Alma Media Oyj (ALMA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this interim report session of Alma Media's second quarter and the first half of 2026. My name is Elina Kukkonen, and I'm responsible of the Communications and Brand here in Alma. We will proceed as usual. And first to go on stage will be our CEO, Mr. Kai Telanne. He will present the overall results of Alma Media and highlight the performance of each of our business segments, Alma Career, Alma Marketplaces and Alma News Media. After Kai's presentation, our CFO, Mrs. Taru Lehtinen, will present the financial position of Alma Media today. And then Mr. Kai Telanne returns about the operating environment and our strategy going forward in the era of AI. And after these presentations, we have plenty of time for the questions and answers, and we will first take the questions here at the premises in Alma House. And then we have the questions from online moderated by our Director for Investor Relations, Mr. Teemu Salmi. Okay. Warmly welcome, everyone, to follow us today. Nice to have you here and nice to have you online. And I think with this short introduction, we are good, ready, set to go. So please, Mr. Telanne, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Elina, and good morning, and welcome on my behalf as well, and welcome back to work from summer holidays for those who have returned as we have, full of energy and ready for the second half of the year. I will concentrate more on the second quarter numbers and achievements, and I think as Taru as well. As you noticed or maybe noticed already, Alma Media delivered again a strong quarter. And the big news here is that the strength came from all over the businesses, I would say, abroad, which actually tells us that the strategic choices and the execution works pretty well. We have set our revenue targets to 5% in long-term targets, and now we are delivering according to the targets, revenue growing 5% during the second quarter growth to EUR 87 million and adjusted profit accordingly, 15.6%, up to EUR 24.4 million to 27.7%, which is well on track, I would say, and we are quite confident that the good development should be continued. Most of the revenue growth came from organic growth. As you might remember, we have had some acquisitions also comparables for this quarter, but the revenues and the acquisitions, they are working accordingly and according to our plan and expectations, and that's a good sign for our ability to integrate the new businesses. Of course, digital classifieds and digital services and media are the main drivers for the growth and the profitability improvement. The share of the digital business up over to 87%. So 13% left for the transformation, the digital transformation, so to say. So we are well on track on that. And I would say that we can do this. Because of the good cash flow good results, good cash flow. The financial position that Taru will go deeper into the details later, it's really strong and getting stronger. The leverage getting -- going down and then the equity ratio nicely up, which is, of course, a good foundation for further purposes and further investments if we find good targets. And as I said, the quality of the quarter comes from the breadth of the development, meaning that all the segments were able to grow and increase their profitability. From this slide, you can see that marketplaces, again, has been the driver for the growth and the profitability improvement, but other segments are doing their job evenly and according to the plan or even better. On the right side of the slide, you can see where the growth comes from. It comes from classified businesses and digital services, the biggest growth, of course. And the classified part, it comes from the Career Czech businesses and then, of course, marketplaces businesses in Finland and Sweden. So that is the driver for the growth during the second quarter. But a good sign, very good sign for the whole company is, of course, that the advertising market in Finland has -- especially the digital advertising market has started to pick up slightly. And our performance in that market has been extremely good and the figures are telling us the growth and the good possibility to grow even more in the future. And of course, the digital content has been the core of the development initiatives inside the Media segment has continued to perform. So the digital subscription base has grown. And for that, we've been able to mitigate the slight decline of the print business and by that, the profitability going up. So I'm really happy with the overall performance of the company, while every segment is doing their job properly. Okay. Let's go deeper into the business segment, so we can have a little bit more details. Just to remind you, the way we run the business, we have 3 business segments: Alma Career led by Vesa-Pekka Kirsi; Marketplaces led by Santtu Elsinen; and News Media led by Juha-Petri Loimovuori. And here are the core -- the main numbers, revenues and profitability. Start from the Career. Recruitment services in 10 countries in Scandinavia, Baltic countries, Central Eastern Europe and so on. 5.5% revenue growth and around 5% profitability growth. So we were able to defend the good margin of 42% despite the investments that we have made and have on board for the common recruitment platform development and the cloud migration. We have extra overlapping costs for those this year and we should be able to get rid of those by the end of the year, most of those and that will increase the margins even further. There are differences in the different regional markets, as we can see from here. The driver for the growth and the profitability improvement has been, again, Career Central, where the -- all the customer segments have grown, started to recruit -- and Career North, like the Baltic countries, we have seen a slight market development. The problem is Finland, where the demand for labor has been on a very low side. Hopefully, that will change while we have seen gradual development already in the market, but not quite visible yet. And then in South, the business is quite okay. We have some difficulties in getting the service sector labor in place and there that is the restraint for our growth at the moment in there. But very good development. I'm really happy that all the segments are doing pretty good and