TX Group AG (TXGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A very warm welcome to our analyst conference held to announce the TX Group's Half Year Results. My name is Ursula Notzli, and I'm responsible for the communication and the sustainability of the TX Group. We are really pleased to comment on our half year results today. Around the table, we have our Executive Chairman and publisher, Pietro Supino, our COO, Sandro Macciacchini; our CFO, Wolf-Gerrit Benkendorff; our group Executive Board member, Daniel Monch, who will comment on the ventures; and our CEOs of the different companies for 20 minutes panel [indiscernible] for Tamedia; Andreas Schaffner and for Goldbach, Michi Frank. And we also have here Oli Rihs, who is actually in the board of our most important participations, namely or in the Board of the Swiss Marketplace Group and JobCloud. I also like to say it right at the beginning, we plan a next event end of November that is a so-called strategy day where we will provide guidance at least for the most important companies of our group. Therefore, obviously, we'll not give any guidance today, but as promised, this will come end of November. And with this, I'd like to hand over to our Executive Chairman, Pietro Supino.

Thanks, Ursula, and welcome from my side. I want to be short and not to take too much of your time speaking or talking about what you have already got in written, I assume that you have read or had a look at the half year report and my editorial there, and you have the press release in a nutshell. The first half year of '23 shows a positive trend. We are very pleased about that. We are not yet satisfied with the overall result. Our ambition goes beyond, as Ursula has said, we will come back to this in November. But -- we are happy that we can already show a positive trend, and we hope that the trend is your friend. And this is ultimately based on twofold engagement. On the one hand, we have reduced costs, and we will have to further reduce costs at all levels and in all activities. And on the other hand, we have to continue to invest in the quality of our offerings to transform the existing offerings and to develop new offerings. And there, I must say that I'm really pleased looking at all our activities and especially at our 3 main companies. In Tamedia we have, for the first time, a B2B subscription offer in the field of transportation. We think that, that it's promising as such. We think it's promising on a bigger strategic scale, and it shows the capacity of Tamedia to innovate and to cultivate its qualities and transform them into a new world. And for Tamedia, I also would want to make a compliment to Andreas Schaffner, who will hand over as the CEO by the end of next month, and I'm really very pleased, and I think you can be proud that you have now been able to achieve this beginning of the turnaround that is needed for Tamedia and you will hand over Tamedia, I think, in good shape for the third development to your successor. 20 minutes has really concentrated on its core, on the content and the performance of its content. And then I'm really very happy to see the development that we have gained Market share in the digital publishing. And that also the strong position in social media, which then has to be transformed on our own platforms for 20 minutes has been further strengthened and that's really very positive and I think that Bernhard deserves a compliment for that, and he will further comment on it. And also, as Goldbach, I think we can be really proud about the development. Mainly this transformation into a more technology-driven advertising marketing company and the platform through which also smaller clients can book advertising has made a big step forward. There has been also a very smooth process of the integration of the ad unit that we have taken over from Swisscom and this is a really important building stone into the future of Goldbach. Obviously, together with the integration of Clear Channel, which is a real highlight for. And so I can say I'm really pleased about the development of our main activities. In terms of revenues, but also in terms -- and revenue potential, I should say, but also in terms of cost development, but we all know that on the cost side, there is much more to be done and that the group also has to contribute to that effort. And then the biggest contributors, I leave to Oli our Rainmaker, the JobCloud and Swiss Marketplace group, they are both really positive, have always been. But in the case of the Swiss Marketplace Group, I think the potential becomes more and more visible, but there is much more potential in my view than what we see in the first half year. But here, again, the trend, I think, is important. And JobCloud shows that Switzerland is a paradise and that the business in Switzerland is almost not affected by the global insecurities in the economy and in the job environment is, of course, positive. In Austria, the story looks a little bit different. But fundamentally, we remain convinced that these are fantastic businesses to be in. And this is, as you know, also one of the fields where we would like to further invest. And with this, I would like to hand over now to Wolf.

