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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ströer preliminary figures Q4 '25 Conference Call. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Udo Müller, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Dear, ladies and gentlemen, the analysts. Let me welcome you to our call on our Q4 and preliminary and unaudited full year results for 2025. We start the call with a short overview of the key numbers and our key strategic achievements in the context of the current market dynamics. Then I will talk about the real game changer for Ströer as recent technologic developments enable us to converge Ströer from advertising space marketer into an AI-driven platform business, something I had in my mind for years. This will be followed by an update on the T-Online and Statista. Henning will then guide you through the figures of fiscal 2025 and Q4. I will close the presentation with the outlook for '26 and open the call for Q&A. Our total revenues rose slightly increasing by 1% year-over-year from EUR 2.05 billion to EUR 2.08 billion, in line with our expectations and our guidance. Our revenue were up by 4% to EUR 989 million, digital out-of-home by around 8% to EUR 398 million and programmatic digital out-of-home by 12% to EUR 151 million. EBITDA adjusted ended the year essentially basically unchanged at EUR 626 million. EBIT adjusted declined by 4% to EUR 307 million. Net income adjusted was above EUR 165 million. Free cash flow adjusted came in at roughly EUR 107 million. Our capital expenditures remained stable at around EUR 93 million, virtually unchanged from last year. Adjusted earnings per share came in at EUR 2.70. Let's change gears here and look forward. On the next chart, I would like to present you the next logical strategic step for Ströer. This step will take Ströer to the next level and mark a decisive milestone in the company's history. It is a path we began over a decade ago with the digitalization of our portfolio and the strategic acquisitions such as [indiscernible] local display, video and native ad rich such as T-Online who significance is only now becoming fully apparent, especially in combination with the [indiscernible]. This also answers the question why now? The answer is obvious, because only now with a comprehensive set of AI tools, which developed in the last 12 months, we are in the position of transforming Ströer from a marketer of advertising space into an ad-driven platform business. What we described here is the way our business works perfectly well. As you all know, under present day is primarily manual silo-based sales model. Customers have traditionally selected predefined advertising space packages and use them as building blocks for their campaigns. They are buying contracts and reach but the system of the time are offering only limited visibility into the real impact of those campaigns. Our different product words out-of-home, digital out-of-home and digital ad developed the strong expertise in each area, but they evolve to some extent, on separate technical and organizational tracks. Because of that history, they are marketed primarily independently, and our teams worked extensively across the world to coordinate offers, scheduling and delivery. Much of that work was done through hands-on collaboration with campaign development and follow-up managed directly by our people. But then the present setup automation is limited, and that is true for a good reason. Our business grew quickly and our teams build tailored solution for thousands of customers. That model served us well and created strong customer relationships. But as volume increase, the processes remain highly people driven. Avenue campaign required detailed coordination and impact measurement often relied on data that came from different systems and time lines. The foundation we built our success on model expertise, personal service and deep market knowledge. And it also shows that the next step in our evolution is so important. By bringing these product worlds together and introducing integrated, automated AI support systems, we can keep strength got us here while unlocking new levels of speed, transparency and scalability for the future. This chart illustrates the next step we initiated to move from primarily a manual-driven advertising space marketer to a fully integrated AI-powered platform. At the center of this evolution, to be the true manager as said that dynamically generates individualized products for each customer instead of a predefined packages. The platform creates tailored solutions, automatically, based on budget, location, product, industry and location. The booking experience changes just as significantly. What used to require multiple steps and coordination looks we move to one-click workflow that controls the entire campaign process from start to finish. This will be powered by an AI offer engine that bring our components together, quotation, configuration and delivery in a unified sequence. Alongside the [indiscernible], our public mine analytics tool will become an intelligence layer of the system, and predicts and monitors the impact of campaigns and continuously improves them as a platform keeps learning. For the first time, we can manage campaigns not only by which, but the expected and measured effectiveness. The system optimizing its sales over time, the economic benefits of this transformation are equally clear, faster cycles, lower management costs and strong margins emerge from naturally from AI-driven model. We gained the ability to introduce true yield management across our inventory and to scale our business without scaling our headcount. The system can generate and evaluate an unlimited number of offer variants which means we can serve both large natural advertisers and local LMEs with equal efficiency. But this chart ultimately shows is a shift from selling advertising space to delivering complete customer solutions, automated, data-driven and impact oriented. It marks the next step in transforming our company into a platform business that grows faster, operate smarter and strengthens customer relationships with every campaign. With this chart, I'll give you a short introduction to the first pillar of our transformation, the Ströer ad manager. It will be the engine that will automate all our transactional processes and fundamentally change how we serve customers. The platform generates personalized offers at scale, something that in a traditional setup would require extensive manual work. Instead, the ad manager does this automatically, combining data, rules and contact signals to produce proposals that are tailored to each customer's budget, location and objectives. The workflows themselves review booking, delivery and billing also become fully automated. What used to require multiple handoffs will be controlled end-to-end by the system. This reduces errors, increases speed and lower processing costs. If we make the entire transaction change faster, one of the most important elements shown on the slide will be dynamic pricing. A yield and rules engine will continuously optimize prices and bidding logic so that our inventory will be used as efficiently as possible. This ensures better utilization and creates measure economic benefits for our business. And because the system is AI-driven at campuses and unlimited number of bookings in parallel without increasing headcount. That scalability is essential as we expand our reach to many more local and regional advertisers. That manages a key strategic feature that enables us to multiply the number of customers we can serve, both locally and nationally without adding proportional costs. As was performance players whose offerings are complementary to product portfolio, have already made several booking, the standard in the digital performance business, AI will enable Ströer to use its extensive digital infrastructure to make customer-specific and target-oriented products easily book a big and a self-service as well. Let me briefly share our milestone plan for the development and implementation of the Ströer Ad Manager. The plan shows how we will take the Ströer Ad Manager from concept to rollout with roughly 1.5 years. We are now starting with MVP, minimum viable product concept phase where we define the architecture, the infrastructure blueprint, the data catalog and all required systems checks. That works lays the foundation for everything that follows. Within the second and fourth quarter of 2026, we built a deep data pipeline that powers the platform. This includes all ETL connections, extract, transform load pipeline to our delivery system, data cleanup, the warehouse scheme, our product catalog and the price engine, ensuring we can run the platform on clean, consistent data from day one. From the third quarter of 2026, the second quarter of 2027, we had agentic AI layer. All 6 or 7 agents become fully functional, guard rails go live and we implement aviation frameworks and prompt regressing tests. This is what gives the systems intelligence to recommend, optimize and execute at scale. During the overlapping period Q2 2026 to Q3 '27, we built a sales interface and reporting environment. The back office UI, the sales co-pilot interface, [indiscernible] and all dashboards and reporting tools. This ensures the platform integrates clearly into our commercial workflow and give for every team that uses it. Finally, from Q3 '26 to Q4 '27, we conduct testing and rollout. Internal pilots, feedback loops, change management measures and performance tuning lead directly to the go-live. The final step ensures not just red lines -- readiness of the system, but readiness of the organization to work with at scale. Our second pillar for our transformational public mind, our AI-based predictive intelligence layer. Its purpose is simple but powerful. For the first time, the impact out-of-home campaign becomes predictable, measurable and fully plannable. The system uses large volumes of mobility and behavioral data to generate precise predictions of how campaign will perform and it feeds those predictions directly into planning and pricing decisions. This slide also shows our public demand form earning cycle with Ad Manager. Every campaign generates new booking, delivery and performance sickness, in minds interpreted Ströer signals improve the model and sense optimized guidance back into planning, pricing and delivery. The model system runs a smarter becomes continuously raising effectiveness across the portfolio. Another important point here is a shift from pure performance metric contacts and which to impact transparency. Customers increasingly want to understand the real effect of the spend, not just how many people they reach, Public Mind tackled and optimizes that impact. The strengthens customer confidence and loyalty. Returns were used to be an estimate into a managed variable that can be improved in real time. And our ambition is clear. We want to form an industry-wide standard. Let me briefly walk you through the Public Mind development pipeline. In the third and fourth quarter of '26, we completed our proof of concept, the core QPIs quality and impact indicators. We selected partners to ensure the impact segments we generate are accurate and reliable in real-world settings. For the first or second quarter of '27, we built MVP with 5 pure QPIs, quality and impact indicators. PDI presence density index, PCS bottleneck coverage share location lift, CHL carry over half life and iROAS incremental return on ad spend. These QPIs form the analytic backbone that allows us to quantify campaigns impact the precision. The third and fourth quarter of '27 will shift into multi-partner MVP testing and scientific validation. This sales confirms that Public Minds performs consistently across different industries and campaign type before we scale the system. And bringing move into full enterprise rollout, including international expansion. At that point, Public Mind becomes the predictive intelligence layer of our platform, guiding, planning, pricing and delivery across all markets we serve. The web of this chapter, let me repeat the key message. Drive Manager is a transition engine -- transaction engine. Public Mind is intelligence layer. Together, they transform manual ads sales into a scalable, automated platform business. AI is becoming the operating system tool automating the entire value chain, from planning to booking delivery and impact measurement. The Ströer Ad Manager now acts as our transaction engine, taking over operated steps and enabling scale well beyond mineral processes. Public Mind ad intelligence layer, joining campaigns impact into measurable and continuously optimized viable. Together, they shift us from a manual ad space business to automated platform. The automated cycle includes data feedback and self-learning optimization, drives faster decisions, more accurate pricing, stronger yield management and better outcomes of our clients. Within long-term reality and more resilient revenue, all of this is anchored in our 4-layer business model. First, our public infrastructure layer. Second, our transaction layer, the Ad Manager, third, our intelligence layer Public Mind and fourth, our trusted content T-Online. Ströer transforms into a unique AI-driven real-world media platform. With the T-Online as our trusted content layer, the amplifies impact of our nationwide advertising network and increased attractiveness for the German public. Let me now give you an update on where we stand with the T-Online and Statista. Let's start with T-Online. Over the last 10 years, we have formed the T-Online into undisputed #1 news platform in the market. The data points on this slide makes that unmistakably clear. In terms of net household income, we are reaching the most economically relevant users. Demographic spread data on the chart underscores the Online's strength. The platform is really strong across all age groups. In addition, the general distribution is very well balanced 50 million male unit users and 40 million female unique users, together, forming one of the largest and most adverse digital news audiences in the German market. But what met your what is today throughout the past decade, we have a sole player that combines highly quality journalism with 3 fully developed distribution channels, desktop, mobile and public video. That market channel approach has allowed us to reach audiences wherever they are and have been centered to establishing the T-Online as Germany's #1 news and advised portal. Today, across our channels, T-Online reaches 47 million unique users. That scale is matched by a level of trust that has become increasingly important in the edge of AI, their reliable information is one of the most valuable currencies. More and more users not only consume our content, but actively prefer our brand of major competitors. The strength of this model comes from consistency. 10 years of open access to order paywall, 10 years of investment in distribution technology and 10 years of building a brand that people choose to both news and guidance. And we compare reach amongst German-speaking in diets, T-Online issues 43% outperforming the major newsprint in the category. But the most important indicator of advertisers, household managers shows an even clearer picture. In this segment, T-Online delivers a 42% reach or up to 110% advantage to our key competitors. There is quality of our reach are key, T-Online not only leads an overall audience, it leads, it matters most for brands among key decision makers with strong buying power. This leadership translates directly into higher campaign relevance, stronger advertiser demand and a clear competitive edge in the digital news and information markets. The next chart, and of course is simple, but it is of bond for advertisers. Trust drives effectiveness. The data shows a clear and positive correlation of 0.85 between media brand trust and advertising systems, acceptance. In other words, the more a user trust platform, the more open they are to advertising and the lower the likelihood of ad avoidance. Within this framework, T-Online stands out with a trust score of 50 significantly above the 32-point score of another major outlet shown in the chart. The 18-point gap is not just a statistical difference. It directly translates into higher uncertain, stronger campaign performance and better ROI for advertisers who choose our platform. In times of exploding amount of synthetic content, trust will be one of the most valuable currencies in the digital media and T-Online's leadership in this metric gives us a meaningful competitive advantage in an environment where brand safety, quality and credibility matter more than ever. In the research in summaries, known as Google Zero rolled out broadly in early 2025, many in the industry expected online platforms to lose, reach and relevance, but our numbers show a very different picture. A year later, T-Online's audience is stable and over time, clearly growing. Paid rules in January 26 were up 10% versus '24. And in February 26, based on reported data, paid rules to up 30% compared with '24. A key factor in our strong share of direct traffic where reduces our dependency on external referrals and underscores the strength of the T-Online brand. The platform continues to draw a large loyal audiences, supporting advertising relevance and strengthening the long-term quality of our revenue. The data makes it clear even in the share landscape, T-Online remains the destination with stable, reach and strong impact. With that, over to Statista to give you a follow-up or a deep dive in H1 2025. AI and large language models now dominate almost all areas of business, from research and analysis of strategic decision-making. But the quality of the output is only a data behind it. In the AI system access and verified or near as better to introduce so-called hallucinations. Content that sounds possible but is factually incorrect. The figures on this slide speak for themselves. According to McKinsey, it's a global economic damage caused by AI hallucinations amounted to EUR 67.4 billion in '24 loan. According to Deloitte, almost half of all enterprise users have already made important decision based on hallucinated information. And Boston Consulting Group estimates efficiency loss due to a minimum verification of AI output at 22%. These are not absolute risks. And probably an example from last year illustrates this impressively. In October 25, it was revealed that Deloitte Australia had produced a $290,000 report for the Australian government with the help of AI. The report was full of fabricated sources, non-existent academic publications, picture book costs. Deloitte had to reimburse part of the cost. It ensures that at real level verified and created data accompanies risk not only poor reports but also fundamental misjudgments with legal, financial and reputational consequences. This is exactly where Statista comes in as a trustworthy verified data source for AI supported workflows. What makes Statista unique as a data source. First of all, the sheer breath and depth of data, over 1.3 million statistics, 80,000 reports, 30,000 infographics, 10,000 topic pages and around 3 million consumer interviews. About 85% of our data is proprietary or exclusive third-party data, meaning it is created exclusively by Statista. In addition, we have exclusive partnerships with third-party providers and crucially, our data as trusted verified and editorially classified. What is not changing fundamentally that this data is no longer only available via statista.com. We bring it directly to where our customers work into their own workflows and applications. We do this via our own MCP server for AI agents, we represent state transfer, and via various technical integration solutions that companies can integrate in their own applications. Particularly important, our data is now also integrated directly into the applications of major partners Capacity, Canvas and Microsoft Copilot. This dramatically expands the user base. It is no longer just power users and analysts who benefit. But effectively, the entire company usage but more accessible because it takes place directly and people already work in the everyday applications. The shift to AI first and the connections to AI application requires a consistent change in 2 dimensions, product and sales. On the product side, this means first and foremost that we are integrating our data technically into partner applications such as Microsoft Copilot. In other words, core product development with our partners. AI is all fundamentally changing our customers search for data with us, keyword, guided search, in addition, AI enables completely new data formats that can be searched in real time. Here, we are investing heavily in products such as synthetic populations, which allow market research and analysis in real time. To solve customer-specific problems, we specifically address use cases in various industries, for example, media planning. On the sales side, this results in a new go-to-market approach. Since solutions that are integrated new customer applications and systems are significantly more complex, more solution-based and consulting best approach is needed. The first step is primarily about convincing customers of the new applications and driving up usage through close integration of sales and customer teams. This also results in new customer segmentation. Small customers are served in safe service with integrated standard solutions, but for large customers, we jointly develop tailor-made solutions that's embedded in the application and processes. Finally, we expect the pricing model to avoid from a purely seat-based approach to a more consumption-based model. So far, my remarks with that, I hand over to Henning.

