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

Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear analysts, thank you for participating in our early call on the publication of our Q3 and 9 months figures. As you know, we had planned a virtual CMD with focus on out-of-home and digital out-of-home for today immediately following this call. In the light of last week's announcement of the acquisition of RBL Media, we have decided to postpone this and do it in combination with our preliminary results or final results for 2024. We've been quite busy in finalizing the deal for our core business in the last 6 weeks, and currently focused on a swift integration to optimize our plan for 2025. It simply makes more sense to make our projections going forward, including RBL Media and i.e., the digitization of the underlying contracts. We are ultimately a small team. So our resources are limited. So there is no other agenda or meaning behind the postponed CMD, just to be clear. However, I would like to take up topics in the following that are not directly affected by the acquisitions, such as technical features, bookability and targeting, in order to provide a deeper understanding of our growth drivers at the moment. Henning will then comment on the developments and effects of our Q3 figures in more detail. This will be followed by remarks on what we expect for the fourth quarter and the full year. As always, we are looking forward to your questions after our presentation. With that, we start the call with a short overview of Q3 2024 and the 9 months market dynamics. Let's put our performance into the context of direct and indirect peers in Germany. You're probably familiar with this chart. And as always, the numbers in the 2 middle columns are based on Nielsen, which reports gross revenue, which is inflated by roughly 6 to 7 points versus net numbers, which you have on the right and left of the chart for us and global platforms. In line with the development in previous quarters and comparing like-for-like, the realistic net numbers, out-of-home is outperforming the overall ad market and Stroer is outperforming the ad market as well as its out-of-home peers. The driver within out-of-home is consistently digital out-of-home, and our public video business was again beyond the growth rate of the global ad platforms like Google, Alphabet or YouTube and far beyond any local German media owner. After the outstanding high, driven in part by the European football championship in the second quarter, the German advertising market grew in gross numbers by only 4% compared to 9% in Q2. As in the previous quarters, out-of-home was the decisive growth driver here, with an increase of around 10%, outperforming TV and print significantly by 4 and 9 percentage points respectively. And this is particularly noteworthy outgrew desktop/mobile, which was down by 3%. Let's look at how these consistently strong development are reflected in the figures for the first 9 months and also level out the phasing effects between Q2 and Q3, given the impact of the sports event in the second quarter. In total, revenues were up by 8% reported or by 7.8% on an organic basis from EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 1.5 billion. These numbers reflect on the one hand, continues its strong business development, but on the other hand, also the strong comps from the prior year quarter. Henning will talk about this in the development of Asam in China in more detail in the financial section, particularly on the developments in the third quarter. Most importantly, despite the softer ad market and negative phasing effects coming from Q2, our organic out-of-home growth was again double digits. Looking at the other key figures on this page, they are developing exactly as we expected and explained in the last call. EBITDA adjusted is growing faster than revenue. EBITDA adjusted and net profit adjusted are growing almost twice as fast as EBITDA adjusted, reflecting easing cost pressure as well as declining inflation, and in particular, the sustained operational leverage of our core out-of-home segment. An EBITDA growth of 12% compared to 8% revenue growth is a perfect proof point for this. In total, EBITDA was up from EUR 375 million to EUR 420 million. EBIT improved from EUR 158 million to EUR 192 million, also due to comparably stable IFRS effects, a development that we also see for the coming years as described in previous calls. Net income increased in line with EBIT from EUR 79 million to EUR 96 million or also 22%. Free cash flow is probably the strongest statement in the first 9 months of 2024. It increased by almost EUR 100 million from minus EUR 90 million to plus EUR 78 million, in addition to the positive business development, lower capital expenditure and tax expenses compared to the previous year as well as stable IFRS 16 repayments contributed to this encouraging development. At EUR 62 million, CapEx for the first 9 months was 37% below the previous year's figure of around EUR 98 million, and reflects the continued back to normal and the objective to further optimize and improve the fill rate of our digital out-of-home portfolio. We developed our infrastructure more demand oriented and focused on leveraging existing strong network. You have seen this chart for the first time in the last call, and we have added the Q3 numbers to once again put the current momentum into a broader context, especially the dynamics of digital out-of-home, which is the key value driver for our group. You see both quarterly digital out-of-home revenue as well as the last 12 months numbers for the last almost 6 years. The pandemic with the various lockdowns pushed the last 12 months revenue of our subsegment down by roughly 35%. Also the digital out-of-home business has fully recovered, with the end of the last lockdown in 2021. The following 6 quarters were strong, but still impacted by the war in the Ukraine, massive cost inflation as well as the ad market crisis and the tobacco ad ban for out-of-home advertising. But since almost 18 months, we see an acceleration