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

Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts, thank you for joining our today's call on our Q2 2023 Results. As in our past calls, I would like to share with you the developments of the just-ended quarter and discuss the most important strategic highlights. Henning will then present the financials for the second quarter 2023 before we give you a short outlook of what we expect for the third quarter and the remaining months of the year. As always, following our presentation, we will be available for Q&A. Let us start the call with a short overview of the key figures of the first 6 months of fiscal 2023, and then go straight to the key strategic highlights of the quarter. Even though the Russian war of aggression has continued since our last call, the ECB has not yet been able to curb high inflation, despite several interest rate hikes and Germany is technically in a recession at the moment. We were able to continue and even improve on the good developments of the previous quarter, and thus deliver a very solid first half of 2023. In contrast to the overall German advertising market, which declined on a gross level by more than 4%, and net probably rather 7%. In the first 6 months, we increased our revenues in our core business out-of-home by 6%. In detail, reported group revenues for the first 6 months 2023 were up by 7% from EUR 810 million to EUR 865 million. Organic revenue growth was -- with 7.3%, a notch higher than the reported revenue growth due to last year's Asam disposal as discussed in previous quarters. Adjusted EBITDA increased as guided by 3% from EUR 220 million to EUR 227 million including cost increases, especially for electricity, external service provider and labor as well as the continued challenging market conditions for the digital ad business. At the same time, the strong momentum in Dialogue as well as Asam continued to contribute to the overall positive development. EBIT adjusted contracted by 4% to EUR 84 million, due to slightly increased D&A, reflecting higher investments in the past. Net income adjusted came in at EUR 40 million compared with EUR 58 million in H1 2022. In particular, due to higher interest rates as described before. Operating cash flow stood at EUR 140 million or EUR 10 million lower compared with the prior year period due to higher interest and tax payments, which we will discuss later in the finance section. With EUR 63 million, CapEx was EUR 3 million lower compared with H1 2022, reflecting a step-by-step back to normal against an accelerated ramp-up of our roadside portfolio in 2022. Our developments in H1, plus 7% for our group, plus 6% for our core out-of-home segment and plus 24% for digital out-of-home are outstanding against the German ad market that went backwards according to Nielsen by more than 4%, and in gross and looking at public numbers from publicly listed media companies probably rather 7% in net. And it shows that we were able to accelerate revenue growth further when compared to Q1. Even the global digital platforms from the U.S. are at best on par with us in H1. And Q2 was slightly stronger than Q1 for us in a pretty much unchanged overall market environment. And that's, in general, the trend that we see to date and also in our order book going forward. All three groups as well as out-of-home and digital out-of-home are winning slightly more momentum month-over-month. Additionally, one thing becomes even clearer, the structural shift towards digital out-of-home is there to stay. More than 30% growth in Q2 in such a market environment shows the disruptive power of digital out-of-home. At the moment, you only see 3 substantially growing segments in the ad market in Germany, retail media, like the Amazon Ad business, Tiktok, i.e., fueled by significant user growth and digital out-of-home. The special situation during the pandemic has made it more difficult to follow up with underlying media trends as there have been too many one-off effects and lockdowns. But besides the current momentum, it's also the long-term view that gives us a lot of confidence for the coming years. Over the last 10 years, the out-of-home media channel, driven by Ströer with a share of -- meanwhile well over 60%, has grown steadily and has been able to outperform the overall advertising market and roughly doubled its share. The continuous expansion of our digital portfolio, meanwhile, accelerates these developments, while competing channels are facing more and more structural headwind. Our customers appreciate the flexibility, attractiveness and above all, the massive reach and audience coverage, which in metropolitan areas is now at or above that of linear television. Having laid a solid foundation with small- and medium-sized local advertisers and having built a TV comparable reach with around 1,800 digital roadside screens on top of the strong indoor public video proposition. We are seeing the second growth stage in digital out-of-home now. With more than 75% reach in Germany's metropolitan areas, digital out-of-home is increasingly becoming more than an additional channel to TV for national advertisers, but rather than advertising channel to which disproportionate budgets are devoted. This is against the backdrop of a generally declining advertising market and falling TV budgets. We've highlighted the Nielsen year-to-date ad spend monitor for a couple of exemplary clients and the numbers speak for themselves. Deutsche Telecom is increasing its advertising spending in the digital out-of-home channel by 20%, while at the same time, reducing its overall budget by 12%, especially at the expense of TV. The changes are even more pronounced at Stellantis with car brands like Fiat, Peugeot, Chrysler and Opel where the budget for digital out-of-home has increased by 65% compared to previous year, while the overall budget has been reduced by 35%, again at the expense of TV budget, which has been cut by 50%. At eBay, on the other hand, we are a real game changer for their entire advertising strategy, plus 268% are equivalent for turning an add-on medium into a lead medium within the marketing mix. And Amazon, Telefonica or many others show very similar developments now. And the accelerated market share gains for out-of-home and digital out-of-home are quite robust since the end of the pandemic, looking again at concrete client references based on both Nielsen data as well as internal net revenue numbers. It's not a flash in the pan, but continuous, sustainable and robust trend across all industries. Staples retailers such as Lidl and DM, public transport operators such as Deutsche Bahn, for example, have long recognized the strength of digital out-of-home and significantly shifted their marketing mix. Customers who only discovered digital out-of-home more recently like Netflix, Volt or Stellantis are joining the trend and their budgets are growing all the more. And ultimately, it's the impact on both marketing KPIs and sales that ensure structural growth for our core business. Here are two interesting and very recent success cases of 2 real out-of-home believers in the marketing team. Ritter Sport wanted to continue its vegan success story in 2023 and is succeeding with digital outdoor advertising from Ströer. For the launch of its new vegan varieties, Ritter Sport relied massively on our nationwide digital reach in public spaces from January to April. During this period, all of Ströer's digital out-of-home products indoors and outdoors, will occupy the traffic up, such as train stations, street, shopping centers and on subway and suburban train platforms. The public video campaign generated 2.3 billion contract during the period and the market research results proved Ritter Sport rises to become the best known vegan chocolate brand, thanks to the public video campaign, all success parameters of the campaign in the areas of brand awareness, first choice, advertising recall and activation are pointing upwards. Both the unaided and aided awareness developed positively over the course of the campaign, also in comparison to competitor brands. The same applies for another premium food brand, Mövenpick. They haven't been too active with broad consumer advertising and thus, we're facing slightly declining brand awareness. Having limited funds, they could only focus on one core medium and decided against a mono TV campaign and focused on out-of-home instead. Brand awareness after a longer time of advertising absence rose by 319%. So out-of-home was able to massively reactivate a basically strong brand also with limited funds. Let's switch to Asam. Since taking over the majority stake of the business, a small and fine cosmetics company, primarily active in telesales, we formed Asam Beauty into a multichannel German beauty success story, which has proven its success in DACH as well as since this year also outside of the German-speaking countries. There was clearly some extra momentum for the e-commerce part of Asam during the pandemic and vice versa necessary investments in the last 18 months to further scale the production and kickstart the international rollout. But over the last 7 years, average quarter-on-quarter sales growth was around 25% and the year-to-date -- and year-to-date, the business performs at the top end of what we've seen historically or with almost 30% even a little bit above. In our stretch target case, the company can achieve up to EUR 200 million revenue full year 2023. Margin profile over the years, excluding overproportionate temporary investments like new production plants, logistics or new countries like France, the U.S. or China, EBITDA margin was around 18% to 20% historically. And year-to-date, the bottom line performance of the business is where historic all-time highs are. So where are the key levers now and why are we very positive about the coming months and quarters? We've continuously expanded our retail presence getting listed in more and more outlets. This success story will continue in 2024 as we were able to win DM, Germany's largest drugstore chain, as a new distribution partner for a broad range of products which will bring incremental momentum from end of Q1 of the coming year. Secondly, we've built our own online shop from scratch, optimized tech user experience and performance marketing over time and run the e-commerce business and 2023 is not an easy year, as you all know, with a margin profile of currently 12% to 15%, winning substantially market share when you look at Nielsen panel data. And we've invested in the last 2 years to develop business outside of German-speaking countries, which represent at the end of this year around 1/4 of our total business. China might represent 2/3 of the non-DACH business as we have successfully identified and rolled out with our sales partner, the first Hero product there. The limitation for even more growth in China at the moment is that we have to catch up with our production capacities. Preorders from China for the next year indicate up to 2x to 3x the volume of 2023, but we have to do our homework now and ensure that our production and logistic capacities are really able to deliver. And we are working on launching more products there as well as we've seen how, in general, the mechanics in China works. This puts us in a comfortable position to initiate a concrete value crystallization process, and we are already starting to update our internal due diligence prework. In our next earnings call, we might be able to give you more concrete timing and details on Asam. But year-to-date, the operational performance is outstanding, and we don't see anything changing in H2. With Asam, we expect to have a company with substantial value crystallization potential, and we are fully committed to monetize that potential as a first step of our strategic portfolio optimization to simplify the structure of the group. We are convinced with this first step of the journey to unveil value. This will also allow a better assessment of the underlying value of our out-of-home core business, and here, especially the long-term potential of digital out-of-home. Coming to Statista, we should talk about the current mega topic AI and especially the potentials we see bringing Statista's user experience to the next level. So in the case of Statista and after the last roughly 8 months working on exactly that topic, we see that the latest developments on AI and especially generative AI tools like ChatGPT will be a game changer in the direct user experience of Statista. Until now, comparable to leading financial tools that you all know, it now takes quite a bit of experience in dealing with Statista to create efficient search queries due to the large amount of data. Here, AI can significantly improve the user experience and simplify access to the data. Based on our Statista GPT, the user can formulate his search query in a natural language, and our AI compiles the answer and the corresponding data in an easy-to-understand form, i.e., in text, but also slides. Currently, we have our AI setup running on Vector search and OpenAI sitting on top of our Statista database and internal prototyping. The results are already very promising, and we expect to be able to release this new feature to a selected group of our customers as early as the end of 2023. We will probably also make a digital teach-in for interested analysts and investors as soon as this feature goes live. Massively changes consumer interaction, active users and all UX KPIs for our platform and opens up new subscription and pricing optionalities for the future. Due to the size and the depth of the Statista database, you have to be some kind of expert to extract the full value of the platform and the majority of users was in research, R&D or business analytics department historically. With Statista GPT, even the CEO of Fortune 500 company can use Statista directly and without in-depth know-how of the platform structure and content itself. Ask Statista, and you will get the right answer directly in tax and visualized. Working on these complete Statista GPT has been our short-term focus in the last months. But we see AI on a broader scale as a further catalyst for the development of our DaaS business. The fact that our content is predominantly proprietary and behind paywalls, protects the business in general. Tech will become the commodity part on the long run and own data and being a trusted brand and source of information will be of even higher value. There are some main topics where the new technologies will help making the business over time, faster, more profitable. On the one hand, so to speak behind the scenes, in the preparation of data, AI can support and accelerate processes efficiently and cost effectively, especially in the case of standardized processes such as querying, preparing and processing. But that is only a comparatively small section of the possibilities. In fact, AI can support us throughout the entire value chain. For example, we can personalize our brand presence more and adopted more to the needs and expectations of specific customer groups. At the same time, the effort to personalize our content offering and adapt it to a much larger number of language versions is reduced. This allows us to address new international customer groups and thus optimize our sales performance and scale business. In addition, LLMs can help us to improve the text quality of our content more easily and efficiently and anyone who has tried AI-supported coding knows how much AI accelerates the creation of codes, so that we can provide our customers with new features and ever shorter intervals. Especially the usability or the user experience will make a quantum loop in addition to the simplified queries like Statista GPT, the time to insight will accelerate significantly. On the basis of the user query, individual data sets can be made available, which consists of all data points, classical Statista data -- statistical data, company profiles, market models and feedback from 2 million interviews. Since queries and task descriptions can be made in natural language in the future, onboarding is reduced to a minimum. Against this background, we see significant additional growth potential for Statista's top line once we've been able to implement more and more of those tech-enabled features. Conversely, AI will support us to significantly reduce the time to update our data sets, but more importantly, the cost to produce data sets and updates. So far on my remarks, and with that, over to Henning.