according to the plans. So the main message here is that good ability to retain margins despite the investments and the classified the core of the business started to grow with 6.7%. And later, we can see that the invoicing, so the sales has started to grow also. We have been able to decrease some major costs like personnel costs. And by the end of the year, we will be able to decrease also the ICT cost that we have in place at the moment for the development. So that's good, very good performance. And as I said, the future looks pretty good as well. So we wait for the invoicing, meaning sales in our case, to continue the growth. The Central European market seems to be quite good at the moment and developing, the big question remains the Finnish market, as I said. And the services are working pretty good. So we have good quality, high quality and good load of data there as well. Secondly, the driver for our second quarter growth and profitability improvement is the Marketplaces. Just to remind you, we have marketplaces in Finland and Sweden. In Finland, the core is houses and premises and inside services, comparison services. And in Sweden, we have commercial premises for business purposes. And Swedish market has continued the growth and to drive as we have seen already earlier, and we are doing extremely well there. So the revenue, 9.2% up, of which the organic growth, 6.7%. So the Acquired businesses have been integrated properly into the current businesses, and we have been able to leverage the business. We are -- we enjoy the synergies at the moment, and that's why the profitability hand-in-hand with the revenue growth is going nicely up. All the businesses, as you can see from the slide on the center of this slide, going nicely up, real estate, mobility, comparison services and inside services. 6% jump in profitability, around 6% -- 6, how do you say it in English, percentage points from 28.8% to 34.6%. It's quite a good, good sign of our disciplined strategy, execution and ability to drive the synergies. What to say? The digital services, of course, where we have invested and acquired new businesses is the biggest growth driver here percentages-wise. And the classifieds, the second biggest one, which is the core of the Marketplaces business, of course. And this is really important for us to see that the core businesses are growing now even more than we actually expected despite the subdued market, where we are operating, as we know, the housing businesses, housing premises, especially in Finland, and the car business is on a very low level still. But also in these circumstances, we can do pretty okay business. A few slides about the market, which is, of course, important to understand and for us also to follow closely. The consumer confidence is still on a very low level, as we know in Finland. And that's, of course, highly connected into the housing market development. As we can see, this is quite sad picture of the market development, while the housing market is still 17.4% below comparable figures, so last year's second quarter. So that tells us quite a lot about the consumer confidence. But there are good signs also, so we can come back to that. But then the other message here is that there are actions in the marketplaces of ours, the lower part of this slide, meaning about 4% more listings. There's a bit buyer's market still in the market. So it's a good time actually to buy house if you are aiming at that. And we can reach the buyers and sellers. So there's a lot of activity and a good reach of our service going up 9.2%. So the services of ours are working pretty well. And the same with the mobility market, unfortunately, the new car sales has not really picked up. There's a slight increase in new car sales. And because of the lack of the renewal of the fleet in Finland, there's too little to sell or buy of the used cars and the market is quite stable, so to say. And for the services, the lack of content, so to say, when you don't get new cars into the market. So we are just actually moving the old cars inside the services and the buyers and sellers, of course, need more stuff there to act. But the reach is really good. So the marketplaces are working pretty well. So we can reach all the buyers and sellers and the service mix of the portfolio is increasing all the time, so we can do all the transactions on digital platform, which is, of course, very good for the buyer sellers and for us as well. And then thirdly, last but not least, extremely good performance again on our News Media segment, 10th consecutive improvement in profitability is telling us that the portfolio restructuring and the choices have been right. The execution is extremely good, good cost discipline. The implementation of AI in that segment is also very well on track. And the digital transformation seems to be working perfectly. The print business, as we know, the market and ours as well is declining slightly, but we can now say that we can mitigate the decline with the good development of digital content and digital advertising, which drives the profitability up and drives the content -- print-related costs down, and that's why with the good mix, good execution, cost discipline and digital transformation, the profitability grows as we have planned and even expected or even better. So we can say that media business is now on digital format, media business is growing profitable business. There's a high demand of journalism, as we know, of course, with the help of the news that we hear all the time from abroad. And we -- our reach is really good in the main markets. So there's a good foundation for the further media business as well. We have talked about the ad market, which is heavily related on the overall economic development and the GDP development and confidence and so on. Now we have seen slight improvement in Finnish ad market already. Hopefully, that continues. And we have benefited, of course, from the slight change in the market. We have been able to grow a little bit more than the market, meaning that we have gained market share and our performance has been really good on the digital side as we have seen and will continue. So now it's Taru's turn to go deeper into the financials and the balance sheet issues. I will return with the market -- underlying market development later and the strategy that we will continue. Please.