of digital out-of-home and the LTM for digital out-of-home revenue has doubled over the last 12 quarters. In addition, and this is particularly evident in the LTM analysis, digital out-of-home growth is stabilizing clearly above 20%, which makes it clear that even our digital out-of-home product, with its short-term bookability, is not a business that necessarily responds to short-term shocks or market cycles, but on the contrary, shows a comparatively robust development. And according to the available forecast for our core business, from industry bodies like IDOOH or consultancies like PwC, the current trend is a recurring and sustainable one for the coming years, in line with our expectations. More than 80% of the out-of-home segment growth is coming from digital out-of-home and more than 60% of that digital out-of-home growth is fueled by programmatic demand, automated trading and the seamless integration of digital out-of-home into the broader digital marketing ecosystem. It's worth mentioning that we still see low single-digit momentum for classic out-of-home going forward based on our strong local and regional sales force and the opportunities of exactly those customer groups shifting budgets away from print media, i.e., newspapers freebie weeklies. But the largest potential clearly lies in the linear TV market, still between 40% and 45% of the legacy media landscape today. Long-term TV audience development for the total population is only one direction, and the loss of reaching younger target group segments has become massive since the end of the pandemic. At the same time, global platforms already have a high share and focus more on the lower advertising funnel, while advertisers predominantly need to find alternatives in the upper funnel to strengthen their brand presence. And that's where our investments in digitizing our infrastructure in the last years fully pays off. With total over 46,000 screens across all touch points and in over 200 cities, our audience penetration on a weekly and monthly level can more than compete with television, and is an inevitable and complementary medium to compensate the shortfall in audience of historic TV-heavy media plans. Similar to prime time and daytime in television, the variety of our formats and screen sizes give brands a broad range of choices, from maximum reach at lowest possible costs, to maximum brand visibility and cut through with spectacular solutions. And we are the only media category that is able to focus both on niche audiences just as broadcasting brand messages to the whole country. Over the last years, we have been working closely with all relevant DSPs and trading desks from the digital programmatic world to connect our infrastructure to their systems. Google DV360 was the last bigger one that opened up their Internet-based logics to our alternate to digital out-of-home. But the pure connection doesn't immediately generate revenue. It takes a while until clients and agency actively allocate budgets via that channel. And we see over time, more and more momentum while demand sources like Adform, The Trade Desk, or Xandr. Starting originally as a DMP, a data management platform, joint venture with the Otto Group, we have been working continuously over the last 5 years to build partnership models with various data providers like Deutsche Post or Payback and analytics companies like Acxiom to maximize the available sources for audience profiles for all of our media, both online and digital out-of-home. Mass mobility data of telco companies like Deutsche Telekom or Telefonica enable us to better understand the geospatial structure of the various target group clusters. So how does audience targeting for digital out-of-home work? How do we know which screens we need to activate in what moment for which creative to reach the right audience to optimize advertiser ROI for brands? Basically, 3 steps ensure that we know exactly which locations have the right target group concentrations for campaigns. First of all, based on the data sources and the -- and their information described before, we know who has small kids who is interested in cars who's looking for the latest fashion trend or is only a light viewer of television. That data is connected with the ZIP code of people's homes or their mobile ID, so we know their profiles and where they are generally. The second step is the projection of movement data. Data from apps give us the geolocation of target groups or, that's the second methodology, we use the radio cells, the telco provides. So for example, for an average hour of an average day, you know the concentration of individual target group segments in front of our screens. The third and last stage, the audience segment projections are delivered to our playout systems to activate the right screen in the right moment for the right message to the right target group. And every day, we are connecting more data, optimize the projection processes, get advertiser ROI feedback and improve our underlying model. We have developed a screen infrastructure to cover the country and reach the majority of the population. We have connected the inventory via our SSP to demand side and their automated trading systems, and we enrich our inventory with smart data to enable the trading desks to precisely get the eyeballs for the audiences they need to address. But ultimately, that's the technical process behind the delivery. The underlying propositions are concrete solutions for dedicated marketing costs of advertisers. We have highlighted a couple of them here and we'll show exemplary 3 use cases: video, audience and retail solutions. What's the advertiser challenge behind our video solution? We reach target groups that TV can't cover anymore. We close TV coverage gaps by leveraging TV viewer data and extending TV campaigns via digital out-of-home locations, where TV reach falls below a specific threshold. A best-in-class case was developed for and together with Bayer for their product Priorin to demonstrate the improved effectiveness for the overall campaign. Measured results