Thank you, Udo, and a very good morning, everybody. Udo already elaborated on the key financials for 2025. But please allow me just to add a few remarks. In what, after a strong start to be turned out to be a very challenging year, we delivered all in all, a very robust performance. After a decline in the first 9 months, EBITDA adjusted for the full year was stable, supported by an improvement in the fourth quarter. Exceptional items for the year amounted to EUR 25 million and included costs for our structures program of EUR 2.5 million. Restructuring costs mainly at Statista and expenses for ERP transformation of altogether close to EUR 17 million and costs for the assessment of potential changes of the group's portfolio of roughly EUR 4 million. With that, reported EBITDA amounted to EUR 601 million up to EUR 605 million in the prior year. Depreciation, amortization increased by 5% to EUR 334 million and included roughly EUR 10 million from the acquisition of RBL Media in 2024. Thus, the underlying increase in D&A was somewhat lower. EBIT for the full fiscal year was EUR 268 million and the 7% lower than in '24. At the same time, the financial result improved by 13% and amounted to EUR 67 million. The improvement reflects lower rates and some positive currency effects from intra group debt denominated in U.S. dollar more than offsetting higher net debt. Earnings before taxes were EUR 201 million and EUR 9 million below previous year's level, applying a broad sale tax rate and net income for '25 million was EUR 140 million, leading also to an improved equity position in the balance sheet. Adjustments were slightly higher following the above-mentioned exceptional items. And with that, net income adjusted came in at EUR 165 million, so just a few million euros short against the prior year. While organic growth in Q4 was flat as in the first 9 months, sales growth was 3%, supported mainly by an acquisition of our call center business. The corresponding effect on revenue amounted to around about EUR 20 million. EBIT adjusted improved by EUR 7 million, mainly driven by the contribution from the just described acquisition, around EUR 3 million and improved earnings from out of home media as well as digital dialogue media segments. Reported EBITDA came in broadly stable. Higher D&A and just a lower EBIT was compensated for by an improved financial result, leading to stable earnings before taxes. Taking into account the higher adjustments, net income adjusted even improved to EUR 79 million for the fourth quarter. Let us now discuss the cash flow development for the full fiscal year and the fourth quarter. While it is obvious that the full year's development was not in line with our initial expectations at the beginning of last year, Q4 cash flow is capitalized by improved cash conversion based on tight expense and CapEx control. With stable EBITDA in Q4, lower interest and tax payments could compensate for a lower but still positive working capital contribution. Working capital included roughly EUR 10 million outflows required to finance the activities acquired in the call center area. So excluding that, the working capital contribution to cash flow in Q4 was roughly on the prior year level. With that, the operating cash flow in Q4 was on prior year's level, representing considerable improvement compared to the development of the first 9 months. Lower cash out for investments and slightly lower cash out for lease liability repayments even led to improved free cash flow adjusted in the fourth quarter, in line with the guidance that we have provided in our Q3 call. Let us now analyze the net debt development. Net debt year-over-year was up by EUR 33 million, including our free cash flow adjusted of plus EUR 107 million, dividends to shareholders of minus EUR 128 million, dividend payments to minority shareholders of minus EUR 13 million, M&A and transaction costs of around minus EUR 3 million and the remainder of around plus EUR 4 million, lower financial liabilities recognized from profit transfer agreements at companies with minority interest. Sequentially, so from the end of Q3 to the end of Q4, net debt was reduced by EUR 74 million, including free cash flow adjusted of plus EUR 88 million, M&A expenses of minus EUR 1 million and quite like in Q4 '24 minus EUR 9 million arising from increased customer over payments. With that, our leverage ratio amounted to 2.3x by the end of fiscal year '25, up to 2.1x last year. Compared to the end of Q3, however, and based on good Q4 cash flow generation, our leverage ratio improved by roughly 0.3x, giving us reasonable headroom. Let us now have a look into the performance of our out-of-home media segment. I trust many of you are aware of the IFRS lease accounting implies for the significance of EBITDA. In order to increase transparency, we would like to share with you the same chart we have discussed already in the last couple of years, now extended for the values of fiscal year 2025. Looking at the average growth since '22, we see revenue up by close to 8% supported on the one hand by the acquisition of RBL last year, contributing a sales delta of around EUR 19 million. And on the other hand, however, more than compensated for by an exceptionally challenging market environment in '25. EBITDA adjusted, which includes effects from IFRS 16 accounting in the same period showed a slightly higher average growth rate. You also see that IFRS 16 effect increased a little more in '25 compared to the 2 years before, again, partly deriving from the acquisition of RBL. Now looking at the EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16 effects, so the cash EBITDA, which certainly is a much better cash flow proxy. We see average growth of more than 10% in the period since '22. The main drivers here being the sales outperformance of our high-margin digital products and above-average growth for our large national account business. Including a CapEx-to-sales ratio declining into 2024 and stabilizing in '25, cash contribution average improved considerably by more than 25% on average in the period. If we now focus more on the development in '25 compared to '24 we see that the EBITDA adjusted margin is improving slightly, while the cash EBITDA margin is flat at 25.5%. The main reason for this being a slightly higher fixed rent exposure compared to the prior year from RBL of roughly EUR 5 million and some EUR 4 million from new contracts at Ströer Polska. Total lease expenses before IFRS 16 amounted to EUR 303 million in '25. In percent of sales, 30.6%, reflecting a slight increase against the prior year due to a sales mix shifting to slightly more expensive inventory and a lower differential between the sales performance of classic and digital than in the previous year, delivering a stable cash EBITDA margin at a slightly higher lease to sales ratio shows also good cost and expense control that we intensified after the ad market were going south in spring last year. For the current fiscal year 2026, we currently expect declining effects from IFRS 16 after several contracts such as in the cities of Bremen, Frankfurt and Bielefeld have been renewed and will now foresee a significantly lower fixed rent component. Let us now have a look at the performance of our different segments with a particular focus on the Q4 development. Out-of-home media sales in the fourth quarter grew by almost 2% in a very challenging market, which was characterized by declining TV sales. With that, the performance was in line with the projection provided on our Q3 call. Both our classic and digital products showed moderate growth. EBITDA adjusted was up by roughly EUR 10 million, almost 1/3 of this coming from an exceptionally strong year and performance of our activities in Poland and also supported by higher IFRS 16 effects mentioned earlier. On top of that, our services business, where we supply nonmedia services to, in particular, smaller clients improved earnings around EUR 2 million. The remainder of improvement also includes continuously tight cost control. Altogether, the performance in fiscal year '25 with around 4% growth and a stainable cash EBITDA margin demonstrates resilience under extreme market conditions. Supported by our acquisition in the call center space that is recognized in our financials at the beginning of October last year, our segment Digital and Dialog Media showed a strong increase in Q4 revenues of 9%. Organic growth for the segment was 0.7% and thus also improved compared to the development of the first 9 months. Let me take a moment to repeat the key rationale behind the call center transaction. The acquired assets related to Amavita, which was an established provider in the field of dialogue marketing with a strong focus on sales and sales-related services. We acquired the business in the course of insolvency proceedings for an addigible purchase price. As part of the integration, the acquired business is now operated largely from our existing overhead infrastructure. On top of that, we are optimizing the existing portfolio of locations and renegotiated existing lease contracts. So altogether, we will be able to operate Amavita profitably from day 1. In terms of customer structure, we will strengthen our position by helping mostly already existing clients in the sales process as opposed to a pure service-related business, this will offer a higher margin potential going forward. The full -- for the full fiscal year '26, we shall have on average more than 1,200 additional FTEs generating more than EUR 70 million in revenue with an expected high single-digit million euro contribution to EBITDA on top of the roughly EUR 3 million recognized in Q4. Our additional media sales somewhat stabilized towards the end of the year. Revenues of our high-quality owned content portfolio increased and largely compensated for a decline in our third-party portfolio. Q4 EBITDA was up EUR 4 million, largely deriving from the already mentioned transaction and a positive earnings development in digital, which altogether more than compensated for a decline in our door-to-door activities which delivered strong earnings improvement in Q4 of 2024. Segment revenue in our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment were down by 4%. Sales in Statista were up 3.5% organically, excluding currency effects and thus a little bit better than the development in the first 9 months. On the platform side, inbound sales expected to remain under pressure, while outbound and the ranking business hold up well. By the end of the year, we disposed off a small noncore business unit of Statista, which focused on customized strategic consulting project. This unit generated roughly EUR 8 million of sales in '25 with no relevant earnings contribution. At Azam, Q4 was challenging for 2 reasons. Firstly, the consumer environment remains under pressure, including a sluggish Christmas business impacting our online channel. Secondly, we faced some teething issues after migrating our updated Webshop infrastructure to a new provider. Initially, insufficient controls led to fraud than purchase orders in which a large number of gas accounts were used, which finally triggered an exceptional -- an extraordinary write-off and receivables of around EUR 2.5 million recognized in our EBITDA adjusted. With that, let me hand you over back to Udo for the outlook and closing remarks.

