracts from the Out-of-Home business. On the next few slides, I will provide a more detailed insight into the development and composition of revenue. If we look at the organic development of revenue, we see that it has fallen by 6%. Both JobCloud and Tamedia are down around 10%. In the case of JobCloud, it needs to be mentioned that besides a general weakness in the job market, JobCloud is also comparing against a strong first half year in 2023. At Tamedia, the falling price of paper had a negative impact on revenue in addition to challenges in the advertising market.
The revenue composition shows that the share of advertising revenue has expanded due to the inorganic growth of the out-of-home business. If we examine the development of the growing share of advertising revenue further, we can see at the top right that this growth comes exclusively from the out-of-home business. Revenue at 20 Minuten has remained more or less unchanged after the pandemic, however, with a transformation from print to digital. Tamedia has not yet been able to compensate for the decline in print advertising with additional digital advertising revenue. The share of digital revenue and total revenue increased marginally. Tamedia subscription and single sales are growing the digital categories slightly. In the small stacked columns in the green box, it can be seen that especially the digital transformation of advertising at Tamedia is a challenge, and the digital share has not been growing.
In the income statement, lower costs of material, which is mainly paper, is the main reason for the EBITDA improvement. D&A increased by CHF 8.3 million due to higher amortization for capitalized lease contracts in the out-of-home business. The financial result is driven by extraordinary effects. Firstly, the earn-out payment of CHF 4.2 million from the sale of Trendsales in October 2020, and secondly, the gain on disposal of the DriveFive group of CHF 4 million. In the first half year, a positive earnings after tax of CHF 24.5 million results, which is well above the previous year. The adjusted income statement mainly corrects for the amortization from business combinations from SMG and the fully consolidated companies. Also, the two beforehand mentioned extraordinary effects in the financial result, the earn-out from Trendsales and the disposal of the DriveFive group, are adjusted.
Overall, the adjusted earnings after tax is slightly higher compared to 2023. Compared to the previous year, a higher EBITDA was achieved, and once again, a positive effect from net working capital in the amount of CHF 8.1 million was realized. Mainly because of the reduction in net working capital of CHF 32 million in 2023, due to intensified debtor management, overall cash flow from operating activities is below 2023. Investments in PP&E and intangible assets are below previous year due to lower real estate CapEx and less own work capitalized at JobCloud. Mainly because of the huge positive effect from the beforehand mentioned net working capital last year, free cash flow before M&A is below 2023. With this, I hand over to Sandro.
Hello, everybody. Warm welcome also from my side. I would like to continue with an overview of our five segments, starting with TX Markets, and then the activities, JobCloud, Karriere.at and SMG on a 100% basis. As you can see, net revenue and EBIT adjusted of the segment itself overall declined, revenue by 10% and EBIT adjusted by 11%. JobCloud itself, and that's the only activity we fully consolidate in this segment, therefore, also lost 10% in revenues, and EBIT adjusted declined by 15%. Karriere.at in Austria has even more difficulties in the first half year, with a decline in revenues of 16% and in EBIT adjusted of 20%. On the other hand, SMG developed very well, with revenues rising by 13% and the EBIT adjusted by 14%.
This chart shows the segment Goldbach, which could rise their revenues by 20% due to the acquisition of Clear Channel mainly, but also in its core business, mainly the TV business. As you can see on the next column, the revenues overall rose by 22% and Goldbach without out-of-home by 4% and out-of-home by 48%. EBIT Adjusted for these activities well stood at 7.2 for the whole segment, 4.3 for Goldbach without out-of-home, and 2.9 for out-of-home. I continue with 20 Minuten and Tamedia. Both had to face again a decline in revenues due to the challenging advertising market, as Wolf has explained.
20 Minuten, the revenues of 20 Minuten declined by 5% but they could offset then with lower costs, and therefore, the EBIT Adjusted rose slightly to CHF 2.5 million. Tamedia, on the other hand, wasn't able to offset fully the decline in revenues, and the EBIT declined slightly and stood at CHF 5.4 million at the end of June. Then, let me end with Group and Ventures. Group and Ventures consists, as the name said, with Ventures and Group.
TX Ventures themselves could slightly improve their revenues, but EBIT just declined to CHF 3.9 million minus in the first half of the year, whereas Group was able to reduce further their costs, and the contribution stood at CHF 3.8 million negative, because these are the non-charged costs of the overhead at the end of the first half year. That's all from my side, and then I hand over to my colleagues for the operational reporting. Thanks.
