Vend Marketplaces ASA (VEND) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Schibsted's Q1 2025 results. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Jann-Boje, and I'm heading Investor Relations. As usual, our CEO, Christian, and our CFO, PC, will walk us through the performance and developments in the quarter. And afterwards, I will moderate a Q&A session where analysts can dial in with Microsoft Teams and use the raised hand function. And now without further delay, please let me hand over to Christian. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Jann-Boje, and good morning, everyone. I have previously compared the next phase of Schibsted history with writing an entirely new book. Well, today I'm happy to say that the first chapter of that book has started on a positive note with progress in the first quarter as we delivered growth across all our verticals and also continued to reduce our cost base as anticipated. In parallel, we have continued to simplify our structure, and we have now decided to accelerate the exit from our Delivery business. And as we announced yesterday, we have entered into an agreement to sell Prisjakt. Also, consistent with our commitment to return surplus capital to shareholders, we initiated a new NOK 2 billion share buyback program in the quarter, and we plan to return around NOK 500 million in a special cash dividend linked to proceeds from Adevinta. In this quarter, group revenues ended at NOK 2,015 million. That represents a 4% year-on-year increase, while the group EBITDA increased by 18% to NOK 394 million. This revenue growth was driven by solid ARPU development across our verticals, but it was curbed by softer advertising revenues than expected. EBITDA growth was particularly supported by exceptionally strong volume-driven revenues in real estate and also the reduced operating expenses across the group. On the negative side, the exit from Jobs in Sweden and Finland as well as the simplification of our offerings in Recommerce affected the revenue growth on the negative side. Now next week, on May 12, we will reach another important milestone in our history as we officially become Vend. And to me, this is a manifestation of our ambition to build world-class and efficient and easy-to-use marketplaces in the Nordics, delivering value to all our stakeholders, users, customers, society at large and shareholders. So let me then go into the details of our first quarter. And as usual, we will begin with Mobility, and we will begin with the revenue drivers for the classifieds revenues. And if we look at ARPA, then Mobility continued to show growth across all markets. Sweden had the strongest uplift, and that was driven by solid Professional ARPA development and also strong ARPA performance in the Private segment. This was driven by continued success of upsell products as well as the new value-based pricing model that we introduced at the end of the third quarter last year as well as the packages that we launched close to the end of the year. In Norway, the Professional ARPA was hampered by a decline in revenues from our dealer management system, CarWeb. That was due to churn by customers. If we were to exclude CarWeb, the underlying growth in Professional ARPA in FINN was 16% year-on-year. And that was driven by the launch of the packages in Norway. I just want to remind everyone that we decided to reclassify the revenues from CarWeb from other revenues to classifieds revenues, and that started in Q4 of last year. The strong Private ARPA growth in Norway is supported by the value-based pricing model that we also introduced late in Q4. And in Denmark, Professional ARPA developed in line with the price adjustments that we implemented at the year -- at the end of the year, while the Private ARPA was boosted by the introduction of listing fees in DBA for cars below NOK 50,000. And that was introduced after we launched DBA on our new common platform. If we then turn to volume, Norway's Professional segment continued to grow. It was supported by the surge in new car sales in 2021, cars that are now returning to the market, and also by generally solid sales of new cars in Norway. In Sweden, the Pro volume dropped, and that was mainly driven by a change that we made in the business model from subscriptions to paper ad in one of the subcategories, heavy machinery. And in Denmark, we have seen a continued very strong market. That means fast sell rates. And as many of you know, that also means a decline in average daily listings on our Pro segment in Denmark. And the decline that you see in the Private segment in Denmark, that was anticipated and that was also a result of the introduction of the listing fees that I mentioned earlier. Looking at the financials then. Revenues in Mobility declined by 1% in Q1. Revenue growth was impacted by the closing of Tori Autot by NOK 10 million and the split from Media by another NOK 7 million. If we were to exclude those factors, the revenue growth would have been 4%. The growth was driven primarily by ARPA, as mentioned. And in addition, the transactional business models delivered 18% revenue growth in the first quarter, driven by strong performance in both Nettbil and AutoVex. Advertising, however, declined further in the quarter and was down 30%, and this decline was primarily driven by the separation from Schibsted Media. OpEx, excluding COGS, remained close to stable year-on-year, and that is despite the continued investments in the new transactional models in Nettbil, AutoVex and Wheelaway. But if we look only at the core business, then OpEx declined, and that was driven by the closing of Tori Autot as well as the effects from the reorganization that we did last year that resulted in lower FTEs and lower common costs. At the same time, we are investing in marketing. We are investing in product development. And it's worth mentioning that in the first quarter, we had higher marketing costs in Mobility than we did the year before. And all in all, EBITDA increased by 3% compared to Q1 '24, and that resulted in a margin of 49%. Adjusting for transactional models, the margin in the traditional classifieds business in Mobility was around 57% in the quarter compared to 55% before. Let's then go to Real Estate. And for Real Estate, the total ARPA in Norway grew 10 -- sorry, 12% in the quarter, primarily driven by price changes in residential for sale, but also in rent and leisure homes for sale. The ARPA development in residential for sale is still hampered by package downgrades, as we have mentioned before, but it is good to see that it is now at 6% growth compared to 1% when we reported Q4. And the growth in this first quarter was driven by changes both in the pricing and discount structure. It's worth saying that the real estate market in Norway is very vibrant and has been so in Q1. As usual, that leads to a lower need for visibility products, which also hampers the ARPA somewhat in Norway. In Finland, 11% year-on-year