Ströer SE & Co. KGaA (SAX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our H1 2021 results call today. Together with our entire Board, Christian, Henning and Christian, we will present the financials for the first half 2021 and give you more information about the current business dynamics across all segments but especially Out-of-Home Media in the light of a normalizing Out-of-Home market, our financial development in H1 across the various businesses and subsegments. We wanted to take the opportunity to make a deeper dive into the product and platform development of Statista before we close the presentation with the outlook for Q3 and the full year, including an update of our ESG initiatives. The first half of this year was unsurprisingly driven by the dynamics of the pandemic and especially the lockdown measures of the government. So we talk about 6 months, of which more than 5 are facing massive restrictions of public life. But our strategic model Out-of-Home PLUS clearly paid off in the crisis. Especially at the end of April, we focus on protecting our core business and its key levers for the future. We managed costs carefully but make sure not to have any crucial relationships with partners or key initiatives like digitization or local sales. From May onwards and already before the end of the lockdown, we got back to full speed on both sales as well as portfolio development and digital rollout, definitely also a key reason why already at the end of H1 we could see pre-COVID Out-of-Home levels and even stronger public video numbers. The non-Out-of-Home business, our PLUS segment, Digital & Dialog Media as well as DaaS & E-Commerce have seen 2 really strong quarters and were operatingly unimpressed or even supported by COVID-19. The business diversification across media segments within one country was definitely a resilient setup in the crisis. Since advertising market shows more vitality again, the demand for digital media as well as tech and data-driven solutions is even stronger than pre COVID, and this should also give us more midterm tailwind for our specific and very digital-focused setup. Our leading Out-of-Home position furthermore helps us gaining market share when advertisers come back and focus on premium and digital solutions from the larger players, us and JCDecaux. So we already started accelerating our infrastructure development plans towards more roadside screens. And at the end of H1, we see all sales channels, programmatic, national key accounting, regional as well as local sales back on full speed and optimistic for H2. The results for the first half 2020 once again reflects advantages of our globally unique positioning with Out-of-Home PLUS. Broader performance in a challenging environment of the first 5 months of the year due to the massive restrictions of public life and accelerated growth in a recovery market environment in addition to the sound performance of our content-based businesses, dialogue marketing as well as our DaaS and E-Commerce activities, Statista and Asam, Out-of-Home contributed its share to the strong performance. Reported revenues in the first half of 2021 for the group stand at EUR 686 million, up 8% compared to the prior year period. Organic revenue was at a comparable level with 8.9%, or 23 percentage points, above the level of H1 2020. The adjusted EBITDA increased by 5% to EUR 180 million following the overall revenue development. Our adjusted EBIT benefited from a better operational performance and a slightly lower D&A volume. Due to the lower comparative value of the previous year, adjusted EBIT improved over-proportionally by 36% from EUR 35 million to EUR 48 million. Adjusted net income accelerated over-proportionally as well and was up by 48% from EUR 18 million to EUR 27 million. Operating cash flow for the first 6 months was solid with EUR 120 million, however, some EUR 20 million lower compared to H1 2020 due to higher receivable levels triggered by the overall higher business volume in the current reporting period. Driven by lower CapEx spend in the first quarter of the year due to phasing effects, CapEx for the first half was EUR 38 million, or 26% less, compared to the same period in 2020. For the second half of the year, we will again accelerate the ramp-up of our digital footprint especially for digital roadside screens and expect the full year CapEx spend at least on prior year level. Let me zoom a little bit into our segments to highlight some initiatives and results but also form the fundamentals for the