Provided that the already significant trade policy and geopolitical uncertainties do not increase further, we are optimistic about the 2026 financial year. Based on the assumptions with you today, we anticipate organic revenue growth in the low to mid-single-digit range. For the cash EBITDA, so the EBITDA before IFRS 16, we expect the development in line with the sales growth. For adjusted free cash flow before M&A, we see a positive development. For EBITDA adjusted, after IFRS 16, we are expecting a largely stable development compared to the previous year, including lower IFRS 16 effects due to better economic parameters and recently renewed contracts. The shift from fixed and variable rents, negative impact on EBITDA adjusted on the one hand and declining fixed lease obligations on the other hand. Looking to Q1 2026, out-of-home media sales should come in slightly above last year's level, even against a strong prior year growth of 15.3%, which included the impact from the federal elections in Germany. In Digital Dialog Media, we expect sales growth broadly in line with momentum of the fourth quarter of 2025, which stood at plus 9%. For DaaS and e-commerce, we expect a decline of roughly EUR 9 million including the disposal of Statista Strategy and Consulting unit. Let me now close the presentation with a short look into our financial calendar for 2026. The annual report for 2025, we published on March 23, 2026. On May 12, our Q1 numbers will be released. The half year figures will be presented on August 13, and our Q3 figures will be published on November 12. In order to do justice to significant and complexity of our strategic transformation, we are planning on a webinar in April 2026. A during which we will discuss the topics presented in detail with you and explore them greater depth. We will send you a invitation to webinar in good time. As always, updates, reports and roadshows presentations can be found on our IR website. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Annick Maas from Bernstein.