ARPA growth was driven by a favorable mix between for-sale and rent, some price increases that we introduced as well as better upsell. If we look at the volume side, it's very clear that the Norwegian market experienced an exceptionally high ad volume in Q1, and we have actually now been looking back at data all the way back to 2003, and we have not been able to find such exceptional volumes as we have seen this quarter. The timing of Easter has been one effect, but mainly this is driven by exceptionally high activity in the market. And I do want to say here that throughout history, volumes in Real Estate have proven to be quite stable, and they've only fluctuated by a few percentage points year-on-year if we look at the full year basis. And while it is quite hard to estimate right now, we are preparing for a similar development as that in 2025 as well. Then finally, if we look at Finland, the for-sale segment had double-digit growth year-on-year, but the rental volumes continued to decline. And as a totality, we moved to negative territory in volume development. Looking at the financials. Total revenues increased by a strong 20% this quarter. This was driven by an 18% growth in Classifieds revenues due to both the ARPA development and the exceptionally high volume growth in Norway, but also the transactional revenues had a strong quarter driven by the development in both Qasa and HomeQ. Now looking at traffic. I'm very happy to see that FINN Real Estate achieved for the fourth consecutive quarter an all-time high in traffic. And to me, that continues to demonstrate the strong position that we have in Norway. FINN Real Estate is truly a loved service by Norwegians. As many as 93% of all Norwegians know about the service. And on average, every single Norwegian is using FINN Real Estate 40 minutes every single month. And we have all the listings on our site. So I just want to be very clear that we see no signs of our market position being affected by the efforts by EM in the market. Now in Finland, we are pleased to see that our investments in marketing are paying off. We see good development in key metrics such as brand awareness, which is record high. And we will continue these efforts and these investments to continue to strengthen our market position to be able to reach our long-term financial goals in Finland. OpEx, excluding COGS, declined year-on-year, and that was despite these investments in transactional models and in the accelerated marketing and product development in Finland. And this led to an EBITDA increase of 97% compared to last year and a margin of 42% for Real Estate. If we adjust for the transactional models, margin in the traditional Real Estate area was at around 49% in this quarter. Then to Jobs. And here, following the exits in Sweden and Finland, we are now exclusively focusing on Norway. And here, we continue to see strong ARPA development, mainly driven by price increases in the segmented price model that we have introduced as well as upsell efforts that we have strengthened, and that is related to distribution products. As you can see, volumes are hampered by a continued soft macroeconomic backdrop. And it's worth saying here that the late Easter actually had a positive volume effect in the first quarter compared to last year when Easter was in March. Then looking at the financial development, and let's here focus on the blue bars that represent Norway. As you can see, revenues increased 5% compared to last year, and that is despite then this 10% volume decline. And that is obviously due to the positive ARPA development. I'd like to mention here that we are also continuing to strengthen our product offering in Jobs. One thing that we have launched is an AI-driven ad insertion that is helping our customers. Now the exits that we have made in Sweden and in Finland, they will continue to impact our reported numbers throughout 2025. They will have a negative impact on revenues and positive impact on the cost side. If we then look at the costs, the total cost base decreased by 32%, and that was driven by the mentioned exits in Sweden and Finland as well as lower FTEs in Norway. And overall, the reported EBITDA increased by 17% year-on-year, and that resulted in an EBITDA margin of 59%. I do want to note here that Q1 is usually a strong quarter for Jobs with higher margins than we usually see for the rest of the year. And then finally, Recommerce. And here, we had transacted gross merchandise value or GMV increasing across Norway, Sweden and Finland in Q1. That was driven by transactional volumes, but also by higher average order value in Norway and in Finland. We have still less than a full year of history in Finland. So here, we are comparing with the quarter before. And I want to say that Q4 is seasonally a stronger quarter than Q1 for Recommerce. So the underlying development in Finland is very solid. And we've also seen positive development in the take rate in both Finland and Sweden, while it has remained stable in Norway at 16%. And let me also remind you that the take rate in Sweden is lower than in the other markets due to a different category mix in Sweden that leads to a higher average order value. Now for the first time, we have included Denmark in this overview, and that is following the platform transition of DBA onto our common platform. It's obviously still early days, but we have come off to a good start. And as a result, we, of course, don't have any comparison figures either on a quarterly or annual basis, but we are looking forward to provide those as we move forward. And then the financials. Total revenues for Recommerce declined by 6% that was negatively affected by the phaseout and deconsolidation of certain non-core revenue streams as well as the challenging situation that we have in advertising. Advertising was down 42% for Recommerce. Classifieds revenues were also negatively affected by the discontinuation of certain listing fees in DBA as well as some impact on Tori Professional. But the transactional revenues continue to develop well, and the growth was 30% year-on-year in this quarter, driven then by the increase in GMV and the higher take rate, as mentioned. Now with the launch of the transactional model in Denmark, we are now transactional in all 4 countries. That is a significant milestone to us and really sets the stage for scalable growth going forward. We are now able to launch new features simultaneously in multiple markets. And one of the things we have launched is an AI-driven ad insertion in several of our markets. On the cost side, OpEx, excluding COGS, reduced by 17% compared to Q1 '24 and this was a result of several things: fewer FTEs, platform consolidation, AI automation and other targeted cost-cutting measures. And EBITDA then improved by 12% year-on-year, landing on minus NOK 72 million, and the margin improved by 3 percentage points for Recommerce. So with that, over to PC for a deeper look at our financials. Thank you.

Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Let me present some more details on the financials for the first quarter. Total revenues ended 4% above Q1 last year, mainly driven by Delivery and Real Estate. Total EBITDA ended at NOK 394 million, 18% up versus Q1 last year, driven by Real Estate and jobs. Christian has already commented on the verticals, but let me give some more flavors on Delivery and other HQ. Total revenue growth in Delivery also includes the business that we acquired from Amedia with effect of 1st of July '24. This is contributing with NOK 85 million of revenues in Q1. If we exclude this, Delivery revenues grew 5% in the quarter. The growth in the quarter is lower than the growth that we have reported in the previous quarters, and this is a result of significantly lower growth volumes related to Temu. EBITDA ended at negative NOK 20 million versus plus NOK 1 million last year. We have initiated measures to adjust our capacity and our cost levels to adapt to the weaker trend in terms of parcel volumes. Other and HQ had an EBITDA of minus NOK 101 million in the quarter compared to minus NOK 77 million in the same period last year. Lower revenues are partly mitigated by cost reduction in all our common functions. Now let's move over to cost development. This slide shows OpEx, excluding COGS and delivery. The cost development and workforce reductions are on track and total OpEx, excluding COGS, declined 9% versus last year. Personnel cost is reduced 21%. This is driven by significant FTE reductions from our downsizing process that we executed last year, effects from closing down Jobs in Sweden and Finland, and some effects related to the Media separation. Total workforce, excluding delivery, now stand at around 1,730 FTEs. Marketing costs decreased as planned by 23% in the quarter, mainly as a result of the exit of Job in Finland and Sweden, but also lower campaign activity level in Recommerce compared to Q1 last year. Other costs increased mainly driven by higher cloud, software and computer-related costs. And overall, this results in a 6 percentage point improvement in OpEx, excluding COGS over revenue from 69% to 63% now in Q1 '25. Let's move to income statement. Our operating profit for the quarter increased to NOK 183 million from NOK 73 million last year. This is due to improved EBITDA, lower depreciation and amortization charges and also a decrease in other operating expenses. Financial income is impacted by a fair value adjustment related to Adevinta. The value of our 14% stake in Adevinta has decreased by around NOK 2.4 billion from NOK 21.8 billion to NOK 19.3 billion now in Q1. Our valuation approach and also the underlying financial performance in Adevinta is kept unchanged. The decrease is entirely driven by a change in peer multiples, combined with a strengthening NOK versus euro at the end of Q1. In broad terms, you can say 3/4 of the effect is related to the multiple and 1/4 is related to FX. Since the end of Q1, both the peer multiples has improved, but also the NOK has weakened against -- versus the euro. So if we have done the assessment as of today, 7th of May '25, this will not have resulted in any reduction of the value of Adevinta compared to the value at Q4. In totality, net loss for the group ended at minus NOK 2.2 billion. Let's move to cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities for continued operation ended at NOK 257 million versus NOK 10 million in Q1 last year. The increase is related to EBITDA, improved net interest, lower paid taxes and improved working capital. Cash flow from investment activities in Q1 ended at NOK 198 million, down 51% versus last year. With CapEx at NOK 125 million, similar level as Q1 last year, and as before, a majority of our CapEx is related to the ongoing transition to a common tech platform. Finally, cash flow from financing activities are impacted by the significant amount of share buyback of NOK 1.2 billion that we have executed on in the quarter. Moving on, in March, Schibsted purchased own bonds of the amount of NOK 72 million. Except from this, there are no other refinancing activities during the quarter. Due to the significant cash