rest of the year and our midterm perspectives. COVID, ultimately, it's just a bump in our road, and we see all long-term business drivers fully intact. Our market share in Out-of-Home is based on the latest and most reliable data from the German Advertising Association, ZAW, 63%. Besides our unique public video product, we have currently 748 roadside screens live and expect to see the crucial 1,000 at the very beginning of next year. Together with JCDecaux and the Out-of-Home Association, we are just launching dynamic audiences for digital roadside inventory and premarketing for the new nationwide network to start from September. Local sales order book stands at plus 28% versus prior year, so our pipeline for 2022 and the following years is intact. Programmatic represents at the moment 43% of our public video revenue, and this gives us interesting opportunities once we open our roadside network also for best sales channel. In our Digital & Dialog Media segment, the T-Online, the service content offering, so excluding the email platform, the #1 news website since mid of Q2 and we see a strong and sustainable traffic development across all our publishing assets and verticals. Third-party sales was at 360 monetization model, for our publisher bundles roughly 1/3 of the revenues of all German publishing assets. And programmatic and data revenue count here for 52% of the total. Both our contact centers and door-to-door have again broadened the customer base via our group key account access, have optimized operational KPIs, also the employment market is more challenging at the moment. DaaS and E-Commerce have been slightly outperforming our expectations in H1. Statista's top line growth is also fueled by an optimized churn and net revenue retention, improved traffic and sales funnel management and strong product improvements, which Christian will show in more detail later in our presentation. Asam's momentum is driven by the unchanged dynamics of E-Commerce. And we have kicked off this year's planned investments of EUR 5 million into new markets like U.S., France and Poland as well as the enhanced live video sales channel. And our current order book for Q3 shows that the achievements of H1 also converts into a strong start into H2. To give you a better orientation about the business performance, we look at the comps of both 2019 and 2020. Out-of-Home Media revenue is in the range of plus 29% to plus 28% versus 2020; and around 2019 levels, up 5%. Especially national sales and public video shows the best recovery dynamics at the moment. Digital & Dialog Media stand at around plus 10% versus 2020 and plus 17% versus 2019. The total online business as well as our contact centers performed strong. Door-to-door is robust against extremely tough comps from last year. The Ranger had massive catch-up effects as it couldn't serve most of Q2 2020. DaaS and E-Commerce in Q3 is currently fully in line with what we have delivered in the last quarter, between 30% and 35% growth versus last year and 68% to 75% growth versus 2019. Even if Out-of-Home's overall on pre-COVID level in Q3 so far, it's worth having a look at different products and client clusters as the picture isn't fully consistent yet. In some areas, we are already growing significantly versus pre-COVID baseline. In other areas, we have still potential to catch up especially when the pandemic is really over. Clearly above the pre COVID are roadside screens, public video, our retail and media around supermarkets and our signage media. For a customer clusters view, small local clients, E-Commerce, media and the public sector are currently extremely dynamic. Around the pre-COVID levels, we see billboards, scrollers, street furniture and Out-of-Home service business around Out-of-Home products. Looking at clients, it's the regional portfolio, automotive, telco, finance, FMCG and food that has really recovered from the pandemic. Still below pre-COVID levels is the analog inventory, the public transport locations, culture media and columns, ambient media in locations like airports, fitness studios or restaurants as well as our international Out-of-Home business. And we see similar catch-up potential with our event clients, customers in high investment categories, traditional [ REITs ] challenging but we use opportunities for our PLUS businesses and made our homework to further grow our core Out-of-Home segment. Let me now hand over to Henning, who will guide you through the financial details and the results of the second quarter of 2021.