Olivier.
Thank you very much. Hi, everybody. I'm Olivier . For this reason, we'll start the presentation of TX Markets with JobCloud. Despite the challenging economic environment, with about 20% less job ads, compared to 2023, JobCloud has made a significant strides in the first half of 2024. We've seen 26% increase in applications started, and a 25% raise in applications sent, reflecting our platform's growing impact and strengthening our market position compared to our main competitor. We see that on the two graphs here on the slide. Our focus has been on innovation and investing in new technology like, of course, AI, but also in pay-per-performance technology and the new architecture of the platform.
These investments are preparing our platform for future growth, ensuring we continue to provide crucial support to job seekers and employers alike, and as we move forward, we remain committed to connecting people with the job they love and ensuring a brighter future for the job market in Switzerland. One comment on our participation in Austria with Karriere.at, we had exactly the same situation, so a difficult economic environment, investment in the platform, in technology, strengthening the market positions, so we really have the same focus during the first half of the year, and now let's talk about SMG. Also there, we continue to invest in strengthening our market position, and our latest initiatives enhances competitiveness with savings reinvested in innovation and growth, and to keep us at the industry's forefront.
It's important to have same level and the same technology, the same goals as our peers in Europe and around the world. Strategically, we've made significant moves with two investments. First of all, Flatfox, that boosted our product services for real estate industry, and also acquiring Moneyland, expanding our financial services offering more value to our customer and more services. We focused on continuous technological development and product innovation to increase customer benefits, customer value, and customer experience. Compared to last year, we've seen a significant increase in revenue and in EBITDA in all the segments, in cars, in real estate, in general classified, and also in finance and services. That reflects our commitment to excellence, to performance, and the management is doing...
Of course, all the employees are doing a great job. So SMG is really on a very good track. Thank you very much. That was for my side.
Olivier, and we will hand over to Christoph Marty from Goldbach.
Hi, and good afternoon. Happy to present for the first time the Goldbach Group results. The group's revenue and operating margin, adjusted EBIT, have significantly increased compared to the previous year. This improvement is partially attributable to the integration of Clear Channel Switzerland, as already mentioned, whose acquisition was completed on April 1st last year. The merger of Clear Channel and Neo Advertising into Goldbach Neo is progressing well, even without the effects of the first quarter last year. The expected synergies are materializing on both on the top line and on the cost side. In parallel with Goldbach's organically and inorganically growing business, excluding print, the cost measures that have been implemented are taking effect.
Growth in the TV sector is supported, on the one hand, by newly won contracts in the French-speaking part of Switzerland with the SFR Group, but also with the growing business in the new area of replay ads. Going forward, Goldbach will focus on the areas of TV, radio, out-of-home, and digital.... The marketing of the group's Tamedia and 20 Minuten brands will be integrated into the respective companies, while in digital, collaboration with Goldbach will continue in a new setup. As a result of these changes, cost and complexity within Goldbach will be further reduced, and the structure will be correspondingly adjusted. With its very strong pillars in TV and out-of-home, the Goldbach Group is excellently positioned and will focus its energy on further developing the digital business in all media vectors that it manages: TV, radio, out-of-home, and of course, the digital business itself.
The strategic challenges in the emerging initiatives are the emerging initiatives in various levels to ban advertising for entire product categories across all media, and to prohibit outdoor advertising on public ground. We will vigorously oppose these initiatives as Goldbach and in collaboration with Communication Switzerland, using all necessary means, including referendums and votes where necessary, and we are on a successful track with all these activities. Thank you.
And now we hand over to Bernhard Brechbühl for 20 M inuten.
Welcome from my side. At 20 Minuten, we look back to a successful journey on the user market in the past six or 12 months. Last summer, we reorganized our newsroom, we broadened our content mix, and we started various initiatives in digital content distribution and user experience. This yielded results, as you can see on the chart. On the right-hand side, the gap to our direct competitor in the news business in the German part of Switzerland has widened continuously, and now we are the clear market leader, with more than 20% more daily visits than the number two, compared to a 5% lead in January 2023, and an even smaller gap before. In the Romandie, we have 60% more daily visits than the number two.