balance, Schibsted has deposited a total of NOK 3.6 billion in short-term liquidity funds to achieve a slightly higher return than bank deposits. Net cash amounted to NOK 1.4 billion at the end of the quarter. Shifting gear a bit. And on the next slide, to build on our CMD messages from November last year, let me provide some additional flavor on our growth and profitability agenda for the years to come. The Q1 results are a good indication that we are already on our way to execute on the portfolio simplification, cost reductions and ARPA growth agenda, which are our most key value creation levers going forward. The chart on this slide provides an indicative sizing and an indicative timing of the EBITDA effects related to these initiatives. Although we see good ARPA growth and also a good transactional growth momentum in 2025, we plan to accelerate this significantly in the years to come. Drivers will be increased impact from product, pricing and packaging agenda following the completion of the platform transition as well as continued growth momentum for our transactional businesses in Mobility, Real Estate and not the least Recommerce. Becoming a smaller, simpler and a marketplace-focused company has some dissynergies. In addition to the pressure on advertising revenues that we have talked about, we expect revenue to be impacted by the phaseout of TSA from Media as well as discontinuation of certain central services today charge to Prisjakt, Lendo and Delivery. As mentioned at several occasions before, we expect an increase in transactional revenues, particularly in Recommerce, and that will come with an increase in COGS related to increased shipping volumes. As we complete our platform transition and also execute on other structural cost initiatives, we expect to see an increased impact on net cost development. In totality, our cost agenda is expected to more than offset negative effects from our portfolio simplification and also expected cost and salary inflation. I want to once again reiterate our strategy, our medium-term targets and the capital allocation principles that we laid out at CMD in November last year. In terms of portfolio simplification, we are well on track. Yesterday, we announced that we entered into an agreement to divest Prisjakt with an expectation to receive around NOK 500 million in cash consideration as a result of the transaction. Also, we have decided to initiate the sales process for Delivery. The intention to do so has been communicated earlier, and we are now ready to move on with this initiative. We plan to launch the process after summer and expect to present Delivery as discontinued operation and deconsolidate from Q2 onwards. A couple of messages related to outlook before we go into Q&A. In the midst of the current very uncertain macroeconomic environment, it's not easy to have a clear view on the outlook for the remainder of 2025. We expect solid underlying ARPA growth to continue, driven by the updated price and package launches across all our verticals. However, we do expect total revenue growth continue to be muted driven by, first, advertising revenues negatively impacted by the synergies from Media and put a drag on particular Mobility and Recommerce revenue growth. In addition, I will also say an increased uncertainty on the macro situation may hamper the advertising business even further. Additionally, as in Q1, our strategic choices to simplify the business such as exiting Jobs in Finland and in Sweden, phasing out and deconsolidating revenue streams in Recommerce, but also shutting down our Mobility operation in Finland is impacting the growth momentum short term in some of our verticals. And finally, given both historical data, but also the trends that we observed now in April, we expect that exceptionally strong volume that we have seen and reported in Real Estate in Norway is likely to be normalized throughout the year. We expect our cost base to continue to decline throughout 2025 compared to '24. However, the pace and the level of the reduction will slow down with significantly lower year-on-year reductions in the second half of this year. And with that, I will hand over to Jann-Boje and go into Q&A.