Thank you, Kai, and welcome to our analysts also from my behalf. Like Kai presented, we have a good performance in our businesses in the second quarter, and this is, of course, clearly showing in our financial position. The second quarter was probably the quarter of deleveraging for our balance sheet. We paid EUR 40 million dividend during the quarter and also repaid the loans. And with that, ended up with a strong balance sheet. But let me go through a couple of the details. So our interest-bearing net debt amounting EUR 125 million in the end of the June, which was EUR 33 million less than in the previous year. Our net debt is developing now really nicely. And like you can see, of course, the balance is higher than it was in the end of the March due to the dividend payment. But on the other hand, we are clearly below the previous year end of June. We repaid our debt by EUR 15 million during the Q2 and also raised EUR 10 million commercial paper or issued EUR 10 million commercial paper. In connection with that, we also repaid EUR 2 million of financial lease liabilities. It's also worth of mentioning that we renewed our interest rate derivative agreement during the Q2. So previously, we had a 2 agreement, amounting EUR 50 million and another one amounting EUR 30 million. And now we combined these 2 by one single agreement of EUR 60 million ending in the end of the year 2028. Our average interest rate was in the previous year level. So no surprises coming from there. Our balance sheet KPIs are developing really nicely. So the equity ratio amounting -- going up like 52% and the gearing going down by to 52% also. So the balance sheet is moving really according to the plan and our balance sheet supporting our investments and future growth investments. Also the cash flow during the Q2, there was more modest development in the quarter level. So the operative cash flow for Q2 was EUR 15.6 million, while in the previous year, ending up to EUR 15.5 million. But like you remember, our first quarter cash flow was really strong. So now the cumulative increase in our operative cash flow is more than EUR 7 million. And there's no specific reasoning behind that, just a normal fluctuation and seasonality between working capital. And like you can see from the bridge on the right-hand side, the change in the working capital is really stable for -- as a full year effect. So the main contributor for our cash flow is our good operating result, contributing EUR 5 million in the first half of the year. The taxes paid, of course, increased a bit due to the increase of the result. But on the other hand, it's explained that the seasonality between the tax payments between years and quarters. The free cash flow in the second quarter was EUR 14.7 million compared to previous year, EUR 13.8 million. And actually, the free cash flow for the first half of the year almost doubled. So the behind this is, of course, the good operating result, but also explained by the investments. So during 2026, we have done only small investments as a CapEx investments to our product development. And we haven't been executing any M&A acquisition during the '26, and this is explaining the really strong free cash flow for '26. Still reminding you that we are actually actively developing our services and products, but we are mostly showing these expenses as an OpEx. Also this doesn't mean that we are not developing our services. It's more about the message that we are showing those as an expenses. And also it is worth of mentioning that our depreciations are lower than in the previous year because of the purchase price allocation amortization, which are more or less EUR 1 million less than in the previous year as described earlier. And then moving to earning per share, we had a really strong quarter from the earning per share perspective, ending up to EUR 0.22 compared to EUR 0.18 previous year. The good operative result is the biggest contributor behind of this, but of course, the adjusted items are also explaining. So during 2026 we haven't had, or in the second quarter we had only 200,000 adjusted items compared EUR 1.2 million in the previous year. And this means also that our adjusted operating profit equals in practice to our reported numbers. And there wasn't any exceptional changes in the interest items or financial items in the second quarter. Our interest rate, cost was a little bit lower than in the previous year, due to the fact that our principal amounts were lower, and also the exchange rates were more like positive compared to negative ones in the previous year. So in that sense, our return on equity and return on invest are progressing really well, ending up to return on equity 33% and return on invest to 21%. Really extremely good result on this. And then finally, concluding our business results compared to our long-term financial targets. So this was the quarter that we were able to gain our revenue growth target 5%, and which is extremely good news now is that most of this is coming organically. So in the second quarter, the organic development was 2%, and in the cumulative numbers it was 3.6%. And like, I already mentioned, the main contributors behind the revenue growth is the classified revenue and the digital services. They share equally the development on this. And it also worth of mentioning that our digital revenue as a total grew 6.6%. And this, of course, the decline of print and other offline products were then offsetting, for example, the development in news media. In news media, the increase of digital revenue was 2.3% in the first half of the 2026. And this is clearly also shown in our profitability. Our long-term target is to gain 30% profitability. Adjusted operating profit margin, during the last 12 months, we are now in 26.4%. And I would say that there are three components behind that. Of course, our business is growing in digital products, which has the better margin development and declining in the print and offline products with the lower margin. Then of course, the active cost management and discipline cost actions that we are doing. But of course, keeping in mind that we have this technical PPA amortization explaining the factor. The role for that is 1/3 or less. And then finally, our goal is to keep our leverage below 2.5. Currently we are in the 1.2, which means that there is a good room for investments in our balance sheet. Okay. Then back to Kai. That is all from me.

