Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen. Only one lady in the room of the guests. We are inventory, right. Exactly. Also, welcome to the guests that have joined us virtually. It's a pleasure to welcome you here in the offices and virtually to this year's half year results presentation. It's a special pleasure for me since this is my first event since joining TX Group roughly two months ago. Our Chairman, Pietro Supino, will start with the presentation and then he's followed by our CFO Wolf Benkendorff, our Chief Portfolio Officer Daniel Mönch, and Tanja zu Waldeck, our Chief Operating Officer. The floor is yours for any questions you would like to ask us.
The guests in the room can ask questions directly and the ones joining us virtually, we kindly ask them to use the FAQ button that we have on the bottom of the Zoom screen, not in the chat, but in this FAQ field. We will then read out the question. My colleague Karole will do that and answer those questions here in the room. Many thanks for being with us this afternoon. It's my pleasure to hand over to Pietro Supino, our Chairman.
That was also the opportunity for all of you to meet Urs, those who have not met him. He's our new responsible for communication at the group level and for Investors Relation. Welcome to this analyst conference. You have seen the results. We will go into it in more detail. I'm not doing that, otherwise you get it like three times. Just to mention that obviously we are also affected by the instability that we have to live with globally, the instability politically and economically. Luckily, we are only indirectly affected, but still we are affected and you can see that in our numbers. The picture is mixed. We have said it and we will go into it in more detail on the side of media where the results are not up to our expectations.
I can say that the critical questions are on the table and a lot of work is being done in the various areas and that we are confident that we will be able to deliver on the margin goals that have been announced two years ago, which means that 20 Minuten and Goldbach should achieve the margin goals next year and Tamedia the following year, 2027 as we have communicated, and there is no change in our expectation in that regard. I think that's important to mention on the background of these figures that we present today that are not up to our expectations. The second positive note I would want to underline is that if we look at our results on a cash flow basis, and that is what I'm most interested in, it's at least more or less on the level of the previous year.
All the deterioration we observe can also be explained by a variety of different effects. If you look at cash flow, at least we are at the level of last year, which of course is not up to our medium and long- term ambitions, but I think it's important to note it. We have also been spending some time thinking about our equity story. The short version of it is that we see our group standing on two pillars. On the one hand, the marketplace businesses, including digital recruiting, which is of value for society. I think we deliver a service to society, which is important with these activities and they are promising in terms of growth, in addition to the high profitability which they show. The second pillar is and remains media. Our ambition is to reconstruct a sustainable base for journalism in the future.
As said, we believe that we will be able to achieve this and it has to be proved in the next two years that that is the case. We invest in companies in these areas. We would like to find new sources of growth within our existing companies or in new investments around these themes. Having said that, it's also clear that all the other activities are not strategic. They are partly of important value, namely the real estate. These other activities that are not marketplace and not media are not strategic for our group. Lastly, I would like to mention the share buyback program which we have announced today. The reason for it is that we have excess cash which we think we should return to our shareholders as long as we don't have better investment ideas. It shows the confidence we have in the potential of our group.
I should also underline that the magnitude of this program is somehow limited by the already not high free float and liquidity of our share. It is not our intention to take the company private. We think it's for the benefit of our activities to be in the frame of a publicly traded company. We want to remain in that frame. My family has no intentions to sell any shares because they are also convinced that the potential of the group is there. It is, I think, to be taken as a logical step and as a signal that we care about the interests of our shareholders. It is somehow limited by the frame in which we operate. That I wanted to clarify. With this I hand over to my colleagues and then we are here, as always, to answer questions you might have. Thank you for your interest.
Good afternoon, I'm Wolf Benkendorff, CFO of TX Group. I'll be presenting a brief overview of TX Group's financial performance for the first half of 2025. In the overview, you can see that revenue, EBITDA adjusted, and profit margin decreased. The equity ratio remains largely consistent, and net liquidity has declined primarily due to reduced cash holdings compared to the year end 2024. This reduction is attributed to dividend payments to TX shareholders and the acquisition of 200,000 treasury shares. Despite lower revenue and EBITDA adjusted, free cash flow before M&A, as Pietro just mentioned, remained unchanged, and I will give you more detail on the next slide. Cash flow from operating activities was stable year- over- year despite a considerably lower EBITDA and a reduced positive impact from changes in net working capital.