Okay. Good interest here on Teams this morning. First in the queue is Hakon from Kepler.

Yes. On your CMD, you previously stated that the Delivery is non-core, but it was included in -- but it wasn't included in the initial group of asset marked for sale like Lendo and Prisjakt. Can you clarify what triggered the timing right now? Was there a strategic shift incoming buy interest or change in performance that accelerated the decision?

I guess I can comment on that. So the answer is no, there's no big shifts or reprioritizations on our strategy or in the buyer landscape. When we had the CMD in November last year, we were not ready to commit that Delivery could be sold within 12 months. So that's why we put it on -- we were quite clear that we don't see ourselves as a future owner of a Delivery business in Norway, but we need some more time. And I think we have then worked hard to progress on the initiative, and we are now ready to move into the next phase, and that's why we're announcing that today.

Thanks, Hakon. So I think next in line, we have Eirik.

I'll do them one at a time, and I can actually start where we just left off on Delivery. Should we read anything into your kind of Recommerce conviction on the back of this and kind of how strategically important has, for instance, Helthjem been for FINN Fiks ferdig?

No, you should not read anything into our Recommerce conviction from this announcement on Delivery. I mean we have -- as PC just said, we have already said before that Delivery is not an asset we see ourselves as the long-term owner of. And we can certainly operate the Recommerce business without also owning the Delivery network as we are doing in the other markets than Norway. But of course, we will have and have a good collaboration with the Helthjem and Delivery network, and we will have a partnership with them probably also in the future.

I think that's very clear. And on the display ads, PC, you called it out as a lack of visibility now with the current macro and everything. But when I just look at the kind of run rate right now, it's ballpark or almost 50% below full year 2023 levels. Again, I appreciate seasonality, macro and everything. But could you help us think around absolute levels, maybe internal ambitions, when do you expect these trends from the dissynergies to turn? Just any color there would be great.

Should I take it? You gave it to me. I guess we both can comment on it. I think it's fair to say that we're not happy where we are right now on our advertising business. But also, we need to remind ourselves of what we're going through of separating. This was announced 1.5 years ago when we discussed the separation of Media to be the area that will have the biggest effect. And now we are in the midst of that. As we have said before, our internal ambition is to be able to recover and get back to the levels that we saw before we started to see the negative effects. That is still a bit ahead of us, right? So I think we still need to deliver on that and show that going forward. So I'm not going to give you another sort of outlook on absolute ambitions, but I think we have a good starting point where we are now, and I use that as a reference, and then we need to show how we are progressing and sort of recouping the lost advertising revenues. And then as you said, the joker in all of this is the overall, let's say, macro and market conditions that we are not in control of.

That's very clear. And just one final one for me, a housekeeping question. Would you be able to split out the impact of computer and software cost growth versus the one-off linked to the company-wide event?

Yes. So what we have talked about before is that becoming a new company, we spent -- we took all our employees 3 days and gathered them as a real kickoff and that was a great investment, I would say, but that was a one-off in nature. And then we have said around NOK 25 million of cost of that, and that's not going to recur. The rest is more sort of running-related costs.

Thanks for the good questions, Eirik. Ed, happy to have you here.

I've got 3. I'll ask one at a time as well. So first of all, on the OpEx ex-COGS down 9%. You said that that will be down, but maybe not as much in H2. So if you could just give a bit of color on that, presuming that's percentage terms you're talking about rather than absolute in terms of run rate. And it's obviously very different across different divisions, sort of broadly stable in Mobility and down very heavily in Jobs. So is there any sort of color you can give on the mix of that as we go through the year?

