TX Group AG ($TXGN)

Hello, and welcome, everybody. Here, we are complete. Thank you for your interest. We are pleased to present our 2025 annual results to you. I won't be long. The results are not up to our ambition. What is positive is that we were able to compensate the decline in revenue. And what I think is the more important and more interesting part is the fact that in our diverse portfolio of activities in each and every single activity, we have made progress in terms of rebuilding the base of the business for a sustainable future, and that will be the topic of the presentations later on. So I won't go into it. But at the end, we are here to answer to your questions, and thank you again for your interest.

Good afternoon. My name is Wolf Benkendorff, and I'm the CFO of the TX Group. Today, I will walk you through group's financial development and the financial performance of its segments. Let me start with the overall picture. Revenue declined compared to the previous year. However, adjusted EBIT reached CHF 102 million and remained broadly stable year-on-year. At the same time, the margin improved to 11.7%. Free cash flow before M&A declined compared to the previous year. This is mainly due to the special dividend of CHF 71 million received from SMG in '24. Our balance sheet remains very strong. Equity ratio stands at 76%. Net liquidity also remains at a very solid level. Starting this year, we present this figure, excluding lease liabilities under IFRS 16. We believe this better reflects our economic financial position. Let me now walk you through the main drivers of development. Revenue declined by 7%. This was mainly driven by a softened job market, structural pressure in advertising and reduced print production. At the same time, EBITDA increased by 14%. This divergence between revenue and EBITDA reflects the structural cost measures we implemented over the past 2 years. During this period, we resized the organization and aligned our cost base with the revenue environment. While EBITDA increased significantly year-on-year, adjusted EBIT remained broadly stable. The main reason is '24 included substantially higher normalization effects compared to '25. This graph clarifies that the operational decline was lower than the reported figure suggests. The difference is explained by portfolio streamlined, carried out in '24. Overall, digital operating revenue increased slightly compared to the previous year. The digital share in advertising will increase further in '26. This is due to the discontinuation of the print edition of 20 Minuten. From '26 onwards, 20 Minuten will be fully digital. The share of digital revenue in subscription and single sales also increased. The high level of digitalization in classifieds and services reflects the fully digital business models of JobCloud, Zattoo and Doodle. Here, the remaining nondigital revenue in '25 originates almost entirely from Tamedia. From '26 onwards, only Tamedia in Goldbach Neo out-of-home will continue to generate nondigital operating revenue. Let us take a closer look at personnel costs, which represent our largest cost category. Since announcing our margin targets in late '23, personnel costs have been structurally reduced by 9%. The number of FTEs declined by 11% and net revenue per FTE increased by 2%. Overall, this confirms that we are resizing the cost base in line with revenue realities. Let me briefly comment on the reported income statement, focusing on personnel expenses. Compared to the prior year, personnel expenses declined by approximately CHF 67 million or around 15%. This reflects headcount reductions, lower provisions and reduced IAS 19 effects. The improvement in EBIT reflects the structurally reduced cost base and the transformation measures implemented over the past 2 years. Let us now turn to the adjusted income statement. Reported EBIT increased by CHF 19.8 million year-on-year. However, adjusted EBIT decreased slightly by CHF 1.5 million. The key reason for this difference lies in the normalization effects. In '24, adjustments amounted to CHF 20 million related to restructuring costs for the closure of the printing centers. In '25, normalization effects were significantly lower at CHF 2.4 million for restructuring. This explains why the strong improvement reported in EBIT does not translate into higher adjusted EBIT. Operating cash flow amounted to CHF 190.6 million. The year-on-year decline compared to '24 is primarily explained by the extraordinary SMG dividend received in '24. Investments in PP&E and intangible assets remained disciplined. As a result, free cash flow before M&A amounted to CHF 162.6 million. This bridge illustrates how free cash flow before M&A translates into free cash flow attributable to TX shareholders. After lease payments and minority distributions, CHF 56.7 million remain attributable to TX shareholders. Our dividend policy foresees distributing between 30% and 50% of this free cash flow to shareholders. Based purely on this policy, the dividend for '25 would be below the level communicated in November '23. At that time, we committed to a minimum dividend of