Good afternoon. My name is Wolf Benkendorff. I'm the CFO of the TX Group, and I will briefly present the financial development of TX Group for the first half of 2023. In the overview, you can see that TX Group was able to increase its revenue, EBIT adjusted profit margin and free cash flow before M&A compared to 2022. The equity ratio deteriorated slightly and net liquidity decreased. The main reason for this was the acquisition of Clear Channel Switzerland, which I will explain in more detail later. If we start on the left, you can see that revenue has grown by 3%. This growth is mainly due to Clear Channel Switzerland, which has been fully consolidated since 1st of April. Organically, sales decreased slightly. EBITDA and the EBITDA margin improved significantly. The main reasons for this are lower OpEx and the higher earnings contribution from SMG. EBIT adjusted also improved clearly compared to EBITDA, the improvement is lower because depreciation increased due to additional capitalized lease contracts from Clear Channel Switzerland. A look at the revenue composition shows that the revenue mix is very balanced and that the share of advertising revenue has expanded due to the acquisition of Clear Channel Switzerland. The share of digital revenue and total revenue decreased marginally. The reason for this is the lower digital share in advertising revenues, which has decreased from 51% to 47%. In the small step columns in the green box, you can see that the digital share has expanded slightly at Tamedia in 20 minutes, but has decreased for out-of-home. This is due to the fact that Clear Channel Switzerland has a larger proportion of non-digital advertising space compared to Tamedia. In the income statement, personnel costs are particularly noteworthy. Despite the integration of Clear Channel Switzerland, these are lower than in 2022, organically by as much as CHF 12.7 million. In the first half year, a positive earnings after tax of CHF 13.7 million results, which is well above the previous year. The normalized income statement mainly correct for the amortization from business combinations of SMG and the line share of net result of associated joint ventures as well as the amortization from business combination of the fully consolidated companies. Also normalized a clear improvement of earning after tax was achieved compared to 2022. Cash flow from operating activities increased significantly. This is mainly due to the following reasons. EBITDA has grown. There is a considerable reduction in net working capital, which is partly due to the first time consolidation of Clear Channel Switzerland and [indiscernible] but also due to more intensive receivable management at Goldbach. Cash flow from investing activities is negative mainly due to the acquisition of Clear Channel Switzerland. In the previous year, cash flow from investing activities was supposed to positive due to the sale of MoneyPark in first [ quarter ] and a special dividend from SMG. If we exclude inorganic effects and look at the free cash flow before M&A, we see that it has improved clearly compared to 2022. Now I'd like to briefly illustrate the impact of IFRS 16 on our financial figures. IFRS 16 was already important last year due to the growth of Neo, but it has become even more important due to the acquisition of Clear Channel Switzerland and the additional capitalization of the lease contracts as you can see in the column chart to the right. Here, the first column shows the income statement for the first half year as reported. In the next 2 columns on the right, we have separated the impact of IFRS 16 and the proportion that comes from the out-of-home business. On the far right is an adjusted profit and loss statement without the effect from IFRS 16. It becomes obvious that other operating expense would be CHF 25.7 million higher without IFRS 16 because rental expense would be well recorded above EBITDA and not as depreciation below EBITDA. EBITDA without IFRS 16 would therefore be low at CHF 61 million instead of the reported CHF 86.7 million. We applied the same method to the balance sheet, and it can be seen that IFRS 16 leads to an additional capitalization of 2019 -- CHF 219.6 million, thus extending the balance sheet. Since lease liabilities are included in the calculation of net liquidity, this currently leads to a net liquidity of 11.9%. You can see that in the first column, second last line, without IFRS 16, the net liquidity would be CHF 236.3 million. The additional recognition of lease contracts as liability also has an impact on the equity ratio. That's the last line without IFRS 16, equity ratio would be 81.7%. IFRS 16 increases operating cash flow as well. If lease would be a recognized as an expense rather than as depreciation, the operating cash flow would be significantly lower and instead of CHF 111.7 million, only CHF 87.1 million, as can be seen in the right column under operating cash flow. This higher figure for operating cash flow is corrected in cash flow from financing activities by the repayments of the corresponding lease liabilities. This illustrates that the repayment of lease liabilities is driven by the operating business. Therefore, this item is deducted in the calculation of the TX Group dividend, although it is reported in cash flow from financing activities. The next page summarizes again in a compact way in what I have just assented. And now I will hand over to Sandro for the presentation of the financial performance of the segments.