I think what I can add is that we reported 9%. And keep in mind, what really helps us there is that we have full effect year-on-year from the FTE reductions that we executed on last year. We saw -- if you look -- remember last year, we got some effect of that in Q3, and we got quite a lot of effect of it also in Q4. So year-on-year, you will not have the same effect in the second half. Then the closing of Jobs, we will -- we saw a good effect of that in Q4. So you're not going to see the same year-on-year effect in Q4 related to that. And then also, there are some costs that we are carrying in the first half related to Media that's not going to be there in the second half sort of in '24. So I think that mainly it's a big shift between the first half and the second half. But we are not have any intention to increase our cost base. It's just a sort of reported year-on-year decline that we just want to manage expectation that you're not going to see 9% throughout the year. And then sort of beyond '25, of course, then we will see new impacts from more structural initiatives that we have talked about before.

Okay. The second one is on Jobs margins. Obviously, that's where the biggest impact was. And you spoke about some of the changes there, but you're now already above your CMD target to be above 55% margin. But obviously, you haven't seen volumes recover in that business yet. So can you talk a little bit about how we should expect margin to trend over the medium term as it gets to maybe a more normalized picture between volumes and price over time?

I can comment on that. As I said in my section, Q1 is usually a very strong quarter for Jobs where we also see high margins. So keep that in mind. Plus that we had a positive effect from Easter in this quarter. And you will also see that in this quarter we had some lower FTEs in Jobs than what we will have from Q2 onwards. So you should not expect to see the same margin level throughout the year and we'll probably end the -- over the course of the entire year below the 55% that we have communicated before.

Okay. And then finally, as you mentioned, Real Estate for sale ARPA improved decently sequentially. I appreciate you made some comments there around very high volumes. So I guess some of it will depend on how volume trends for the rest of the year. But is your expectation that can continue to accelerate from where you see the picture now?

The volume or ARPA, what did you mean?

For sale ARPA.

The ARPA. Yes. So what we have said there before is that we expect a double-digit ARPA over the course of the year.

Thanks, Ed. Good questions. And then next up in the queue is Giles.

I had 2 questions, please. The first one, I think Christian, the second for PC. So the first question was on Real Estate in Norway. And the trade association data suggests that the volume growth that we saw in the quarter was market-driven rather than anything to do with a gain in listing share by FINN. And in the same period or maybe just after the Q1 end, we've had the bad relationship between FINN and the Norwegian Real Estate Association spill into the local newspapers again and not coincidentally, we've also had here in the public domain talking about how their progress is going better than they expected. So it's a very direct question, but are we reaching a point where there needs to be a reset in relations between FINN and estate agents in Norway? Deliberately provocative question there, but some thoughts would be useful. And then the second question is actually a much simpler housekeeping question. The special dividend, the NOK 500 million, will the proceeds from the Willhaben stake sale by Adevinta be part of the funding for that? Or does that sit somewhere else? Hopefully, that makes sense.

Well, first, on Real Estate, the volume growth is not driven by increased market share because we have all the properties on our site. So it is driven by extremely high market activity. And when it comes to the -- let's say, the press and activity in the press that you have seen related to contracts, for example, I would say that majority of our customers, we have an agreement in place with them. So it's just a minority of customers where there is an ongoing discussion, and we have a constructive dialogue with them and with the industry association on this. So it's a little bit elevated in media, I would say. So in general, we have a good collaboration with our Real Estate customers. Of course, a little bit more challenging with the owners of EM clearly.

And then on your second question, the announced NOK 500 million is the same as we announced at the end of Q4, which is related to the sale of Distilled. We have not -- and Willhaben has nothing to do with that. So if and when there are additional proceeds coming from Adevinta, we will then update the market. But just to repeat, our capital allocation principle is that if we have more cash than we need to run our business, we will distribute that back to our shareholders, either in the form of share buybacks or extraordinary dividend.

Perfect. And just a follow-up on the Real Estate question. Are you happy to reiterate that you're confident that the marketing spend that was allocated elsewhere by the founder shareholders EM will ultimately come back to you, to your latest thinking there?

Well, we don't expect the downgrades necessarily to come back from medium to large. We are now planning for a different distribution of packages, but we are certainly confident in our ability to, over time, increase our, let's say, share of wallet in this market and the monetization in Real Estate.

