Vend Marketplaces ASA (VENDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Schibsted's Capital Markets Day 2021. My name is Jann-Boje, Meinecke, and I'm heading Investor Relations at Schibsted. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual event. We would have loved to meet you all in person, but due to COVID-19, this was not possible. Presentations have been prerecorded, and the last Q&A will be streamed from different home office locations. We hope this format will be a good substitute after all, and that we can all meet again soon. Next up is our disclaimer, but I will not go through this in detail. We have prepared what we believe is an exciting program for you today. So let's have a short look at the agenda. First up is Ole Jacob, the Chairman of Schibsted, who will kick off the event with some opening remarks. Afterwards, Kristin, our CEO, will give an update on Schibsted's overall strategy and avenues of growth before members of the executive team will dive into more details. As you can see on the agenda slide, we will have a 15-minute break after Siv's presentation on News media, which should give you the possibility to get some more coffee and stretch your legs. At the end of the presentation, Kristin will be back for some concluding remarks before we start the Q&A session, which will end around 1 O'clock CET. The Q&A will be in the same format as our quarterly presentations, meaning that you need to call in to ask questions. If you just would like to listen into the questions and answers, you can stay on the webcast stream. Dial-in numbers are available on our IR website, and please call in at least 5 to 10 minutes before the Q&A session starts. A recording of the event will also be available on our IR website. But now to the program. Most of you are probably quite familiar with our first speaker, Ole Jacob. He is the Board Chair of Schibsted since 2002 and also the Chair of the Tinius Trust, which controls the largest stake in Schibsted. And by that, please, let me hand it over to you, Ole Jacob.

Thank you, Jann-Boje, and good morning, everybody. A lot has happened since our last Capital Market Day, 2 years ago. Then, I talked about our history of digital transformation and how it is creating value. I talked about Adevinta and how setting it free would create growth opportunities. And we presented a growth strategy for the new Schibsted, highlighting the potential within marketplaces, our strong digital news companies and the potential of our growth businesses. Today, I am pleased to report that we have achieved these goals, both for Adevinta and for Schibsted, delivering value to our shareholders through landmark transactions and through operational developments. We have also learned a lot about Schibsted's attractiveness during the past year. COVID-19 has tested our organization, and most of our businesses have shown a true resilience being more relevant than ever. What we observed with the pandemic is that the digitalization of society accelerates. And as a digital company, Schibsted is well placed to take a larger role, and this will be the focus of today's presentations. But first, let me set the stage. A key strategic decision when spinning off Adevinta was to maintain the Nordic marketplaces as part of Schibsted, jointly with our News Media and growth opportunities. We did this because we believe that the individual parts of Schibsted are more valuable together than separate. And Schibsted now has a remarkable footprint in the Nordics. And I am pleased to see that this strategy is blossoming. Our core businesses have strong growth prospects in themselves. But even more importantly, our combined user base in the Nordic markets provides the reach and the data quality to strengthen all our operating units. Every day, we are proving that the value of Schibsted is larger than the sum of its parts. Schibsted has a shared purpose across all our businesses. Our joint mission of empowering people in their daily lives is rooted in the values of our media heritage and the legacy of bold change. At the high level, Schibsted's business and role in society is to help create trust and transparency, 2 key building blocks of well-functioning democracies. Schibsted is contributing to these values through our media houses, providing the public with reliable news and holding the powerful accountable. But equally important our marketplaces are building transparency and trust, connecting people and facilitating transactions in efficient and reliable ways. And our growth companies are also about trust, helping people make informed choices when taking important decisions. We also build trust in linking the digital world to the physical, for instance, in our home delivery services. And underlying all of our services, is our quest to use data responsibly. Why does this matter, you may ask? Then I will say because we believe companies are more sustainable in modern society, also financially when they have a higher purpose than mere profits. This core belief is anchored in our legacy, creating value at multiple levels and for all stakeholders. It's not a balancing act. But it is a virtual circle, creating value for consumers is leading to increased use of our services, which again benefits society. And this again, attracts people we want to work with. And last but not least, this circle produces profits to our shareholders and capital to fund new initiatives. Each Schibsted business contributes in its own way to this goal. Some of our companies may grow and leave Schibsted, and others become the cornerstone of our future. All are part of the family, developing together and developing better because of it. Our large base of frequent users and subscribers is delivering a clear message, our services are relevant to them. We are deeply connected to their everyday lives, their choices, decisions and opinions. This makes us proud and it makes us humble because empowering them matters even more in these challenging times. Thank you, everybody. Now I'll pass the word to Kristin, our CEO, who has been with us a little more than 2 years, but she already has a firm grip of our development.