Thank you, Taru. As noted, strong cash flow, healthy balance sheet, good foundation for going forward. But before we go to the strategy, let's have a look at the operating environment. And that is, of course, a big discussion. We can debate quite a lot that this slight recovery, is this sustainable or not? We start from the Finnish market. As we have noticed, the business confidence has already started to increase. It started from the export businesses manufacturing and now the services and retail have followed. The only problem and the biggest problem is, of course, and seems to be the construction. While the new houses construction sales and the market has been on a very low side, and that is highly related on the consumer confidence that is still on a low side. But if we believe that the studied pick up from July is sustainable, so the future would look better, right? And while the industry's confidence -- the business' confidence, like for the retail services and manufacturing have already picked up. We have seen that the investments for the businesses has already started, or have started. Like for advertising and hopefully for the labor as well. But that comes hopefully later. So there are gradual signs or signs of gradual recovery also on the Finnish economy and consumer confidence. So the rest of the later part of the year looks from this point of view, a little bit better than the first part of the year. So we hope that the recovery that we have been waiting for years now has started. Remains to be seen. But then the other markets, of course, we have very important operating markets in the Central Europe. It seems that the GDP estimates are okay-ish. They are better than they were last year mostly and getting better. So we have seen that for the Czech market, the businesses have started to grow. And especially for the smaller countries, the growth rates are bigger there, but the revenues and the money is smaller for our purposes. So no big deal or big problems seem to be there. The unemployment rates in Central Europe and Czech Republic, there we have the lowest unemployment rate in Europe. It seems to be there. In Finland and Sweden, especially in Finland, we have the problem remaining but hopefully it will ease up. So no big changes there. So quite a good market for us to maneuver. So that is it. Hopefully, we don't get more hiccups from global arena like with the Ukrainian situation getting worse or other hiccups like for inflation or interest rates. I think, it seems that the consumers and especially the businesses, they are quite used to the current level at the moment. So you don't hear too much talk about the level of interest rates for the investments or the inflation, so that is quite good. So I think, is it too early to say that we have resolved the inflation and interest rate problem or not, but for the investments, the current level is quite okay. Okay. Let's have a few words about our strategy. How do we go forward while we are at this stage with a good balance sheet and good cash flow? So the journey will continue. Let's concentrate on the last step, 2020 forward. So as we know, we are close to finalizing the digital transformation, 13%, something else than digital business at the moment. We can say that it has been done and it's almost finished. Now we are in the second or the next phase, which is the AI adoption and platform integration. So we are applying the AI, the newest technology into our services to increase the customer value, to increase the productivity, to increase the value, the quality of the services, and the reach. So we are streamlining or automating the processes of ours and also for the benefit of customers. Meaning that we are creating entire end-to-end platforms with the help of AI so that you could do the business in our digital platform in a cost-effective way, with a high-quality way, so that the matchmaking will get better and better all the time. And of course, we will continue to grow with the help of AI or the M&A, sorry, or help of AI as well. But with the help of M&A while the balance sheet is getting stronger and stronger, so we have plenty of room for investments, and we have a good relationship with the banks as well. So we hopefully can get loans if and when we need. That is the case. So we'll continue or even speed up the transformation. We are relying on the strongholds