Thanks. Hello, everybody. A warm welcome also from my side. I would like to give you an overview of our 4 segments, starting with TX Markets. Segment TX Markets consists of our participations in JobCloud, which is fully consolidated and in karriere.at and in SMG, which are consolidated at equity. For a better understanding, we show you on this chart for each activity, 100% of revenue and EBITDA and EBIT. Starting from that time, the turnover of JobCloud was stable, whereas EBITDA and EBIT adjusted decreased by around 10% due to further investments in new business. The market in Austria, as yet already has pointed out was more challenging. The turnover of Karriere.at the #1 job recruiting platform in Austria decreased by 6% and EBIT adjusted was down by 20%. In contrast, SMG developed very well in both revenues and profitability. The EBIT adjusted stood at around CHF 40 million at the end of the first half year. In the consolidated normalized income statement, the share of net result of SMG amounted to CHF 10.4 million in the reported period compared to CHF 2.7 million in the last year. And Karriere.at accounts for another 10 million in 2023. The next chart shows the development of Goldbach, thanks to the acquisition of Clear Channel which is consolidated since April, revenue rose by around 30%. Nevertheless, EBIT adjusted was slightly negative for the whole segment. The drivers for this negative result are, on the one hand, lower revenue and further investments in new businesses of Goldbach -- in the core business of Goldbach, mainly in TV and online. Therefore, the EBIT adjusted, of course, we've outperformed decreased significantly and amounted to CHF 1.5 million in the first half of 2023. Second driver was a clearly negative contribution of NEO in the out-of-home business. Besides a further negative development above the previous period, we also have a provision of around CHF 2 million for additional payments for the last year. In contrast, Clear Channel contributed to solid positive result in the reported period. Overall, the EBIT adjusted of Neo and Clear Channel together, that's the column out-of-home amounted to minus [ CHF 2.3 million ], as you see on the bottom right of the slide. In the following months, we will merge Neo and Clear Channel to leverage synergies both on the revenue and on the cost side. Due to integration costs, we do not expect a significant recovery in the second half of this year, but medium term, a digit adjusted contribution on EBIT adjusted level. The next chart shows the development of the segment's 20 minutes and Tamedia. 20 minutes was able to slightly improve the revenue with a stable cost base. This improvement was overcompensated by a negative development of the print activities of Heute in Austria, which is recognized as share of net result of associated companies in EBITDA. In contrast, Tamedia able to improve the EBIT significantly despite lower revenue. To conclude from my side, a look at the segment group and interest. The turnover rents just decreased by 6% due to lower costs, the overall investment was with 3.5 million lower than in the previous period. Turnover of group decreased substantially due to fewer group services provided mainly to SMG. This was all compensated by a lower cost base, thanks to further cost reductions within central services. The target, as announced 3 years ago, of saving 20 million at group level by the end of 2023 will be met this year. So we are expecting combination is on top measures further improvement in the following years. With that, I hand over to my colleagues.

Now we discussed the different segments. Oli Rihs?

Okay. Thank you very much. So as Pietro said before, JobCloud remains very resilient despite a difficult market situation. The JobCloud team did a very good job investing also in new products and technologies above all in programmatic and artificial intelligence. The new organization also in segments of 4 segments, small enterprise, medium enterprise, large enterprise and seekers show those first results. And you see here in the middle, the core KPIs of this platform and the mobile application. The application started and the application sense. It shows that the usage of our services are pretty high and shows 20%, 25% growth during this period. In Austria, not the same situation. The market was more and more difficult. The inflation between 8% and 9% is still there, and it has a negative impact on the business and on the company's working in Austria but overall, we can say we have a very strong result despite the market situation and we have a solid #1 position in Switzerland and in order, and we look at the future very positively. And then Swiss Marketplace Group. You saw the results before. The new CEO, Christoph Tonini, made a great job with his team since the beginning of this year. You see here all the results, revenues and EBITDA in automotive, real estate, general marketplace and finance. We are very happy about this trend. And the changes in products and services helped, of course, but also the intensive work behind in technology. We continue to consolidate all the platform to get and it will last til the end of this year '23 and we are absolutely ready for further growth -- increased growth in 2024 and further. Thank you and then I hand over Michi.