CHF 4 per share for the financial years '24 to '26. The proposed dividend of CHF 4 per share for '25, therefore, reflects the commitment and our confidence in the group's financial strength. In '25, we acted consistently in line with our defined capital allocation priorities. Last September, we launched a 3-year public share buyback program with an authorized volume of up to 6.25% of share capital. Execution of the program is progressing very well. At the current pace, we would complete the program earlier than originally planned. In addition, we increased our stake in SMG to further strengthen our position in Classifieds & Marketplaces. The balance sheet remains structurally strong with an equity ratio of 76%. Cash decreased compared to the prior year. At the same time, we continue to deploy capital through the dividend of CHF 4 per share and the ongoing share buyback program. Now, let's take a closer look at the segments. Let me commentate on markets on the level of the individual businesses. JobCloud was impacted by a weakened recruitment market and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Despite lower revenues, profitability remained at an attractive level. Karriere.at in Austria experienced similar macroeconomic headwinds. Revenue declined due to a softer Austrian labor market and FX effects. Despite this, the business remains highly profitable. SMG delivered double-digit revenue growth and further margin expansion. SMG remains the strongest growth and profitability driver within our portfolio. Let me distinguish between Goldbach without Out-of-Home and Goldbach Out-of-Home. Revenue in Goldbach without out-of-home declined to CHF 93.4 million, representing a decrease of 37%. This reported decline is mainly driven by the reintegration of advertising inventories into Tamedia and 20 Minuten and the divestment or closure of non-core activities. Adjusted EBIT declined to CHF 4.8 million. The decline is mainly attributable to weakness in the advertising market and to restructuring costs. This reflects the fact that the organization has been significantly resized to reflect the narrow strategic focus. The out-of-home business developed more stable with revenue growth of 2%. The weaker adjusted EBIT is mainly attributable to a one-off provision related to an onerous advertising concession agreement in the first half of the year. At 20 Minuten, revenue declined by 16%. However, digital advertising in the second half of the year was higher compared to '24. This demonstrates that after an initial ramp-up phase, the strategic reintegration of sales is operationally working. The result also includes restructuring effects related to the discontinuation of the print product at 20 Minuten announced last June. At Tamedia, revenue declined by 6%. The print market remains structurally under pressure. Adjusted EBIT increased strongly to CHF 11.5 million. This improvement is driven by 2 closely related factors. First, '24 was significantly burdened by restructuring costs, which did not recur in '25. Second, '25 shows the first tangible operational effects of the restructuring measures implemented over the last 2 years. Let me first address Ventures. The Ventures business achieved a positive adjusted EBIT in '25. This represents a clear improvement compared to prior years when the result was negative. It marks an important milestone and reflects improved portfolio quality, operational focus and cost discipline. Turning to the group units. Adjusted EBIT declined to minus CHF 14.1 million. The main driver of this development was our real estate activities. In '25, extraordinary write-downs and provisions were recognized alongside project costs related to the development of income-generating properties. These effects are nonoperational in nature. Excluding these items, the underlying group cost base is structurally reduced following cost reductions and decentralization of services over the past 2 years. The margin targets shown on this slide were originally communicated in November '23. We reaffirm these targets. The targets for 20 Minuten and Goldbach remain unchanged in terms of timing and ambition. For Tamedia, we have extended the target horizon by 1 year. This reflects the fact that the structural transformation of the publishing business requires a slightly longer execution period. However, the strategic direction and margin ambition remain unchanged. This slide illustrates the contribution of each segment to free cash flow before M&A attributable to TX shareholders. TX Markets remains the largest contributor. Importantly, all media segments generated positive free cash flow in '25. View on this slide, highlighted in blue, we show cash flow excluding one-off social plan payments. If we exclude these transformation-related payments, the underlying operating cash flow of the media businesses is stronger than the reported figures suggest. This distinction is important. Social plan payments reflect past restructuring decisions. The blue figures, therefore, provide a clearer view of the recurring cash-generating capacity of the business. And with that, I hand over to Daniel.