were showing 11 percentage points uplift for ad recall versus TV-only, supported brand awareness going up 23 percentage points and 7 percentage points improvement within the relevant set of the core target group. The German TV market is roughly EUR 16.5 billion in gross revenue and all advertisers have the same challenge, shortfall in more and more audience classes and a decline of roughly 7% in only the last 3 years. Especially the top TV spenders like TMG or Ferrero have a historically low out-of-home share. On the back of references like Bayer, we are working on extending the video solution volume with clients like Vodafone, Reckitt or Henkel. One percentage point of the TV market is equivalent to plus 50% for our public video business. The addressable market as well as the client needs are huge over the coming years. What's the advertiser challenge behind our audience solution? The growth of online advertising in the last 20 years is driven, apart from changing media consumption, by its strength of precisely identifying and addressing specific target audiences. Legacy media, including traditional out-of-home have limitations here. At the same time, online media often lack the broadcasting power of classic media channels. Our audience solution cover both, as reflected in a showcase for the Unilever brand, Ben & Jerry's. Based on our DMP audience profiles, we have activated our public video network in areas with a particularly high concentration of the vegan and vegetarian audiences for a new flavor of the brand, and the outcome was as expected, an audience uplift of 2.7x versus linear television, which is simply too broad for an audience segment that only represents 13% of the population. Whereas the future potential, the FMCG advertisers spend in total almost EUR 7 billion per year. Our market share with FMCG clients, including classic out-of-home, is 2.5% at the moment versus 9.5% across all advertisers. Using, for instance, our audience solutions for the very concrete challenges of the FMCG sector and just doubling our market share there to 5%, which would be still significantly below our 9.5 overall share, would be worth EUR 140 million. What's the advertiser challenge behind our retail solution? Given the growth of e-commerce and changing shopping behaviors of the broader population, it becomes key for classic retailers to guide customers to the point of sale and deliver targeted ads directly where you influence people's positions. The case for a food discounter we cannot name here, was based on the footfall analysis over a couple of weeks followed by a 1-month campaign on our digital roadside network optimized for the local customer potential of the stores and their commuting routines. Store visits showed a significant uplift in the declined regions and trackable incremental visits between 5,000 and 6,000 people per store based on the client's internal marketing attribution model. The retail sector in Germany is worth over EUR 5 billion of ad spend and our overall market share, classic and digital out-of-home, is with 4.5% less than half of what we achieved across the total ad market according to Nielsen. Just 1 percentage point of their spend is worth EUR 50 million or 15% of our total public video business. We already have strong growth in that sector with increasing budgets from Lidl, Aldi, Rewe, Edeka, but also Amazon on the digital retail front, but we are coming from such a low level and have such strong arguments that the addressable market also in that segment is still huge. The advertising fill rate for digital out-of-home is still low in the mid-30s. Tech and data enable us to deliver solutions from advertisers on a completely new level. We have a clear plan how we improve advertisers' ROI and more and more use cases in proof of concept. Not every quarter will be perfect and it won't be a linear process, but the midterm potential for digital out-of-home is massive, and we are still at a very early stage of that development. That's the key message here. Let me now make some comments on the newest addition to the Stroer family, RBL Media, which we acquired end of last month, as you all know. This deal is a consequent and logical step in expanding our portfolio in total, but especially our high-reach digital portfolio. With the acquisition, we can integrate attractive cities in which we were already active, but not yet to our full potential, but especially cities that complement our existing portfolio. Cities like Dortmund, Essen, Leipzig and Erfurt offers high short-term digitization potential since RBL Media not only has the relevant city contracts, but also the building permits. This means that RBL Media was small enough for us to buy from a regulatory point of view, but on the other hand, it has much potential that the business will make an earnings contribution of around EUR 70 million in the midterm by 2027 once we've built all the potential inventory. Let's now take a look at the major cities in Germany with more than 300,000 inhabitants and which we already cover with our portfolio. Our out-of-home segment in total is based on roughly 20,000 individual advertising possessions, highly diversified and across private landlords, enterprises and municipalities. On a city level, we never depend on individual contracts and our infrastructure is based on a combination of the various long-term contracts. Nevertheless, communal advertising rights, i.e., in the top cities are an important backbone of our business. On this slide, you see the enormous stability over the last 10 years of our municipality contract portfolio in the largest cities, and we have highlighted where RBL will strengthen and extend our footprint, especially in street furniture. Based on the digitization level of only 4%, there is a substantial upside for the acquired portfolio. So while we are working on the fill rate of our portfolio, the underlying infrastructure and its concessions are extremely robust, thanks to a highly consolidated market with high market entry barriers. So far on my remarks, and with that, over to Henning.