So my first question is about your AI Ad Manager. Can you just tell us how much investment is needed to develop this platform over the next years? My second one is on the Dialog business. Can you just isolate again, I think it was a bit too quickly earlier of how much of the growth is due to M&A, how much of the growth was coming from Ranger in the Dialog segment, that would be great. Then you -- on Statista, I think you've already alluded to the usage-based model at the last results. Can you tell us, has this materialized already in some revenues coming from this new model? Or are we still in a full transition? And I'll just add one more. Can you just comment on why your fixed rent payment in the renegotiation has gone down just to expand a little bit more?

Yes. Thank you, Annick. So let's start with the last question. So we are benefiting here from the consolidation of the German market. So we said that already in the last call, one of the other time. January, the rents are shrinking. So that is a result here. It could improve the rents in a couple of contracts in the last year, which were actually signed 15 years ago, then we had 3, sometimes 4 competitors. Now we have a geopolitics situation here with and mainly focused on large cities. So that's why we have let's say, a very supportive situation, which we already saw in the last years, we see shrinking rents. And that is the result here. IFRS, EBITDA is shrinking when we take fixed rents out. So the variable rents don't impact that solution. But if the fixed rents are growing EBITDA IFRS is rising. I mean the fixed rents are shrinking, the EBITDA goes down. So this is a bit weird if you look on the first view because obviously, we have lower EBITDA because we have a more favorable rent conditions. So first question, I mean due to the reason there are no developments. It's much cheaper. So we expect maximum around EUR 2 million here CapEx. So it's negligible actually. So it's not the same also for -- clearly something what we -- what is our platform. You can compare it a little bit with whatever Google, for example, doing the Google App manager has 10 more complex than a global thing, et cetera. But at the end here, the big advantage is that we are able to produce automated offers locally and nationally. And this will be a big help, for example, especially also in the local market because today we have 330,000 local customers, and average ticket here is like EUR 7,500. And the processing costs and also the sale costs are enormous because if you -- you have no possibility if we self-bookings, for example, local customers. While self-booking became the standard now in local sales really, I mean, Google and Amazon, they do like EUR 13 billion turnover in Germany. And almost everything there is self-booking. So we have no self-booking capability and you can only buy or we are selling actually products. We don't sell solutions. And for example, you have 1,000 local makers and banks in Germany. The ad manager, we are able to produce offers for 1,000 banks in 2 minutes where you have a completely tailored offering across our different advertising platforms with out-of-home as a key offering. So -- and this can be done by our sales force as a managed service or can be done by the customers or agencies, small agencies, which are working for the customer themselves self-booking. So that's why we are -- we strongly believe that we are able to multiply the number of local customers through the Ad Manager because we have this completely tailor-made products for every customer, for every opportunity and for every strategic focus sales. I remind it's a bit different. We are in talks with all the industry players here because the target is here and the intelligence layer and the development cost around EUR 2 million to get it live process actually initiative by the association there. We are developing it right now. And we are almost finish with the first phase. So here in the future, we can show the impact of the campaign based on these QPIs, which we've talked before. So this will be also a game changer clearly because impact is key in the future for the acceptance of our media -- for any other media. So that's why the combination of the Ad Manager, which is a store development and Public Mind, which is -- which will become an industry-wide initiative is going to change acceptance and also how people look at our media completely.

Annick, on your question reconciling Dialog sales in Q4, you see on Slide 30 that sales are growing by around EUR 23 million, roughly EUR 20 million of this is coming from the acquisition. The underlying growth in the call centers was, I would say, around EUR 5 million. And resales at Ranger roughly down by EUR 2 million. So I think that explains. However, Ranger was quite strong in moving from 23 into 24. So there's a bit of a base effect and also Ranger developed better than we anticipated, like both weeks ago in the fourth quarter.

And on Statista, Annick, we clearly see consumption or usage going up through the changing model. But what we also see is that we have very different results for various clients. So it's not like a home run coming from itself. So we have customers like, for instance, Shopify who have integrated Statista data via the LLM cloud, which is implemented in their internal work process, and they had like 25x the credits now that they originally had planned. So you see that the database model works very well for specific clients, but there are other customers like in the advertising space, Omnicom Group, where you see the changing model in itself has not really driven consumption up so far. So you need to work with the clients on the activation of the new model, but we clearly see that consumption or usage in general goes up, but still a very diversified profile across all customers, but you see like the customers where it works, you see consumption almost excluding. So we are working on finding out where the levers are for the success cases and then implemented in an activation program across all customers that go for Statista.

Your next question comes from James Tate from Goldman Sachs.

It's James Tate from Goldman. I've got 3 questions, please. Firstly, on the cadence of out-of-home growth through 2026. You mentioned the slight growth in Q1 against a tough pump. So could you give some color on what you're baking in for the rest of the year as part of the group guidance, should we expect an acceleration to mid-single-digit growth for sort of Q2 to Q4? And I guess, secondly, related, have you seen the escalation in the Middle East conflict impact sentiment or forward bookings amongst advertisers? I guess, similar to the -- in any way similar to the impact that you flagged around the trade war last year. I guess, finally, from a more strategic viewpoint, it was helpful to understand more about Ströer Ad Manager. Will this also help you become more closely integrated with some of the advertising agencies and grow your share of their direct budgets, and you described the Ad Manager as a game changer. Could you quantify how you're thinking about the contribution to out-of-home revenue growth over time.