of the company. And those are, of course, strong brands, leading positions, the newest technology, long customer relationships, data and data capabilities and domain-specific expertise. I would say that for our purposes and in the businesses where we are in, we have all the needed resources that we need to flourish in coming years as well. So to summarize the strategy, we continue to transform to the next stage, which is the AI-helped businesses. We continue to grow with new businesses, add-on businesses, and maybe new areas as well. And we are able to scale, to integrate the new businesses into the current ones, use the data -- common data, common platforms, and do it on a very productive and profitable way. And to be a little bit more concrete in the AI development, we just talked in the morning with the personnel that where are we, what is the stance at the moment, and how do we drive the future further? It is summarized like this. So we are well on track with the increasing internal productivity. So every Alma Media have the tools at use. We are quite well on track with applying the tools for process development inside the teams. So automating processes inside the company in order to jump into improving customer experience and value for the customer. So we are moving the skills and the initiatives and the investments in order to help the customers doing better business and seeing the productivity increments in their businesses. Embedded platforms has been the key for increasing the customer engagement. And then finally, when we are educated enough and good enough, we will be in new business models, but that is the future for coming years. We have some new businesses already there, but the revenues are still to come. That's it. So the -- as we know, the discovery of our customers' information discovery, product discovery, media discovery is reshaping. We all know that from our personnel perspective. And we know that the winners in the market, they need to have high-quality data in order to succeed. They need to have the ability to use the data. They need to have end-to-end platforms to serve the customers in use of the data and data -- in order to do that, you need to have the domain-specific best expertise. And all those is the ones that Alma is built on. So we have strong brands. We have long customer relationships. We have a lot of data, like 3 million locked-in customers inside the group, and we have ability to learn and the mentality to learn quickly. And that's where we built on the current and the coming success. And of course, we invest enough into this. While we have a strong cash flow balance sheet, we invest enough in order to apply all the technology. So very good strategy and plans in place. We are a bit careful about the market developers still, so it remains to be seen, is the consumer confidence development sustainable? Hopefully, it is. We can see that we can keep the revenue level of last year, and as we can see that the operating profit is going to improve from the last year. So that is where we stand at the moment. As we have noticed, there are signs of gradual recovery, but we need a little bit more indications for that to be sustainable before we can make a different stance. But to summarize, I would say that this was a good sign of our strategy to work. A profitable growth in all segments. Digital transformation almost finalized or ending to its life cycle as a project. Record high margin in News Media. Extremely good growth in Marketplaces. Good ability to sustain the profitability in Career, and good growth starting in Central Europe. And a clear position in AI development and ability to use the technology. That is the picture at the moment. This is not a one-off, actually. The second quarter, from my point of view, is not a one-off. It's about structural change and the design of our strategy. Right choices in the market and extremely good execution of the strategy. Well-disciplined execution of chosen path. So that's -- Elina, was that my part? Yes. That was my part. I'm happy to answer your questions that you might have. I noticed that there are some online and maybe some also from the audience. Here we have, actually, the business segment leaders, so I leave all the segment-specific questions for those who are experts -- domain experts, as I said, on the arena. Well, thank you. Please.