Thank you, Udo, and hello to everybody. Before we get into the details of the Q2 2021 financials, let's note again that we are comparing 2 quarters with different economic backdrops here. Q2 2020 when we all went into a tightening lockdown versus Q2 '21, a quarter with light at the end of the tunnel due to an increasing vaccination rate and reduced incidence rates as well as a step-by-step easing of the corona measures here in Germany. Even when taking this into account, Ströer continued to perform very strongly in Q2. Revenues were up significantly by 42%, or in absolute terms from EUR 264 million to EUR 374 million. Organic growth developed accordingly. This strong sales increase led to a significantly improving EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA increased from EUR 55 million to EUR 107 million and thus more than compensating the earnings decline of the first quarter. The adjusted EBITDA margin improved significantly from 21% to around 29%. This development was driven by both the operating post lockdown dynamics of our Out-of-Home business, as well as continued strength in the Digital & Dialog Media business. At the same time, the support of short-term work allowances in this year's Q2 was some EUR 18 million less than in prior year second quarter. So all in all, the underlying improvement was even stronger. As our focus is less on M&A and rather on organic growth and since many restructuring efforts have already been implemented in the past, exceptional items are down significantly from minus EUR 10.6 million to EUR 0.6 million. This improving earnings quality is in line with the guidance we have given. However, this does not imply that there will be no adjustments effect in the future. But again, the magnitude should be much lower than what we have seen in the last couple of years. Depreciation and amortization, including mainly the depreciation on IFRS 16 assets, was minus EUR 79 million, EUR 10 million below the level of Q2 2020. The main driver behind this development are impairments in the prior year and lower amortizations from PPA assets. Some assets which have been recognized in the process of historical purchase price allocations are fully written down in the meantime, so underlying D&A has been more or less flat. With minus EUR 7 million, the financial result was EUR 1.7 million better compared to Q2 '20 mainly because of impairments on loans for former group companies in the prior year. The tax result came in with approximately minus EUR 5 million compared to a tax income of EUR 8 million in Q2 '20. Summing all this up, net income adjusted turned positive with EUR 26 million in Q2 '21 compared to a loss of EUR 17 million in Q2 '20. Reported net income showed an even stronger improvement from minus EUR 45.2 million to now EUR 15.4 million, again, supported by lower adjustments on EBITDA level as well as lower adjustments on D&A but, more importantly, fueled by a very healthy operational performance in the second quarter. Moving over to cash flow. We see an improving cash -- operating cash flow, which has improved to -- from EUR 71 million to EUR 93 million. So we see that better EBITDA is not fully converting into better cash flow. This has to be seen in the context with last year's heavy cash flow protection mode due to the evolving pandemic, which at the time led to a strong contribution from working capital. Since we ended last year with a cash outflow from net working capital, this quarter's development should not be seen as an indication for the full fiscal year 2020. Cash-out from non-M&A investments came in virtually flat at EUR 24 million. Free cash flow before M&A was EUR 17 million up to EUR 48 million in previous year's Q2. And free cash flow including leasing payments went up to EUR 34 million. With this development, financial debt came in at EUR 621 million, so reflecting a sequential improvement compared to Q1. At the same time, bank leverage after a spike in Q1 improved again to 2.3x, slightly better than we expected and more or less on the level of the year-end 2020. For the third quarter, we are foreseeing some impact on the leverage ratio resulting from the expected dividend payment. With a cash-heavy fourth quarter, however, we expect a broadly stable ratio for the full fiscal year. Let us now have a closer look at the operating business segments and where we stand compared to 2020 as well as compared to pre-COVID 2019 levels. The Out-of-Home Media segment showed encouraging trajectory throughout the second quarter. Nonetheless, some areas were still dampened due not-yet-fully-recovered mobility compared to pre-COVID levels. However, travel data suggests a continuous improvement and easing here. That said, Out-of-Home sales were on an index level of 72% and compared to pre COVID. This index improved nicely throughout the quarter. Compared to the prior year, revenues were up 47%. In this context, adjusted EBITDA almost doubled versus the prior year from EUR 33 million to EUR 64 million. And the margin jumped from 32% to 42% due to a better utilization of our fixed cost base and despite last year's support from short-time work allowances. Our new Digital & Dialog Media segment again performed very well in both subsegments even when considering the brightening of the overall economic environment. Revenues increased by around 45% from EUR 120 million in Q2 2020 to EUR 175 million in Q2 '21. Our online advertising and content publishing showed ongoing growth momentum as well as margin improvement. The same applies for our Dialog business, which last year was heavily impacted by the lockdown in particular in the area of our door-to-door activities. All in all, adjusted EBITDA grew from EUR 19 million to EUR 45 million as adjusted EBITDA margin improved from 16% to 26%. Our Data as a Service and E-Commerce segment continues its success story and accelerated revenue growth to 34% compared to 17% in the prior year period. And total segment sales increased from EUR 42 million to EUR 56 million. With organic sales growth of 55%, Statista once again significantly accelerated growth compared to the average previous years and was the main sales contributor to the quarter for the segment. The sales up by more than 20%, Asam continues its success story. Due to an increasing investment in accelerated growth and the expansion of our international business, especially at Asam, adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 9%, and adjusted EBITDA was EUR 5 million in Q2 '21 compared to EUR 7 million in the corresponding prior year period. Let me now hand you over to Christian, who will give you an update on Statista.