Thank you, James. Maybe starting with the cadence of out-of-home. I think it's really fair to say that we expect, say, somewhat of an acceleration as far as we move down the year. Q1, as we all know, actually was very strong last year with more than 15%. So we are very positive that there's a good chance that we will see quite a bit of a tick up. And I think unchanged, again, let me let us point out that we feel structurally, there is no limit that outcome -- out-of-home should grow, I'd say, close to 10%. So that our midterm guidance for the business is unchanged.

So the Ad Manager clearly is something which is also let's say, the agencies and the customers because this will allow us -- when we look today, we are the out-of-business in the world, they are selling actually the box, and we are selling reach, and we are selling products. So this is a complete game changer because the customers are asking for impact, not for contacts. We can buy a lot of contacts, but you need to know what is the outcome from that. And look, we have, for example, today, we have a national sales force of 750 people. That is a big sales force. And there are only like 100 people working with clients and the rest is in back office. And to transform the business in the platform business, is a complete game changer, and I'm 100% convinced that the whole out-of-home industry is going to make this move. We see that we are here ahead of the development, but the reason that we are also ahead in introducing programmatic technologies to our business because of our strong digital business, we are much deeper in this technology development. But if you -- we just got a big study from one of the big consulting companies last week by chance and the -- and we saw that they go exactly the same rule of the industry. The industry will change. AI is a transition, transforming power for the out-of-home industry. And you see the future will be clearly -- you see the big American performance companies, and you see out-of-home growing and all the other stuff will suffer to print TV, radio the market is changing. And the question is really is AI? Is this driving your development on a new level. And that's what we see here. We are able, first time to really report impact, and we are able to automate our processes, which are super complex because if you have hundreds of thousands of billboards and street furniture pieces around the country, it's a super complex operation from marketing it from building products until the maintenance on the street. And this is -- AI is complete game changer. And that's -- you would see in the latest 12 to 24 months, the whole industry is going to change in this direction. Iran, okay, Iran question. Right now, we don't see an impact, but it depends obviously how it develops. So nobody can see that. We saw -- last year, I think -- if you look at the market development, the market, I think, was well to high single-digit down. I think we delivered an excellent result for that look completely different without all these tariff war and stuff. We are in a situation where consumer confidence and also corporate confidence is not very high. For this background, if you look at the numbers, I think we delivered really strong numbers in our core business, especially if you look on digital growth and digital out-of-home growth and programmatic out-of-home growth. And so I think this is really surprisingly stable. So Q1 is much better than I expected because I always look on 3 years' average growth rates. So last year was an exceptional year in Q1, not only the elections, but also -- you might remember there's a big -- some of the big German retailers this paper leveled out, and they shifted a lot of money in advertising for digital solutions and apps and stuff like that. So this gives also unusual strong Q1. So I expected a slightly negative development in Q1, but we see growth. I think there's a very good signal into the year. So let's see. I think the second half will be better, that's my expectation, growth wise because we are progressing here in sales and the market, let's say, is stable. But the overall advertising market I think, is not going to change. It is a year with a lot of insecureness. And I think TV will be under pressure, unchanged and print as well. So I think we see pretty much similarly in the advertising market than last year because the circulates didn't change. And now we have a new war on top. Let's see how this is -- if it's finished in 4 weeks. What we all hope, then I don't see you see an impact if it goes on for the next 6 months. And clearly, we see a global impact.

The next question comes from Julien Roch from Barclays.

I'll start with top line guidance, low to mid-single-digit organic, how do we translate that into absolute revenue? Is there any effect in the M&A? How much does programmatic growth views, the growth? That's my first question. The second one is coming on your Ad Manager saying AI is completely transforming the business because we were selling basically a number of people, and now we're going to sell an audience I'm not sure why AI is making the difference, selling an audience means you need to understand who goes in front of your billboard, which is more like a measurement. So why is AI allowing you to transform a contact into impact, as you said? And then last question for Henning. On free cash flow, can we get some help indications, maybe 1 cash interest, 2 cash tax, 3 CapEx and 4, lease requirement?

I think there's a misunderstanding. We don't sell audience. Look, if you look at these QPIs, which I was talking before, like say, KPIs. So the Public Mind is defining KPIs and we track the efficiency of the campaign against these KPIs, for example, mental availability index. So because the idea behind that is look, if you compare -- let me compare it with the football team. By Munich went 3-0 and Hurricane makes 3 goals. And Google says, okay, last cookie wins. So the whole cash goes to Hurricane. So you would say, okay, I have 10 hurricanes, you win 30-0 instead of 3-0. But everybody knows that's not happening. You need a middle field and the middle field is actually preparing the conversion. If you have a strong middle field or if a stronger brand, then it's much cheaper, but you have to spend in performance. So Hurricane will make more gold. If you have a strong middle field, if there's no middle field, you win maybe 0 goals. But in the middle field, you have different KPIs in football. It's not about making goals, but maybe how many how good you're tackling, how good are you, how accurate are your passes, how much you're running. So we have different KPIs to measure the impact of the middle field, and that's what we are doing here. We developed, we don't sell, obviously, audience and context, there is still one point. But people want to know what is the outcome. So we developed during the first level, these 5 QPIs which I disclosed before. And we are disclosing the impact of the campaigns based on these 5 KPIs. So that is -- and this is, by the way, exactly what Google or Amazon is doing today. So the other day, has bought with a guy from the cosmetic industry as he says, if I add what Google and Salesforce are telling me, Google and Amazon are telling me how many units are selling, I have to sell 30% more than I'm selling a reality because at the end, but they deliver impact in relation to self-defined KPIs. So that is the next step. The next step is going from audience to impact. And that is what we achieved here through AI technology with all the AI, it's impossible to deliver that. And also, look, also the Ad Manager is only -- this was actually concept a target, which I already followed like 10 years ago. That's why we acquired a local display video and native ad reach. That's why we acquired also [indiscernible] is a reseller for U.S. player performance products. Because my vision was always a moment when the and local newspaper companies are disappearing, and this will be now in 5 to 6 years from what I'm hearing, in 5 to 6 years will be out of business. There's no other local sales force anymore. But if you -- but we realize if you don't have a technology and a platform which is combining automatically the different products in a customer-specific product. So then it becomes very difficult because you have the silos next silos, and it is quite expensive also to sell EUR 7,500 tickets on average with a people-driven sales force. So to the technical development in the last 12 months, we can now actually realize it was my vision already 10 years ago. And this will be a big change because whatever you can even put a prompt and saying, look, I want to -- I'm a packer in Cologne. I want -- I have EUR 5,000 or EUR 10,000, I want to make a campaign for many new customers, my location is here. And this will give you a directly a tailored product for winning new customers, saying, for example, okay, you invest 50% in outdoor at 20% in local display reach and 30% in Google search. And then you can -- pushing the button, you can directly book it and also pay it. So we are launching now this week, actually, we're launching our first test platform for cultural advertising because this is really small tickets, really expensive in processing. So it's -- this one is based on actually Shopify technology. And as a local cultural event company. You booked your campaign and you compare it with PayPal or the credit card immediately. So very exciting times. And we see that tests are really promising and we go live in this week and the first city in Germany.

Your question, Julian, on sort of breaking down the sales guidance. As I said in the speech, if you ask ourselves what are, let's say, the nonorganic effects in the sales of 2026, most important thing for sure is the acquisition in the call center space. I said in the speech, we expect more than EUR 70 million sales. compared to the EUR 20 million already recognized, I would say probably EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million additional sales from that in the full fiscal year 2026. And we have to consider minus EUR 8 million from the disposed small strategy consulting unit at Statista. I think these are the major components you need to understand sort of to break down the guidance a little bit. On free cash flow, I mean just walking you a little bit through the drivers. Currently, we expect, let's say, lower exceptionals for fiscal year of 2026. So that should little bit support free cash flow generation in 2026. In terms of interest, I would say, at this point, probably we expect rather stable cash out for interest payments. Tax will probably go up a little bit. I think we expect a major change in working capital, as you know, which last year has been quite a burden. That turned around a little bit in Q4, and we hope to see also that we will not once again see such a substantiated outflow as we have seen in 2025. And if you ask me now, probably a target at this point in time is that '26 cash flow should be somewhere between '25 and '24 level, right? And maybe just to add. In terms of CapEx, we expect broadly stable CapEx, maybe a little bit increase in out-of-home, which is offset by the lower CapEx and Statista.