This stability is primarily attributed to the ordinary dividend of CHF 18.4 million from SMG for the 2024 business year paid to TX Group. This is the first ordinary dividend from SMG since its founding in 2021. As a reminder, in November of last year, SMG paid an extraordinary dividend totaling CHF 230 million, and CHF 71 million of this amount has been paid to TX Group. Last year, investments in property, plant and equipment, and intangible assets were consistent with the previous year, resulting in a free cash flow before M&A of CHF 82.1 million, aligning with 2024 levels. The increase in cash outflow from financing activities was mainly driven by the already mentioned buyback of 200,000 TX shares valued at CHF 30 million. Now we go into more detail about the development of revenue and earnings.
If we start on the left, you can see that revenue declined by 7%. JobCloud faced headwinds in the digital job market. Meanwhile, 20 Minuten experienced weaker advertising performance, and the closure of the Lausanne printing center led to lower print and logistic revenue at Tamedia. EBITDA and the EBITDA margin decreased primarily due to lower revenue. Additionally, negative one-off effects at 20 Minuten and Goldbach out of home contributed to the decline. Despite the negative one-off effects, more than 50% of the revenue loss was offset by cost savings. Concerning EBIT, we see only a minor increase in D&A and overall adjustments of CHF 31.5 million, roughly the same amount of adjustments compared to last year. Revenue saw a reported decline of -7.5%, though organic revenue loss was a more modest -5.3%.
This difference is attributable to the 2024 divestments of Goldbach dreifive , Goldbach Austria, and DJ Digitale Medien, that is, heute.at. N o significant investments were made in the first half year of 2025. If we look at the income statement, revenue decline outpaced cost reductions even with personnel cost savings over CHF 10 million, and it's worth mentioning that this already includes a one-off expense for the 20 Minuten social plan. Net income from associated companies and joint ventures remained stable. Weaker results from Karriere.at and the divestment of Ultimate Media were balanced by additional contributions from SMG . The significant decline in the 2025 financial result is attributed to extraordinary effects in the previous year: an earn-out payment of CHF 4.2 million from the sale of Trend Sales and a CHF 4 million gain on the disposal of the dreifive Group .
The adjusted income statement mainly corrects for the amortization from business combinations from SMG, the +CHF 5.6 million, and the fully consolidated companies, the +CHF 24.2 million. In addition to that, all costs related to closing the print centers were adjusted. The adjustment in the financial result concerns a one-off effect of +CHF 2.2 million due to the revaluation of the purchase price liability from the full acquisition of minority interest in Neo Advertising . Overall, the adjusted income statement clearly shows that revenue loss uncompensated by reduced costs results in lower profits. I will briefly address the financial development of the segments in the following section. This slide shows the main investments in the TX market segment on a 100% basis. JobCloud and Karriere.at experienced a decline in revenue and earnings attributed to a challenging job market.
Despite this, margins remain appealing, holding in the high 40s percent. SMG continues its positive trend with sales up 16% and substantial earnings growth. In the Goldbach segment, sales sharply declined. The primary drivers for the changes observed are the reintegration of ad sales into Tamedia and 20 Minuten alongside the divestments of the dreifive Group and Goldbach Austria. When analyzing Goldbach without out-of-home business, a substantial portion of the revenue decline has been offset by cost reductions or cost reallocations to Tamedia. This strategic adjustment led to a slightly positive result for the first half of the year, even within a demanding advertising market. The out of home business on the right hand side experienced a slight increase in sales excluding a one-off effect related to an onerous contract. The result for Goldbach out of home are clearly better than the previous year's performance.