Also, our print edition could increase the readership by 2.7% to 1.3 million daily readers. We believe the refresh of our print edition was one of the substantial factors. Reach alone, though, won't bring success on the advertising market, since Big Tech platforms offer tremendous amounts of reach as well. Therefore, we need to offer very creative and powerful concepts to our clients, such as the special edition of 20 Minuten back in April this year, when our news site and our newspaper were all in yellow to help our clients launch the new Rivella Gelb. Or an extra newspaper edition all about the Taylor Swift concerts we published this July. 150,000 copies that we distributed around the stadium and attracted various renowned advertising clients that target young audiences.
It's quite rare that you can target a young audience with a print product. In this case, it worked really well. To bring the creativity of our content teams and sales closer together, to deepen the connection with our clients, and to reduce complexity in sales, we have decided to bring back the entire sales and monetization activities back in-house. Sales has been done by our sister company, Goldbach, in the past four years, and we firmly believe that as an ad-funded media business, we have to be back in the driver seat. Goldbach remains an important partner, though, when it comes to the online network. That's where clients buy target groups across various publishers, and in this network, we will remain an important publisher, and we're looking forward to a new, fruitful mode of cooperation with Christoph and his team at Goldbach.
Here, I have to mention that we will incur ramp-up costs in the second semester this year to implement the new sales organization that has to be fully up and running as of 1st of January 2025 , and will start its operations already from now on onwards. We're talking about a low single-digit million CHF amount for project costs, tech licenses, and new staff starting this year. This is obviously an investment into better results in the future than we expect with the current complexity in our setup.
Thanks. Now we will skip for Tamedia, which will be then the end, including the strategy. So I would ask, Daniel to comment the ventures before we then end up with Tamedia.
Sure, happy to give you an update on TX Ventures. Due to the focus that Ursula mentioned, I will also focus on the Fintech Fund today, and I would refer to the published half-year results if it comes to questions regarding Doodle and C2. For the Fintech Fund, the first six months have been quite busy and quite active with some pleasant events and maybe also one less pleasant event. I'm very happy that we could finish three investments into great companies in U.K., Austria, and Ireland. I'm less happy about the exit.
... that we have to communicate. We had to write off our investment into Helvengo. The core business was sold, the rest was liquidated, and for us this was not a successful exit, and it was not a successful development that we have expected when we were investing into Helvengo. What makes me quite positive is the chart on the left-hand side of the slide that shows the NAV per share that we have published today for the first time, and it shows that the overall value of the fund has increased. That's also the case when we take into consideration that we have written off Helvengo.
So it shows that the rest of the portfolio develops quite good and have overcompensated the loss that we had to realize with Helvengo. Overall, I think we're on a good path, and I can also say that we will set up a call in the next weeks with the fund managers, so that you can ask more questions and understand a bit more into detail how this NAV calculation takes place, and what's behind this, the numbers that we have published today for the first time. Thanks.
Good. Then, Jessica... I don't know, do you start with the operational result or straight into...
Yes.
Okay. Here we go. Thank you.
We are all happy to give you an update of the performance for Tamedia before we are starting to go into the new strategy of Tamedia. The digitalization, combined with the demographic shift in our print subscription base, continued to put pressure on print subscribers. While we managed to slow down the churn in print subscription with improved customer service within the last months, we continued to grow steadily in digital subscription, and as you can see here on the left-hand side, we were able to have a plus 10% to previous year. This results in a relatively stable total subscriber base, digital subscription moving towards 30% of our total subscription base.
Considering the pricing gap between print subscription and digital subscription, we are very much aware of the necessity to put more effort and measures in place to continue and possibly accelerate the digital subscription growth, and now I'm very happy, and thanks to you all, to having the opportunity to present the new Tamedia strategy to you today, and for that, we have prepared some slides. So starting with the status quo, with over 1,400 employees, 75% of them are based in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and another 25% in the French-speaking part. We have three main locations, three printing centers, and additional local editorial offices. Aside in Belgrade, around 30 brands and a lot of sub-brands. Tamedia is, as you can see, a large company. That's not a weakness. In fact, it could be a major competitive advantage.
But we are not making the most of this size yet. We are a very decentralized organization and often works in silos. This makes our organization and our collaboration quite complex, and this needs to be changed. This is going to change. We need a clear focus for growth regarding our portfolio and further increase our audiences. We need to monetize our audience much better. While doing this, our revenue share in digital advertising needs to increase, and our overall digital revenue share needs to increase steadily. And not forget, as I mentioned, our complexity. We need to stop activities and organizational complexities which are not creating value, and I will come back to this in a few minutes. Brand portfolio. So one of the crucial things we did to take a close look to our brand portfolio. What did we find? Take a look for yourself.