Good morning, everyone. I'm recording this from home today as I am in a corona quarantine. 2 negative tests and no symptoms, but these days, we all stick to the rules regardless. So 2 years ago, my Capital Markets Day address focused on the soon to be Adevinta spin-off and our plans to establish 2 leading businesses with higher value and more flexibility. Today, you heard our Chairman talk about how we delivered on those plans. And later today, you're going to hear from our EVPs about how we're going to keep delivering growth and value in each brand and business area. What I want to spend my time on today is how we work to ensure growth and value creation in Schibsted, how we lay the ground for future success and something else Ole Jacob talked about, how we make sure Schibsted is worth more than the sum of its parts. But first, I want to address something that I know many of you are eager to hear about, how we plan to manage our Adevinta stake post the eBay Classifieds deal. We see Schibsted's Adevinta ownership as a journey with 3 phases. In 2019, we carried out Phase 1, the preparation. We spun off Adevinta to show the real value of these assets and to make it easier to be an active participant in value-accretive consolidation. This started the journey of moving Schibsted from being a strategic owner to a financial one, and the spin-offs demonstrated that we are proactive and take calculated risks to create value. In 2020, we carried out the second phase, the transformation. Adevinta's acquisition of eBay Classifieds was the first logical step after the spin-off in 2019, confirming that Schibsted has an active but financial approach to Adevinta. The dilution of our share from around 59% to 33% was in line with our previous communication, showing our willingness to dilute our share if it creates significant value for shareholders in Adevinta and Schibsted. And starting in 2021, we entered Phase III, which is about leverage. With the closing of the eBay deal, we see material value creation potential through the combination of these 2 companies. Schibsted has the capabilities and knowledge to support Adevinta in realizing this potential. We are a financial owner of Adevinta, and our shareholding will never stand in the way of value-creating transactions. CFO, Ragnar Kårhus, will tell you more about the next phase and the restrictions that are part of the deal and capital allocation. But allow me to emphasize our Adevinta ownership is high on our agenda because of the enormous value and potential for value creation. And while we are proud of what we have achieved with Adevinta, we're also aware that we're entering a new phase of our ownership. That new phase means we will keep going for growth, but also that we will evaluate and balance our ownership as a financial owner over time, in line with the best interest of both Adevinta and Schibsted shareholder. Now let's go further into Schibsted's priorities and way forward. As Ole Jacob said in his introduction, a key strategic assumption in Schibsted is that we create more value for all business units together than we would do apart. We are more than the sum of our parts. And in order to explain where this more than lies and in order to explain how we will leverage it, let me share a perspective on Schibsted's strategy that some of you may recognize from previous presentations. This figure illustrates Schibsted as a 3-layered pyramid. The top layer represents the purpose and identity we share across the entire Schibsted family, providing direction and inspiration for all. The middle layer represents Schibsted's brands and businesses, with all -- which all pursue their own goals and strategies, while group priorities guide resource allocation among existing and new businesses. The foundation represents our shared functions and capabilities, the things we do together because they demand scale or specialization, enabling both the individual and the collective to thrive. Now a pyramid might be a simple enough illustration, but there are a couple of important points here. While we have a clear vision that the group is more than the sum of its parts, we don't run Schibsted top-down as a traditional large industrial company. Rather the opposite, we view Schibsted's strength in terms of our individual brands and businesses, allowing them room to develop and accountability for their own success. And that is also why the group functions are represented as a foundation at the bottom. They exist for our businesses to build from and not to. So let's take a look closer at this bottom layer. That foundation represents what enables us to create value beyond each business, the secret sauce that makes us more than the sum of our parts. In reality, we can distinguish between 2 separate layers of this foundation. Like any group, we share resources for technology, infrastructure and capital allocation, making sure we operate efficiently and work well together day-to-day. And we share HR resources, enabling us to build a joint culture, something we have really seen pay dividends over the last year, with employee satisfaction and engagement actually going up rather than down during lockdowns and COVID restrictions, ranking us top 10% against external benchmarks. In addition to that, we also have what we refer to as Schibsted services. These are market-facing services that create direct value for our customers and brands. At the moment, we have 4 such services, advertising, data, subscription and integrations. And allow me to begin with data as it is such a key element for all the other Schibsted services. With all our popular sites and consumer services, we are uniquely positioned in the Nordics to really capture the value of data. To leverage that position, we need to be even better at capturing, managing and sharing data across Schibsted to fully comprehend our customers' preferences, to make our products even more relevant to each consumer's wants and desires and to create more value for each individual Schibsted business. Value they would not have had if they were not part of the Schibsted family. So in short, rather than having a separate data universe for each brand like this, we are now close to having one common data universe for all of Schibsted. For instance, we have an identity management system called Schibsted account, enabling us to identify users across almost all our products and services. And we have a common data catalog across the group to localize, streamline and inquire about the data we have. And last but not least, we have taken an important step that Schibsted becoming the legal data controller across our services, ensuring data is handled in a responsible and transparent manner. This is important to us and in line with our core principle as a company. We also believe transparent data management will prove to be a competitive advantage over time with increasing customer awareness and privacy issues and with increasing resistance towards cookies, tracking and third-party data. But the benefits reach even further than privacy issues. Being the data controller allows Schibsted to use data from all the different sites across the group about who our users are and what are users like, vastly enhancing our ability to develop, personalize our bundled products. And before I move on, I want to share the scope of our data positions to give a better idea of the potential and the importance of this issue to us. As you can see, numbers get smaller from left to right, but the firmness of the user connection and thereby, the value of the user data increases. We have almost 1 billion monthly visits across our services in Norway, Sweden and Finland, which has a combined population of only 20 million. And with its 6 million inhabitants, Denmark will come on top of this. We reach around 80% of the population in Norway and Sweden every week through some of the most visited sites in the Nordics. 3.3 million people are logged in every day, which is a high proportion considering population numbers. And we have around 1.4 million paying subscribers across news, media and next. And then there's advertising, where we, for several years, have been moving towards one shared unit, selling advertising on behalf of almost all Schibsted brands across all digital real estate and based on shared technology stack. Our advertising unit is run by News Media, but it serves all of Schibsted. And by doing it jointly, we face the market on a much larger scale, and we can afford to invest in technology that makes us competitive with the global giants in our markets. The third Schibsted service is our subscription hub. Traditionally, our subscription business focused on selling the highest possible number of newspaper subscriptions to each brand. These days, we think more holistically about it. On one hand, we aim to grow our total subscriber base. On the other, we strive to create as much value as possible for each subscriber by combining products and services across Schibsted or even external services. And Siv will come and tell you more about both advertising and subscription later on today. Finally, #4 is what we refer to as integrations, bringing the full power of Schibsted to each business. For instance, if you read a review of the latest Samsung mobile phone on tech.no, you'll find a link to pre-stock price comparison for that particular phone. Or when you want to sell your used car on Blocket and make a digital transaction, Rocker provides that transactional capability. Speaking of Rocker and financial services, there are many promising opportunities to integrate financial services further across Schibsted. And I would not be surprised to see transactions and identity as the next Schibsted service. And we'll hear Dan talk more about this later on. So through these 4 cross-company services, we continue to develop the foundation of our brands and business stand on. Not on a cost driving basis, hoping that these services will someday prove to be valuable. No, rather we build them step-by-step, based on real value creation for our units and based on real use cases with our units. And this has created value for both our stakeholders and our individual brands in the past and will keep creating value, making sure Schibsted remains being more than the sum of our parts. Okay. I said my colleagues will take the deep dives into the brands and businesses. So I will just give you the broad strokes. And the broad strokes that Schibsted has 4 key priorities: one, strengthening Nordic marketplace by expanding and consolidating our Nordic positions, leveraging our current positions and transforming into next generation; 2, strengthening our digital news positions with an even stronger focus on subscriptions, enabling top line growth and healthy margins; 3, pursuing new opportunities building on Schibsted's existing positions through fueling the subscription economy and enabling the e-commerce value chain; and 4, leveraging Schibsted's growth acceleration capabilities to launch new businesses and extend positions through continuing to invest in financial services as well as integrating fintech in our businesses and continue to pursue new growth opportunities through venture investments. So these 4 priorities currently guide our strategic work and capital allocation and will, of course, be covered in more detail later today. Then finally, we are at the top layer, our purpose. Just as our brands and businesses share a foundation in Schibsted that they can stand on. They also share a purpose they can reach for. And Ole Jacob spoke about the values we carry with us from our media heritage and our legacy of bold change and transformation. Ultimately, the goal we are reaching for is building trust and transparency in society, both crucial when faced with today's challenges. That being pandemic or polarization, climate change or challenges to democracy or fake news or inequality. We aim to keep amplifying our impact by continuing to develop and rethink our existing positions and business models, find new business opportunities to raise the bar in our industries and to use our knowledge and technology to help solve society's challenges. And that brings me to a key Schibsted characteristic that I want to mention, and that is our willingness to think big, to experiment and to make bold changes. The obvious example is how we, some 20 years ago, dared to let Finn develop on its own terms, letting it compete freely with our legacy business. But there are other examples as well. For instance, our media brands embrace the digital era, not letting the print business XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX or how we transformed a distribution network of declining newspaper circulation into an advanced and fast growing e-commerce enablement operation that attracts attention far outside the Nordics. Or how the group took the calculated, but inarguably, big risk of really betting on online classifieds on a global scale, punching way above our original league. And this attitude, this willingness to rethink positions, to think big and to go for growth, that is a core trait of the Schibsted culture and a trait that I see as part of this shared purpose on the top of the strategic pyramid. Moreover, it is the characteristic of a company that is never content with the way things are, that always let new opportunities develop, and that never allows yesterday's successes stand in way of the new. So thank you for listening. This concludes my presentation, but I'll be back later today with a wrap-up before the Q&A. And now I am delighted to introduce the first speaker of my team, and that is Christian, who runs our Nordic marketplaces.