Thank you, Henning. In the last quarter, we gave you a detailed update on Asam. Today, we want to provide you with more information on Statista. Since the acquisition of Statista in 2016, the team around Dr. Friedrich Schwandt and Hubert Jakob has transformed the company into the globally leading business data platform. Showing consistent fast growth over the last 5 years, they have grown the Hamburg-based company into a leading international player with offices across the globe. In today's presentation, we want to focus on the core product of Statista. It is the foundation of Statista's business model and the main differentiating factor from other business information firms. Statista is the category leader in what we call Data as a Service. Traditionally, as most of you will probably remember, software was sold on CDs and had to be installed on the computer. Updates were expensive and required a new CD. With the advent of fast and reliable Internet connections in combination with cloud hosting services, numerous companies transformed the model. Salesforce was one of them. Taking the software for sales management into the cloud, they shifted from one-off license sales to a flexible subscription model. Statista did something similar with the business data market. Traditionally, companies would sell paper-based and lay the digital reports on specific topics to customers. If web access was provided, then the licenses were expensive and targeted at individual researchers within companies. Usually only very few employees had access to the state, and everyone who needed such information had to approach the research teams. Statista transformed the industry by creating a Data as a Service platform. Customers acquire subscription for teams, departments and frequently the entire company. Through this subscription and a simple web-based user interface, users can access the information wherever they are. This leads to a deeper customer penetration compared to traditional business data providers, which results in higher usage, lower churn rates and stable customer relationships. The core of the Statista platform is the single Statistic. It provides an easy to understand overview of data on a specific topic including transparent source information. Customers can change layout to adjust it to their needs. Statista also provides various download functionality. This enables customers to directly integrate the Statistic into their workflows. Various enterprise clients are even using the so-called PowerPoint customization, which allows them to download Statistic directly in their corporate PowerPoint design. With just one click, the Statistic on the Statista website is converted into a slide for a PowerPoint presentation. This helps customers to save a lot of time. Additionally, the Statistic makes it easier to search and digest content, both for Google and for customers. The standardized format makes content comparable and much easier to understand. In traditional market research reports, the relevant information is frequently hidden within long text paragraph or in charts scattered across text documents. Statista focuses on the core quantitative information. Context is provided in the descriptions and annotations but in the background. When Statista was founded, the focus of the content creation lay on the duration and aggregation of publicly available data sources. Those included national statistics offices, international audience such as the World Bank, policy institutes and others. While this information is generally freely available to everyone, Statista added a massive benefit for customers by checking the sources, standardizing the information, categorizing it and taking the resulting statistics, thus, making them searchable and easily accessible. To date, those sources only make up a fraction of the overall content base. Subsequently, Statista started to acquire additional data sources through contractual agreements. Those agreements provide Statista with access to broader and more specialized data from well-known research firms such as GfK, Ipsos or Nielsen. Statista customers can access this information through the Statista web platform and do not have to access various information providers. Starting in 2016, Statista has built up and expanded its own proprietary content base. A large team of data scientists and research analysts creates so-called market outlooks that allow customers to access data -- a detailed country and industry-specific forecasts for various topics. The consumer market outlook, for example, contains market data on fast-moving consumer goods such as cosmetics. Additionally, the team conducted extensive service. A flagship product, the Global Consumer Survey, is paying customers access to consumer sentiment, attitudes and behaviors in 56 countries. The data is based on surveys conducted with more than 1 million respondents worldwide. Over the last years, proprietary data has been continuously expanded and today accounts for roughly 50% of the information on the Statista platform. To make the differentiation between the 2 content types easier to understand, think of the following analogy. Proprietary data can be compared to Netflix Originals such as House of Cards that are exclusively available on Netflix. Third-party content can be compared to nonexclusive shows like Stranger Things that are available on Netflix but also on other platforms. The investment into proprietary content has thus created a defendable competitive advantage for Statista. Customers who want to access this kind of information needs to stay with Statista as it is not available on other platforms. The vast content on the platform in combination with customer-friendly usability and the simple premium subscription model has made Statista a credible, reliable source for business