Thank you, Christian, and good morning to everyone from my side. Looking on our revenues and adjusted EBITDA development in Q2 '23, both are well in line with our internal expectations and our guidance. Revenue increased by 7% from EUR 425 million to EUR 455 million, and adjusted EBITDA by 3% from EUR 126 million to EUR 130 million. Altogether, a solid performance and overall still demanding German macro context. Organic revenue growth was slightly higher compared to reported revenue growth due to the disposal of our Turkish online marketing business SEM which was still included in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 3% to EUR 130 million, as just mentioned. Adjustments in the quarter stood at minus EUR 1.5 million, mainly coming from restructuring and integration costs compared with the prior year period, which delivered EUR 11 million positive one-offs owed to the disposal of SEM in Turkey and a partly release of provisions for a stock option plan. Accordingly, reported EBITDA came in at EUR 129 million compared to EUR 137 million in Q2 '22. Depreciation and amortization for the quarter were almost flat at EUR 77 million. Depreciation on IFRS 16 assets was slightly down because high interest rates imply a lower recognition of the value in use for any new renegotiated or adjusted lease contracts. Reported EBIT decreased by minus EUR 10 million from EUR 62 million to EUR 52 million. The financial result came in at minus EUR 15 million compared to minus EUR 6 million in '22. The change is due to 2 main effects, just like in the previous quarter: firstly, net interest expenses in the narrow sense, which reflect the higher interest rate level compared to the prior year and some increase in net debt; and on the other hand, in a broader sense, the effects of IFRS 16. Here, we have an implication here. For instance, there's a change in the parameters of an existing lease contract, where we then must supply the now higher interest rates on the recognized leasing debt. This effect led to roughly EUR 3 million higher interest rate expenses for the quarter and, at the same time, a reverse impact on the corresponding depreciation, which I already described above. EBT came in at EUR 37 million compared to EUR 55 million in the previous year's quarter and accordingly, tax expenses are down to EUR 10 million, which corresponds to a tax rate of 27.6%. All in all, reported net income stands at EUR 27 million in Q2 '23. Adjustments to be considered in the quarter were EUR 4 million and related mainly to the EUR 1.5 million exceptionals, as well as PPA-related amortizations. With that, our net income adjusted amounted to EUR 31 million after EUR 39 million in Q2 '22. Let me now make some brief comments on the cash flow development. The operating cash flow for the first 6 months declined by EUR 10 million to EUR 140 million, so roughly in line with the development of the reported EBITDA. Thereby, higher tax and interest payments were to a large extent compensated for by a better working capital development and a better development of others from less corrections for noncash EBITDA items. Including declining investments and higher lease liability repayments, the adjusted free cash flow was down by EUR 15 million to minus EUR 16 million. The individual second quarter showed a weaker cash flow development based on some reversal of the strongly improved working capital position after the first quarter and from a shift of lease liability repayments from the first into the second quarter. This development in the quarter should not be seen as an indication for the second half where we expect a significant decline in CapEx, better working capital and lower lease liability repayments in comparison to the second half of last year. Please also bear in mind that Q4, which is our most cash generative quarter last year showed a sales decline in our core business. Compared with the beginning of the year, net debt was up by roughly EUR 36 million, including the free cash flow of minus EUR 16 million, expenses for our share buyback of EUR 24 million as well as some EUR 3 million dividends from minority shareholders. Thus, the increase in net debt is some EUR 7 million lower than what you would anticipate from the reconciliation from the cash flow statement. The reason comes from repaying previous customers over payments, which are recognized as cash out through a change in working capital, but have no effect on net debt. These smaller fluctuations are a recurring feature of our ongoing billing and account reconciliation with large agencies. Net debt year-on-year was up by EUR 28 million from EUR 726 million to EUR 745 million in Q2 '23. This increase included returns to shareholders via our share buyback program of EUR 50 million. Although slightly up year-on-year, our bank leverage ratio remained broadly stable over the last couple of quarters at now 2.3x. Let me now talk you through the performance of the individual operating segments. Starting with our core segment out-of-home media. In the second quarter, out-of-home delivered a 7% higher sales growth than in the first quarter, and this against the backdrop of an overall still declining German media market, which is down by as much as 4%. When taking out sales from tobacco advertising, growth even amounted to 10% in Q2 and 8% in the first 6 months, respectively. Main contributor for the strong revenue development was our digital out-of-home business, which accelerated strongly. After a growth rate of 17% in Q1, it now grew by 31% to EUR 66 million and stands for 1/3 of out-of-home revenues meanwhile. Within digital, our programmatic channel outperformed considerably. Sales from classic out-of-home were on prior year level when adjusting for tobacco ad sales and with that, also better than the general ad market trends. EBITDA adjusted increased from EUR 88 million to EUR 91 million, despite still elevated SG&A cost inflation. In Digital & Dialogue, revenue increased by 6% from EUR 181 million to EUR 192 million or in other words, as robust as in Q1. In digital, sales declined by 2%, reflecting the disposal of our Turkish subsidiary, SEM in summer last year and adjusted for this effect, organic sales were slightly positive. Taking the still tough online advertising environment into account, which declined by 3% in Q2 '23, according to Nielsen, digital continued to perform solidly from a sales perspective. Nevertheless, there's still subdued performance of especially T-Online had a negative impact on our margin mix. However, we have already started to see stabilizing traffic during the second quarter and now easing prior year comps should provide some support in the second half. Dialogue again performed strongly in Q2, especially driven by highly successful direct sales activities for telecommunication products in Germany, in total, this subsegment was up by 15% from EUR 83 million to EUR 95 million. Following the weaker margin mix described, earnings declined by EUR 9 million to EUR 31 million. Finally, let us have a look into our Data as a Service and E-Commerce segment with Statista and Asam. In total, revenue increased by 17% to EUR 83 million. Statista increased revenues by 10% from EUR 34 million to EUR 37 million, driven by both existing and new clients. After a lot of internal optimizations for the last couple of quarters, we have seen account sales activity picking up strongly in June, and we are confident that H2 we'll deliver accelerated growth. Asam's revenues were up by 24% from EUR 37 million to EUR 46 million, driven by significant revenue growth across all sales channels, retail, e-commerce and our refocused international business. EBITDA adjusted for the segment was strongly up to EUR 15 million, reaching a very healthy margin of nearly 18% and demonstrating the profitability potential from the scaling of both assets. As you all know, sustainability is a top priority for us and as a family business, we think across generations. The topic has many aspects. In previous quarters, we had already talked about the fact that out-of-home and digital outer advertising, in particular, has the smallest carbon footprint by far ahead of any other media type. In addition, we are working on many other topics from the air social and GE governance areas. Our progress is reflected, among other things, and the continuous improvement of our ratings with the leading sustainability agencies. For example, we're recently able to improve our MSCI ESG score from BBB to single A. However, this is not a resting place for us. And we have just submitted a comprehensive data package to the carbon disclosure project. We're striving for continuous implementation of our ESG strategy, which will strengthen our standing with all important stakeholders. And with that, let me hand you over back to Christian.