Thank you, Christian, and a very good morning to everybody from my side. Overall, we have seen a pretty strong quarter, in particular, fueled by good underlying revenue and cash flow performance of our core advertising businesses. Against the high prior year base from last year's strong Q3 that turned in of growth of 11% at the time, sales now were up 3% for the quarter and organic growth came in at 3.3%. When adjusting for Asam's strong growth last year and the decline this year, sales were up 9%, followed by now 5% for this year's Q3, to put things a little bit into perspective. With an increase of 6%, we were able to improve adjusted EBITDA for the past quarter from EUR 147 million to EUR 156 million. The exceptional items for the quarter were minus EUR 3.6 million, somewhat higher than in the previous year's figure of EUR 0.3 million plus. This was mainly due to some restructuring and regulation expenses at Statista as well as costs from exiting some of our French door-to-door activities. Accordingly, reported EBITDA came in at EUR 153 million, up 3% compared to the prior year quarter. Depreciation amortization for the quarter was only slightly up, following more or less the trend of the first 6 months. With that, the reported EBIT for the quarter improved by 4% to EUR 72 million. The financial result came in at around minus EUR 18 million compared to minus EUR 20 million in Q3 '23. The development reflects slightly lower interest rates as well as reduced net debt. The EUR 54 million EBT for the quarter was some 9% higher compared to EUR 49 million in the previous year's quarter. The tax rate for the quarter remained at around 30%, and thus in line with the first 2 quarters. Including the developments described above, net income adjusted came in at around EUR 41 million or 8% above the prior year level. Let us now switch over to the cash flow. Altogether, the group continued to show improving cash flow dynamics for Q3, even ahead of our own expectations. Q3 cash flow improved basically across all line items. Improving EBITDA, lower cash out for interest and taxes as well as working capital led to an increase in the operating cash flow of EUR 38 million. Lower investments and lower lease liability repayments contributed to an adjusted free cash flow of EUR 57 million after minus EUR 3 million last year. Taxes and lease liability repayments are characterized by phasing effects that will, to some extent, reverse in Q4. For the cumulative period, our adjusted free cash flow came in at EUR 78 million, so almost on the level of our free cash flow for the entire year of 2023. For the fourth quarter, we are expecting strong free cash flow generation. However, please bear in mind that we had a substantial working capital improvement in last year's Q4, that we do not forecast to reach the same level again. Also, we should see some reversal of the phasing effects that I mentioned earlier on taxes and lease liability repayments. Let me come to the net debt development. In a sequential view from the end of Q2 to the end of Q3, net debt was down by roughly EUR 50 million, including the adjusted free cash flow for the third quarter of plus EUR 57 million, plus EUR 2.5 million cash in from exercise stock options, a change in liabilities from dividends of minority shareholders here, in particular, at Asam of minus EUR 11 million and some M&A expenses of EUR 1 million. With that, our leverage ratio decreased further to now 2.1x, and thus providing sufficient headroom for the acquisition of RBL Media. Including the acquisition and based on our expectations for Q4, we anticipate the leverage ratio by the end of this year of well below our target level of 2.5x. Let me now discuss the performance of the individual operating segments. Starting with our core segment out-of-home media. Against quite tough comps, our core business out-of-home media continued to deliver a strong performance, and we increased Q3 revenues from EUR 217 million to EUR 237 million. Organic growth for the quarter came in at 10%, just in line with our expectations for the quarter. From a 9 months perspective, organic growth was 16%. Our digital out-of-home business, in particular, contributed to the strong performance, growing by 24% to EUR 93 million in Q3. In the period from January through September, growth was even stronger, also driven by the UEFA football tournament in the second quarter, and increased by 27%. Our classic out-of-home business shows a comparable development cycle. This product grew by around 3% to EUR 131 million in the third quarter. For the 6-month period, classic out-of-home also benefited from the European championships and posted a double-digit increase. Among the top performers by industry, we had FMCG, retail and telcos, altogether growing by more than 35% in the quarter, while somewhat lagging were clients from the consumer electronics, both leisure and automotive industries. The development in out-of-home services was still characterized by the disposal of the smaller noncore activity. EBITDA adjusted for the quarter increased from EUR 102 million to EUR 115 million. Alongside the strong revenue development, just described at the moderating cost inflation compared to the previous year's quarter led to an improvement of the EBITDA margin by 200 basis points year-over-year and 250 basis points in the first 9 months. Excluding the effects from IFRS 16 accounting, the margin improvement for the same period amounted to more than 400 basis points, and thus underlines the strong operational leverage. In Digital and Dialog, revenue in the third quarter increased by slightly more than 2%. Within Digital, programmatic continues to be the growth driver, with total digital revenues up by 6% to EUR 112 million. Our content publishing business, and here, our flagship asset online delivered broadly stable sales and earnings. In our Dialog business, increasing sales at our contact centers almost compensated for a sales decline in our door-to-door business. Altogether, earnings here were stable. In total, the segment delivered an EBITDA adjusted of EUR 37 million, up to EUR 38 million in Q3 '23. Please bear in mind that earnings in Digital are still affected by a technical effect from the loss of the Bauer contract that I mentioned in the previous calls. The effect on EBITDA adjusted from this for the quarter was around minus EUR 2 million. There is and will be no effect on sales, EBIT and net cash flow due to the compensation of business volume through newly acquired business mandates at the beginning of the year. Last but not least, some comments on our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment with Statista and Asam. Revenue development showed a differentiated picture both in the third quarter as well as from a 9-month perspective. Data as a Service, revenue development accelerated further and returned to double-digit growth as expected. Sales rose from EUR 36 million to EUR 41 million or 13%, respectively. On a 9-month basis, revenues came in at EUR 121 million. While Statista delivered the expected acceleration in sales, Asam's business development was still impaired by reduced trading and wholesale distribution in China, which last year delivered very strong growth. In contrast Asam's core online activities continued to deliver good growth. Reflecting the impaired performance at Asam regarding China and increased marketing intensity, EBITDA adjusted for the segment was down from EUR 15 million to EUR 11 million. With that, let me hand you over back to Christian for the outlook and some closing remarks.