Despite a challenging advertising market, 20 Minuten results would have been slightly positive without a negative one-off of -CHF 5.3 million for a social plan. Intensive cost management helped 20 Minuten largely offset this revenue loss. In order to properly assess the performance of 20 Minuten, the effect of last year's sales of the shares in the Austrian companies Heute and heute.at must also be taken into account. Compared to the previous year, this reduced revenue by CHF 3.8 million and earnings by almost CHF 1 million. Tamedia experienced a decline in revenues primarily due to the advertising market and printing business. However, strict cost management enabled Tamedia to slightly improve the results, thereby fully compensating for the revenue loss. Venture sales remained stable while results showed a clear improvement with EBITDA turning positive
for the first half of the year. Group revenue saw a decline due to the ongoing reallocation of service activities from the Group to the media companies. As Pietro already mentioned, the Board of Directors has decided to conduct a public share buyback program. As part of this three-year buyback program, TX Group intends to repurchase own registered shares up to a mid single-digit percentage of the outstanding share capital. The buyback at market price will be carried out on the second trading line followed by the cancellation of the shares and is set to start in the coming weeks. The purpose of this buyback is to deploy capital efficiently and return funds to our shareholders. With this being said, I will hand over to Daniel Mönch.
Thank you, Wolf, and a warm welcome also from my side. I'm happy to give you a brief overview on the first six months of the portfolio. Even though there have been quite some changes in the portfolio, for example, two new CEOs, one at JobCloud and one at Doodle, the overall trends and development remain constant. I will go into more detail company by company, starting with JobCloud. As Pietro and as Wolf have mentioned, the job market in Switzerland and in Austria remains challenging. That's no secret. Within these circumstances, we are quite happy with the development that JobCloud chose. A strict cost discipline helps us to maintain an attractive margin, while ongoing investments in product and innovation help us to defend our strong position. In Austria, t he business is even more affected by the current conditions, resulting in lower revenue but still a strong margin.
The chart on the right-hand side showing the web visits underlines what I've just said. Even though the situation is complicated and challenging, JobCloud was able to improve its position against its competitors as already done in the first six months of this year. We will continue to closely monitor the macroeconomic developments in the second half of the year and maintain a strong cost focus. Coming to SMG, you can see a lot of green on the slide, which underlines the positive development that Wolf already has mentioned. SMG was able to grow by double digits, and the result is even better when looking at the verticals. As you can see on the right-hand side, each of the verticals also was able to contribute to this result and to grow by double digits.
SMG continues to invest in improving the security, efficiency, and user experience of its platforms while at the same time keeping an eye on cost measures. Examples for product innovation are tenant plus in real estate or digital contracts for private sellers in automotive. Since its foundation in 2021, it has always been clearly communicated that the shareholders intend to take SMG public. This remains unchanged, and all shareholders are committed to the IPO path. That said, it's important to outline that no decision on a potential IPO or on the timing has been made yet. As you may have seen, SMG has also published its own half-year report earlier this morning, where you can find more detailed information on the verticals and on their performance. Looking at Group and Ventures including real estate, the task regarding real estate remains unchanged.
We're currently developing a tailored property strategy for each location, and we are assessing whether to do that through partnerships or on our own. We are making good progress and expect to be one step further in early 2026. Doodle and Zattoo present a mixed picture. While both companies face challenges in reaching their growth ambitions, they have significantly improved their bottom line. While we're already at the implementation of the strategy at Zattoo, at Doodle, we're in the midst of the strategy development with the new CEO Christian Fielitz , who joined May 1. Our fintech fund has shown an increased net asset value and successfully closed three new deals in the first six months of the year, and we are seeing an ongoing, very positive, interesting deal flow. We are confident that we will be able to make interesting new investments also in the second half of this year.
Overall, despite the challenges I've mentioned, we are pleased with the development of the portfolio and remain confident that the various assets are moving in the right direction to fully unlock their potential step by step. With that, I'll hand over to you, Tanja.
Thank you and good afternoon from my side as well. Thank you. Just like 2024, now it's switcher. Just like 2024. The first half of 2025 is characterized by transformation and change across our media companies. Over the past six months, we have set the following three priorities for all companies. First of all, to transform the group from a highly functional structure into a decentralized group of independent businesses, each with a high level of entrepreneurial freedom and stronger consumer focus, and in this context, shifting resources from central administrative tasks to product and consumer focused activities. Second, to divest non-strategic and non-profitable activities and businesses, and third, to focus on our digital strategies and accelerate the growth in our businesses. Overall, I can say we are confident that with these efforts we will be able to reach our communicated margin targets.