Hello, everyone. Today, I'd like to take you through Nordic marketplaces. And let's start by talking about who we are followed by an in-depth look at our exciting growth prospects and the journey we have ahead of us. I like to think of ourselves as pioneers within the online classifieds industry. And already in the late '90s and early 2000s, we took bold steps to disrupt our own print based classifieds by first establishing Finn and then acquiring Blocket. And the early success we had here led them to almost 2 decades of international expansion, creating 2 global leaders. Adevinta, of course, which will now become the world's largest online classifieds operator after the acquisition of eBay Classifieds and Schibsted Nordic Marketplaces. The undisputed leader in the Nordics. We have also been pioneers in promoting and enabling circular consumption, and we see many exciting opportunities ahead in this area as this megatrend picks up more and more speed. Reuse, repair, the sharing of goods will all be key to a more circular and sustainable consumption, which is just so important to our society. And just to give you an example, in 2020, the users on Schibsted's marketplaces saved up to 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gas by secondhand use. And this is almost equal to the amount of CO2 emissions emitted by the oil heavy energy supply sector in Norway. Or to give you a more tangible comparison maybe this equals the emissions from production of 26 million iPhone 11. So this is really a lot. If you want to know more about this, our second-hand effect report for 2020 will come out later this spring. So I urge you to pick up a copy and read that. Although we are not as big as Adevinta, Nordic Marketplaces is still a significant player in the online classifieds world, and we are among the top 10 globally. And as you can see on this page, we are certainly 1 of the best monetized in terms of revenue per capita. And when you think of the Nordics, you may think of small countries with relatively dispersed populations. And you would be mostly right in thinking so. Even though these 4 countries in total make up 27 million inhabitants. And what you may overlook is that we are actually rated among the most digitally-savvy nations, and we have some of the highest GDPs in the world. While at the same time, we generally enjoy less intense competition than what we see in larger countries. So overall, we believe the Nordics are really attractive markets, also due to the long traditions of using only marketplaces and also the fact that there are similarities across these countries, which enables collaboration. And with the strong positions that we have in each market, I think we can confidently call ourselves and Nordic Marketplaces, powerhouse. Finn is the clear market leader in all categories and is in a particularly unique position with extreme brand position and monetization. And for us, Finn serves as our North Star, really the benchmark of what we would like to achieve in the other markets. And Blocket has done a tremendous job in winning the jobs category in recent years through a combination of organic development and also M&A. And they are now the market leader in general merchandise, in motor, in jobs and also in real estate rentals. Schibsted Marketplace Finland holds the leadership position in general merchandise and in jobs. And their key priority now is for Oikotie to become the clear leader in real estate and for Tori to challenge the #1 player in cars. And then we have Denmark, which we are really looking forward to get as part of and they are in a similarly strong position within motor and general merchandise. If you look at our portfolio overall, then motor is our most important vertical in terms of revenue with jobs coming in second. And that said, we actually believe that it's the combination of these verticals that make us really strong. And it's especially this combination of having a broad, high-frequency generalist together with the deep verticals. Now let's look ahead and really discuss the growth opportunities that we see. And broadly speaking, there are 3 areas where we believe we can create value and really increase our revenues. And let me take this one by one. And the first value creation lever is to expand and consolidate by taking new #1 positions in the Nordics. Marketplaces in Finland, they are different from other Nordic countries on several fronts. And we see the Finnish online classified market as both fragmented and also underdeveloped. Marketplace's ownership here has historically been split between several owners, several brands and also several sites. And owners have typically been media companies who have operated these assets from a pure media perspective, which means through sales and marketing mainly. And as a result, we believe that the sites have had maybe less opportunity to invest in product and in technology to develop the very best products for consumers and also professional clients. And partly, therefore, we think that the level of digitalization in Finland in both cars and real estate and jobs has been a bit slower than what we have seen in other Nordic countries. Now after the announcement by Alma last week that they have acquired Nettix, we are left with 2 players who are actively consolidating the market in Finland, it's Alma and it's Schibsted. Finland has really been a home market for Schibsted with Tori for over a decade. And we believe that there are significant opportunities here. And now with the acquisition of Oikotie, we saw the chance to really develop our position further. And as a combined entity, we have over 35 million monthly visits in Tori and 11 million monthly visits in Oikotie. The numbers on this slide are actually a bit old, but these are the new numbers. And this gives us a great starting point for consolidation of the Finnish market. First of all, we believe that our horizontal, Tori, will be a crucial success factor in winning the real estate and jobs verticals. And we are going to use Tori as a strong traffic engine to increase both usage and engagement in Oikotie. And secondly, we are going to invest and particularly in product, technology and also in marketing to improve the user experience and also the effect for both users and professional customers. And thirdly, of course, we are going to use our proven playbook, our best practices from our sister companies within Schibsted to make sure that we succeed in the Finnish market. And then we have Denmark. And of course, an expansion to Denmark is a natural next step for us in executing our strategy to strengthen our position as the Nordic marketplace leader. DBA and Bilbasen are solid brands, which hold leading positions in the generalist and motor segments. And our ambition when we take over these assets is to really build on the strong positions that they have. And accelerate the growth seen by the company in the past. And I also want to mention that by entering Denmark, we will get more scale to develop and roll out next-generation marketplaces across the Nordics, which is a topic I will come back to a little bit later. Now our second value creation lever is really to innovate on top of the existing positions to create more value for consumers and professionals. And thereby be able to extract more value. And if there is one thing I want you to take away from this presentation, it's that we still see significant headroom to grow in our verticals. One of our strengths is that we are well diversified through multiple verticals and that we