Before ending the presentation, let me just have some comments on our share buyback program and close with a brief look at what we expect for the second half of 2023 and our financial calendar. As you're all aware, we've ended our share buyback program some weeks ago, having spent EUR 50 million into the buyback, which created significant shareholder value in order to bring the program to a formal conclusion, the Board of Management has decided to cancel the shares now. On the outlook, based on current trading, we expect for the second half 2023, our out-of-home media segment to substantially outperform the still challenging German ad market with a strong digital out-of-home dynamics. Our Digital & Dialogue Media segment to deliver a better earnings development compared to prior year than in H1. Having said, Q2 was the turning point for top line development of digital We expect to become Q3 the turning point for bottom line development with bottom line growth again. Our DaaS and E-Commerce segment to achieve continued strong sales growth and margin improvement as in H1. Based on the current status of our order book, our development in H1 and assuming no significant change in market trends, we expect group full year sales and EBITDA adjusted to broadly in line with consensus, and a slightly accelerating dynamic throughout H2, especially towards the end of the year. We see our structural growth drivers unchanged digitization of out-of-home sustainably growing SME business backbone, good client access by our PLUS businesses and very profitable growth of our noncore businesses. Let me close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2023. There is only one date left, November 9, with the release of the Q3 report and as always, updates reports and roadshow presentations can be found on our Investor Relations website. Thank you, everyone, and we are now happy to take your questions.