Okay. Michi Frank, I'm incharge for Goldbach. We heard have some information from Pietro about the market. I'm totally sure that we're on the right way. For sure, but it was not easy for first 6 months for Goldbach. It was really a difficult situation. I think, with what we heard about Clear Channel, [indiscernible] of Neo stuff where they go forward. I think that's the story where we much go. On the right side, you see the mix, Tamedia mix from 22% to 23% the first half year. And especially, you see there is a growing especially in the out-of-home business. And that's also our reason to go forward. We heard that from Sandro also the new mix, we are sure for that this combination with Neo with Clear Channel in the new Goldbach Neo. That's the new way. And then also, we are started with them. Especially in September, we are on the right way with the timing also. And we start in October. That's really important for us with the new platform. We have, I think, the 3,800 out-of-home and digital out-of-home places where we can sell now with our new platform. And then that's really the investment in the future. And with this, we are the [indiscernible] -- but also, we are in the TV business and in [indiscernible] the mining part of the new contract. We faced the biggest TV station or TV sales house in French. And now our situation especially in the French part of it we have the bigger marketplace, and I think that's also for us, important for the future. And also what Pietro told you, we invest a lot of money in the future, special for the SMG business because this business goes now all to the GAFAs and we are totally sure that we have here a point when you just bring back, say quote of 10%, then we have really a big market where we can go forward. And I think that's really the investment where we go, this platform and this future for the Goldbach is the future also for us as a [indiscernible]. Thank you so much. And I go now to hand over...

Sorry.

Thank you, Michi. [indiscernible] We managed to grow advertising revenue slightly, but the market remains challenging, as you've just heard. Together with Goldbach, we set up new advertising sales organization that started in the market on 1st of July, and we're very much looking forward to working together with Goldbach in this new mode to go a step further in our advertising sales and monetization. In the user market, we had a very heavy traffic drop in 2022. We suffered from the corona, post-corona news fatigue, so people were not interested in hard news anymore, and we had to -- on the one hand, broaden our content offerings. We are doing much more lifestyle and entertainment content nowadays. So we have a lighter mix and more positive mix that really works well in the market. We also reorganized the editorial team. We united strengths and increased churn realistic impact. We are working now in a cross-functional mode that's -- in the latest evolutionary stage of a newsroom where out of 1 team, you can create various formats for various distribution channels. And then we also invested into the print edition. We invested into a legacy. This was a combination of a contemporary design. It was a minimum page count to make sure that you always have a substantial product in our hands -- in your hands. We added a daily lifestyle page to attract new advertisers and this has positive impact on the user market, on the advertising market to work against structural decline of print. When you look at the digital traffic we managed in the first semester to grow again, slowly first. And now this summer, we could do another jump. This is attributed to the reorganization of the editorial team. We also did a continuous improvement in the digital entries, designers and user experience-wise. Also, when you look at the traffic development, you can see that we widened the gap between us and the main competitors in the German-speaking part of Switzerland it's compared with [ click ]. There, our lead was only 3.5% in October '22. And now in July, it's 14% ahead and a similar picture in the Romandy, where we look at the main competitor, RTS. This is the public broadcaster. And there, you can also see a widening of the gap. And our joint ventures in Luxembourg, [indiscernible] were satisfied to see a dynamic digital development as well. I hand over to Andreas.

No, [indiscernible] I'm very happy to speak to you. And I'm very proud what we can present. Compared to the last year we have a 15% more digital subscription. That's the great achievement and thus not just happened. There is a lot of work behind. And we believe that we -- this result, we are on the edge on the subscription market in Switzerland for Tamedia. What beginning in this year, we -- by the beginning of the year, we clarified our product portfolio and assign clear tasks and rule between the titles for the Swiss German part. Therefore, [indiscernible] is now our national champion, it is responsible to growth in the national base [indiscernible] outside more regional and will increase their original subscription base in the relative local area. Building an expanding reach is the first step in ensuring the growth in paid subscription. Therefore, our editorial team have developed innovative formats to meet the expectation of digital users and attract them. For example, we have successfully introduced a variety of newsletters and podcast format. Some of them are free and created for -- to attract users. Some of them are behind table. This helps us to sell our subscription. As the next step, we have to gain subscription coming from the subscription base. Here, we rely on one of the best software on the market on the software, Piano. We have already built up a lot of experience and are constantly making process by using this tool or we have significantly improved segmentation in marketing of digital subscription. Subscription offers are now better geared to our individual people. The close collaboration between editorial team, product, consumer business and technology is appearing to fruit. We are faster, and we can respond more flexibly to our needs and the needs of our customers. Despite continuous improvement in the terms of journalism, the decline in print will continue and we have -- will have a negative impact of our revenue. Therefore, we will continuously adapt our structural costs over the next year to keep contribution margin in -- from print as high as possible. I'm convinced that we have a fantastic starting point, starting position and that we will successfully manage the digital transformation for Tamedia in every mix group.