only to a limited extent, rely on advertising revenue. This ensures that we have multiple growth avenues and also that we have resilience in uncertain times. And we could clearly see this during COVID-19, where we have managed quite well, I think. Of course, jobs and travel have been hit quite hard by the pandemic, while motor and real estate fared much better and actually grew year-over-year in both Norway and Sweden. And then we have general merchandise, which actually thrived under these conditions and where we saw record volumes and record traffic growth. If you look at 2020, overall, then underlying revenue for the Nordic Marketplace group declined by a modest 4%. And we also managed to keep the margin at a high level. We have showed that we have a quite flexible cost base, which we were able to adjust to the development of the top line. Then we added Oikotie, we added Nettbil to then give you the numbers that you see here. And also keep in mind that from Q4 and onwards, we started ramping up other investments to position us for further growth ahead. One of the things that has always excited me personally about working with marketplaces is how you almost endlessly can innovate on top of these #1 positions to attack new revenue pools all the time. Traditional classified ads represent only a relatively small portion of the total revenue pool in the markets we operate in. And we wanted to illustrate this to you by giving you some rough estimates of what it looks like in the Norwegian car industry. And let's begin at the center of the circles and move our way outwards here. First, we have the total classified spending for motors, which is about NOK 500 million, and Finn captures most of this today. And of course, we can never take this for granted. And as I will show you on the next page, we are continuously investing to improve our core offering here. Then we have our end users who represent both an attractive and relevant target group and display advertising has always been a great revenue source. By combining the strength of our marketplaces and Schibsted's News media, we have successfully been able to develop targeted offerings, enabling us to capture a larger share of the car industry's marketing spend. Then thirdly, when we move closer to the transactions, the opportunities within finance and insurance increase. And knowing the car buyer allows us for highly targeted offerings. And to give you an example, there is no better timing to offer an insurance trial than at the exact time of signing the car contract. The fourth directly addressable market can be reached by helping dealers efficiently source attractive cars. And our consumer to business auction service Nettbil is a great example of how we can create value for both consumers and professionals. And at the same time, allow us to take higher take rates in this market. And then finally, when we facilitate the transaction, we also get to know the new owner of the car, and this opens up a whole new set of adjacent markets related to car ownership. So as an example, we could be offering service and maintenance offerings from car workshops to just give you an example. So as I mentioned, we continue to invest in our core offerings for our professional customers. And we just wanted to give you a couple of examples of how we provide a bit more insight, how we provide them with better tools, how we increase their customer value and also our average revenue per ad. The first example is automated ad renewal on motor or what we call auto bump. By doing this, we help car dealers save time, and we also increase the effectiveness of their ads. Then we have distribution products such as Blink, which provide customers with broader distribution and exposure of their ads and also gives them insight into how the ad is performing in various channels. Thirdly, we have a data insight product for real estate, which provides agents with insight into what they can expect from an upcoming sale based on data from similar homes on Finn. And finally, we are working actively to move from what we had yesterday, which was a long a la carte menu of products to much simpler bundles. So nowadays, a recruiter, for example, can very easily choose a package that is really suited for their specific set of needs. Equally important is to invest in the core offering to our users because this, of course, results in increased usage and higher engagement. And here are a couple of examples of what we are working on in this area. So first, we have polygon search, which gives users the ability to choose exactly the area that they are interested in, instead of choosing a neighborhood or a municipality or a radius distance. Then we have our new notification center, which enables users to get the latest updates on what's going on, both on the app and also on the web. And thirdly, we are improving our search and recommendations to improve findability on our sites. And recommendations are really increasingly driving traffic and engagement on our sites. And the last example comes from Finland, where we have just recently renewed our motor marketplace in Tori, where we have improved both the search and mobile experience, to mention a couple of things. And we are quite happy to see early signs of improvement in user engagement in this area. Now let's dive into each country. And in Finn, we continue to reinforce our position despite COVID-19. And we saw high-traffic and volume growth last year. On the revenue side, the development was a bit more mixed between the verticals. And overall, Finn saw a 4% revenue decline last year. Margin ended at 47% for the year, which is a bit lower than the year before. Which is due to partly the revenue shortfall and also the fact that we started to ramp up investments from Q4 and onwards. Going forward, Finn will continue to move into the transaction, really to make it easier to buy and sell on our platform. And I will come back to this later, but we -- on motor, we have launched a transactional service which we are now focusing on scaling. While in the generalist market, we are still in relatively early development. Second focus area for us is creating more value, new opportunities through product packaging, by creating new upsell products, data insight products to professionals and also differentiating our ads. And right now, we are particularly focused on real estate. Then thirdly, we have expansion to new marketplaces and sub verticals. We have B2B, as an example, new construction and also car subscriptions are a few areas that we are working on at the moment. This time, we have chosen to show you quite a bit more detailed breakdown of how we work with monetization in each country. And these are quite fact-backed slides. So let me point your attention to the most important items. And here, for Finn, you can see how we have managed to grow revenue through higher average revenue per ad despite flat volume and even declining volume during COVID-19. If you look at the job vertical, here, we have increased ARPA through a number of measures. We have focused on price and packaging. We have developed new upsell products. We have implemented data-driven sales methodologies and even launched a new self-service tool for professionals. We see an equally solid ARPA improvement in real estate. But here, the improvement actually comes from new value-added services to professional customers. We have launched new Insight products. We have a completely new solution for new construction, and we also have the ad distribution product that I mentioned