And the first question comes from Chris Johnen from HSBC.

I would like to do them one by one if possible. First, on your guidance, maybe starting with out-of-home. I mean digital seems to be on fire in the best side of the world. Looking at consensus expectations of roughly 5% growth for the out-of-home segment for the year with comps getting easier. I just wanted to see why you're just comfortable with your expectations. It doesn't go increasingly likely that, particularly on the out-of-home side, things are looking better than consensus expects. So I mean, I guess my question is also -- could you give us a bit of color on current trading in that segment? Just to get an idea whether the -- what sort of the exit rate is from Q2 into Q3? That will be my first question.

Christopher, it's Christian. Yes. I would say, in general, I would agree with you, the comps get softer month-over-month, especially in Q4, I would say. And at the same time, Q4 is, I think, a very crucial quarter for the full year performance. That's why I would agree with you regarding the tendency and the comps. That's also what we currently see in the order book, that especially the pre-bookings for Q4 and a period of like mid of September to end of December, already quite good and promising. And then the -- as we sometimes say the spot market or what comes in short-term, last year was weak. So I would expect that also having a little bit more upside potential. That said, looking at -- comes of last year, looking at the momentum so far and looking at pre-bookings, all of that can indicate that we see a good second half of the year. But that said, you see the macro environment is still volatile. We see other media companies publishing rather negative news cutting back expectations. So if I would do the forecast only on ourselves. I would probably be a much more positive. But I think given what -- given the communications of others, plus all the surprises we've seen in the last 3 or 4 years, we just want to be maybe a little bit more of a conservative side. But in general, no matter what the market environment is, we feel quite comfortable with the second half in our core business there. As you said, digital out-of-home has such a strong momentum across all industries, client-by-client, getting on top bookings as well as clients switching completely to the medium. I wouldn't see any reason why that should suddenly change in the next couple of weeks. And therefore, the backbone of our growth is probably independent from what's happening out there, but the last 1, 2 percentage points of the total segment depend also on macro environment.

Okay. Understood. Another one on guidance. I'm afraid, apologies for that. On the earnings development or the improvement in Digital & Dialogue, I get your comments to understand that the online, in particular, being a high-margin business. Any sort of revenue move has a big impact. But is there any sort of color you can give on top of what's on the slide with respect to what do you expect to happen in H2 because better earnings is quite broad?

Well, I think what we see is that again, answering it maybe more in the context of the last 2 or 3 years, I think we had some extra momentum through the pandemic with overproportionately growing traffic numbers, things like lockdowns that were harming the out-of-home segment, at the same time, pushing money a little bit more towards digital media. So I think we had comps, at least until the mid of 2022, that were -- I wouldn't say doped, but a little bit supported by extra effects. I think we are in a situation now we've a little bit organized our business internally and the margins according to what we see at the moment top line-wise. And I think that's what we see in that we are able to grow again versus prior year level. And that means as soon as we grow and mid of the year was maybe the turning point then for the margin development, we have a chance to see positive earnings momentum again, but it's difficult to quantify that precisely. I think we are at the moment; we feel very comfortable with the trend turning around. But quantifying it is difficult because if you look at the macro environment in the ad market, the online business in total is still negative when you look at Nielsen data, you also see that global platforms struggle to grow more than low single digit, at least in Germany. And what's possible earnings wise is a little bit dependent on what kind of extra revenue we can develop. I think with our cost base under control and the margins now have adjusted that to changes in the last 12 months. But growing 5%, 8% to 10% depends more on the macro environment than on us. But that kind of next 3% to 5% of top line growth had substantial impact on the earnings development. And that's at the moment a little bit where we are. Yes. I think we've gone through the worst of the worst. That's why we are positive, but it's not stable in away from the market environment that we can precisely say what is the real earnings uplift there.

Maybe building on what Christian is said, I think it's clear. Second half will be much better than where we've seen a large earnings decline in the first half. How good the second half will be, I mean, will depend on the operational traction we are able to get, and we see some of that. And don't forget that Q4 had a pretty decent development also from the Dialogue business. So in general, we talk about low basis more for Q4, but in the single area of Dialogue, that was relatively high base. But I think we are quite confident that half year -- the second half will provide good support for us in context of what we have seen in the first half.

I think yesterday or the day before, there was the RTL half yearly report. And I think they also spoke about more momentum for Q4. I think we share that observation, and we share that on top of a meanwhile, positive development year-to-date. But I think there's still some way to go until we have Q4, and it's not there. That's why we are just a little bit -- maybe a little bit too careful or conservative here with what we say.