Tamedia has a very extensive portfolio with around 30 brands. It's a portfolio that has grown over many years, and it was kept, in most cases, as it was. Hence, it's not clearly structured. Efficiency and collaboration was not at a focus. Our brands are strong, but they are lacking a clear orientation, they don't have a distinct positioning, and they are perceived very differently... by employees and customers alike. But only clear brands are strong brands, and only strong brands are successful brands. And also, our brands are operating in different markets, which are very different in size. However, our internal processes and structures are not aligned to these varying potentials. And so what we did out of that, what are the most crucial initiatives we are going to implement in order to execute a long-term strategic plan and to secure the necessary transformation of Tamedia?
First, by restructuring our brand and product portfolio, we are creating focus to lead in quality journalism in the digital world. Second, by establishing Tamedia Advertising in-house, we lay the foundation to become the leading partner for Swiss advertisers. Third, in order to optimize the monetization of our portfolio, we combine the subscription and the advertising business under one strong leadership for fast and value-driven decisions. Four, with the strategic initiatives for our printing centers, we will become leader in production efficiency, securing long-term print production capacity for our titles, but also for our clients. And last but not least, five, with the establishment of our digital hub, we position ourselves to lead in digitalization across the entire value chain. But what does it mean in detail, concentrating on the main initiatives we are going to implement?
So what does it mean when we say we are restructuring our extensive brand and product portfolio, which currently includes over 30 brands? We have revised our brand portfolio and placed a clear focus on strong brands, which have the potential to achieve greater reach. With these initiatives, we identify what we so-called future brands, which we will expand digitally to their full potential. This means we are concentrating our investments and all our resources on these four future brands you can see on the left-hand side. Specifically, this means that product portfolios will be consistently developed with a digital-first approach, with investments made to expand digital reach and to build a loyal user base. Their print product will continue to operate and remain crucial to Tamedia's success. In doing so, we are laying the foundation for the future growth in the digital world. Next, advertising.
As another crucial strategic initiatives, we will start marketing ourselves holistically in future and will establish Tamedia Advertising for this purpose. To have more ownership and less complexity or less complex organizational interfaces, it's important for our future. To address this, we will integrate the necessary teams from Goldbach into Tamedia, and this will bring them close to our brands and to our teams. Then we can achieve the goal of generating more growth in advertising revenue. This will also reduce complexity in our advertising operation, allowing us to start self-marketing large portions of our portfolio from early 2025 . We will create the necessary structures through this integration and progressively optimize them throughout 2025 . Goldbach itself supports this organizational direction and remains our trusted partner for the digital network, which will be managed through Goldbach Audiences.
In addition to these changes, we want to accelerate and improve our product portfolio for our advertising customers with a strong focus on their requirements. Next initiatives, our print centers. In past decades, our printing centers have been a source of pride, giving us a competitive edge over other publishers for a long time. Unfortunately, those days are over through the monumental market changes over the last decade. All in all, we are confronted with a complex and difficult situation. Since mandatory commitments in volume, price, and long-term contract duration are not enforceable in the market, we need to consolidate our capacity as fast as possible. Moving forward, our printing operation will focus on Bern. The Bern printing center will operate at an optimized capacity....
This will allow Tamedia to provide long-term production security and capacity for our own titles, but also, or as well, for our external clients. Starting in 2027, all production will be centralized in Bern, which will be further partially expanded regarding some necessary equipment. This secures the production of our product in the long term in a much, much more efficient way. Next strategic initiative, our digital hub. The digital hub is the backbone of Tamedia's digital transformation. To this end, the hub combines various competencies: digital product, audience growth, data, artificial intelligence, and technology. It's crucial for improving our performance and productivity, fosters innovation, and makes a significant contribution to enabling independent quality journalism in the future. The digital hub will also help to strengthen the future of print with digital opportunities and the use of state-of-the-art technologies. What does it mean in total?