before, called Blink. If we look at Blocket, then Blocket was less affected by COVID-19 than Finn. And here, we delivered revenue on par with 2019 in local currency. And in Sweden, it's motor that has had the strongest growth over the last couple of years, delivering a CAGR of 11%. Going forward, Blocket will, just like Finn, continue to move into the transaction in key verticals by a combination of transforming the existing services and also by introducing new business models such as XXCASAXX in real estate rentals and Nettbil or XBillyX, as we call it, in Sweden, in the motor area. We also have new price and packaging, which we believe will contribute to increased ARPA in jobs and motor. And we're also working on digitizing the dealer proposition in Sweden. Yes. Also for Blocket. We see solid improvement in average revenue per ad in motor and jobs. And even though the volume development has been soft, we have, as you can see here, managed to work with the revenue development. And if you look into jobs, it's primarily been the launch of a new pricing model based on bundles that has driven this ARPA increase. In the motor area, the change has been driven by a change of business model from subscriptions in the past to now a pay per ad model. And also part of this is an increase in the visibility product that we call bump, which moves cars to the top of the listing. Following the acquisition of Oikotie in July. The revenue, as you can see here in Finland has increased significantly. And just like in our other markets, jobs and advertising are, of course, affected by COVID-19. While real estate and generalist verticals, they have been growing. And in Finland, we just completed the separation of Oikotie from Sanoma now at the end of February as planned. And we were really happy to see that. We have spent considerable effort in integrating the 2 organizations into 1 team. And we have also started to implement some of Schibsted's unique capabilities like a common account like data tracking and also our ad stack. And now we are directing our efforts more to business development in the mid to long term. And really to make clear, our ambition here is about becoming #1 in real estate and also becoming a significant challenger in the motor segment. We've said before and can say again that we are looking for further acquisitions to continue to strengthen our Nordic marketplaces position in Finland. But of course, with the recent news around Nettix, the options are a bit fewer, but I also want to say that we still see attractive targets in the Finnish market. Okay. We are about to enter the third and last part of the presentation. Our third value creation lever, which is about how we are thinking about becoming next-gen or transactional in our marketplaces. And I really want to take a step back first. And our playbook for marketplaces has always been about building high-frequency and loyalty through #1 generalist position and then evolve and monetize this through the verticals, which is generally where we see much higher value items. As we now transform to next generation, this strategy is still important. And as you can see on this page, the monetary value is indeed in the verticals. The total value of the cars listed on our marketplaces in Norway and Sweden and Finland is actually more than NOK 300 billion and today, we have a take rate of only around 0.2% of that value on average. But if we look at the very best transactional players like Nettbil, as an example, they are able to capture more than 5% of that value. So as you can understand, this can easily become really large numbers, even if you only capture part of the inventory with these new models. In our generalist market basis, the total value of goods listed is obviously smaller, but still not insignificant. And we believe that there could be potential in achieving take rates many times of what we have today -- and particularly, that's going to be true in shippable goods. So again, you should not expect that we can apply these transaction models to all of our inventory, the whole NOK 76 billion that we have listed here as an example. But still, we just want to reiterate that the potential is significant here. In Finn, we have made, what I call, significant progress on the car transactional journey. And we have evolved from having only the ad to having a basic digital contract to now a complete digital process. And we were quite satisfied when we read in one of AIM Group's additions not long ago, where they stated that Finn seems to be ahead of pretty much everyone on executing the sales contracts online and also the formal change of vehicle ownership, because this really matched our own perception of where we stand. Our approach has been to build volume quickly by partnering with third parties and then solve this quite complex car purchase process one piece at a time. And we actually wanted to give you a look at how we are transforming our motor verticals into next-generation through the example of Finn motor, and we have actually created a video for that. So please take a look at this video. [Presentation]

Okay. I think that showed quite well how we're thinking and what we are doing. The strategic rationale for transforming into next-gen is, of course, to adapt to consumers' increased demand for convenience and also to monetize on the new opportunities that emerge from facilitating these transactions. And you have now seen examples of how we approach this, particularly in the motor vertical, but I've also stated several times that we are investing in other verticals as well. Historically, the advantage of being horizontal marketplaces with integrated verticals has been benefits of scale. So you have technology, you have listings, search, messaging products, to just name a few things that can be more or less equal across these verticals, maybe with a little bit of tailoring. But now with the transactional user journeys, the situation is actually quite different. The process of selling and shipping an iPhone from one part of the country to another part of the country is very different from the process of, let's say, finding and applying for a new job. So as you can understand, next-generation marketplaces will require significantly more vertical specialization. And this is why it's so crucial for us to exploit the synergies and the scaling opportunities that exist from having similar positions in 4 similar markets. So to put it in a different way. We have some capabilities that need to be scalable across verticals within a country as is the case today. And then we will have to create new capabilities, which will have to be scalable across countries but within a vertical. To summarize. We have a long and strong track record of being pioneers within the classifieds industry, and we have strong positions in highly attractive markets. And this makes us confident that we will be able to deliver on our mid- to long-term target of 8% to 12% growth through our 3 value creation levers in the coming years. We see organic and inorganic consolidation opportunities in Finland and Denmark. We see solid headroom for growth in all key verticals through further innovation. And as I mentioned here at the end, we also see exciting opportunities to transform key verticals to these transactional models and then take stronger positions and enabling us to capture higher take rates. So we have exciting times ahead of us. Thank you for listening. And now I want to give the word over to my great colleague and eminent leader of News Media, Siv.