Okay. That's clear. And then last one, a bit of a broader one for me. I mean Asam seems well on track, and I think everybody is looking forward to details next quarter. Statista is still a little bit ahead. I think that the plans here unless there is any change seems quite on track as well end of '24, early '25. I'm just curious, what do you think about portfolio rationalization more generally? I mean, you can say Asam a little bit noncore -- at this maybe a little bit noncore. But what about other parts of the business, I'm thinking about the Dialogue business, for example. Is there any color you can give anything interesting? Is that even an option for you, is -- let's say, everything "on the table" is the right price can be achieved? How are you thinking about portfolio rationalization?

Yes. I think -- I think I need to be careful with using the right words because everything is on the table is, of course, nothing that we do. I think we built our business following specific strategic rationales. And operationally, we are very happy with the combination that we have and also had when I just look at the last 3 or 4 years, I think from an operational point of view, it was good to have that combination of businesses. And when I look at the individual parts of our group, I think none of them had a disadvantage of being part of the -- it's more a valuation point of view. That said, yes, what's the right answer, let's cross the bridge when we come to the water. I think we said that what we've identified as clear value crystallization candidates is Asam and Statista exactly in that order. I think looking from a strategic point of view, the another potential candidate would be the Dialogue business that clearly differentiates a little bit more than online from the out-of-home business because you talk more about sales related to support direct marketing and less really eyeballs and advertising. But I think there is still a way to go to take any decisions there, and we have homework to do as I mentioned, Statista. But the other way around, in general, I would not -- I would not say that, that setup is made forever. I think what we've learned especially in the last couple of years that whatever we did, no matter what kind of transparency we brought into the portfolio, no matter what we did around segmentation, the capital market did not evaluate our group, at least in our view, in a way that we see the inner value of the various assets reflected. And I think that is a general approach that we will also follow-up in the future. If we see a mismatch -- massive mismatch between some of the parts and share price or inner value versus, what do we see in the market cap, then I think we will have a closer look at the portfolio again. But the first steps are now Asam and Statista clearly.

I think Christian made it really clear here that. We have a mismatch of what we think is operationally senseful. On the other hand was the capital market believes what is senseful. And this is a conflict. Actually, we have to solve over time. I mean from my point of view, in the sum of the part, view today, the auto business is valued to 0. And this is clearly nothing which can satisfy the shareholders. So that's why we talk about the value crystallization process that we clearly need to unlock the real value of the businesses in the upcoming years because -- where we stand now the EUR 44 is obviously, not reflecting at all what I said before, out-of-home business, from our point of view, valued to 0. And this is nothing which we can accept and that you can satisfy the shareholders. But -- we have to do it step by step and let's see how the stock price is reacting on the next steps. And then we'll take the next decision after that.

And the next question comes from Annick Maas from Societe Generale.

So my first question is on the margin in out-of-home. I mean digital grew so strongly in out-of-home. And I guess there are some arguments to say that the digital out-of-home is higher margin. So can you just give us an explanation of why the margin has come slightly down in out-of-home? The second one is on CapEx. You suggested it's going to decline in the second half. Does that mean that you deploy less digital boards. Can you maybe elaborate on that? And then if you could just comment a bit more -- give us a bit more color on the working capital change that you've seen in the second quarter?

Okay. Annick, maybe I'll pick up the first one on the out-of-home margin. I think in general, you're right, digital out-of-home has especially the indoor business has a slightly higher margin profile. That's why the product mix would, in general, support us to improve the margin. I think the counter development short-term at the moment are significant electricity cost increases. Thank God, less dramatic than we thought. And I think throughout the year, we can also find solutions for parts of it. But nevertheless, still electricity is like 60%, 70% above where it was, for instance, in 2019. Second aspect is subcontractors. I think historically, that was an area through efficiencies that we could continuously improve. What we see, especially this year, minimum wages increasing, high inflation rates, put wages there even more under pressure and more or less full employment in Germany. So at the moment, we don't have that much space to reduce costs, and we rather have at least temporarily increasing cost per piece of unit. And it goes further to stuff like company cars were the centralized organization. We have like 1,200 company cars, fuel cost or petrol costs, just as leasing rates have changed. So there have been a lot of cost items that increased really overproportionate in the last 12 months. And I think we can level that out and find solutions for it. But we can't match price increases in some areas beyond 20%, 25% within 1 or 2 quarters. So I think we are working on that. The digital out-of-home development helps protecting somewhat our margin, but we'll need the other 1 or 2 quarters more just to find the right answers to those cost increases like postering, gluing there are ways to handle it, again, simplify your supplier structure, finding different cycles of how you work, but that's all a little bit more structural and can be done in the speed that those inflationary challenges came to us. But I would say that's something we can handle over the next couple of months. And meanwhile, we feel, again, quite comfortable with that challenge. I think 6, 9 months ago, especially around electricity that was by far more of a challenge. But nevertheless, it makes it difficult at the moment to keep the margin exactly where it was or improve it, and that would be our target in a market environment where digital out-of-home is the growth driver because clearly, there are scale effects that support positive cash generation developments.

Well, Annick, on CapEx. Second half, I think we should expect some EUR 20 million lower CapEx than in the prior year second half. I would say roughly half of that should come from last year, we acquired the head office location, which was obviously not reoccur again and some may be, let's say, around EUR 10 million lower CapEx in out-of-home, where last year, we were sort of expanding faster than our initial plan was. So we did actually more roadside screen expansion as we initially had on the cars. And since now a couple of months, we are -- I think we're becoming more selective in our expansion. Christian mentioned, we already have 1,800 roadside screens out there in operation. And already now have very good reach level, 75%, christian mentioned that. So I think we're becoming here a bit more selective. And -- but this is actually according to the initial plan we have for the year. Working capital in the second quarter was disturbed to one extent also by what I mentioned in the speech, repayment of over payments. That was one point burdening on working capital. And the other was also it's more a function of a very good working capital in the first quarter. So there's a bit of timing effects. Overall, for the year, I would say, on the second half, I'd said we would see a more controlled development. okay? Also the heavy expansion at Asam, and we talked about this very good international business that can also imply some more inventory buildup as we anticipate. Just to confirm on rollout of screens, we roll out and invest whatever is necessary to drive the digital out-of-home development midterm. What we see at the moment or looking at the last 2 years, I think the kind of push that we've given to our roadside presence was really helpful to make digital out-of-home in total more attractive, because people just could experience is more when they went out on the street and not only or not so much on public transport. But what we see at the moment is like when you get to 75% reach, when you see digital screens on the roadside in a completely different setting than maybe 5 years ago. The screens -- screen 900 to 1,500 really made a difference. The screen number 1,801 to 2,500 at the moment does not create that much extra momentum that we that we would need to make the investment now. I think our capacity, fill rates are still on a level where also given the interest rate swing and the challenges in the ad market. We have more than enough inventory. We have good traction on the program. We'd rather optimize a little bit more on the fill rate at the moment. And to further screen rollouts a little bit slower step by step, we're anywhere able to turn on the speed when needed. So I think it's the right pace for the moment to do a little bit less over the next 2, 3, 4 quarters and then we will see where we are.