Thanks, Giles. Still a lot of hands, which is good, good activity. So next is Fredrik from Handelsbanken.

Just wanted to touch a little bit on Mobility, the trends in it. You didn't really see any growth in the quarter. ARPA is doing fine. If you take Sweden as one of the items in that, do you see an increased sort of competitive landscape? Do you see any sort of pullbacks from you changing your pricing structure on Blocket on the automotive side, for example? It would be interesting to hear sort of your thoughts on the dynamics in that part of Mobility.

I would say that we don't see any major changes in the competitive landscape in Sweden. One area where there is competition is in the transactional space, the C2B model. The Swedish market is quite competitive in that area where we have Wheelaway. But in the, let's say, traditional classifieds, Blocket is a clear, clear leader and continue to be so. And we have been able to work with the monetization levels, both in the Private segment with great success with this segmented price models and also in the Pro segment where we increased prices going into this year.

So the volume is merely an effect of that you had a very strong Q1 last year. So it's a sort of comps issue?

In the Pro segment -- as I mentioned, in the Pro segment, we did a change in business model in one of the subcategories, this heavy machinery category, where we changed from a subscription to a paper ad model, and that reduced the volumes, which, again, impacted the total NAA numbers.

Thanks, Fredrik. Then switching over from Sweden to the U.K. So Will, the floor is yours.

It's Will Packer from BNP. At FINN Property, could you update us on the efforts to reform the package structure to disincentivize FINN down? Are those new features in place? And is the limited ARPA progress year-to-date more a symptom of a cyclical backdrop? And secondly, my understanding is there's been some regulatory interventions to ensure that agents with an economic interest in EM share that information with vendors at the time the marketing envelope is determined. Could you just update us what's changed? And is that having an impact? And then finally, in terms of your medium-term guidance, which you've reiterated from the CMD, could you just remind us the underlying inventory assumptions that underpin that? It feels like there's quite a lot of volatility there. So as we head towards next year, that could be a source of upside or downside across various segments and geographies.

All right. Let me see if I remember all the questions. On the volume question, the third question, we have assumed flat volume development over the years and just that is the assumption in our guidance. Then on the, let's say, the regulatory requirement for the EM agents to disclose their ownership, that is a clear case. Whether they are compliant with it or not, I'm not entirely sure of, but they are required to disclose it. And then when it comes to your first question, I didn't entirely catch all of it. But we are, of course, working continuously with, let's say, the optimization of our packages and the offering to the agents. One of the key things that we are working with right now is to show the difference in value between the large and the medium package, showing that you get, for example, 25% more traffic when you have the large package versus the medium one and also that you get more leads to have new sales tasks for -- as an agent. So that is kind of the focus that we're working on right now.

And just to confirm, so the changes to the packages have been instituted to disincentivize FINN down. Now it's a question of just that playing out and impacting vendor and consumer behavior. You're happy with how the packages look today.

The distribution of the packages between large, medium and small is okay. And we're working now with that distribution to see how can we optimize that structure or that distribution in the best possible way. We are not -- of course, it would be ideal if some of the agents would come back to the large package, but we are not assuming that in our plans.

Thanks, Will. And then next up is Henriette.

Henriette Trondsen, Arctic. And 2 questions, if I may. First, on the Adevinta write-down. I understand this was due to peer pricing and FX. Could you provide any insights on the underlying fundamentals? And also on Jobs, ARPU growth at 18% was strong. Could you give any color on your ARPU growth expectations going forward?

Yes. On your first question on Adevinta, I cannot go into details of, let's say, the underlying performance in Adevinta. As we have said before and then still holds true is we are happy with the financial and operational and strategic performance of Adevinta, and that is also what is reflected in our valuation.

And on the Job side, you're right, 18% was a very strong number for Jobs on the ARPA side. We expect continued double-digit ARPA growth throughout this year, but we also continue to believe that there will be a challenging volume development, maybe somewhat better by the end of the year, but don't expect any big changes on the volume side.

Okay. I think it was your questions. So then we can move it to [ Stephanie ]. Stephanie, please go ahead.

Three from me. So firstly, on the phasing of the OpEx, I think that's clear. But maybe if you could give us a bit more color in terms of your plans for the marketing spend and hiring for the rest of the year. Then secondly, a bit more color maybe on the April volume trends across the different verticals and how that's trending versus Q1. And then my last question is on the Blocket transition, how that is progressing? And has it already started? And then sort of what do you expect any additional costs that you might incur for the remainder of the year because of this?