Let's go through the companies one by one. Al igned with the group priorities and to improve its profitability for the next years, Goldbach has undergone further restructurings, particularly reviewing its existing portfolio in Germany and second, realizing savings in the Goldbach Group and taking over services from the TX Group i n context of the decentralization. O verall, Goldbach had to compensate for the handover of the Tamedia and the 20 Minuten business. This is supported by strong development of the core TV and out of home business. Goldbach out of home began 2025 with a good operational performance despite a challenging environment. As Wolf said, a one-off depreciation for a loss-making contract impacts the picture, but it should not distract from the strong operational performance that the team shows.
Due to the restructuring of the digital ad business with Tamedia and 20 Minuten, the Goldbach digital business had a challenging start in the first half year and had to rethink its standalone strategy. They have decided on a clear focus on programmatic and our strong video position in the market, which can be seen on the right-hand side of the slide. We are confident that they will come back on track in the coming months. 20 Minuten has taken a head start into its purely digital future and decided to discontinue its print product at the end of the year.
We are excited to be able to build on such a strong digital product for the future. T o build a solid financial base and to ensure its profitability for the upcoming years, 20 Minuten has undergone an organizational restructuring in the first half of the year with a reorganization of its editorial activities at its core, while integrating the advertising sales activities took longer than expected and the advertising market has proven challenging. The new setup has now been in place for more than six months. We can say with confidence that the decision shows first positive results. We observe an uplift in direct sales and see the development of several additional monetization ideas. Investing strongly in AI and monetization opportunities will help 20 Minuten to drive future business growth.
Following the big restructuring in 2024 and the closure of one of its three printing centers this year, Tamedia has begun operating in its newly defined organization during the first half of the year and is very satisfied with the first start and results, with preparations underway for the closure of the Zürich printing center in 2026 and the reorganization of the Tamedia advertising team that has been taken over from Goldbach. Tamedia still has several key initiatives ahead this year. Although the advertising market did not show the expected development, Tamedia was able to offset the loss in revenues with additional cost measures. Tamedia is now focused on its transformation and its digital growth strategy to secure long- term success.
Overall, we can say that we are confident that the continuous hard work on the transformation of our businesses will show first positive effects on our margins in 2026 and 2027. Thank you very much. I think I will hand over to Urs. Right.
Thank you. If you have questions in the room, I would hand over the microphone so that the people on the webcast can h ear you as well.
Thank you. First question, the 200,000 shares, are they also already part of the buyback? Not really.
No, they're not part of the buyback, and they will not be eliminated.
You bought them for what purpose?
Maybe I hand over to Pietro.
These shares come out of the family shareholding. There was the structure of one deceased shareholder who wanted to sell the shares. We could buy them at a discount, and I thought it was right to do it in the interest of all shareholders, not to have it traded to other family shareholders, but to buy it with the company and through that also increasing the free float in that case. The idea is to place these shares with a new shareholder outside of the family pool. We are not right now in concrete negotiations for that, but we hold them to ultimately place them or use them for strategic transactions if ever that possibility came up, to partly pay with our own shares. To a certain degree, we could also use these shares in the future for management incentivizations.
The CHF 4.9 million provision in Neo Advertising, that contract. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
It has been a contract which is already a while ago. We can see that actually the assumptions we had for this contract were not correct. We had to adjust for that with the one-time depreciation. We hope that, you know, talking to the partner, we will come up with a better solution, but we don't have it yet. Therefore.
And then on 20 Minuten, Tamedia and also Goldbach without out of home, we have these 2026 targets. Obviously, the margins in H1 are quite far away from these targets. Maybe you can give us a little bit more insight about the bridge to these 2026 targets. Obviously, talking about 20 Minuten, the discontinuation of the print will play a significant role. Tamedia will be printing center and Goldbach will be probably the sale of the businesses. Maybe you can give us a little bit more insight.
Yes. Let's maybe start with Tamedia. You just mentioned it. I think the biggest step ahead is the closing of the Zürich printing center actually to that target. Additionally, the further basically restructuring of the company that's going on. On the other side, of course, growing on the digital side. Those I think are the three big steps that have to be taken. If we look at Goldbach, Goldbach is working very hard on the cost side. First of all in the group. Second, divesting a lot of activities that are around the core activities where we don't see that they are strategically important for us. Those kind of activities we're selling. The third part, of course, is also growing the business on the digital side. That's what we need as a combination.