This is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. You already explained rationale a bit behind the guidance, but I still continue on the topic and ask about the sales guidance. You are guiding that to be flat year-on-year this year after being up 5% in H1. So do you think that H1 5% was growth in your wording? So that if you would grow 5%...

Remains to be seen. No, we are cautious with the end of the year. Of course, the comparables are something. But we wait for the signs of the consumer confidence to be again, in the market. If the plans of the businesses are going to be sustainable, then the growth might be as it has. But we really don't know. The most difficult part to estimate is the advertising market. And we have seen fluctuation on daily, weekly, and monthly basis in the ad market, but now it seems to be okay. Remains to be seen does that sustain. I don't know.

All right. We'll look forward to that. Then on another topic, you said that you aim to help your clients to improve their business with AI and new features you are bringing. So do you think that that has been already visible in your business or sales average price per user you are gaining, or is the financial impact to you maybe a bit further away?

Both. We have already some extensions in the services done by the or with the help of AI. And the rest of the year will show that we will have new add-ons to the services as well. So there are actually two ways. So to increase the quality and the matchmaking ability of the services is one, so that you can see the higher customer value when using our service, or then increase the productivity or the cost effectiveness of using our services. And that comes from the platforms that we are developing. Like, we have developed the entire digital platforms for the use of houses and premises market, like for the agents or private customers with the digital, like DIAS or other services. You can do the transaction the full -- from discovery to the transaction with our services. So you already have the product benefits, productivity benefits, or the cost benefits on the customer side. And of course, we have streamlined our operations and are streamlining already our operations with the help of AI. So the productivity gains are already seen in our own work. We have been able to move some of the productivity gains to the customers as well, and of course, their products will be heavily improved in coming quarters with the help of AI. But we do not actually, how to say? We do not split the productivity gains specifically to AI or something else. We do this as a whole process, and we do not make a distinction between the productivity gains. Is this coming from the AI or from something else? We are improving the industrial processes inside the company and some of the productivity gains come from the AI. Some comes from the streamlining the way of working, and we are talking about redesign of work inside the company. So both. We have seen and we will see more in the coming quarters from productivity side and from product quality side.

All right. And then last one from me regarding mobility volumes. I guess that the 7.5% decline is a bigger decline than what the market transactions have been. So what -- can you explain a bit what is behind that?

Okay. Santtu Elsinen, you are there as well, so you can go into the details more.

Yes. Let's check perhaps if I answer your question a bit later.

You said that the 17.4%?

7.5% decline.

7.5% decline in the market. Yes.

The number of activities [indiscernible]

This is Pia Rosqvist from DNB Carnegie. I have a few questions, and I'm still coming back to the guidance. Your adjusted EBIT grew by 17% year-on-year in the first half. So now keeping in mind your comment on continued or even maybe accelerating productivity improvements in the coming quarter, how should we view this 17% earnings growth in the first half? Is this representative for the full year, or are there specific factors we should keep in mind now that will lead to lower growth in earnings in the second half compared to the first half?

No. Well, it remains to be seen while the market is fluctuating more or less. The good signs now we had, I would say that during the second quarter, every segment performed extremely well and quite rare situation while everybody over-performed or at least performed according to the plans and the strategy. So if that continues, then the growth might be as you said. But then we have the underlying market, which we can't actually decide is it going to grow or not. Now it seems that there's a gradual recovery in the market, and if that continues, we might even be able to speed up. But we don't put that in our estimation or on numbers yet.

Then the advertising market and the kind of positive news we saw in June, what do you see currently? Is there -- is this strength across the board, or was this something specific happening in June which led to that the market was positive?

Tiina can answer that. She is the expert here.

So June we saw a slight recovery, and it seems that it comes from finance but also from some other industries. And for us, we have been able to gain some market share, as Kai told earlier, so outperformed digital market during the quarter 2. And as Kai already told, it is very difficult to say about the coming quarters how the market will actually work. So that seems to be seen. We of course hope that it will grow a little bit more than it has been for the first half year. But we do not give the estimate at the moment.

So the good signs from advertising perspective is of course that the services and retail sector in Finland has started to pick up. So the expectations for the businesses there are better than they have been. So the market seems to be recovering. Usually that brings the advertising along if that happens. The problem for us is, of course, the big house housing market in Finland. Is that going to stay on a low level or not? Hopefully not. And then the car market. And for those, the change might not be that quick as for some other markets because these investments for private persons, like houses or premises or car, they are big investments and that might take time before the tide changes for that. It might be a little bit longer than month or 2. Hopefully, it happens.