information. Today, almost 30 million users visit the Statista site per month. This is substantially more than even the largest competitors can command. The 15 other business information and market research companies, as you can see on the chart, together command roughly the same number of visits at Statista alone. This traffic brings a consistent flow of potential users and subscribers to the platform. They get to know Statista through web searches for any kind of information. If they want to access more information, they need to sign up for a free account. This provides Statista with contact information that can be used for targeted marketing and sales. The free account will allow them to access the entire platform. However, they can only see around 5% of the data as the rest lies behind the paywall. Customers can find this information in their searches but to subscribe for paid account to access it. The large traffic base start directly through direct purchases and indirectly through leads for the sales team as Statista to win new customers and expand the business further without incurring marketing expenses. We hope you find this information helpful. We are planning to provide deeper insights on Statista at our Capital Markets Day in October. Let me now talk briefly on our business outlook for the third quarter and our expectations for the full year 2021 and give you a preview on our upcoming ESG report. For the third quarter, we expect our group revenue around 15% to 20% above prior year and our EBITDA above both 2020 and 2019. All 3 segments will contribute to this positive development. Our expectations for the full year 2021 are unchanged. We expect our Out-of-Home business at around EUR 700 million revenue, i.e., on 2019 level, minus lockdown effects of EUR 120 million in H1 plus potential catch-up effect in Q4. This assumes that there is no substantial fourth COVID wave. On that basis, we see a revenue range of around EUR 1.6 billion for the full year for the group. Depending on the Out-of-Home dynamics towards Q4, we expect group EBITDA in the range of EUR 490 million to EUR 510 million. As already pointed out before, we do not expect any medium- and long-term structural changes in our revenue and profitability expectations. Let me now give you a preview on the highlights of our ESG report for 2020, which describes the progress we've made on our sustainability goals and which we will publish soon. Along our guiding principles, efficiency, innovation and responsibility, we've continued to push several ESG topics forward. Most importantly, we concluded the group-wide assessment of our corporate carbon footprint together with a renowned agency, Climbing Partners. In total, we produced CO2 emissions of 47,000 tons in 2020 mainly from our digital Out-of-Home billboards, our employees commuting to and from work, our car fleet and our office buildings. While this is within the typical range of our industry and already lower than in 2019, we are working hard on bringing this number down significantly. Most importantly, we are switching our energy contracts to green energy. All our office buildings and 80% of our Out-of-Home billboards are run without CO2 emissions already, resulting in a positive impact that we will see in the 2021 numbers. In addition, we started to offset our CO2 emissions from Out-of-Home and online campaigns via a reforestation program in Colombia. But this is certainly not enough. We set ourselves the goal to reach climate neutrality for the entire company by 2025 and will work relentlessly towards making this happen. Another key goal for us is to use both our Out-of-Home and online reach to promote sustainability topics on a pro bono basis. Therefore, we are very happy to announce a strategic multiyear collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Our joint objective is to promote the rights and well-being of children worldwide. We aim to inform and raise broad awareness and wide attention to advocate children's rights and the UNICEF Child Rights School in particular across all of Germany. We aim to co-develop campaigns supporting children's rights and UNICEF's work in Germany and played out on our nationwide Digital Out-of-Home, Out-of-Home and online network. In total, we will dedicate media reach worth a few million euro to this effort. On the governance dimension, cybersecurity remains key to us. Rooted in a newly defined group-wide cybersecurity strategy, we are now working on further professionalizing our cybersecurity governance. This includes building up a dedicated organization with clear responsibilities, conducting a rigorous vulnerability management via scans and penetration tests and managing the risk in the information security management system, One Trust. Most importantly, we were able to close all severe security weaknesses identified in our initial assessment from end of last year. We will provide more information on these topics and quantify our progress towards more sustainability in our 2020 ESG report in a couple of weeks. Let me close the presentation by looking at our financial calendar for the coming months. Our AGM is scheduled for September 3. Around this time, we will also publish our ESG report. We will hold a Capital Markets Day in early October. We are planning to do a review of the company's development in the last 8 years at our current Out-of-Home PLUS strategy. Furthermore, we will give you a midterm outlook on our Out-of-Home core business, especially our digitization will drive our market share in the coming 5 years. And we will make a deeper dive into Statista and Asam. We will provide more information on exact timing and location. Our Q3 quarterly statement will be published on November 10. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question we've received is from Annick Maas, Exane BNP Paribas.