Where are we now, and where we are going to? We did a deep analysis of the current situation. We defined strategic initiatives to operationally drive this transformation. The size and the scope of the necessary change are massive and will cover all over the company. We did not propose to go the easy way and just cut some costs here or there. But even though it might be partially a painful process, as today, we have to take comprehensive measures in order to secure the success of the transformation. That means to execute the defined measures we need time, and so we have given an extra year beyond the initial margin target-setting timeframe. Instead of 2026, we now strive to achieve the EBIT margin target in 2027.
Thank you very much for your time and opportunity to explain the main framework for our extensive transformation program, and I'm looking forward with you to sharing the progress in our joint future touchpoints and meetings.
Thank you, Jessica, for these comments on your new strategy. We will now open up the Q&A. Obviously, there is the possibility to ask questions here in the room, but there is also the possibility to ask question via Zoom. You can enter your question in the chat, and we will read it out then. Thank you very much. So, Danny!
Yeah. Thank you, Daniel Bürki from Zürcher Kantonalbank. I would have a question on Tamedia, obviously, because I saw somewhere in the news that you spoke of restructuring costs of CHF 30 million in the second half. This is correct. Is this all, or is it expected it will be more in the future? And, if you have CHF 30 million, what possible savings do you expect to take out of this? That's my first one. I have later, a second one, but maybe we start with this.
Thank you, Daniel. CHF 30 million is really the correct number. CHF 25 million of this is restructuring of printing centers, and that's the provision that we had to build in the balance sheet based on the decisions that have been taken so far, and that was what was presented today by Jessica. Second question was?
Possible savings.
We are focusing, as Jessica said, to reach the margin in 2027, the 8%-10%, and so, of course, revenue and cost will be in the focus. That's why we set a result margin here.
I think the costs will be in the second half year.
Yes, the provision will be made in the second half year, but is already announced as an event after the balance sheet date because the decision was already made.
Thank you, and maybe a second one on Swiss Marketplace Group. Obviously, top-line growth was great, EBIT margin also very good, but we didn't really see a big improvement. This is still investing phase, because I understand you have a big leverage effect on top-line growth in this business.
Yeah. So the improvement or acquiring, for example, Flatfox, allows Swiss Marketplace Group to innovate, to have new products, to bundling them into new packages also, and this is what's our... let's say, driving the growth for Swiss Marketplace Group. The implementation is step by step, always. It's not a one shot. This is a clear midterm plan that follows us till 2027 at least. And but we are fully on track on every segment, and also in EBITDA, absolutely on track.
Thank you.
... Andi?
Thank you. Andi Schnee, Datz Capital. Jessica, maybe you can go a little bit into more detail what the focus on these four brands means in practice. As I see it, you, as you said, you invest in these four titles, in these four newspapers, and everything else won't see any investment, and they get all the content from the other brands, besides probably some local content. Is that how it works? And-
First of all, it is a question about digital platforms. So these four brands will have their own digital platform, where we are concentrating all investments and resources on. The situation today is that we spend our money on a lot of platforms, where we do not have that potential as we have it right now for the four brands, digital brands in the future, with more than 5.5 million inhabitants. And this is the big difference to the situation today, and the target is to have a increase in reach for these four brands and supporting this to monetize these brands much better as 30 small brands in comparison. And this is the strategy behind. That does not mean that we do not have other digital platforms for Der Bund and for Tribune de Genève.
They will keep their own digital platform, but in a smaller size, because they have a smaller potential for sure. But all the other platforms, what we are driving right now for the smaller brands, will be integrated in these four future brands. That means that you can still find the content, but this is integrated into the four digital brands. We will have individual ways for each brand to find them into, in the, four future brands, and this is what we figure out until the end of this year, how this will work for the single brands, and where the users can find the content as they are used to for regional and local content.
You already did some content sharing across the brands, and as far as I understand, also from some comments in the press you made today, that is also gonna intensifying going forward.
Yes.
Maybe you can give us a sense of what intensifying means.
Yeah. In four weeks, we will communicate how the editorial organization will work content-wise, and how we are sharing content. For example, sharing content between Deutsch Schweiz and Westschweiz is one of the biggest target, but also vice versa. And KI or AI is supporting us here for that, and we did a quite successful test run out of that, really to share content between these both markets. And for sure, we will improve that. You know, in the past, it will be by chance that we have collaboration between the teams, and with the new organization, which will come up latest in October, we will do it systematically in a new structure.
Just to finish that up. So the 90 jobs you said that will become redundant, this is a final number, or is it depending on what comes out of this new organization in terms of content sharing and everything? So might the number change upwards or downwards?