Before ending the presentation, let me just have some comments on the outlook for Q4 and the full year as well as our financial calendar. For the fourth quarter 2024, we expect revenue for out-of-home, up in the high single-digit percentage range, driven by ongoing strong digital out-of-home momentum. Digital and dialogue should increase in the mid-single percentage range. DaaS and e-commerce should accelerate driven by Statista. Our full year guidance remains unchanged. And you've seen in our 9 months numbers, EBIT growed grows 3x faster than revenue. And EBITDA margin is substantially above prior year. We have a strong cash conversion, so we also feel comfortable with the current market consensus. Let me close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for '24, '25. Our next agenda topic will be the publication of our preliminary figures for the 2024 financial calendar on March 6, 2025. The annual report for 2024, including the mandatory publications on CSRD sustainability reporting for the first time will be published later in March. I mentioned the CMD throughout Q1 earlier in the presentation. On May 8, our Q1 numbers will be released. The half year figures will be presented on August 13, and Q3 figures will be published on November 11. 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.

Our first question comes from Annick Maas in Bernstein.

My first question is, is your out-of-home guidance for the fourth quarter including RBL Media? And if so, what would be out-of-home growth been guided for if it will be excluded? And the second one is, could you just tell us -- you said that the segment should grow because of Statista in Q4. Can you tell us what you're expecting for Asam? And also, that's the third question, what Asam did in Germany versus the rest of the world over the last quarter? And how much rest of the world is now making up of the mix of Asam ?

Annick, thanks for your questions. Maybe starting with the first one before I hand over to Henning regarding Asam. RBL Media, I think we've just started the transition. So I think the impact that we see for Q4 might be around EUR 3 million, maybe EUR 0.5 million more, difficult to be precise. So I think that's equivalent to, I would say, roughly 1 percentage point of out-of-home revenue in Q4. So I think last year's basis was like 280, 285, I think, roughly. So as you mentioned, and I think we haven't really thought about it precisely, plus/minus 1 percentage point. I think it wouldn't -- won't substantially move the needle for Q4.

On Asam, Annick, I think, first of all, once again, to remind us, we had a spectacular '23 in Asam with the performance that we've seen from selling a very specific noncore product into China. We generated a sales level of, altogether in 2023, of something like EUR 33 million, EUR 34 million. Basically now, this growth that we've seen last year is falling apart and it's explaining the performance to a very large extent. The underlying performance, and here, in particular, the online performance in our German core business, was quite positive. In the third quarter, we would have seen a little bit of phasing effects with regard to our delivery to retailers. But in terms of the underlying business, we are very confident and we don't see any sort of structural change excluding China.

Our next question comes from Craig Abbott at Kepler Cheuvreux.

I just wanted to come back, please, to RBL Media. I just wondered if you could give us at least some kind of indication on acquisition price? You gave us an indication on absolute number on EBITDA outlook by the time you get up to '27. I just wondered if there are any more metrics you could give? So I appreciate you gave us a leverage target by year-end, and we can probably later go out and go back and work through that. But any indications you could give us here would be very useful.

Well, Craig, the preliminary purchase price of RBL, we have disclosed in the quarter report. It is around EUR 106 million. We talked about a long-term or midterm expectation in terms of earnings, including synergies of around EUR 17 million. That was the before, let's say, the inflationary effects of IFRS 16. So it's the cash EBITDA contribution that we expect over time. And if you relay purchase price to that earnings quality, I think is a reasonable evaluation. With regards to the leverage, I said our target leverage always is 2.5x, but our expectation is that even including RBL, we will be quite a bit below the 2.5x by the end of this year, assuming we reach our forecast as we have mapped it out in the call. So we are quite confident there is sufficient headroom in terms of financing, even including the acquisition. And as we all know, Q4 is always a very strong and cash generative quarter for us in absolute terms.

Okay. Yes. And I have to ask the usual question, but still, I mean any updates on your strategic thoughts over the next year or 2 in terms of your 2 noncore assets?