And the next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

Christian, Henning and Christopher. First question is on Q3 out-of-home trends. So ProSieben told us July and August bad, no visibility on September. RTL told us July okay, August bad, no visibility on September. So what about you? Do you have visibility on September? Any difference between July and August and September? Is September better, if it is better, is it only out-of-home or own media? That's my first question. The second one on Asam. I know you told us will know more at the Q3, but maybe kind of early broad indication of timing. Also what is the minimum price you think it is worth selling for? And what would you do with the proceeds, buyback, special dividend or M&A? And then last question is how much was public video in your EUR 115 million of digital out-of-home in the first half of '23?

[Foreign Language]. Maybe I can start with your first one, Q3. I think we have less complex answer. July looks good, August looks good. Visibility for September, I would say, is 60%, 65% of final revenue, and we feel quite comfortable with it seems to be in line with what the other 2 months showed. So no special effects or anything inside the quarter or anything that is would be outside of what we're guiding for, for the second half. Asam timing, as I said, I think we are currently doing our internal homework that will require another couple of weeks. And towards our Q3 numbers, we'll probably have a more detailed internal discussion how we see the M&A market and how we want to move forward. So it's difficult to say anything where we just haven't taken any final decision. Price is also something I think we have an overview of what public listed where we are publicly listed beauty companies are trading at the moment both revenue and EBITDA wise. The M&A market is still limited, so that it's difficult to say where our comparable transactions at the moment. So an answer that is very difficult to give right at the moment, but I think the proceeds would definitely go into a special dividend. There might be smaller parts that I don't know, go here and there, but neither share buyback nor M&A would be a realistic capital allocation target. So it would go naturally into dividend payments. And I think we are just working on your final question on the share of the indoor -- indoor versus -- while controlling is still working on it, my gut feel would be around 75% or so. So -- yes. Yes. So maybe -- so if controlling is always right, it's maybe more between 76% and 77% and 75%.

And when you say indoor is that public video or what's the...

Rent -- it is a shopping malls, public transportation systems. And that's really a tiny part inside of fitness studios, restaurants and so on. And outdoor would be what you know by means of billboards, city light poster scroller's when they are digitized. So it's really...

No, he was asking about the digital part is outside would be the roadside screen.

So in the roadside screens might be 2 square meter digitized city light poster, it would be, and that's the majority, 9 square meter. That's a digitized scroller or board, and it could be also large-format outdoor square meter, like we have those in the top 5, 10 cities here and there.

Okay. So you're now thinking about the business more between indoor and outdoor or -- because historically, you always talked about public video, which was basically video mostly in translation, but have you kind of changed the way you look at the breakdown of digital out-of-home then?

No. I think it's just the way that we've developed the business historically. So 10 years ago, the first screen. So we had like that historically that Infoscreen cross-track projections. Then the next step was train stations indoor, then we had the shopping malls following indoor. And I think 5, 6 years ago, we started with the roadside screens that was the digitized scroller. And over the last 3 or 4 years, we've digitized step-by-step more outdoor inventory. And I think, again, historically, we only monetize the indoor part, what we historically also called public video to national advertisers, and the roadside inventory was monetized on screen by screen, on a local level. And a year ago, for the first time, we decided to bring those 2 elements together and monetize it as public video overall also to national advertisers. That said, I think we always have a little bit in mind that how do big national advertisers look at the business. And for them, I think what happened in the last 12 months from their point of view, digital out-of-home or public video was predominantly or only indoor, and that could be now extended to outdoor locations. And I think that has brought quite some interesting momentum in the category in total. Also, we see that once people see that it's available everywhere and reaching 75% of the population, then I think we see that roadside in an itself is not the ultimate driver. It's the overall product proposition. I think that has maybe changed a little bit in the way we looked at the business development over time.

And the next question comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. I just wanted to come back to the digital business, please. I mean, you talked quite a bit at length earlier about the signs of stabilization are on Q2 on the revenues and earnings in H2, which is quite pleasing to hear, obviously. But I wanted to look a little bit further down the road and try to understand whether or not there might be some structural headwinds here, in general, for the online advertising category. And I'm thinking about 2 points here, I'm thinking about -- with the whole generative API -- AI, GPT development. My impression at least, I don't have a lot of hard evidence, but my impression is that publishers are moving even more to secure the content behind digital paywalls. So the first part of that question would be, might this be a midterm sort of erosion threat to the online ad business? And the second component would be, I'm seeing a bit more evidence of the sound advertising, I think they call it via streaming platforms. I'm thinking in particular about music and pod platforms that -- this is an emerging category in ad spend, whether or not this might also present a potential risk of further shift from online to streaming?

Yes. I think on the -- on your first question, in general, I would say, yes, you are right that especially historic print publishers that moved their content 10, 15 years ago, also in the Internet, I had to learn that -- it's a challenge in the digital world, if you only depend on advertising revenues because their historic print business had 2 revenue streams. One was in newspapers. The other one was ads. So I think 10 years further down the online road, they saw that it will be difficult if they don't have something that is similar to selling newspapers or magazines, so they moved the content or part of the content behind paywalls to monetize it that way. Yes, I think -- but that's a trend that we've seen in the last 4 or 5 years, and you could see that it works for -- in part for local newspapers or local publishing houses, and it works for pretty niche specialist interest one, but it doesn't work for general interest and news. Why? Because you can get the content also, I don't know, on other platforms. That's exactly, I think, where we stepped in with our T-Online proposition. We see and saw more and more traditional news publishers moving the best part of their content behind paywalls, which means at the same time, the traffic that is available for advertising goes down. And I think that's one of the key USPs of the online that what we deliver there is pretty much on the quality level of where other more established news brands are. But in our case, the business case works very nicely with advertising with really decent and recurring margins. And there is no need to move anything behind paywalls. So if others reactions to AI is moving even more behind the paywall, I would say that opens up more opportunities for T-Online. That said, we are also producing the first articles with AI. So we try to use the tools to optimize the cost for our content production. But I also see is that -- if you look at the most recent developments of ChatGPT, that it learns and learns, but it also learns based on human behavior. So it starts to like, it starts to talk bulls***, and it starts to tell things that are maybe that are nice in the ears of the people that listen, but it's not the full reality. So I think there is also some potential for news brands that can clearly claim and say that everything is definitely true, rational and text based. That's why I would agree with you that there will be further changes for the publishing and especially the news business. And there's always opportunities and risks, but I think there are enough opportunities for us to develop that business further, especially as we think that others are a little bit more under pressure than us given the margin profile that we have. Just -- looking at the second question, the sound aspect of the radio.