20 Minuten has actually done the biggest step this year by restructuring the team and restructuring the whole organization. This is one of the biggest steps that they have to take. The additional levels are basically to grow the revenue side again with the investments that we're doing in content and monetization models.
Can you give us an idea about how much sales and EBITDA or EBIT loss the print edition of 20 Minuten did produce?
How much? What? I'm sorry.
Sales and EBITDA.
I think w e have to handle. We don't disclose that. I'm sorry.
We are around break even and without print. How close does that get us to the 14%- 16%? Is it 2/3 of the way? Just the print edition.
It is the restructuring of the team I think that's far, you know, safe to say. T he print part, let's put it that way, it was not break even, but it's not the biggest lever you have. It is important to do it because it enables you also to focus as an organization. The restructuring they did this year was the biggest step towards the margin. They're very confident that they will be able to reach it.
Okay, thank you.
More questions in the room.
You mentioned the substantial investments in 20 Minuten. Can you talk about or quantify them? [crosstalk] T he first question. You looked at Neo, all the contracts or are there all the contracts that you still believe there might be a possibility for more provision?
No I think we have, I will start with the last question and then go to the first question. I think we now, after basically the merger of the two out of home companies, gained a very good perspective on the contracts. I think we know it's already built in the numbers, which contracts we feel very confident about and which not. I think there are no surprises if that's your question waiting for us, which I completely get as a question. We're working on basically each and every one of those contracts to renegotiate them. Of course, they're all coming up again after a while, so we have the opportunity then to negotiate them with better terms. The first question, 20 Minuten, we are especially investing first of all in initiatives on the AI side, which will help us to gain efficiency, but also in product innovation.
This is already taken into account with basically our idea of reaching the margins next year.
An add-on question to the closure of the printing centers. Do you expect for the second half any material, other costs to happen, or is the next step in 2026 to expect?
As far as I see it, I think the team has a pretty good view on how to do it, what kind of costs will be involved. If that's again the question, I think there will be no big surprise on that. They have a very good plan on how to execute it. It just takes time. It's nothing you can do immediately. You have to rearrange a lot of contracts with partners and everything. I think the team has a pretty good plan on how to do it.
Maybe your question is about additional provisions. Everything that we knew last year regarding the closing of the printing center was already included in these provisions. That's basically reflected in the provision: the full plan to close the two printing centers and all the related costs.
Who's next in the room? Karole, do we have some questions online? Nothing.
Here's another question.
Maybe looking at JobCloud, it has not really grown the last years for obvious reasons. Can you give us kind of a substantial growth rate of the business? Are you already in after recruiting services like Indeed, Seek, and (Inaudible)? I think if I pronounce it correctly.
It's hard to pronounce you. Right, yeah. As you know, Przemyslaw is in the Board of Directors of JobCloud, the CEO and Founder of Grupa Pracuj . You mentioned it yourself. It's not growing in the last years. That's due to the difficult conditions we find in the job market. I think compared to our competitors in Europe, we're still doing good. I think it's thanks to really a high cost discipline on one hand side, but on the other hand side also still continuing to invest because we're convinced that when the market conditions will improve that then also we will be back on the growth path and that companies that invest now will even more benefit from the clearing up. It's hard to give some concrete numbers on the growth, but we are still expecting some growth coming back after the macroeconomic developments.
Development gets a bit better than it is at the moment. The second question was. Sorry, yeah. We always. That's a very good question. You mentioned one company that is heavily investing into HR tech services. We're not at that stage. We talk cloud at the moment because we're convinced that in the core of the business there's still a lot of potential for the business, may it be blue collar, may it be the young generation. We see a lot of potential still in the core. This is a question that will be tackled in the upcoming years for sure.
Can you comment a little bit more upon two questions on jobs? Obviously volume declines, macro driven. Any pricing that you can potentially put through? I guess you have a very strong position, and I imagine there's some less, less strong players out there that potentially are eating into budgets of the HR teams. Is there a way for you to price your way up and gain a bit of share there on the wallet side, or would you disclose any of the mix on how does that growth look like?