A warm welcome also from my side as well. I'm happy to give you some additional insights into the portfolio on top of the financial results that Wolf has already shared. In summary, the development we saw in the first half of the year also continued in the second half. So the overall result does not include any major surprises, neither on the downside nor on the upside. As usual, I will go into a bit more detail in the next couple of minutes. And today, I will also share some additional insights into our real estate portfolio. The job market in Switzerland and Austria remained challenging in the second half of the year. We continue to hear a lot about tariffs, war, inflation and similar topics. The teams in both countries showed strong cost discipline and did their best to respond to the situation. Nevertheless, the financial performance reflects these challenging market environments. Looking at some seeker KPIs underlines that JobCloud was able to defend its strong #1 position. The number of applications started on the platform, which you can see in the chart on the top right, and the number of registered users both increased significantly over the past year. Web visits shown in the chart on the bottom right, also confirms that JobCloud is still by far the #1 platform in Switzerland. A similar picture would also be visible in Austria when looking at the corresponding karriere.at KPIs. To navigate the current market environment, continued cost discipline is crucial. At the same time, investments in innovation and technology remain crucial. JobCloud is, therefore, continuously working on both pillars, and for example, introducing an AI hub in the course of the year '26. One of the highlights of last year was for sure the IPO of SMG. While the share price showed some weakness in the context of broader market dynamics and concerns around AI, we remain very convinced of SMG. That is also the reason why we slightly increased our stake in the company, as Wolf has already mentioned. While I will not go into detail on the performance of SMG, as they hosted their own analyst conference just 2 hours ago, I think it is fair to highlight the double-digit growth in both revenue and EBITDA. And I think it's also worth mentioning that all main verticals have supported this growth. The growth and the improved margin also came alongside continued product development. This will remain a strong focus also for '26. The goal is to further improve the product and bring even more value to SMG's customers. As Wolf already has mentioned, we are pleased that we are able to bring Ventures, which includes Doodle and Zattoo, back to profitability. While the bottom line is moving in the right direction, we are not yet satisfied with the top line performance. For both companies, the clear goal is to return to stronger growth. Doodle has, therefore, gone through an organizational restructuring and will completely renew its product in Q2 this year. Following the Green Streams acquisition, Zattoo is now also able to offer a modular product for our B2B customers, which will be one of the key drivers for growth going forward. The fintech fund now shows an increased NAV and consists of 24 companies. Out of the CHF 100 million that were communicated, around CHF 65 million have already been deployed until the end of 2025. As mentioned, I will also share some additional insights into the different locations in our real estate portfolio. The Bert area, where we are today, is the headquarters of TX Group. It consists of 3 buildings: Werdstrasse 21, Stauffacherquai 8 and Werdstrasse 25, which is currently under construction, as you could see on your way to us and as you can already feel at the moment. All 3 buildings provide office space in total around 20,000 square meters. Werdstrasse 25 is intended exclusively for third-party tenants and will be ready in 2029. In our annual report, we have only communicated the fair value of the new building. This does not include Werdstrasse 21 or Stauffacherquai 8, as they are still considered operational properties. The portfolio also includes another office building in Bern, which used to be the headquarters of Berner Zeitung. The building will undergo a complete refurbishment and is expected to be ready for third-party leasing by the end of 2028, offering mainly office space, but also some retail areas, as you can see on the picture. Zurich, Bubenberg with an area of almost 20,000 square meters is currently still used as one of our printing centers. After operations end in 2027, the site will offer the opportunity to convert it into residential use. At the moment, we are working on a feasibility study as well as on options for interim use to bridge the time until construction can start. In addition to office space and hopefully soon also residential use, the portfolio also includes industrial properties. This is the former printing center in Bussigny near Lausanne. At the moment, we are finalizing a very interesting solution together with a well-established partner. This year's annual report also includes the fair value of this location. Last, but not least, the printing facility at Zentweg in Bern is also part of the portfolio. From 2027 onwards, it will be the only remaining active printing center of TX Group. As you can hopefully see, we are making progress across all locations in our real estate portfolio. At the same time, we are considering various options for the overall portfolio, such as strategic partnerships. The development described today do not limit any of these options, but at the same time, already allows us to make progress today. To summarize, even though there are some challenging developments in the ecosystem, at the moment, we are convinced that we are on the right path to foster growth and value creation. We see solid development across the portfolio and expect 2026 will show even more tangible assets. And with that, I'll hand over to Tanja for the Media business.