Should I start on the cost at least, and then we can -- you can choose. Yes. So I'm not going to talk more in detail around the marketing. That will vary from quarter-to-quarter, and it will be between the different verticals as well. But I mean, there's no -- I don't expect any major changes to the underlying run rate that we have seen across the different verticals. When it comes to hiring, we have reduced our employees quite significantly over the course of the last, let's say, 6 months in particular. We are continuously reviewing and assessing every single hiring. We are meeting on a weekly basis to assess if someone is leaving, do we need to replace them? If there is a new need, could we sort of redistribute with internal talent and so on? But don't expect any major changes in our employee compositions in the short term, meaning the rest of this year. So I think that the levels that you see now is probably a good level to expect for the remainder of the year.

What was the second question again?

April volumes.

April volumes. Yes. So keep in mind that April volumes are affected negatively by Easter. So it's a little bit hard to compare those with Q1. But, for example, if you take Real Estate, you see a clear impact of that, and it's more a flat volume development in Real Estate for April as one example. And the other markets are, let's say, equally impacted. I don't know if you want to add anything.

Not here.

Yes. And then on the Blocket transition, yes, that is ongoing. It has started. It is progressing according to plan. And I think you should also expect that, as we have said before, when we do this transition, we have an elevated level of resources using or implementing those initiatives, and that will continue. And we have also said before that we plan to be able to launch the -- let's say, the consumer-facing side of the marketplaces on this common platform by the end of the year or slightly into next year.

Thanks for the questions, Stephanie. The next in line is Silvia.

I have one question left about the Recommerce segment. And especially so if we look at revenue less COGS, the gross margin decreased year-on-year. And I wanted to ask if you could please help us understand what were the drivers here considering in the presentation you showed higher GMV and take rate. Can you comment about whether you're running any promotions that impact the unit economics? Or is it that due only to the mix effect in the revenue streams? And maybe related to this question within transactions, are there certain categories gaining more traction that you can highlight? And could there be any impact of the margin from different categories at this stage?

Yes. So in Recommerce, transaction volumes are continuing to grow, as we said. And also the take rate is remaining at a high level and even increasing in certain markets. However, as we said also very clearly, advertising is down at 42% in Recommerce and advertising is a higher-margin business. So that will impact the gross margin.

At least impact the EBITDA margin. And then on the -- if you only isolate around the gross margin, keep in mind we also have initiated Denmark and Finland into the mix now versus before it was only Norway and Sweden, and that has some impact. And then a question was, Christian, in terms of categories. Are there any sort of additional information around what is driving the growth and how is that impacting?

Not any additional flavor on that. No.

Thank you, Silvia. Then I think last one with questions for today as it seems, is Markus. Markus, please go ahead.

So a couple of questions for me. Firstly, on the Professional in Norway, you mentioned underlying 16% ARPA growth. I would have expected a bit higher given the price changes that you announced. Is that due to upsell or less republications? Or how should we think about that number? That's the first one.

Well, it's good that you point out that 16% is the underlying ARPA growth in FINN if you exclude the CarWeb revenues. I don't think I will comment more on why it's 16% as of now.

That's fair. And then on transactional in Mobility, is it possible to say anything about AutoVex compared with Nettbil? Are you seeing traction in Sweden, for instance?

AutoVex in Finland is growing very well with actually the highest growth rates of the assets we have in the C2B space. Wheelaway in Sweden, which is based on the AutoVex model, is still, let's say, at an early stage and that is a more competitive market, it's fair to say.

And then final for me is on the number of employees going out of Q1, is it possible to elaborate a bit on how that is looking compared with out of 2024 has been stable or any changes?

Yes. So we continue to see a slight decrease. There are no sort of big changes during the quarter. Of course, comparing to previous quarters, there's a big change. But during the quarter, we have -- month by month, we see a sort of a slow decrease in number of employees. And I think that is also -- it will go maybe a little bit up and down depending on what month you look at. But for the year, you should expect a similar level over the next couple of quarters.

Thanks, Markus. And then I think this concludes our Q&A session for today. So I think then we can say thank you so much for tuning in. Good questions, and talk to you soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.