Traditional news media is still in the middle of a digital transformation. COVID-19 has accelerated this transformation. Schibsted News Media has 4 national news brands, 2 regional and 4 local newspapers in Norway and in Sweden. And all of them set new track big records in 2020. We are proud of the role our news media play by informing citizens and driving societal debate, our mission to deliver high-quality journalism that is strengthening democracy is more important than ever. In Schibsted, we have world-class digital brands. And after this presentation, I hope you will understand why. First, I think it is important to understand how the population of Norway and Sweden differs from other countries. In Norway, we have a population of 5.4 million people, Sweden has 10 million. In both countries, more or less, everyone has access to the Internet. The number of Norwegian and suites who trust traditional media is very high. And more than 80% use online news on a weekly basis. And smartphones are the #1 device for news. But what is particularly unique in Norway and Sweden, is the willingness to pay for online use. Reuters Institute Digital News report show that 42% Norwegians paid for online news in 2019. And that is the highest number in the world. Also in Sweden, the number is way above-average with 27%. And these figures are a year old. And if we look at the growth in digital new subscribers during the COVID-19 year 2020, we are expecting these numbers to grow. The market is far from saturated. The market situation in Scandinavia make us well positioned to compete in the battle for attention and revenue holding #1 position in both Norway and Sweden. Our brands have 3 positions in the news media market. We divide them into the primary news destination, the premium subscriptions and niches. So let's start with the primary news destinations. Vega has the unrivaled #1 position in Norway, meaning Vega is the top go-to news destination for any use in Norway. About 90% of the traffic to Vega is direct. Traffic from Facebook, it's only 2% to 3%. Vega has a daily reach of 51%, and this is why Vega is mostly advertising finance, reaching broad national target groups. Aftonbladet blade has a similar #1 position in Sweden and 70% direct traffic. However, the competition is more fierce than in Norway. Aftonbladet reaches 50% of the population and is also a very attractive brand for advertisers. The reach of both Vega and Aftonbladet is unique in the global context. And it is also worth mentioning that these brands are strong in digital subscription with Vega+ and Aftonbladet+. So the premium subscription brands. As I said, the willingness to pay for online use in Norway and Sweden is high, and this is also why the business model for our premium subscription brands has changed dramatically over the last years. These brands' online recurring revenues are growing to become a significant part of our income base, and engagement is high. More than half of these brands' digital subscribers are using their subscription actively every day. In Norway, we have a clear #1 position with Aftenposten. And in Sweden, we have a strong #2 position with Svenska Dagbladet. In addition, we have 2 regional and 4 local newspapers along the coast in Norway. So our niche positions. We have also built separate digital, well-known brands covering niche products and services with financial news, food, wellbeing, weather services and consumer technology to mention a few. These niches are also an important part of our revenue stream, and they help strengthening the other brand's value proposition. In News Media, we have had a focused digital strategy for years. This has led to a solid and accelerated growth in digital revenue streams. In other words, the business model for our news brands has changed dramatically in the recent year. That said, print revenue is still important and will continue to be so for years to come. But we are downscaling print in a sustainable way. Our margins are healthy. We have good cost control. But more important, we are converting uses of our print products to digital consumers. And to give you one example. We have a subscription called Combined, which gives access to both our physical and digital newspapers. What we see is that 65% of these are also digital active. We believe that this is a strong sign that when print is no longer with us, our growth in pure digital subscribers will increase substantially. In 2020, our digital journey reached a new milestone. The digital revenue growth is stronger than the decrease in revenue we are experiencing from our print products. And this gives us a solid foundation for a paperless future. In 2020, News Media delivered a stable EBITDA margin of 10%, which is stronger than in 2019, despite a challenging year, with COVID-19 has had a significant negative impact on the advertising market. This is partly due to solid cost control. Last year, we implemented a cost program of NOK 500 million, and we are seeing that the program is progressing faster than expected. But it is also because we are able to capitalize on the increased traffic on our sites and the willingness to pay for news. This makes each distribution channel more profitable. In News Media, we have an overall ambition, to ensure digitally sustainable positions for all our news brands. Simply put, that means that all our brands should be able to be profitable standing on their own digital feet. I will deep dive more into advertising and subscription, but strengthening our premium advertising position and continued high growth in volume and revenue from subscriptions is key. Last but not least, our continued sustainable cost base is important in order to be able to invest. And as part of that, a collaborative culture that drives efficiency and high motivated workforce is highly prioritized. Our mission is to deliver high-quality journalism. Journalism is the core of news media. Journalism is our gold, our most valuable asset. It is what we sell. Therefore, I would like to illustrate our valuable journalism with a couple of examples. I am very proud of Vegas coronavirus live tracker. By combining complex data sets with innovative design, we built a unique coronavirus service that answered all corona-related questions Norwegians had. In Norway, this live tracker became the leading platform for information and facts, more detailed and thorough than the information from the government. In fact, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has asked for access to our database to do research. In 2020, it became the most popular journalistic content ever made in Norway. So another case from Aftonbladet. In December last year, Aftonbladet's investigative journalism program 200 seconds, revealed that recurring races and discrimination was happening at H&M. By combining recordings with a hidden camera with a large number of interviews and testimonies, the reporters have managed to reveal a previously unknown racism and how it affects customers. The revelation became world news and had major consequences. The government also initiated an inspection of H&M as a direct result of our journalism. These are just 2 examples of how the power of journalism really is fulfilling our societal mission in news media. But it doesn't matter if we have the best story if we don't manage to tell them in an engaging way. Providing the best user experience is a prerequisite for sustaining our strong #1 digital positions. Fighting for our users' attention and time, visual, audiovisual and innovative storytelling is crucial. This is one of the reasons we have invested heavily in product development and technology. We have developed a common standardized media platform that is being used and appreciated across our media brands. A common technology like this makes it possible and easy to roll out and scale new local innovations, products and services quickly. This led us adjust our cost base in line with our revenue growth. And we can develop better products at a lower cost. Now let's look at our advertising business. As you probably know, about 80% of Schibsted Group's advertising revenue comes from News Media. And our most important currency in the digital advertising economy is data. And because News Media is a part of a greater Schibsted, we get access to data from users beyond our News Media uses. And this is also why our advertising organization not only work across our media brands, they also operate as a team across our marketplaces and next companies. Advertising revenue was hit hard by COVID-19. And even before that, the market was challenging. In 2019, Aftonbladet in Sweden was hit particularly hard by reduced ad spending from the gambling industry because of new regulations. In Norway, our development in the digital advertising market is developing in line with the overall market, which is a flattish development. In Sweden, the overall market has declined 5% yearly, which is also in line with our development, if you exclude the gambling effect. A less