Thank you, Daniel, and good afternoon also from my side. For the Media businesses, the year 2025 was characterized by extensive restructuring and consolidation efforts. We sold or closed 6 activities in 2025. Overall, Goldbach closed or sold 4 activities and handed over the advertising business -- sales business of 20 Minuten on Tamedia to the 2 media companies. 20 Minuten discontinued its print product at the end of the year and is now entering the digital era. We closed down a printing facility at Tamedia in Bussigny, and we'll close down one more at the end of this year. We restructured our teams going from 2,539 FTE in the Media section of TX at the end of 2024 to 2,344 at the end of the year 2025. On the other side, we decided to invest and kick off new investments in 2025 into product innovation and AI projects. As Wolf has already said before, with these efforts, I'm really, really confident that we will reach our margin goals with Goldbach and 20 Minuten in 2026 and with Tamedia in 2027. So let's go deeper into the individual companies. After an era of expansion and diversification into different advertising genres, the new leadership team under Christoph Marty decided to streamline the Goldbach Group and to sell or close businesses that show no strategic fit or profit potential for the upcoming years. The team sold Splicky, AdUnit, Goldvertise in Germany and closed our regional sales team in 2025. They restructured the Goldbach Group and reduced overhead costs significantly. You can see the restructuring on the left side. Those are the white boxes. Those are actually the activities that have been dropped in the last years. Overall, the restructuring activities will lead to a loss of more than CHF 10 million in revenues and even more costs, which will strongly improve our expected margin in 2026. We are confident that reducing the complexity of Goldbach and focusing on the success of the core businesses will help us to improve profitability. Goldbach Neo benefits from the worldwide growth of digital out-of-home and grew its revenues by 2.4%, better than the market forecast from PwC. Our biggest competitor in Switzerland grew its business only by 0.3% in 2025. If we take out the one-off effects of one of the old Goldbach Neo contracts, the team around Tom Gibbings was able to significantly increase the adjusted EBIT by more than CHF 2 million. The team has now ended the integration efforts of bringing together Goldbach Neo and Clear Channel and can now focus on further growing the business. With a revenue share of 35% in digital out-of-home and a very strong private ground portfolio, we believe to have a very solid base for the upcoming years. The proposal to ban outdoor advertising in the city of Bern is currently no longer being pursued. During the 2026 budget debate, the city parliament decided to retain advertising revenues. This sends a positive signal to the industry and reduces our political risk as similar debates, for example, in Zurich still continue. Overall, the EBIT adjusted of the Goldbach Group with CHF 15.4 million stays behind our expectations due to the restructuring costs, the one-off for the old Goldbach Neo contract and the negative development of the now closed regional business. Let's turn to 20 Minuten. In 2025, the team of 20 Minuten around Bernhard Brechbuhl made a big step into its pure digital future by taking the tough step to close down its well-loved print business at the end of the year. As a consequence, the team reorganized in 1 Swiss-wide editorial team. 20 Minuten is now starting into 2026 with almost 50 FTEs less than in 2025. The team can now fully concentrate on growing its very successful digital product, especially the app. It can build on its #1 position among all private news brands and the growing trust of a strong loyal user base of around 2 million visitors per day. In a very difficult media environment, 20 Minuten managed to grow the level of trust, especially with our younger target audiences. And I can tell you that's difficult. 20 Minuten will now build on its strong brand and level of trust among younger readers by investing more into product innovation and AI-based product features. The team plans to launch a video-based product, more community features and will expand content offerings around soccer this year. You can see the new video product actually on the right side. In all of these projects, the team uses AI to build features and to scale the necessary content production. Taking the advertising sales in-house proved to be a more difficult start than the team expected, but it pays off. After a difficult start at the first half of the year, the second half was above the previous year. The team also started successfully in the first 2 months of 2026. In the future, we will compare 20 Minuten for more transparency with the revenues without the print product of CHF 66.9 million in 2025. In 2025, Tamedia took further big steps in its transformation. The measures this year strengthened journalistic quality, made the organization economically more sustainable by taking out costs and complexity and created better conditions for long-term digital growth. In 2025, the team of Jessica Peppel-Schulz closed down the first printing facility in Bussigny and is currently preparing to close down Zurich at the end of the year 2026. Tamedia has taken over the advertising sales from Goldbach in 2025 and rebuilt its sales products and processes successfully. A strong growth in digital advertising sales of more than 30% compared to last year and a solid performance in the structurally declining print advertising market was the result. Also, Tamedia has taken over the advertising sales team with around 110 FTE, it has increased its FTE base at the end of 2025 by only 60 due to the restructuring efforts on its commercial and product teams and the closing of the printing facility. The continuous strong decline in the print market emphasizes the importance of the team's work to grow its digital products and digital subscription business. The team has succeeded to increase its digital subscriptions by 5% to almost 200,000. Also, Tamedia has not been the first mover in the digital era, it's now investing a lot to jump curves and embrace the possibility of AI on all levels. The strong AI lab team invests a lot of time in pushing the data literacy of the Tamedia team, helping to automate and support editorial processes like the Article Buddy tool you can see here on the left side and to free time for differentiating journalism on the ground. And finally, also to build innovative AI-based product features like the Hyperlocal community information that you can see here, that's the one on the app screen. It uses AI to find and aggregate information from different local sources and offers these news in newsletters and personalized elements in the digital product. It's actually very successful with already 90,000 newsletter subscribers. So overall, we can summarize, we have done a lot of groundwork in 2025 to improve short-term profitability. In 2026, we will make sure to deliver our promised margins at Goldbach and 20 Minuten, do our homework to deliver the margin at Tamedia in 2027 and invest bolder in digital product innovation and growth. Thank you very much. Your questions.