No. I think as we've said in the past, we are committed to make disposals. I think in the case of Statista, it's a little bit further down the road. I think in the case of Asam, we are well prepared and have our eyes open. I think after Q4, we will be through that special China effect and have a cleaner view on the underlying stock development over the last couple of years, I think Henning just referenced to that, and we'll see what the next couple of months will bring in the market. We depend a little bit on the M&A sentiment out there, but the commitment and the willingness and in the case of Asam, the team, in general, ready to go. That hasn't changed.

We continue with a question from Julien Roch in Barclays.

My first question is on RBL Media again. So EUR 17 million of EBITDA in 2027. Could we get some idea of the revenue then and maybe the contribution in '25, both revenue and EBITDA? And then if you can throw in EBIT on top, so we have an idea of the depreciation. So that's the first question. The second question, on digital out-of-home. You had quite a lengthy remark on that, which I suppose you prepared for the Investor Day. But that targeting of knowing what people are with the mobile, it sounds very good. But what about the privacy law, to what level can you do that kind of targeting in Germany? And then finally, third question is for the first 9 months, could you give us the revenue of Public Video?

Julien, maybe back on RBL, I think just conceptually, the company had won 2 tenders in the last 12 months that are currently ramped up and that will still be ramped up. That's why I think realistically, the EUR 17 million cash EBITDA that Henning mentioned are the fair number based on everything we've acquired is fully in place. I think the underlying revenue contribution by that is probably in the mid- to high 30s revenue-wise. And I think the company is roughly as it's just on the way to execute one contract is probably halfway there. And I think that's why we've made the remarks on the CMD. We currently work on the integration of the assets because as you could expect, there's a lot of duplicated structures, and we just want to make sure that we leverage also the synergy potential, but it just moves their underlying current performance is already on a different level next year.

And on the question of what is like the depreciation for RBL to be expected. I mean as well as Christian said, the portfolio is largely in place. So there's not much further CapEx to be put in place. At this point in time, to be very open, I cannot give you a depreciation number. We are just starting the purchase price allocation model for the first time consolidation. And I guess we will have some further detail on that in our prelim results. Sorry, Julien.

On digital out-of-home, I think the whole GDPR topic is less of a problem here because we are working with anonymous data, and we then aggregate potential individual data again to target group segments. And I think that's a big difference between traditional online media, where the medium ultimately is delivered on a one-by-one basis where you have one concrete IP address behind. I think in our case, it's always out-of-home is and will always be one too many medium. So we only talk about concentration of target groups that we measure on the basis of aggregated individual data. So the way the whole setup is designed. And I think the fact that, for instance, Deutsche Telekom or Telefonica are delivering mass mobility data, and they are ultrasensitive on GDPR topics, just shows and demonstrates that there is no underlying issue. Nevertheless, just keeping it in mind, we will never address an individual person via Public Video. I think our use case and the big benefit that we have is that while TV or other traditional media or broadcasting with limited targeting optionalities more or less to everyone, I think we can, on an individual side, just -- and the specific time zones can be by far precise regarding the concentration of target groups. And especially versus -- where out-of-home comes from like 10 years ago where you had one ad for 7 or 10 days on one side, and that was it. Now we have hundred thousands of ads that we can show in that period of time. But GDPR is something we constantly have in mind, but it's no structural underlying problems.

And Julien, I read your question away that you want to have the programmatic Public Video sales volume, and it's not part of our regular reporting schedule. But I think we've always been pretty clear that the consolidation position in sales is a fairly good indication for the programmatic Public Video turnover. So you can -- it was around, I would say, EUR 37 million, EUR 38 million for the quarter for programmatic public video again. And for the 9-month period, probably a level of -- let me check -- of something like EUR 87 million, EUR 88 million, right? But again, looking at the consolidation position is always a good indicator for -- as we set up internally PPV.

And the total digital out-of-home business includes also smaller digital out-of-home volumes outside of Germany, in Poland and the blowUP business, especially in Netherlands. And also in the ambient sector, which are technically not part of the normal infrastructure, but just to put the number in context.

Very good. And just a follow-up on RBL. You said they won 1 or 2 tender in the last 12 months. What tender did they win and from whom?

Dortmund for instance is one and Leipzig. So they were both from JC Decor. They won one lot from us and Essen. But more or less 95% of what they are doing is street furniture contract at the moment.

Our next question comes from Simon Keller with HAIB.

Firstly, on the broader ad market, we see that it is generally decelerating right now in Germany. And I see that you are yet guiding for sequentially stable out-of-home growth in Q4 of high single digits. Do you think the broader ad market is also stabilizing in Q4? And how should we think about out-of-home for Q1 next year? Could you share any insights maybe from your order book in this regard? And then secondly, on Statista, it's great to see growth rebounding. Could you share any insights on -- of where this growth is coming from, in particular, relatively the pricing and the volume effect? And then I'm wondering whether AI is now fully integrated? Or what's your progress here? And whether this is also one of the triggers that's yet up your sleeve for maybe next year in terms of pricing?