I have 3 questions today. So the first one is you say on Slide 5 that programmatic currently 43% of -- makes up 43% of public video revenue. That seems to be quite a big chunk compared to how much peers are generating from programmatic. So I'm just keen to really understand how you define programmatic here. Then my second question is, if you could give us an update on whether you had more conversations regarding the sale of AsamBeauty over the last month? And then just thinking about the cash of a potential Asam and Statista sale IPO, what are you intending to use the cash for?

Annick, it's Christian. Thanks for your questions. On the first one on programmatic, I mean, it's quite a simple definition, all kind of revenues that come in via trading desks and demand-side platforms. So that means it can be automated trading as well as revenues that come through private options, private deals or also meanwhile open auctions, very small part. But the key point is the technical execution is coming via demand-side platforms and trading desks that originally have been implemented only for the online business. So what's the reason for the relatively high number? I think the reason for that is that since meanwhile, 6 or 7 years, we are working on that, I think, while the rest of the market is working on that topic since 18 months. And I think we've meanwhile both online agencies, digital agencies, traditional media agencies but also Out-of-Home specialists that work with more and more automated campaign bookings, and that's what we ultimately wanted. So on the one hand, access to digital money, that is then via the logics of programmatic trading also allocated to Digital Out-of-Home. And ideally, as a second effect, the traditional Out-of-Home industry learning that there are massive process benefits through automated trading, which also allow us a smarter yielding of our inventory. But you're right, I would say, the true global average is probably a low single-digit number of programmatic volumes going on Digital Out-of-Home. I think we are with above 40%, and that's definitely also a number that was pushed further by COVID. I think we are meanwhile getting to closer to where the online standards are in Germany, which are around 50% or slightly above for the traditional online business.