Thank you all for the insights we have given to you. And as you can see, it is a diverse landscape in which we are working. Therefore, it is helpful for ourselves, and I hope for you, too, that we have tried to bring some order into it in our equity story, where we concentrate on the one hand on marketplaces, which are our joint ventures, but it's the area where we also want to grow through further investments. And on the other hand, on media. And the third bucket are the other activities, which are not where we see our future, but is where there is a lot of value, mainly in the real estate. And there, a lot of work has been done in order to now be in a position to find solutions, which I imagine mainly in partnerships, but it's open. The options are now on the table. And I think by next year, we'll be able to give you also the solutions that we will have found. So thank you again for your interest, and now, we are here to answer to your questions.

I'm [indiscernible]. And on Slide 18, you show the development of karriere.at in Swiss francs. Would you be able to comment the performance in local currencies?

As you have seen, euro has weakened against the Swiss franc. So it was still a decline in the top line, but it was not that a steep decline that we show on the graph. We just make that hint because if we report on Swiss francs, it looks worse than it was in reality.

And then on General Atlantic, you have a new Board member and you still have the active loan. Can you remind us how much it is?

It's roughly more than CHF 150 million.

That's the long term. Yes.

Yes. Yes. And it has a fixed due date, and it's backed by the shares of General Atlantic.

I was just reminded...

So if you are on the virtual, a virtual attendee, you can actually ask your questions via the chat function. We will read them out so that everybody can hear the questions, and they will be, of course, answered by our 4 speakers.

Andy Schnyder at zCapital. I have a few questions. First, on -- also on karriere.at. The margin came down quite a bit this year. Maybe you can talk about that because JobCloud was able to increase the margin despite the revenue slowdown. Maybe a few words on that. And what do you expect for next year?

Yes. As I've said, I think the market conditions in both countries are similar, are challenging, but Austria is a bit more difficult than Switzerland. This is also caused by the inflation that is much higher in Austria than in Switzerland and by some regulations that employees -- employers in Austria need to compensate for the inflation. So they have to adjust the wages in Austria to the inflation, which is not motivating to hire, but rather the other way around. That's why there is pressure on the margin. I think the team in Austria has done a good job in compensate or try to compensate as much as possible. But yes, as you have already stated, the margin went down a bit. We're working on improving that in 2026, but also have to monitor how the macroeconomic development looks like this year.

And then, probably a few words on the general view on the jobs market. We've seen that not only yours, but also other players in Europe revenues have declined after the COVID boom. But maybe your view for the midterm for the next few years, do you see that stabilizing? Because the job market isn't that bad in general. It's not good, yes, but it's not that bad either. And maybe a few words on how you see AI in this field.

Yes. Maybe starting with the easier question with the first one on the view on jobs overall. I think it was always and is still the case, it's linked to the open positions in the market, and they are very, very low at the moment. And I think this is called by the environment that I have tried to describe. I think there's a lot of geopolitical volatility. We have war, we have inflation and tariffs and things like that. We don't see any structural development yet. We're closely monitoring what is happening around AI. But at the moment, we're seeing it more as a chance than as a risk. I think it helps us to develop products much faster and really use the USP that JobCloud already had. It's a strong position. It's a strong brand, and it's the data to really improve the value add that we can deliver to our customers. But we're for sure also closely monitoring on what is happening out there regarding the big LLMs and how they are using AI to maybe getting more into the space also of job classifieds. We're also monitoring what is Indeed doing together with OpenAI. So this is a topic that will -- I think, will be crucial also for the next couple of years for sure.

And then, Mr. Supino, you said before that there are a few options on the table for the real estate portfolio. Maybe you can talk in general how these options look like, whatever you can tell us.