And my last remark to Ad Manager and Public Mind. I mean this is not a cost initiative. But obviously, we expect the processing costs to shrink massively, because every order today is -- goes to 4, 5 or 6 hands. So this is -- in the future is going to be reduced on 1, maximum 2, but this is, let's say, a side effect. I mean we don't speak about cost-cutting strategy here. That is really a side effect is being transforming. And that's what I said before, the whole industry will transform in the next 4 to 8 quarters. Let's say, 4 quarters, it's hard to transform in the next 4 quarters. And I'm convinced that it will transform in the next, let's say, 2 or 3 years to completely.

The next question comes from Marcus Diebel from JPMorgan.

Can you hear me? .

Yes, sir.

Perfect. Two questions. Can you comment a little bit more how this sort of like new model and your approach will impact how the agencies will sell outdoor. I mean, we obviously understand that the structural shift here, but do you see now given this movement, there's an accelerated shift would be interesting to hear sort of like how much longer are you saying the agencies can still push there sort of like old model of selling their sort of like own TV and print inventory and how is that going to change? And then secondly, we've really touched on this. And the question is indeed also on cost savings due to AI. I fully understand that it's much more exciting on the top line. But nevertheless, the question is yes, what can we expect in terms of supply potential changes because nearly every company in our space talks about more efficiencies, talks there about margin expansion, we don't see this really coming through yet at Ströer. So the question is, is that going to change, yes? And conceptually at least from '27 onwards? How should we think about AI also again on the cost side of things. And again, I understand it's more about the top line, that would be very interesting to hear.

So as you all know, the most of the initiatives that people try to introduce the AI and lower the costs are not really a successful appeal. At least you don't see many successful cases. As I said, there's not a cost-saving activity, but we -- we believe that in the next 5 years, we can save up to EUR 50 million costs if you compare the cost in 5 years is the cost we're going to have driven by AI. So it's a significant impact. But I don't think that in the next 2 years, you'll see here big effect. So that's all over the place. It's not only in our company. So -- and I also believe that there are many people doing mistakes now because if you introduce AI as really a transformational power in your company, you have to be aware that it is change everything and they change also your processes, your workflows, and it makes no sense like -- it made no sense when the Internet came up and digitalization started to do the same. And if people try to do the same in a digital way what it before a non digital way, I think now maybe make the same mistake again. This is a game changer, this technology. And I mean, I think from many companies like we were operating a very complex setup of products and processes all over the place, if you don't take it up, there will be a lot of impact on cost and profitability in the next 5 years. But I would guess, if you -- it gives the full potential. It will take 4, maybe 4, maybe 5 years difficult to say, right now is the technology developing so fast that we were discussing now for whatever, 3 months I said, look, we need -- it is a lead to an offer to order process and national sales. We need a tool for our national salespeople so that actually takes over the strategic work in delivering tailor-made strategic planning solutions for our national customers board. At the end, customers want to see how we solve their problems. They don't want us to sell our products. And now 2 days ago, we introduced a new theology and everybody is totally flavored because nobody expected 4 weeks ago, it would be possible now in the next 12 months. And now it's actually a live since 24 hours. So things are changing very quickly. And that's also why we hired a CTO now, which we announced also today. First time that we have a group CTO, who is focused on the main business and the core business and this is one of the first results of that. So I believe completely at the forefront here technical development. And -- so up to EUR 50 million in the next 5 years can be also quicker. It's difficult to say from today's point of view because the technology development is much faster than everybody can foresee that right now. So on the agency side, look, the very simple the agencies are under pressure because in the past, they made money with reselling TV actually and now TV is going down faster than anybody expected. So -- and there's still mid- to high single-digit billion billion of euros in print and TV, which are going either to us or to the Americans. So if it goes to Americans for the agencies, that means 0 income, so there is something where I expect in the next 2 or 3 years that we see support. So what we're doing right now that we develop joint business plans, midterm joint business plans with agencies. So that is one of the reasons why I'm quite optimistic in midterm. I still think that '26 more dies and the blah, blah will be similarly like '25. But the midterm, this is one of the reasons why we are very optimistic here for our core business because agencies, we are a natural strategic partner for them. But they're also saying, look, we need to report impact to our customers. The time is over -- time is over, but time is -- look, what we have today, have to convince customers, they do outdoor and then after the copays running, they see it's working. And -- but we are not able to predict impact, so that is really -- but this -- at the same time, we look like Google and Core, they made very smart because they developed from the beginning their own set of KPIs and the reporting success in relation to the KPIs they developed on their own. I mean this is it's not real at the end. That's why I said before this cosmetic example, if you add what Amazon and Google is selling for you, you end up with 130% from what you are selling. But people want to see impact, even if they know it's not 100% correct because nobody, even Google is able to to show 100% reality. But this is something which is clearly a key demand. The said, look, we want to do more outdoor because it's also for us, more profitable to go out or then the money goes to the U.S., but we need to report impact. We need to predict impact. We need to plan impact. So prediction, report and the learning layer. These are -- this is actually what also made the Americas made it as a market standard today. So that is self booking is a market not for local clients became more and more market under and impact prediction reporting an uplift. So that is -- and that's what we're doing right now here. So we move to the digitization of our infrastructure, it became a part of the future. But now we make the second step. -- makes a second step in how we sell it, how we improve transparency of what is the impact and how we produce our products with a clear customer benefit. So that's actually -- I think these are the keys of what we see in the upcoming quarters. And what I already said, I take everybody that the industry not even in 3 of quarters. The whole industry talks about the same stuff.

Perfect. And when do you think you would be in a position to give a bit more sort of like -- or the potential of incremental revenues at the end of the day? Because obviously, these changes sound intuitively makes a lot of sense. Personally, I find it quite hard to really see what the add-on at the end of the day on revenues will be? And when do you think you will be in a situation to help, I guess, the market to understand it better in terms of the financial impact? .

That's -- we gave a first in, but in local markets. We have 3 million SMEs in Germany, 30,000 customers. So I'm convinced and we do 200 million. So our midterm target when the system is in place up and running, I'm convinced we can serve 100,000 customers instead of 30,000. So I think this is much more easy to calculate in region why because there are no agencies. There's no other sales force. We are the only one visiting customers. There's no competitor at the end. And today, and the local clients who don't have a defined strategy. It depends also how is convincing your offering. And national is more complex because the customers have a lot of specialists here. They have their own strategies, agency has a strategy. The agency has financial ties and background from kickback deals, et cetera. So that is that goes slower. But I'm -- 30,000 customers at what we are serving now with low profitability because EUR 7,500 a ticket, you can imagine that this is something where you see low profitability. So when you increase that from 30,000 to 100,000 and let's say, 40% of them do it in self-service. It will be one of our KPIs in the future, which you're going to report how much of the turnover is going to be in sales service or not. But then the profitability will obviously explore then you go from if you have 5x -- if you go, for example, the 100,000 customer, you go to EUR 1 billion instead of EUR 200 million turnover and with a very healthy profitability. But we will offer this webinar in April, what was interested, we walk you in more detail about what we are doing there and what we believe was going to happen.

The next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank.

I just have 2 more questions. Just diving into your 2026 outlook in a bit more detail. You are guiding for organic revenue growth, but stable adjusted EBITDA, so where are we seeing some margin pressure in the business if that will happen. Could you maybe give us some color by segment as to where you think margins could improve versus not? And also connected to that, this is the organic EBITDA, I'm assuming that you're guiding towards. So what should we expect for reported EBITDA once the EBITDA from the inorganic businesses or the acquisitions that you've done are included. Some color there would be great. . And second, on the AI Ad Manager, would just to confirm the EUR 2 million in CapEx you mentioned, is that already in this year's outlook for 2026? Or is it the whole sort of project? And is there anything in OpEx that you've also included? Like do you need to hire more tech people to ensure those layers are created? Some color would be great.