It is a final number, except the case that we have our law, which is saying, in dependency on the [Foreign language],“ but the dimension will be the same.
Then we had a question right here up front.
... [Foreign language]
I think this is a strategic decision to divide between paid media and free media, but-
Yes. The concept in the last years has been to create more transparency about the different businesses that we own as a group, and to give more autonomy to the different businesses to be responsible for their results. Tamedia and 20 Minuten are two fundamentally different businesses. They have a different business model. They have a different culture. They cater to a different audience. Of course, there is a certain overlap, but in principle, they are different, and we strongly believe that in the decentralized organization and in decentralizing responsibility and entrepreneurship, we'll achieve better results.
But you want to go in the digital era with the print media, and 20 Minuten already knows how that works, so should you not profit from the knowledge of 20 Minuten?
... It works differently in the case of 20, 20 minuten, and we believe-
Also in future.
It works in Tamedia, and I would say that we have quite substantial know-how in Tamedia also, and therefore we are convinced that this is the right setup to get the best results overall.
For me, [Foreign language]
The question is, what's the outlook for SMG, and the understanding that there would be news this autumn. I wouldn't know about the fact about that. It goes very well with SMG, as has been said. As has been mentioned, the margins are not yet where they will be, and we are very confident that they will be among the best, even in an international comparison in the midterm. As has always been said, the IPO of SMG remains a goal, and I think that we will be ready for that towards the end of next year. Of course, then it remains open whether the market conditions will be such that it makes sense at that point of time, but the development is fully in line with our expectations.
We are on track, and we'll be ready when the time comes, and then we will also communicate when the time comes.
I have one more question regarding the printing centers. When they are closed, do you have already... Well, you have shown us once a strategy about the real estate. Is that now becoming more real? What is the time frame? Would you rather sell these slots, or would you rather develop them yourselves now?
The time frame for closing the printing centers has been announced today.
Yes.
This spring of next year in Lausanne, and the end of the following year in Zurich, and then there will be some time needed to dismantle the machinery that is in there, and that gives us enough time to now develop a strategy for this real estate that remains, and that strategy could go from having these assets as cash-generating assets in the group to spinning them off. That is open and to be developed over the next time. So far, it has been important to clarify Tamedia's situation, and now that it is clarified, we are free to develop the real estate strategy, and it's a good question because here we have now mainly been speaking about our three media and advertising companies, Tamedia, 20 Minuten, and Goldbach.
But the fact is, as you all know, that the main value of the group lies first and foremost in the SMG participation, then in the JobCloud, which is going through a difficult time, but is fundamentally very well-positioned and has an excellent outlook, and thirdly, the real estate that you have mentioned.
I would like to ask also, how is the competition developing in the Out-of-Home business now? Well, there have been four players, now it's only two.
There are still a lot. So there are at least three or four national ones, including Livesystems with the Swiss Post, with big pockets. And so far, in the last tender that we saw since the merger took place, there was another quite intense competition. So the bidding for Bahnhofplatz in Zurich was far higher than what we saw on the previous tender that took place two years ago. So at the moment, we have not seen far less competition. We might see this in the future, but we will maybe see it now in Geneva, where the tender takes place for the city of Geneva, and the delivery date is beginning of September. But it's difficult to really foresee what is going to happen there.
My last question, if you admit, does. You have produced quite good cash flows. Thank you. That's good for us as shareholders. My question is, will it-- saving activities, will those have an impact on your dividend strategy, or can we follow last year's one?
So we don't give an outlook on results and dividends, but what I can say, and thank you for the question, is that besides the margin goals that we have set to ourselves, and where we are really confident that we will deliver on them, in the case of Tamedia, we have one year delay, given that the closing down of the printing sites, which is the biggest contribution to the effect, it will take a little bit longer than anticipated. But in addition to these margin goals, to me personally and to us, the view on free cash flow is of utmost importance, and because I think that has always been important in the media business and generally in business, but secondly, it is also the base for our dividend.
When you look at the development of our dividend, then what I can say is that the ordinary dividend that we have paid this year for last year is definitely not up to our ambition.
Thank you. Are there questions online? No, not at the moment. I think many of you, we will see in the next few days for personal meeting one-to-one. So thank you for participating. Thank you for the questions and the interesting discussion, and have a nice day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.