Annick, on AsamBeauty, maybe just to reiterate what we've stated so far, our key priority is to grow the business to size of around EUR 200 million turnover. And we are fully on track with regards to reaching that number next year, 2022. This is what we are focusing on together with the company. But you're right, we've initiated talks specifically with banks to understand better how they look at the company, also what's the key element of the equity story that we have already presented in our last call and also get a bit of judgment on valuation and process. So I believe we will really actively reach out to the investor community early next year.

Annick, Henning here. On the question on the potential disposal proceeds, I mean, first comment is, I'd say, I'll cross the bridge when we get it. But in general, I mean, we are thinking around the lines of the bank leverage, which we're seeing now has sequentially improved from Q1 to Q2. However, we're still a little bit weaker than the pre-COVID level. In general, you also know that we are constructive in terms of the dividend. So I think we need to find the right balance on both getting back to the historical bank leverage ratios and letting shareholders also benefit from potential proceeds.

The next question is from Christopher Johnen, HSBC.

The first, on the order book, on the slide, you say that you have a robust outlook and pre bookings also in September and October. Is there any chance we can get a bit more color on that particularly on October? Are we talking -- I know that the comps are not exactly the same in Q3 and Q4, but are we talking similar type of growth than the range given in Q3? Any color on that would be great. And then as far -- I mean, I take the comments on Asam being on track, that there is no change to view also with respect to growth rates for 2021. Is the same also true for Statista? You gave some indication last quarter. That would be interesting. And then last one, I don't know if it's worth talking about, but I figured I'd ask. There's been a bit of a debate in terms of political advertising in Germany particularly with respect to the Green Party in the last couple of weeks, I would say. The topic of attack ads, is this something we're talking about? Do you -- what's been your sort of feedback? Do you expect any sort of even possibility of pushback on political advertising? Yes, any comment there would be great.

Thanks for your questions, Christopher. Maybe I'll start with your last question. Yes, indeed, there have been massive debates around aggressive advertising during, I think, the campaigns around the coming election. I think historically, we've always had and we have this also today a very clear position. We advertise everything that is not illegal and is not against public policy because -- and therefore, there is a freedom of speech in our country, and we accept and respect that. And anything beyond that would be tricky because beyond, I think, the legal framework, you would start to make judgments. And the problem with those judgments, especially as a company that deals with marketing and advertising is where to start and where to end. And obviously, if it comes down to opinions, it's very difficult to define a clear and neutral line. And our point was always we respect the legal framework, and we want to be 100% neutral. So what we've seen, I think, in the last week was a lot of debate and also, I don't know, an overall campaign atmosphere that is ultra aggressive, so that suddenly is someone like us that tries to be just neutral and doesn't want to be the referee for that, just offers a platform for communication gets in between the lines. So based on that, we've -- we send a public and an open letter to all the parties end of last week, invited them to a roundtable. We are already in discussions with all the parties how to organize it and where their current positions are to either move on with how we deal with it today, if everyone is fine or to find a new framework that everyone agrees and everyone accepts so that we can act then accordingly. But it needs to be a clear framework so that judgment decisions are not up to us. That is our position at the moment, and we try to play here in absolutely neutral and pragmatic role. Maybe just commenting on the commercial impact, yes, because I think that's an important aspect that just illustrates a little bit the situation in a year like this year, where we have a nationwide election, Bundestagswahl, that's ultimately always a slightly bigger budget driver. The total Out-of-Home revenues that we generate through political campaigns is around EUR 5 million. In non-Bundestagswahl years, so without the national elections, if we only have, I don't know, 2, 3, up to 5 regional elections or state elections, the volume is normally around EUR 2 million to EUR 2.5 million. So the annual average over 4 years is around EUR 3 million. And given the fact what the current level of debate is, indeed, a radical position from us could also be if neutrality cannot be that you accept the law and freedom of speech, if that is no longer reasonable or people don't accept it and you're suddenly in the middle of discussions, then the end parties cannot agree jointly to a fair play game that where the rules are crystal clear and we execute it, that in other neutral position could be just to have no political communication at all on Out-of-Home advertising. Not sure if this is really reasonable in a democracy and if it's -- if you shouldn't have that debate publicly. But if we come to situations where our inventory gets damaged, if we get attacked for trying to be neutral, if our employees don't feel comfortable with being attacked on social media, then we need to change something about it. But that's the overall situation at the moment. So commercially, I think, it's not really something crucial, but the emotional debate is quite big.

Maybe, Chris, on the order book, not to be unpolite, but we feel that we have given enough, I think, granularity on what we see, what we have in terms of visibility. So it's clear if you look at the second half implicitly, we are showing Out-of-Home getting back to 2019 levels. So if you think from a group perspective growth in the second half will be much more driven by Out-of-Home than of the PLUS businesses, and I think we'll leave it there for the moment. However, that comes with the caveat, obviously, that we do not anticipate at the moment that there is any significant impact from the discussion around the fourth wave. So this is not included in our proposal.

That's right. I had to try.