Let me take the last one first. No, there's a total cost up to now that is -- but this is -- here, this cost reflects also the technological development. I don't want to say you can buy it off the shelf, but you are not far away from that. So programming becomes so much cheaper, and there's so much power -- brain power worldwide on this technology, this is happening here a lot. I have to say I was also a surprise when I got the numbers from the team, especially if you look at the impact, which is going to have a major transformation of the whole industry at the end. We don't think we need to hire more people. We have 100 programmers here which are work in our SSP, which comes not to end, but we see less expenses going forward. So for now, we are pretty much convinced that we have enough people on board to realize that. Because what I said already some minutes ago, these what we call L2 lead to offer to order that is, let's say, the strategic planning work, which our salespeople are doing with national clients. So this is something where we did everything by hand until 3 weeks ago. So the sales guy, we did a client and the client gave some briefing, then the sales went back to the back office, give them a briefing, then a back office started to think what we could offer and how we could argue then it was 3, 4 feedback circles until we have some fix it is today, it looks like 18 century. I mean there's a new tool, which we introduced just some days ago. This goes in a minute in a different, completely quality and speed that happened up to now. So -- and the costs were 0 because of a product from the shelf.

Nizla, on your question, understanding better, like what is the sort of organic outlook for EBITDA going forward. I think we walked you through already like the technical effects that will arise from lower IFRS 16 effects. So just looking at the underlying cash EBITDA, we believe that should develop in minus with sales more or less. We are positive on the margin outlook for the full year on out-of-home. But it's also fair to assume that at this point in time, we're still cautious on digital as a service and e-commerce. I mean in our guidance for Q1, we already said we expect sales decline to -- by around EUR 9 million, right? The major positive contribution to EBITDA unorganically, if you will, will come from the call center acquisition and here, I would say, around about EUR 5 million to EUR 7 million will be the additional EBITDA from that acquisition that we expect in the current fiscal year. I hope that answers your question.

The next question comes from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

A few questions on my side. First, quite easy. If we can touch a bit on the one-offs. I understood the one-offs in 2025. What expectations for 2026? Are there any restructuring that required Statista or other divisions? And with the project development that you are looking at, whether it's CapEx should be more OpEx as well? I didn't get that. And also, do you need them to retrain and to obscure your employees if that is also something you already expected in your guidance for the EBITDA or it's one-offs you will consider? Another question on contract renegotiations that took place now with the input on the EBITDA. Do you see any further contracts upcoming for the renegotiation where we can see the similar things. And then the last question is on your project with home development? Is it all internal? Or do you work with some external providers. So the amount of just EUR 2 million that really comes as a very efficient product, so to say. So against whom are you competing here because other people could also come up with the similar products? And are you targeting with those products the agencies or the clients? Or what's the idea here? So whom do you think will be the major user. And then you said that you can -- marketing budget across different medias. So you can go to the out-of-home to their online to can go also to your website, but also to Google search, et cetera. But how are you going to do this? So are you going to work directly with Google? I go into the direct the agencies who will sell the Google platforms. So how that is going to look like.

Yes. Let me take the last one first. So Google starts only for local customers and national sales, obviously, we only sell our products. But on local sales, we bought the company many years ago called [indiscernible], who's doing exactly that because the idea was always, look, in the past, in local newspaper companies, they were actually serving something between an agency or a media house because we're selling newspaper ads, radio whatever, a couple of local products, exhibitions and leave labs and whatever. So now it's a question who is a central source actually, who are serving these local clients. And that's obviously a gap. That's why we developed the local sales force. That's why we acquired because we want to discussed with local client, a solution where we can take over 100% of [indiscernible] budget in reality, that means we can influence that we are able to distribute it in the channels where we have the highest profitability. That is the idea behind that. So that means we have either we sell outdoor or local video display or native ad reach. So that's what we have in our portfolio today with T-Online in the core. So is that clear? Is that the answer?

Yes. Yes. And then in terms of the local clients, you told about the brand owners. I know also about the more local agency with whom you can work together. .

No, no, absolutely. Same service does not mean only that the customer is booking it. There are small local smaller agencies. But today, it's quite complicated because if you want to -- you cannot book it in self-service. You have to talk with our sales first. There's no platform where you can buy something. So you have to ask our salespeople to come in the agency, then they show them pictures about billboards and these and that -- and then you write an offer. And then you get an order different and you have to adjust the order then the sales give it a sales support and sales support, give it to the back office and then the back office gives operations. So that is a very complex -- we did it as efficiently could do it in the past, but this is a very complex process with a lot of handovers and many people involved with relatively small tickets. So there is mission critical in the future that the local agency can go on the Ströer Ad Manager, and they see everything what they need actually for local sales. And again, even prompt in by voice, what they want to have, and the sister gives them an offer and they can print the button, press a button and the whole thing is done. And ideally, nobody is touching it anymore on our side. I mean this will be the last evolution. But this is, I think, easy to understand that this is a complete game changer, especially in local sales, we have small tickets and very complex portfolio. And that's what we see now in this first test, which is cultural advertising, we were surprised ourselves, but it's how easy that goes. But also these cultural managers are trained or a Google, this advantage. Google trained these people to use Google products and self service. For them, it's normal now that the book a campaign on the mobile phone. So -- and whatever 2 weeks ago, we are still sending paper back and forth. And -- and this was super complex and expensive. There's another question here who's using the tool. I mean the tool is used first power sales globally and national. So they have manager out to the public in why because at the end, we have to develop a product which solves the problems of our customers. So I saw a lot of customers in the last month, and they said, look, you sell your products to us. But we want solutions, not products. We want you to explain us how you can solvehelp us to achieve our targets. So this is intellectually, not every sales guy is so super hard that he really develops a telemed fantastic solution, which is for the customers who are convincing because for that, we had to digest and process so many details about the customer. What is doing, what it is in the past, what is the target, what is the budget? What's the location? Where are the shops and all of this stuff. And if you -- and that's also -- I mean, by the way, you can do it even if you have a GPT -- ChatGPT account today, if you train it for 2 weeks and you don't need to invest $1, you get better strategic planning and results, and if somebody does it manually. So because the technology is able to process so many details, which is very difficult for human. And this -- I mean, media planning and it's very complex. So you have to process a lot of different data, historical data, target data, whatever consumer data, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But if a standard GPT account, you get much better offers than anybody in our company or any other company is able to produce as a single human person. So that is why it looks so cheap in comparison to what we achieve because it's a little bit -- the LLM technology is like what we say with Statista is like a race car, but it depends what kind of fuel you put in, there is the right data, that is Statista, then it makes results much better. But the technology is developed. So the heart of the thing is the LLM itself. And what we developed now are use cases. Based on this technology, we don't develop the technology. That is a big difference. In the past, whatever, when we programmed our Ströer sales SSP, sales side platform, we invested whatever, over time, EUR 50 million, EUR 60 million because you had to -- there was no technology but you could use, you had to program everything on your own. So now you have this LLM technology, and the only thing you have to do, you have to put the use case on top. And the costs are a fraction of what we, for example, spend for developing these SSP. But our -- the agencies clearly will work. We work not -- let's say, in local sales. People will work a lot of inside service. But in national sales agencies will work with Public Mind because agencies, they have natural interest to keep as much money as possible in the country because they make more money with that, but they need to prove impact, the impact it's very difficult to move money from A to B. And that's why the agencies are actually -- we made a roadshow now in the last month, a big road show. We saw all the agencies, and the feedback was, okay, this was more than needed. This was more than necessary and why you didn't do it earlier. But we couldn't do it earlier, but technology was not there.

Anna Patrice, on your question on adjustments. In 2026, I think it's fair to say that the impacts we had here from restructuring at Statista, and also from the project that was relating to a potential sale of the core business, here, the stuff is behind us. So that should actually lead to lower adjustments going forward. On the other hand, based on what Udo explained about ad manager and Public Mind, probably fair to say that adjustment from information costs, in terms of systems will rise a little bit. But net-net, we would anticipate lower adjustments for fiscal 2026 at this stage.