Thank you, Andreas. And now to conclude, Daniel for the ventures.

Good afternoon also from my side. I would say TX Ventures continues its long-term journey in a challenging environment. For Doodle and Zattoo, the main focus is on product development and to increase the subscription base. We are quite happy with the development of Doodle in the first semester. We can see that user satisfaction increased significantly and we see the indicators showing the right way, and we try to achieve 100,000 paid customers -- paid subscriptions at the end of the year '23. For Zattoo, it's a mixed. First 6 months in '23, we see a nice development in B2C, Switzerland and nice development in B2B, where we could sign new contracts and extend existing contracts and where we can see stagnation in B2C Germany, which is a bit the downside in the first half of the year of Zattoo. Looking at our ventures activities, some of our portfolio companies could reach important milestones -- we -- you see some of them on the slide, for example, Neo, which exceeded 150,000 customers in the first half of this year. We could also do some new investments. The market environment is challenging, but that's also providing some opportunities, and we are quite happy that we could do 3 new investments into Cashlink, Tidely and Lano. And last but not least, we finally got green lights from authority to set up the Fintage Fund as we communicated end of last year, and we are quite happy to now start officially in this new setup and to do investments out of the TX Ventures Fintage Fund I.

Good. Thank you, everybody, and you will start or come to the Q&A now. [Operator Instructions] We will start with Daniel Burki from Zürcher.

I would have two questions. I know you dont give a guidance yet, can you still maybe describe your expectation for the second half of the year where it's tough, where it's more positive, maybe per segment, if possible? And then maybe a more blunt one? You once said there would be a possible IPO of the Swiss Market place Group in '25. Is this still a time frame we should consider?

Thank you for your question. I would say we start with you, Oli, probably you can comment on a possible IPO and on the outlook for our second half year.

So possible IPO, yes, '25 or depending when it's the best time to be, but it's still the goal, of course, yes. And on the -- let's say, on the trend in the second half of the year, I would say, the market environment for job will be still challenging. And for Swiss Marketplace Group, I think we have such a good, let's say, trend at the moment that we expect to grow with the same pace as showed from the first part of the year.

And yes, the situation what I told you before. I think we are on the right way and the last 4 months for Goldbach are important months. And now we see consideration what we have with Goldbach Neo especially in this out-of-home market and also with what we see now in the market, I'm a little bit more positive, and I see that also. But the market is short. And I think, yes, that's the right way, and we see it.

For Tamedia, I can say that revenue on subscription side, we will not achieve. But on the advertising market, we believe that we'll achieve our goals, but we can compensate all differences in revenue by our cost base. I mean the baseline, the bottom line will be there, we expect by the very end of the year.

As mentioned before, the advertising market remains challenging, and we tackle the market in a new mode, so I expect in Switzerland, an improvement compared to last year.

Good. Thank you very much. And then we will hand over to Pascal Boll from Stifel.

Yes. You seem to be quite euphoric. I believe it's a little bit early to celebrate, I think. So you talk a lot about cost adjustments. And if I look, for example, Tamedia, I see that you only decreased FTEs by 15 people year-over-year. And my question is really, what should we expect? Where should these cost cuts coming from going forward? This is on Tamedia. And then also, if you look at Goldbach, if we take out the out-of-home business, the results in H1 was quite poor. So is that problem or that -- yes, the problem in the advertising market, not a structural one and you need to cut costs and adjust the cost structure in order to preserve the long-term wellbeing of that business. That are my first questions. And then on SMG, maybe Oli, can you elaborate a little bit where you stand in terms of business projections towards the IPO? Are you below in line or above the plan for a potential IPO? And maybe also where should the growth really coming from? Is it more from transactions or further price increases? Because if I remember correctly, you increased prices for some of your offers twice over the last 12 months? What is this plan going forward?