What I wanted to say is that for each property in the portfolio, we have now a clear view of its potential. In some cases, already plans how to unlock that potential, like, for example, next door where the building is going on. And so that was a precondition, for example, for partnerships to be in a position where we ourselves know what we have to bring in, in a partnership or even if we wanted to disinvest. To be able to negotiate, we need to know what it is. And that is the work that has been done. I think we now have a very clear view on the potential, or if you want, in other words, on the value of our real estate, and that brings us in a position to now find solutions, which will be different for each part as the portfolio is diverse. But it is, at that point of time, open what the solutions will look like and if maybe some solutions can be packaged in one bigger solution.

So it's not really necessary to find one big solution for the whole portfolio. There can be partnerships here for that and other things you will do on your own and...

Yes, it's not necessary, but it's also not excluded. That is the work that lies in front of us. And what was important to me is that we never wanted to kind of fire sale our real estate. We think there is a lot of value in that real estate and that we want to fully unlock. And so first part of the work has been done, but the second part of the work lies in front of us, and it's not something I can now go into detail as the nature of it is that we have first to do the work and then to communicate it.

I think it's important to say it again, I think all the work we have done in the past doesn't hinder us on any of the options may be on a big solution, as you have described, neither on a solution on every location. So everything we did was really to unlock this value that we see in our real estate portfolio.

More questions in the room?

[indiscernible]. An add-on question about the advertising markets. Can you give us here as well a general assessment about the advertising market and maybe differentiating between digital and print, the margin development?

Well, overall, we can say that in the structurally difficult markets like print, we see a decline over the last years, right, which is accelerating. Overall, I think we can say that we have performed rather well last year in print, which is not to say that it's great, but we're not decreasing as much. So we worked a lot on this. That was what I said when we took over the sales business at Tamedia. I think that was a good step. Overall, at 20 Minuten, we can say that, as I said, it has been a difficult half year to take over. It took a couple of months, also to unplug and plug in the systems and everything that takes months. I think we underestimated the effort, but we can see now in the second half of the year that it was a good decision. We were above the previous year. Overall, I think the digital part, there is growth, but not a big growth. So we will see that we can basically use that much better now with having the advertising sales teams now in-house and be able to optimize it much better. Did that answer your question?

Yes.

Good.

And another question to clarify for Goldbach. Without the out-of-home, we have done a lot of work there. Is that now the new base already reached? Or have we to expect more to come in the first half of the year?

Well, what we have done, we had a lot of integration efforts between Goldbach Neo and Clear Channel with a lot of old contracts that had to be cleaned out. But this is done now, as I said. So I think we -- this kind of new base we've reached, and now, we can grow the business again and think about how to expand. And I think that is a good position now for future growth.

And if I may, some add-on questions. On Goldbach first, can you give us a sense with all the divestments and closures you made, what the revenue base is we should think about for '26?

We'll have to hand that to...

Yes. Since we don't give an outlook, we can share the revenue base. But I highlighted in the difference, I think it was of the 34 -- no, 37% decline. The biggest part of that was the shifting from commercialization advertising sales to Tamedia and 20 Minuten. So that's the biggest part of it. So taking like 2/3 out of it will give you a solid base for, let's say, going forward revenue baseline.

Perfect. And then for Goldbach with the divestments and 20 Minuten with the discontinuation of the print edition, if you take all that out, are you already in -- would you already be in the targeted area for the margins? Is it these 2 facts, all the closures and the discontinuation, that brings you automatically up there?

I mean, automatically is a big word. But we are sure on our way, and we are quite confident. Otherwise, we wouldn't have made that statement here today and repeated it twice. So yes, all the restructuring measures have either been executed already or are set up and will be executed shortly so that we are sure to deliver on that target.

What will be the charges in this year for the closing of the printing centers and other discontinuations?

You mean the provision?

Yes.

That has already been done.

Completely done?

Yes, it's completely.

No further charge this year.

Yes. It will be an effect on the cash flow statement, of course, because severance payments, for example, we'll have to pay them this year and part of it already next year. But in terms of profit and loss statement, provision for that was already done in '24.

And a completely different question. How do you make sure all what you write about these events in Near East is real? I mean, can you -- how can you charge on these issues?