Yeah, I think we're still at a very good pricing level in Switzerland, and I think especially in situations that are challenging, in a partnership it's also important to reflect the other side of the business, which are the companies that are also facing quite some challenges. Otherwise, they would recruit more than they are currently doing. I think your question, how do we get back on the growth path? I think with jobs it's for sure more volume than price driven, I would say, and more services that we're offering.
More generally about jobs, it has to be borne in mind that the growth post-Corona exceeded all expectations. We are still kind of comparing with an acceleration that has taken place, so the curve will be flatter long- term. The fundamental reasons why this, in our view, remains a very good business are the shortage of qualified labor, especially in a country like Switzerland. That has not changed. The demographic situation and the attractivity of Switzerland, I think, is unchanged. In the medium and long- term view, the fundamental reasons why we have been believing in the potential of digital recruiting are unchanged, and the business is highly profitable. If you compare the profitability of our businesses with any peers in the world, you will see that it is run in a very efficient way.
Maybe lastly to mention, this growth potential in the core is mainly in the segment of the small and medium- sized enterprises, while the market is much more challenging with large enterprises and professional recruiters because they obviously, thanks to the technological development, can disintermediate to a certain extent what we do. In a country like Switzerland, where there is a very strong tissue of small and medium- sized enterprises, we believe that there is really an important growth potential in the core, and that's the top priority for JobCloud.
Maybe just as a follow-up on the capital allocation side, obviously the buyback is a signal strongly out there that you think the prices are underpriced. Does that have any implications on the dividend payout policy you have, or what's the best way to think of that going forward?
No, there has no consequence on dividend payment. We announced last November that we guarantee a dividend of at least CHF 4 per share for the business year 2025 and 2026 as well. This has not changed. It's more like returning a bigger chunk of our liquidity to the shareholders.
Thank you.
We have a question via the webcast. Karole, can you please read it out?
Yes. Can you please provide an update on the real estate portfolio strategy? What should we expect as disclosure going into 2026 to help us better understand the value?
As I said, we're working on a strategy, and I think we will proceed with the strategy. We'll be ready to maybe communicate next steps early 2026. I think on the disclosure, it's maybe the question for you all.
Since we ware not using these assets. The printing center in Lausanne and also the new building that we're building here at our location in the Werdstrasse, we will not be using them for operations in the future. That means we have to change accounting standards here. It will be treated as an investment property. As part of this change, we will give more information about the fair value of these real estates. Once the (Inaudible) in Zürich will be closed for operation, we also give more information about the fair value or we have to give more information about the fair value of this property.
Are there more questions?
Maybe to add this, what I said at the beginning, we see our group standing on two pillars, which is marketplaces, digital recruiting, and media. All the other activities are not strategic, and that includes real estate. We are, as Daniel has explained, in the process of developing a strategy that will help us to make the best out of these values. Whatever negotiations, in whatever negotiation we would like to enter in regarding real estate, we can only do a good job and defend our interests well if we clearly understand what we have and what the potential and the value of what we have is. That is what we are working on in the development of these strategies.
More questions in the room. Anything virtually?
Is the loan to General Atlantic repayable upon the IPO of SMG?
Yes. The current loan to General Atlantic is linked to the IPO. Any proceedings from the IPO from General Atlantic have to be used for the repayment of this loan.
Could you spin off your SMG shares to your shareholders at or after the IPO?
I didn't understand.
Could you spin off your SMG shares to your shareholders at or after the IPO?
If and when an IPO takes place is open, the company is preparing it and is well on track on that procedure. By the way, for those who do not know, SMG will have their own press conference or analyst conference today at 5:00 P.M. Any specific questions relating to SMG would be better placed there than here. As far as we are concerned as a shareholder, it's not possible, unfortunately, to distribute our shares to our shareholders without tax consequences that just make it not feasible. It is not an option for us to distribute these shares to our shareholders. Otherwise we would have considered it, but it's not the plan for us.
More online questions? In room questions? If not, thank you very much for being here this afternoon. It was a pleasure, and we hope to see you soon again.