And then to your balance sheet and maybe part of your strategy being acquisitions, how would you describe your M&A pipeline? Is it more active than before? And, yes, I think you mentioned something about transformation. Could you comment upon your view or your ambition to make kind of transformative acquisitions? Should we expect transformative acquisitions for Alma Media or more like what you have done so far adding to your services?

Hopefully both. So we -- of course, we continue with this kind of bolt-on acquisition in order to support the current core, and that will definitely happen. The big ones, the transformative ones, of course, you need the counterparty and good targets. But the idea is of course that we are looking for that. We are doing our homework, of course, on that. And now we start to have room for doing bigger investments. So we could spend a little bit more than during the last 5 years. You might remember that we have done this kind of investments every fifth year, around every fifth year. So it's good to understand that they -- in the business areas we are working at, the profitability profile are very high -- quite high. So we are not aiming into a low profitability businesses. And while the profitability profile is high, the prices are usually quite high, of course, naturally. So we need to have power for that, and step-by-step our power and the pocket is getting better and better, and the ability to do this kind of transformative moves is getting better. Of course, Alma, we will use the resources cleverly when there's the chance, and you can count on that.

Then finally, may I ask maybe Taru on the non-allocated operations, the costs in EBIT, they have hovered around EUR 4 million now on a quarterly basis over the past 3 quarters. And in Q2, I think the costs were up by EUR 1 million year-on-year. So is this representative, this EUR 4 million level, for the coming quarters as well?

Yes. Not fully. We have some non-allocated costs that have been increasing during the first quarter. Some related to IT expenses that has been the part of like our shared function related, non-allocated costs, and that's the reason more like this kind of, not like one time, but having this comparability -- not fully comparable. Then there's, of course, we are not allocating all these kind of personnel plans to our businesses, and due to the fact that our businesses has been growing nicely, also the cost for those plans has been increasing.

So to summarize that question, a short answer is that without the numbers, we haven't and we don't have any plan to increase the central management staff or other resources. So we are really disciplined in that. So the -- all the cost that you can see there are the ones that we share, or the activities where the cost comes are actually the ones that we share with the businesses altogether. So we do the common platforms or underlying infrastructure.

So just to make it clear, should we expect EUR 4 million for the coming quarters as well?

No, you should not expect that yet.

Petri Gostowski from Inderes. One more question related to Career and invoicing development. We see an uptick in the slide where you have the graph on invoicing. If you could talk about the momentum there in demand, how did you see it in Q2 and lately?

Let's get the slide up. As Kai pointed out, markets differ from each other. The current growth is driven by especially Czech market, which is growing well even in its own situation. The market itself is in a high, the [ GDPR ] is growing. At the same time, we see for the first time in a couple of years our own volume growth in Czech market. The volume growth, however, is less than our own invoicing growth, so we are increasing ARPA, which comes from our new packaging in Czech market. It comes from new services that we've introduced, services like Nelisa. It's a combination of factors. But it's not only driven by Czech market, even though it's the strongest market. The Baltics, especially Latvia and Estonia, are recovering well. At the moment, we have markets that are more flattish. Slovakia and Croatia are the ones that we are fighting to start get them into the growth. And then there are small markets that are also in decline. Kai mentioned Finland. Lithuania is one of those as well. So it's a mix of these markets, but the Czech growth at the moment is so strong that it helps the whole group to grow, but there are also other supporting markets to do the same.

Okay. Any more questions? Does Santtu want to add on something?

I am still waiting because the change that you asked actually occurred July, August last year. So I am digging a bit of.

Okay. You take your time. We move on to the online questions. If you pass the microphone for Teemu.

Thank you. We have plenty of online questions, which is also obviously a good thing. First of all, Sanna, if you are out there, I hope you are happy already with the guidance questions, because this is very much what would be asked. So -- but please let me know if you are not that unhappy. If you are unhappy, let me know and we will do that again. But so go with Sanna Perala from Nordea Markets. Her questions goes as follows. Let us start with Career. In Career, the EBIT margin was stable year-on-year despite sales growth. What are the key levers to expand margins in the near future?

Vesku, I know the answer, but you can answer.