active advertising market due to corona and naturally reduced activity within certain industries has given us even more time and motivation to develop new tailor-made advertising solutions for our customers. And very soon, I will give you some example. This work has strengthening our position for growth going forward. It is important to mention that our unique reach in Norway and Sweden gives us a strong competitive advantage. With our trusted and well-known brands in Schibsted, we reach 8 out of 10 Norwegians and Swedes every week. On top of that, we have 3 million daily logged-in users. This gave us access to rich first-party data so that we can create more targeted ads to selected users than other players in a safe and fraud-free context provided by our premium brands. And this is becoming increasingly important now that Google, Safari and Firefox have decided that they, from 2022, no longer will support third-party cookies in their browsers. Then advertisers will no longer be able to run targeted ads programmatically. But with our growing access to unique first-party data, we are well prepared for further growth. And to give you some product examples, we have launched a product that guarantee a reach of 1 million Norwegians and 2 million Swedes within 24 hours. We have also a targeting product where logged-in users are matched with advertisers-own CRM list. And recently, we also launched a contextual keyword matching product. I can also mention a content marketing organization that is growing steadily and also strong partnerships with external players. In short, we will make it easy for advertisers to interact with and buy from Schibsted, providing the most efficient solutions and sophisticated products in the market for them to reach their goals. I have already mentioned that we have credible trusted editorial brands with strong positions. And today, we have 840,000 pure digital subscribers. And last year alone, the number has increased by 10%. And each subscriber is becoming more and more valuable. Through strong customer relations, we have managed to increase our user engagement and provide even better premium offerings and a stronger and more varied product portfolio. This increases people's willingness to pay, and we are appealing to a broader audience. Only last year, digital revenue have increased by 25%. If you look solely at our premium subscription brands, not including Vega and Aftonbladet, we have organically increased the average revenue per user with 5%. Access to rich data profiles will also boost growth in the subscription economy going forward. It gives us the opportunity to develop new and personalized products based on people's interest. If you are interested in sports, food, wellbeing, we can develop niche subscriptions tailored for these uses. This can be stand-alone products, but we can also bundle and unbundle these subscriptions with other core products and increase user engagement and willingness to pay. One concrete example is our brand, E24, Norway's most visited business news destination. E24 is attractive to advertisers, but their subscription economy is also growing fast. It can be bought as a stand-alone product, but can also be bundled with other products as a complementary product. If we want to succeed, there is one common denominator that is absolutely essential, quality content. Content is the core of our business model and investing in content is key if we want to continue to grow our subscription revenues. Exclusive sports rights, niches, podcast and video are example of content and distribution channel that we are working a lot to improve and commercialize these days. And we are also exploring the idea of launching our subscription-based podcast products across our brands. Last but not the least, I want to mention that we increasingly see subscription-related services and initiatives pop up outside our news business and to increase the number of subscribers. And the value of each subscriber going forward, we must think outside our own box. We are, therefore, exploring how we can connect content and services from the whole Schibsted universe, but also with players in other businesses outside both Schibsted and News Media. Recently, a regional news brand Bergens Tidende partnered up with an external audiobook company called [indiscernible], and I think this is just the beginning. So to summarize, News Media has credible and trusted brands. We have a unique reach and access to valuable first-party data that is crucial to grow our digital business model further. Our technology is scalable and efficient. And we have a good and healthy balance between saving costs and in investing to reach our ambition about digital sustainability. Thank you so much. Now, we will take a break. And after that, you can look forward to meeting my colleague, Raoul, who runs next. [Break]

Good morning. I'm Raoul, and I'm Head of Business Area next. I've been in Schibsted since 2006. And ever since, I have been driven by the belief that long term, entrepreneurship and sometimes entrepreneurship is actually the main value driver of Schibsted. If you succeed in finding the best entrepreneurs and if you succeed in creating synergies with your existing businesses, then you can create great value. Historically, we have done this with companies like Blocket, Prisjakt and Lendo. All these companies were built by fantastic entrepreneurs who created strong products. But without the support from Schibsted capabilities, these companies would not have had the same development and growth, Schibsted acted as a king maker. This concept is what's Next is built upon. We identify tomorrow's businesses. We find the best entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, and we'll work actively to create synergies between our existing businesses and our new businesses. This way, we create the kings and queens of tomorrow. Through the pandemic, we have experienced a strong growth and increased engagement for many of our companies, especially those related to an explosive growth in online shopping. Today, Schibsted's Next consists of 3 main areas: first, venture investment; second, distribution and e-commerce enablement; and third, financial services. The common denominator for Next is that we focus strongly on areas with the potential to deliver significant value for Schibsted and our users over time and that then can grow into new and strong business area. If I would summarize our mission in Next as a whole, it would be this: we will ensure that we have a toolbox that helps all our companies in Schibsted realize their full growth potential and we will identify, invest in and facilitate growth in companies that show potential for success. My colleague, Dan, will deep dive into financial services afterwards. So I will focus on the 2 other areas, venture investments and distribution, e-commerce enablement. But first, a few words about Schibsted's ecosystem. Because we already have strong established brands in News Media and Nordic marketplaces, we can offer the companies being part of Next, a broader expertise but also an effective marketing mix that represents a very strong value proposition in the market. As Kristin mentioned in her presentation, our foundation is what makes our -- is what makes us more than the sum of our parts, and it's also what makes Schibsted as a venture investor and growth accelerator different from other businesses in our category. Digital traffic from our established brands, integrations and data being shared across our brands is what is creating our unique ecosystem. I really believe this is the secret sauce of Schibsted. It's not rocket science, but it demands a culture of collaboration. The tricky part is not about strategy, it's about building the right culture. Some of the new businesses are disruptive and may even be a threat to our existing businesses. But that's the way it is. It's better to disrupt yourself than to wait for others to do it. Let's have a quick look at our venture investment business. First of all, it's important to point out that we always have an industrial perspective when we make investments. Of course, we try to find interesting investment themes and exciting businesses, but we also make our choices based on synergies with other businesses within Schibsted. The ambition is that the businesses we buy eventually will become business areas within Schibsted. But sometimes it may be relevant to make an exit, if we see that the company can make it better with other owners. Listing a company may also be an option. Financial services is the largest investment area, but we also invest in marketplaces and consumer services. Health tech is a growing investment area with investments like Mindler, Add Health Media and Hjemmelegene. 