No radio, the streaming pipeline, the music streaming platforms?

Yes. I mean it's -- first -- my first answer would be music streaming, radio, sound was always in a specific category inside the out-of-home market. So ultimately, television does not really compete with radio. And yes, radio can is competing with other regional media, but if you have a visual ad or you do it with sound is, in general, two different things. So what I see at the moment now is that users move away from classic broadcasting radio, and they go to streaming. And in the case of streaming, they go to music or podcast or story on-demand. So I think what we'll see here, what we already have seen in the last couple of years that eyeballs that used to be -- sorry, I don't know earbuds? Yes, they're moving from I don't know by M3 or FFM or FH whatever radio station that you were listening to for 20, 30 years, too. I go and Spotify and listen exactly to the kind of music that I want. That's why I think that kind of cannibalization kit is mainly hitting classic radio, and I think the kind of interdependences between online display and streaming is limited. Nevertheless, we are also inside our digital ad sales house. We have a small radio unit that is also monetizing both podcasts as well as streaming offerings or DAB radio. Just to get a feeling for that. And what we see at the moment is, yes, that with the streaming development and sound on-demand or radio on-demand, I think it can be more targeted, and therefore, it creates more attractiveness towards targeted advertising. But I think the downside is rather happening on the on the broadcasting radio historic ad spend.

And the next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank.

I have two questions. The first is on digital out-of-home. Could you share with us, Christian, what the share of programmatic booking was within the digital out-of-home mix? Has it become more popular or do the national clients still prefer such the direct sales approach somehow, that would be great? And was there a price increase element that also helped drive the growth in Q2 within digital out-of-home? And my second question is on Statista GPT. I mean it sounds highly interesting looking forward to seeing what it looks like. Could you tell us a bit more about the scale of investments needed to set this up? Do you think it could be compensated by future revenue growth? And there's been an improvement in the margin within that entire segment in Q2, could that sort of margin improvement continue for the rest of the year? Some color there would be great.

On your first question, yes and yes. Yes, I think programmatic is clearly driving the growth of digital out-of-home and also the acceleration. I think we are, at the moment, roughly at -- if you look at the national business where clients that really have a rational choice to go via order insertions or programmatic, I would say the mix there is meanwhile, 50-50. And throughout the year, the programmatic part might -- will probably go above 50%. So that's the majority of revenue streams from national advertisers that can host themselves every day do I allocate the budget insertion by insertion? Or do I put digital money on my trading desk and then allocate it to YouTube to display and also to digital out-of-home. So that's clearly overall driving the momentum there. I think answering your second question from the end, yes, the margin improvements that we've seen in H1 in segment 3, that will continue also in H2. I think the whole Statista GPT or AI potential is not part of that. In the case of Statista, we've started working already, I think, in Q2 last year to change a couple of things. Yes, we knew that it will slowdown maybe the top line development a little bit. At the same time, we prepare sales organization wise, the company for the next level and also work on some cost efficiency programs for the first time to make sure that we sustainably make money there. So that's why I would say the trend from H1 good overall development, but with significant margin improvements versus prior year is what we'll see also for the rest of the year. So I think, as I said in the case of Statista, I think EUR 200 million -- sorry, in the case of Asam, EUR 200 million revenue are not impossible this year. I think that's what we are shooting for. Historically, we've been always operating on 18%, 20% EBITDA/EBIT margin once you take out one-offs that taking a company from EUR 30 million revenue to EUR 200 million that are necessary here and there, especially when you expand also to other countries. I think that margin is also what we see in the first half of the year. I think we mentioned an extra impact coming on top through via expanded retailer distribution by having our products at DM, the largest drogerie in Germany from end of Q1. I think we've mentioned the China business where -- at the moment, it's more our job to make sure that we produce and deliver the kind of extra demand that we have than having challenges with the demand coming from China. So I think we have a very solid fundament with the numbers this year. And I think there's quite some strong developments that make us very confident for next year.

And the next question comes from James Tate from Goldman Sachs.

It's James Tate from Goldman Sachs. I've got two quick questions, please. Firstly, just a quick follow-up on Statista GPT, and it's expected to launch by the end of this year. Could you just give a bit more color on how you expect to price the new feature? And then secondly, still on generative AI, it will be great to understand what you're seeing in terms of the application, if any, or the tech your call center business? Just great to get a bit more color there.

Yes. Maybe I'll start with the second one. I think we've worked since by -- I think for the first time, we had external software implemented 4 or 5 years ago, especially for Vodafone. So that was, I think, throughout the years, always some kind of AI support for call center agents, where the software listened to the call and then gave keywords to use, propose the next step product for cross upselling that was filtering profiling incoming calls based on existing consumer data just to get the right agent to the right consumer. So I think that is like an ongoing process operationally. Other than that, I have to say I haven't seen anything in the next 6 months in the industry, and I don't see anything coming in the next 6 to 9 months, that would be plug and play or something dramatically changes. I would say -- we are in Germany. German language is a little bit different. As we operate in German-speaking countries, we focus more on global clients and smaller number of agents and more specific costs and a lot of cross and upselling, that's probably the area which is the most difficult to crack. If you have a global BPO business on standard accounts that might be a little bit different. But we are observing what's happening. At the moment, we feel very comfortable in our niche. But yes, we are also aware that generative AI will have, especially as far as text features or contact centers are concerned will have an impact in the next, I would say, at least 3 to 5 years. But the impact might take a little bit more time. So nothing where we have a focus on landing the next 12 or 18 months. I think in the case of Statista GPT, there is two aspects. I think our main interest is in general to move the user base a little bit out of the specialist departments of companies to a broader number of users inside our subscriber base because ultimately, I think when you look at SaaS businesses, and I think we're developing Data as a Service in a similar way. I think the kind of revenues that you can generate are ultimately driven by the total number of users. And I think it's a massive difference if someone subscribes to Statista, let's say, a large company or take our company with 4,000 people and ultimately, it's 100 specialists using it versus 2,000 out of the 4,000 using it. So I think our first approach is to significantly getting the users up inside the subscriber base to then have a look at what is the right pricing model and more users, more revenue. I think it's just as simple as that. I think secondly, we will also see if there are different levels of the product because we already have today a product called askStatista, where if you have a question and you either don't have the time or the know-how to go through the database yourself, you askStatista, then we give you a price indication for what it takes us to deliver your individualized answer, then you pay for it and you get it and we do like the work on the platform for you. I think that is something that Statista GPT can do also as an add-on feature. So there might be slightly different subscription models that you can ask for depending on what kind of work you want to do yourself and what you want to do in -- via AI support. And I think the third area is just in expanding the product globally or to specific customers. We always have seen some kind of limitations in either creating the next language or individualizing the database more towards the specific product category that is relevant for the next 100 important customers. I think that's something that we can also accelerate dramatically through GPT. So that's, at the moment, the three areas: consumers up, additional services that are more tailor-made and accelerating further rollout to other languages/countries and industries or customer groups.