I believe your last point was on the growth perspective of Statista. I mean as we pointed out, we had a very strong quarter again this quarter, Q2, with Statista. And we are also very optimistic for the remainder of the year. So for the full year, as we always stated, we expect Statista to grow in a corridor of 25% to 30%. And this is also actually the growth rate that we target for the next year. And I think the company just has so many levers to grow. Certainly, still the existing markets are not saturated. We're driving the internationalization. We're working on our product portfolio where we can drive sales and then also -- and I believe, obviously, pricing. So what I'm trying to say is we are fully confident in what we outlined for Statista and reaching EUR 200 million in a couple of years.

And maybe just picking up that point and just come back to what Henning said, because I think we -- over the last 6 to 9 months, we had a couple of statements to that, and we would still stick to that. I think we feel comfortable with a leverage of up to 2.5x. I think mid of next year, we will already be close to only half of that as we see how the business evolves. So with any funds coming from disposals, I think, we said we don't see share buybacks at the moment. We don't see that we need extraordinary, extra money for -- to invest in our digitization. So the only solution left is ultimately a special dividend and paying out the money. That's -- I think that's what we said over the last quarters, and that situation is unchanged. But as Christian said, we have to do our homework first and develop the assets to the level where we feel they are then prepared to have a closer look at crystallizing the value.

The next question is from Craig Abbott, Kepler Cheuvreux.

Thank you very much for your very detailed answers a few moments ago regarding the whole issue of political advertising. If I may, just 2 quick follow-ups on that topic. The first one is my understanding was that you're actually required to provide a certain amount of -- a percentage of your inventory for a brief period of time around the major -- at least, the national election, I think, 2 or 3 weeks. Is that not true? If you could just answer that with regards to the roundtable talks you've got scheduled for next week. And my follow-up is you were very clear about the immediate commercial impact if you were to come to the conclusion that you would not provide inventory for political advertising in the future. But what about would there be any risk in terms of upcoming tenders for new concession mandates with some of the municipalities, whether there might be some backlash that can negatively impact the outcome there for you? The second question that I have, please, is you had a very strong margin in Digital & Dialog Media. And I would like to understand a little bit better, please, how much of that was sort of structural, what was behind that? And what can we -- how should we think about that going forward? And the final question is just on the margin outlook then for DaaS and E-Commerce. You're clearly investing in the growth that you've talked about. But can we expect that to ease back off a little bit and see some higher margin in the second half in that division?

Craig, thanks for your questions. Let me start with your first point on political communication. So we are not forced or it's not required that we give specific parts of the inventory to political parties. That's the logics on television, especially public television, that all parties get the same special amount of [ time ], I think. But in our case, it's very difficult, up to impossible, to reject advertising from political parties unless you have, I don't know, some self-restriction that you put on the table. The other way around, already today, we have municipalities that have in the contract that they don't want political advertising, exception and not the rule. And there are always debates about exactly those points because should there be alcohol, I mean, tobacco is meanwhile or for the future, already decided, what about political parties? What about our NGOs and so on? And we see political parties as well as municipalities and the legislation and administration, they are always quite clear about where potential problems are and could be, but they have been struggling so far with defining rules. So I think no matter if commercial -- or sorry, political advertising would be allowed or not, I think, it wouldn't really -- if I break it down on individual contracts, I think, it wouldn't really change something because, ultimately, it comes down to the money and the commercial deal that we have with municipalities. They already regulated in different ways. And there's very different opinions from the various parties on this. And just to compare it with our other businesses, on our publishing assets, on T-Online and others, we don't take any political advertising because advertising on an online website is very close to the content, and we just want to avoid that people mix up information, opinion and advertising. So we rejected there completely. It's the same with our online advertising business, also with third-party mandates, where we also have discussed and organized that historically have a clear logic that we don't take political advertising exactly for the same reason. And in the Out-of-Home business, our view was always, it's part of public life. So we are 100% neutral and stick only to legal and restrictions. But that looks like we need to get to something different or at least have the debate with political parties around it to define a standard or just to reconfirm that the current standard is okay, which takes us a little bit out of the public discussion where we feel shouldn't be at the moment.