But it means that there's still some restructuring to do and hence adjustments?

Well, first of all, I think it's important to say that the things that are qualified as exceptionals had to relate to a clearly predefined catalog that is also aligned with the auditors. In terms of restructuring, I think in general, we always keep some flexibility when we see there is a measure which will potentially lead to a very strong or short payback, strong return. We are always -- we will always consider what we do doesn't depend on the question whether we can adjust or not, but we do depends on what makes sense economically. And we are prepared if we see potential then we also prepared to implement the corresponding restructuring. As part of the adjustments budget for the current fiscal year, there's also, I'd say, smaller restructuring measures in some of our content publications units is included already. But from today's perspective, not much included is for, let's say, a larger reduction of the workforce, if you refer to that.

Okay. Understood. And sorry, my last question to Udo. Why do you think the local they will not lose the great platform for what describe is kind of similar now if they want to understand their marketing budgets, how they want to spend it et cetera, why would they use all the existing platforms? .

I think they will go on using Google platform for self-booking performance marketing, but it's -- those plans are so trained on user experience-friendly self-booking tools that they book by pharma out of home directly, if there was the same access to inventory and outcome-oriented tools as in the search area from Google. So I think it's just opening up opportunities where the user experience or the simplicity of approaching the available inventory or the available marketing purpose is comparable to what they are used to in the Google Ad Manager space. And I think that's just we tried to catch up with the best-in-class standard and AI technology and more data just opens up new opportunities here.

So to make it clear, Google is not a business model for us. It's just a service in case a small client want us to handle it. We do it just to underline our approach that we say, we solve your problems. And if you want, we also handle this Google stuff for you, but this will be peanuts. This is not important for our business. It's just, let's say, a marketing move, we show the customers, look, you can book everything out of one hand. But let's say, 99% of the customers for sure book Google like today separately, and they use our platform, Google platform and maybe also Amazon platform. So that will be reality, just, let's say, a marketing move. And what we're also doing today but is regulated is a small business. So I don't know what's the turnover of -- EUR 25 million or something. It is a service whoever wants to use the service. It's a few marketing stuff. We don't want to restart anything to make it clear. We want to sell our own products as a reseller is always not interesting, really there's -- that's why it's a pure service offering for the customers in case we believe that it gives us an advantage to do that.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Obviously, most of my questions have been answered in the meantime. But first of all, just to be clear, I mean, I guess, this webinar in April, I assume you will walk us through some very clear examples on just exactly how the impact of the autumn ad campaigns are generated. That would be my first question. I have other quick questions. .

Yes. We're showing the logic, showing the plan, showing the desired outcome by means of what's the range of business impact midterm.

And also make transfer and again, what a difference to where we're standing today to give you a better idea what is the outcome of that. There's obviously partly deep in operations. But I think it's easy to understand if you compare status quo with what we are going to achieve.

Okay. Second question, just do you have any major concession contract renewals coming up that we should be aware of, in particular, I'm thinking about the Deutsche Bank contract. And also, as these roll over, and I think the previous colleague was starting to ask this question as well is whether we might expect more structural changes also in the nature of these contracts, i.e., with a lower fixed component and a higher variable component for the IFRS 16 of these costs. But also just on a broader perspective, are there major contract renewals we should be aware of? .

No, no Deutsche Bank is running for a long time until the 2030s. We are beyond that. And there's -- we have no significant contracts which are impacting there's every month a tender. That is an ongoing process. The biggest 1 which come up is Hamburg. This is clearly an upside because we lost a lot of money in this contract, because there was time where we have still like 3 players in Germany with wall decor and us that was before the COVID overall, and it was a fierce battle in these days. So that is something clearly positive, but doesn't impact the P&L. So there is nothing, nothing what we see. And by the way, the reduction of fixed rent here doesn't mean we pay more variable rent. We lowered the fixed rent and the variable rent in each of these cases, because now the tenders are coming now are 15 years old, and this was a different market situation 15 years ago, where we had much more competition in Germany.

Okay. So I mean -- but if I understand that correctly, then this gradually over time, as these contracts are renewed and presumably successfully from your perspective, we could expect the rents coming down. So I might optically look less positive for the operational EBITDA, but from a cash perspective, perhaps be quite positive. And hence, the focus would probably reship back to a traditional EBITDA on a cash basis, I would assume, correct?

Yes.

Okay. And my final question is just getting back to the CapEx. I have hanging if I understood you correctly. I think you were saying in out-of-home, you thought it might even be a little bit higher this year. I'm just a little surprised, I thought actually we might see that coming down a bit because of the digital out of home national network being now largely already installed. So if you could maybe be a little more specific on what you're kind of expecting on CapEx, that would be helpful. .

Well, Craig, as you know, we usually don't provide breakdown of the group CapEx. When I said out of home, we expect it to rise a little bit. You should not think like that is 10 million or so. So I there's a moderate increase that we foresee at this point in time. And on the other hand, we will have decreasing in other parts of the group, that there's no change to the general idea that the CapEx to sales ratio for out-of-home is clearly going down over time because largely, the digital portfolio is built. Still, we have things to do, right? I mean you have seen the fantastic well that we launched in December, I can only invite everybody to have a look. Obviously, that doesn't come for free. And needs also to be accommodated for like in the CapEx budget. But in general, the story is completely unchanged.

We have a follow-up question from Anna Patrice from Berenberg.

Yes. Could you elaborate a little bit more, please, on your digital business? So you touched base on the T-Online highlighting how important the content is there that the numbers are not declining. What about the other portfolio of your website that you own and that you managed to also see in your own site stable traffic? Or do you see it declining? And what are your expectations for development here? .

I mean, the key is T-Online. This is also from the profitability side. I mean we have some smaller also special interest portals where we see everywhere impact on traffic. But commercially, this is not really impacting the whole thing. T-Online as well as the asset which is key for growth and profitability in all other players, I think that it clearly depends what the courts are going to decide, but I think that the special interest portals which are mostly quite small out of the third-party branch, which we are selling. I think that they lose traffic clearly not only to Google, but also to LLMs because many of them are also used for checking specific information. So I mean, we are very happy about the development of T-Online because, obviously, when the whole thing started, and everybody discusses Google is zero fear. We didn't know what's going to happen. So if you look at the rich development from T-Online, I think, a strong proof for the stability of the brand and our confident. And don't forget T-Online is the only worldwide news portal, which is desktop, mobile and on digital out-of-home. And this also gives us a strong stability for our direct traffic because if you count it as advertising spend, what we do on digital out-of-home, where we show branded content to your online content every day if you would pay it, it's hundreds of millions of advertising for the online brand every year. And this is clearly also one of the reasons, why T-Online is developing even after Google rollout is AI stuff in last year, May was finished. I think this is -- and there was a lot of questions also last year about that, also for investors. I think this is a very encouraging data point.

All right. But if I look at the EBITDA of the Digital and Dialog, roughly EUR 150 million, I thought that's probably round about EUR 80 million would be from the digital and the rest kind of EUR 70 million from Dialog, and then out of the digital on the -- maybe from T-Online now? Or like how important is the EBITDA contribution of T-Online versus the rest? Because if the rest were down, what is the risk overall?

Well, Anna Patrice, I think as we all know, the margin in our T-Online business is probably one of the best margins we have all across the group. You can think about margin in terms of being 50%. So to explain is definitely key that we do everything we can to keep that stable or even have been growing slightly. The margins that we generate from selling third-party inventories, if you will, as a wholesaler, are very tiny, right? . So if sales are going down there, that is not too much of an issue. But as you know, we are not providing these numbers individually as part of our constant reporting. So we would leave the comments there.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Udo Müller for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everybody. I hope we could trust us some interesting information, very interesting times. We are very excited here. And I hope you could excite you also a little bit. Thank you much, and have a nice day. .

Thank you. Bye.

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