Simon, I think broader ad market at the moment is a bit difficult to predict because I think we just had an outstanding summer with the sports event. I think at the moment, there's a lot of discussions around politics in Germany. So I think the perceived environment is probably definitely not better than it used to be in the last months. And I think if you look at the Nielsen numbers, they have been down from Q3 versus -- sorry, from Q2 to Q3. So I think it's fair to say that at the moment, the overall ad market has less momentum than it has, especially in the second quarter and maybe also the first quarter given lower costs from prior year. I think the overall trends that we see for out-of-home haven't really changed. We are broadly diversified across different sales channels from local to national across all industries. So I think we do not depend on individual developments like, for instance, at the moment, if you see discussions around the automotive sector, yes, we have clients there, but it's still a small part of our revenue. So that's why I would say we focus on our business, and there's probably tougher comps than in Q2 that's reflected in our guidance. The broader market is probably a bit tougher than it used to be 3 or 6 months ago. But I think there is enough space for us at the moment to maneuver. Good news is we have only 9.5 percentage points of the legacy media market and maybe 4% to 5% of everything, including the global platforms. So I think there is 91% or 95% depends on where you think the total addressable market lies and enough space for us to maneuver at the moment.

And Simon, on Statista, I think we see increasing traction throughout the year, I think, across all relevant channels. I think, obviously, the most important one being the platform and then also in our ranking business, we have seen a tick up as expected in the third quarter. And the good thing is also that we see earnings now follow through. So there's a clear visibility on the margin improvement. We are quite optimistic also for Q4, as we have been sharing. On the question of where they're coming from, is it like additional customers. I'd say pricing, I would say it's both. Team's doing, I think, a pretty good job in getting more clients on the product and also uptrading existing clients from cheaper accounts into more comprehensive accounts. As you probably follow, we are adjusting our price entry point quite a bit earlier this year for the price entry with a positive effect on the overall top line.

Maybe one comment. I think the difference also versus like last year and first half of the year, I think we had management changes from the founders to a new CEO. I think we had not a great 2023 and that already started in 2022. And I think the company has gone through many structural changes, management changes and a couple of strategic adjustments. I think it was -- it's just something you need to do from time to time, especially after 12, 13, 14 years with the founder team. And I think we have gone through like 80%, 90% of the things we wanted to change and have to change. And you see that the company is now concentrating again completely on operations, not so much on internal topics, and I think that is the underlying change. And as Henning said, you see the result and the impact of that throughout all criteria.

The next question comes from James Tate in Goldman Sachs.

I've got 2 questions, please, I think. Firstly, just related to the RBL Media acquisition. Are there any potential other out-of-home assets in Germany that you might be interested in acquiring or sort of RBL Media is the main one you're looking at? And secondly, you guided to digital and dialogue to grow mid-single digit in Q4. Could you help provide some color on the mix of growth between the digital and the dialogue business?

On RBM and potential other assets, to be honest, James, I think given the level of market consolidation, I think it's not about this massive range of targets or assets out there that would massively change our business. I think we constantly track the market also to see if there's anything we haven't seen yet, if anything changes in the market dynamics also in specific subsegments. There's been a lot of discussions around retail media, smaller digital out-of-home format. So we are -- I think we -- also we are quite big. We try to be always hyper nervous about what competition does. Yes, we know that market consolidation is an important driver of our business, and that doesn't come -- that is not granted and doesn't come for free. So I think being very clear about what competitors do is part of our job. But I think over the next 1 or 2 years, at least, given what we know today, I don't see anything else of a similar size or importance. That said, I think the regulatory limitations are at the moment at around EUR 17 million, EUR 17.5 million revenue in the last full year. So there are limitations to that. But -- so I would not expect anything of the size of RBL, but you never know how things change. We track the market, but it would be probably rather smaller, less mentionable bolt-on acquisition.

On our expectations for Q4 in digital and dialogue, James, I think to some extent, that is interlinked with the outlook that we have given on out-of-home when it comes to programmatic sales. So I think we expect a good performance. On the dialogue side, I would say we're quite optimistic that call centers will show a good reasonable sense increase in Q4 at the -- in the door-to-door activities, and I think it remains to be seen. We have some headwinds here in terms of getting enough scores on the ground, selling contracts. But net-net, I would say probably slight growth in all centers but definitely strong growth should come from the digital part of the segment.

The next question comes from Christopher Johnen in HSBC.