Andreas on Tamedia.

Reduction of FTE based in Tamedia. It's important to see that during the first half of 2023, we integrated [indiscernible] on Tamedia. And therefore, we increased -- on one hand, we reduced our base on FTEs and the same time we increased by this collaborator -- employees we have this area. So the 15 is the net base. You can see we reduced in the Western part of Switzerland as an example, 1 shift in printing centers was about 30 FTEs reduced and therefore, I can believe we will work very hard on adjust our base, on our personnel costs and to keep revenue and contribution margin as high as possible.

Michi on Goldbach?

Yes, as what I told you before, I think the last 4 months, the important months for Goldbach in every part where we are working, that's the first. Second is, you questions about cost, yes, that's a daily business what we have -- we are really looking for that. We can do also what we have done that's important. We've done a lot in this year, and the results comes now slowly into second half year and also '24. And also we go forward, we're looking for that. And once more, I think we have new inventory. We have a lot of new inventory, we have new IDs where we can go for the future, and that's slightly what we have.

Good. Oli, about the business projects and on the way to IPO and transactional versus price increases?

So if we're on track, yes, we are on track. It will depend on the market situation, but we are absolutely on track with SMG, and I'm very happy about the situation. This is the first thing. The second thing is price increases alone is not the way. It's a additional services as you are towards 2 transactions. Yes. We invest also in some technologies in order to be able to do so. And our goal is, of course, to be in the same level than our peers in Europe. And the final goal is the year that won't be -- we will be ready in '25, '26 for the next steps.

Thank you. And finally, Pietro.

I just want to be clear that we are not euphoric and we are not celebrating anything. We are just pleased by the positive trend in the first half year, but I think everyone is aware that, in absolute terms, the result is not good. And we are also aware that the results from our traditional businesses is not good. And that a lot of work is needed to come back on a sustainable basis. On the cost side, there are also -- the contribution from the group is necessary, although we have just finished a projects to save CHF 20 million in costs, we'll have to start the next round from the group to help the businesses to reduce their costs, but they have to reduce their costs on themselves also. And then on the other side, we invest in the quality of the products, in new offers in order to drive the revenue side or where it can't realistically be driven upward at least to maintain it as high as possible. And this is also because price increases by themselves, as has been asked this is not a sustainable strategy in order to increase the prices, you have to increase the quality of the offer that is especially true for Swiss Marketplace Group. And there, it is happening. So maybe last comment for the questions regarding the outlook for the year, when Michi says the last 4 months are important, it means the last 4 months of the year. And this is, in other words, the fact that the visibility of the advertising business is really very, very short. And therefore, it is impossible to give you a serious answer the question. We'll see it by the end of the year. We have good reasons to be optimistic but the account will be made when the year has closed and you have to be patient until then to see how the year will end.

Okay. Thank you very much. I don't see any more questions. Oh, yes, Stefan [indiscernible].

Yes, hello, I was wondering if you could perhaps give some more details why Karriere.at faced a more difficult period. And in Switzerland, the business still seemed to do okay. Is that due to different offerings, different client exposure? If you could give some more color here, please.

So the 2 markets are a bit different. In Austria, you have more production companies than we had in Switzerland. This is the first thing. But the main reason is that in Austria, you have 8% to 9% inflation still today. And the companies has by law to adapt all the wages costs during the year. So they had to increase the salaries on [indiscernible] at the beginning of this year. And of course, large and middle companies are, say, first, expecting what happened on the business side to hire new people. So this is the main effect in Austria was from the beginning of this year. And so is less impacted because our inflation is now less than 2%. So this is the main reason.

Thank you very much. Any other questions? Good. Well, thank you very much. If you still have questions, please let me know. And obviously, some of you already have meetings -- individual meetings in the next few days. So I'm looking forward to see you all and have a nice afternoon.

Goodbye.