Well, we have had this morning a press conference mainly around the media businesses and around journalism. And the key of all is our credibility, like without our credibility, we have no reason to exist. And even more so, the easier it will be to produce content with all technological solutions that exist and are being developed. So we must -- as part of our credibility, we must make sure that what we report is true, and that is the function of fact checking, and we have both in 20 Minuten and in Tamedia dedicated resources to fact checking. Plus we have technical solutions that are being developed to assist in this. So that's kind of one of the main initiatives and the most important hygiene factor in the media business is that what we report is true. And we have various systems in place to work on our quality and to monitor our quality. We have also today published our quality monitoring, which we do yearly. And there, again, the truthfulness of what we do is one of the key criteria.

How reliable is the intelligence in this regard?

It is already quite reliable, and it is increasingly reliable. But the ultimate responsibility will always lie with persons, be it that there is a handish involvement, be it that the person is responsible for the process, which is fully automated, both exist. I think over time, we'll see more that is fully automated. But there are elements of human involvement, and the responsibility will always be of the humans involved, and the ultimate responsibility lies with us who stand in front of you.

Nothing online.

And 20 Minuten with these big changes, what do you expect? How will that develop in the next few months? Is there a trend you see already after...

Well, yes, I think actually closing down the print part set free a lot of energy to invest more into differentiation for digital. So the team can now fully focus on improving the digital product. And I think that you can feel when you talk to the team. And we actually started pretty well in this year. So we are actually very positive right now. Yes.

And how do we react your advertising partners or clients?

Well, I think, of course, there was a certain sadness here in the house, but also with advertising customers who relied on this product for so many years. But I think overall, we can say there was a big understanding of that we've seen it in other countries, and 20 Minuten here in Switzerland was one of the last big free print products. So there was a lot of understanding that we have to do this step. And there's a lot of potential in the digital section for them now. I mean, it still has a huge reach. We can reach biggest part of Switzerland. So they can still fulfill their goals, right?

And when will you transfer this experience to Berner Zeitung and other print...

Well, what we really try to do, of course, is to exchange experiences and ideas. We have invested in building networks across a more decentralized company, right? We want decentrality to have quicker decision-making, but we want the people to talk to each other so that we can exchange ideas, and they're doing that. So I think a lot of things that we develop for one product will find its way into the other product as well, right?

So you mentioned that every business you own generates a strong cash flow. Then, SMG announced a dividend for last year. So would you be able to make an outlook for the dividend? Or -- yes, for your dividend or a floor or -- since you don't have the extra dividend.

Unfortunately, not every of our activity is strongly contributing to the cash flow. That is where we don't meet our ambition, but we think that a lot of groundwork has been done to make sure that all of the core activities in marketplace on the one hand and media on the other hand will contribute to the cash flow. And for our own dividend, we have set the minimum goal of CHF 4 per share for last year, this year and next year, right? And then, through the achievement of the margin goals and the development that we want to realize, we are confident that we will be above that threshold in our regular way to calculate the dividend, which is the 30% to 50% of the free cash flow.

Maybe to be precise. So the dividend paid in '27 for '26 is at least CHF 4 that we have announced in November, 2 years ago. And from that on, in '27, we hope that we have reached the margin targets for all media companies. And as Pietro said, then we are really, let's say, convinced that we will be paying an attractive dividend within the reach of the 30% and 50%.

No more questions in the room.

Maybe one add-on on JobCloud and karriere.at in this current market situation. Do you have any new add-ons for new technologies or revenue streams, which you are evaluating to gain or come back to more speed in this difficult situation?

I don't know if it answered the question 100%. I think we are trying to be agile and fast for the last couple of years. I think AI helps us to, as I have outlined to, develop products faster than we are used to and with less resources. I think that's the case for every company and also for job classifieds. I think we are heavily working on 2 topics where we see growth levels, that's value-based pricing so that we can really differentiate between the job that is listed and the city where the job is listed and how hard it is to find a cook or an engineer or a taxi driver, for example. I think that's the one level we're working on. And the second one is the social recruiting where we can attract talents also on social media platforms and maybe also talents that are not proactively looking for a new job, but that we can attract them and show them that it's maybe time to move to another company and that there's maybe a better fit than at their current employer. I think these are 2 examples where we see a lot of potential for growth and where we're also investing in because, I think I said it, it's really important that we have cost discipline, high cost discipline to keep the margin up, but at the same time, also invest to be innovative and to deliver value for our users, but also for our B2B customers.

Since we have no questions in chat, more questions in the room.

Thank you very much for your interest.

Thanks.

Thank you.