Apologies if this has been -- if there has been a comment in the prepared remarks on this. Just getting back to Statista, please, about Q4. If I remember at the beginning of the year, the story was that we would see a gradual reacceleration pretty much quarter after quarter. And if I'm not mistaken, that implied as much as 20% growth in the fourth quarter. Now the third quarter came in a little bit below, I would say, the initial guidance. So how should we think about the fourth quarter in terms of the further acceleration on the top line?

Well, I would say we're quite optimistic about the outlook for Statista. We saw also -- we see increasingly also interest on the side of a large language model operators. We're always desperately looking for training data for their software models. I think I would leave it there. So I think we will see clearly growth above 20% for Q4. And basically, with that, also the Statista development in this year will be very much in line with our initial expectations since the beginning of the year.

Perfect. And one follow-up, if I may, on profitability during the quarter. Again, if you touched upon this in the remarks, apologies. If I look at the impact that Asam probably had on the segment, that would imply that the profitability for Statista was kind of through the roof. Am I wrong? Is my math correct? Or have -- are we at sort of all-time high margins for Statista at the moment? Is there any color you can give?

In percentage terms, I would join your comments through the roof, but talking still very small absolute numbers. But I think you're directionally understanding the development correctly.

And I think that's part of the -- a little bit of the reorganization, I think until the end of 2022. And I would also say until the end of very low interest rates, we've been focusing on growth only. And I think part of the reorganizing the company was also getting back to historic growth numbers, but with a different profitability focus and profile. And I think in both areas, we are moving in the right direction as Henning said.

If I understand that, I take the base is small, point taken. But if the business -- I mean, if you say that there is -- well, I'm implying that you don't suggest that there's anything one-off in the current quarter, then should we prepare for 30-plus percent margins not just next quarter, but going in '25 as well? Am I interpreting that right?

What we should expect for the full year is a margin improvement, I would leave it there for the time being. In terms of exceptionals, I mentioned in the speech, obviously, that we had some exceptionals in Statista that I excluded from the results for the reorganizational topics that Christian talked about in having a new management in place. So I think, again, we would confirm, let's say, the outlook for Q4 and also for the full year for a clearly improved margin, but we will definitely do not see a margin of 30% or so for the full year. That is still the midterm target, but probably it takes still a couple of years to get there. But we see now that this is reachable. I think we're more confident about this than probably 12 months ago.

We have a follow-up question from Craig Abbott with Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just real quick, please. I'm sorry to go back to RBL Media real quick. I mean, basically, you gave us indication earlier that with these new contracts, we expect to basically double the top line. And -- but what I wanted to understand was how did a small player -- what was it that enabled them to win these tenders, the 2 against the co and the 1 against yourselves?

Well, I think the founder, [indiscernible] is a smart guy, and he originally came from the hardware side of the business. And I think he jumped somehow extended that kind of business model into the media space. And I think street furniture contract, for instance, were not on high up in the priority list of us. And I think in the case of [indiscernible], has been also trying to optimize margins. And I think it's not -- it's -- I think the company is working in that area since 10 years. And we talk about 3, 4, 5 contracts now. So it's not huge. But I think it's a good company. It's a good team. [indiscernible] has made an excellent job, I think, in developing it. And sometimes it's fair to say that even -- no one was able to get there for like 15, 20 years. He was a guy that did an excellent job. And I think our feeling goes and also his that probably being part of our group just gives more opportunities for the business. But sometimes, it's just fair to say that the others simply do a good job here, especially if bigger ones maybe are not ultra cautious here and there. But if I look at the last 10 years, there is one example we could get there, and it's the guy and I think he came from another direction and did an excellent job. So well done, [indiscernible].

And that draws me then to other question. Has he been locked in with some kind of earn-out agreement but in a couple of years, come potentially on top of the acquisition price that you gave us this morning?

No, no, the full -- we acquire 100%, so there's no earnouts whatsoever.

Will we be staying on board?

Not in that media team. I think we work closely together on the hardware and production side because that's where this core company is, I think. As always, sometimes in acquisitions, you build personal partnerships. So I think he will be part of our broader universe in the future. But I think for the concrete media business, it will become an integral part of our business. I think he's an entrepreneur. But I think they've also done a very good job on the hardware side, building street furniture in factory in Belgium, also developing more digital products now. So I think there's also some upside potential going forward in a closer collaboration on hardware and especially also digital products we're currently discussing it with him. So I think I would say it's like acquisition in our core business with a broader spectrum of calibration ultimately over time.

That's also a strong strategic angle here for us because in the last years, we produced most of our hardware in China. And for sustainability reasons, et cetera, we want to move some stuff back to Europe. And the factory of Epsilon is just 1.5 hours away from the headquarter in Cologne. So this is also part of the deal that we develop a strategic partnership on the hardware side with Epsilon, which is the mother company of RBL Media.

All right. I think we have -- we're through all the questions?

Perfect. Then many thanks for your time, especially as it was a bit early today. I hope you have a good remaining week, and see you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.