And the next question comes from Richard Eary from UBS.

Just three sort of quick questions. Just following up on Julien's question earlier about Asam. I mean, I presume, given the size of it, are we only thinking of a trade sale as an exit if you just clarify that, just given the size of the asset? The second thing you mentioned a couple of times in this sort of call that you thought that out-of-home was being valued at 0. Can you just elaborate that and therefore, put some values on the other three parts of the business in terms of your expectations, so we can get an understanding of what your thought process is there? And then just lastly, going back to the split on the indoor digital out-of-home versus outdoor. Can you give us a view in terms of the penetration within indoor and outdoor digital, and where we expect those penetration rates to change going forward and whether we should see that revenue split sort of more evenly split as we see big grade digitation of sort of billboards and out of screens, that would be helpful?

On your third question, what do you mean with penetration? Is it audience coverage or fill rate, utilization rate?

Well, penetration is probably -- well, I mean the way to probably look at it is I would have thought the amount of screen availability out of inventory is one point, and then obviously, fill rates on existing inventory?

Okay. So indoor at the moment, roughly 1/3 is monetized advertising and 2/3 is content, and we are increasing the portfolio slowly. So I think even flipping the share of advertising versus content wouldn't make, make it a bad or difficult product. I think we've been always working historically with a lot of content to make the product attractive, but it could be also a majority wise or even 100% advertising apart from minor obligations to show content here and there. So I think there, it's clearly the indoor product itself. It's everywhere, more or less all train stations or shopping malls are digitized. The smaller areas of the buildings that you can maybe improve. But in general, they are covered, and we reach I don't know, 50%, 60% of the population with those indoor products. So I would say they're everywhere, where it could be, it should be, yes, it's where it could be and the fill rate is still relatively low, so that it's an utilization gain going forward, and that clearly will have profitability structure. I think roadside for us has two aspects, the first -- or three aspects. The first one is we can still monetize every location to local customers if there are enough of them. And if they are willing to presubscribe it's a risk-free switch from analog to digital. That's one area. I think secondly, the money that comes from national advertisers also comes on the roadside inventory because they want to increase the indoor reach. That's also something that we see. But there only need a specific amount of roadside inventory to deliver the needs of national advertisers. That's where we are. I think we've digitized now 1,800 screens. For the moment, we've identified something like 8,000 to 10,000 screens where we feel they have the potential over the next 5 to 7 years. being monetized. Utilization on an individual screen given the speed that we've been ramping up the portfolio. Roadside-wise, at the moment, I think, is around 65%, 70%. So there's a little bit space as far as the fill rate is concerned, but there is pretty much unlimited potential as far as what have we identified as the next I don't know, 8,000 on top of the 1,800. And I think from -- again, intermediate competition, we've on an overall and city by city, meanwhile a reach that is difficult to counter by linear television. So I think from that area, the product is where it needs to be from an advertiser point of view, and we will optimize the business from now on more step-by-step looking also at CapEx invest versus profitability improvements. And I think that's a good situation.

Maybe on Asam, Richard, I think in terms of the potential transaction, I think we think more along the lines of a trade sale. I mean still Asam performance is great, but we doubt at the moment that it would be fitting for the public equity market at the moment. So we're not on that drought at the moment. And on out-of-home, I think maybe Udo wants to take it up on the valuation, but I think one thing is clear. I mean we have, I think, quite concrete understanding of what we believe Asam and Statista are worth. If you just make the math based on, let's say, the average sum of the parts at the moment, you see just a complete mismatch looking at the valuation of our out-of-home business in Germany, which is like 65% market share, very profitable and compare that with probably forward more than 10x valuation for top international peers. I mean that's basically the frustration that we have.

I think you can calculate it in both directions, but I think our market cap is EUR 2.4 billion at the moment. We have a little bit less than EUR 800 million debt. So enterprise value is 3.1% to 3.2% as the way that the capital market sees it. If I look inside that business, we have an online business publishing ad sales that generates, I don't know, roughly EUR 100 million EBITDA take even historic low multiple, then you take a Dialogue business with EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million EBITDA roughly. I think no more than EUR 60 million, EUR 65 million, yes, just take a trading multiple of web help. You name it, deduct if you want 20% or 30% because we have no global business, take that and take the Statista revenue and just take a historic low of revenue multiple for those kind of growing businesses, I don't know. Don't take 10, just take 4 or 5, and then look at Asam, take the, I said, EUR 200 million revenue. 18%, 20% margin take whatever double-digit multiple on the EBITDA you want. And if you just calculate those numbers, you probably get close to EUR 3 billion, and then we haven't talked about the out-of-home business. And it's not about where is the precise value. And that's always, I think, an individual question, how is the business doing at the moment and where our peers and what's the M&A market. But in general, it shows that there is some significant mismatch between the inner value of the various assets and how the market sees currently the enterprise value of the group share product base. And I think we accept it. It is what it is. I think what we can do is changing the structure of the business, and that's what we plan to do. And with Asam, we have the first step here going forward.

It seems there are no further questions. So I hand back to Christian Schmalzl for closing comments.

Thank you very much for the question, for your time. Yes, looking forward to hearing you sooner or later, at least at our Q3 numbers. And enjoy the rest of the summer. Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.