2020 was also a very good year for investments. In total, we invested in 14 companies. A common denominator for these companies is that their products and services are creating sustainable value for customers and users, empowering them to make better and more informed choices in their daily life. In 2020, the companies in our venture portfolio had a total revenue of approximately NOK 500 million based on 100% ownership. This represents a year-over-year growth of almost 80% and emphasizes that these are indeed growth companies with a strong potential. Now let's over to -- let's move to distribution and e-commerce enablement. Our business within distribution is a great example of entrepreneurship in Schibsted. Under the leadership of Cathrine Laksfoss and her team, this business has become a growth rocket. Indeed, distribution has undergone a spectacular transformation. The core of Schibsted distribution used to be the newspaper distribution network. Only a few years ago, the key business model was distribution of freshly printed newspapers to people's homes. But at the same time, as the use of printed newspapers has declined, online shopping has increased. And since we, as an industry, already had a nationwide distribution network, we have managed to build a fast-growing, profitable business on the top of that network, and this has happened in only 6 years. It's also a business that is bringing value to Schibsted's other business areas. We still deliver newspapers, but we also deliver parcels of goods -- of used goods from our marketplace, Finn. If we look more closely, Helthjem Netthandel, the company has had a steady growth since it was established in 2015. But last year, the growth exploded, both in volume, revenue and market share. Helthjem distributed almost 9 million parcels in 2020. And that's a 135% growth from the previous year. Keep in mind that the total market grow at 40%, which means that we have increased our market share over the year. Also, the revenue increased with 129%, ending at NOK 416 million. Our ambition is to expand geographically in parcel distribution. This year, we are establishing a similar business in Sweden, and we are planning to do this as a joint venture with a Swedish news media group, Bonnier News. Helthjem has a door-to-door delivery service or a consumer-to-consumer service. It was established in 2018. And in 2020, this service really took off in a spectacular way. The concept is simple, smooth and extremely user oriented. You write down a code on your parcel, place it outside your door, and the carrier picks it up during the night and delivers it directly to the recipient's home. 1.3 million parcels were sent like this last year, a growth of 228% from the previous year. And 86% of these parcels were fueling the circular economy, the majority being sent between consumers of Schibsted's Norwegian marketplace for used goods, Finn. We are also an enabler for other players in that segment with marketplaces like [ Ties ] and Bookis. And because we have a target to lower Helthjem's CO2 emissions 50% by 2025, a growth within this area is extra positive because it increases the efficiency of delivering parcels to making it easier to deliver them by foot or electrical vehicles. Morgenlevering has also experienced explosive growth with its unique offering of breakfast products and gifts. Their revenues increased 162% in 2020 ending at NOK 226 million. And even though the massive growth is because we have fulfilled a temporary need in the market when people have spending -- been spending more time at home, we see that new habits appears to be sticky, and we are also recruiting brand-new users. During 2020, the service has also taken a solid position in the market where businesses want to surprise their employees or customers with gifts delivered to their homes. And we believe that the potential for further growth within that segment is huge. Morgenlevering is actually becoming more and more of a mini marketplace where we can adjust and expand products that are offered based on people's need at any time, season or occasion. Going forward, we see a potential to grow further with Morgenlevering. Another company in our portfolio, which has been -- which has seen accelerated growth during the COVID-19 is Prisjakt. This is a company that has been part of our portfolio for quite some time, but I still -- that we are just at the beginning of its journey. Prisjakt has an important growth potential. Today, Prisjakt is mostly known as a leading consumer price comparison service in Sweden and Norway, but that is becoming more of a go-to destination, empowering people to make informed choices when shopping online. The company has high ambitions in product development and is playing an increasingly important role in people's online shopping journey. Prisjakt's revenue in 2020 grew 22% compared with the previous year, ending at almost NOK 400 million and resulting in a strong profit margin of 31%. The company has a current premium position as an alternative in the pre-purchase phase, where users are exploring which e-tailer to buy from. But they are also sharing their post-purchase experience with others via reviews. Going forward, Prisjakt will strengthen its position on other parts of the people's shopping journey such as the phases where users are identifying their needs and searching information. Here, we can empower users by helping them to decide not only where to buy the product, but also what product to buy. Recently, Prisjakt acquired a company called [ Adviced ], a platform for independent product testing, peer-to-peer reviews and buying advice. This gives us access to solid network of contracted experts. Prisjakt is also looking in how we can bundle collections of products and categories with -- that will match consumer behaviors. Also, we are exploring how to discover products with the help from recommendations powered by machine learning. If we look at which segments are growing the most, both home electronics, toys, fashion and home interior have seen exponential growth during the last year. So the strategy for growing Prisjakt in new product segments is a combination of manually indexed data, editorial content and indexing of data based on machine learning. The latter is paramount if we want to scale Prisjakt's success in a world where almost everything can be bought online. So to summarize, we are creating value for synergies, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. We have a unique venture investment strategy due to the Schibsted foundation and our ecosystem. We are strengthening our position within distribution and the circular economy. We have a strong growth potential within several phases of the e-commerce customer journey, and there is still important growth potential in Prisjakt. But perhaps the most promising part of Next regarding value creation in short and medium term is financial services. So now I am very pleased to introduce my good colleague, Dan, who is Head of Financial Services within Next.

Lendo helps people improve their finances. And this is why Schibsted chose to invest 10 years ago. And this is why we've been investing ever since. There are a few reasons why we think Schibsted is positioned to create value in financial services. Starting out, we're bullish on the change in the industry where challengers can build great products that improve people's lives and create value. And with big change underway, there are big opportunities. We believe we have the ambition and the capabilities to be part of this change. Lendo was our first fintech investment 10 years ago, but it was not our last. Today, we have 11 companies in our portfolio across 3 different segments: powering e-commerce with Pej and Dintero; powering consumer banking with Rocker, Hypoteket, Insurello and Tillit; and powering SME banking, Capcito, FundingPartner and fixed rate. The fintech ventures turned over NOK 0.25 billion last year, growing 35% to 40% despite COVID, and there are several hidden gems in there that I want to highlight. First is Hypoteket. It's a 100% digital mortgage. We give out a simple competitive mortgage, but we're not a bank. Instead, we use an alternative investment fund where some of Scandinavia's best asset managers have already invested. So if your colleagues in fixed income are looking for exposure to Swedish low-risk mortgages, tell them to look at Hypoteket. They have about NOK 10 billion under management and growing. Another hidden gem is Rocker. It's an everyday banking app. We are onboarding customers rapidly there, and I'll come back to Rocker and the link between this fintech portfolio and Schibsted a little bit later. One thing that is a common theme for Rocker and Hypoteket and the rest of the portfolio is that these companies do not build their own balance sheets. We use innovative solutions to be asset-light, which is a good thing for a company like Schibsted. As Raoul said earlier, our team is continuously scanning for new investments, where we see potential to empower customers and where we can also be a great partner to the entrepreneurs, that can be things like marketing or synergies. With that introduction, I'm going to zoom into Lendo, which is the high performer in our portfolio. We're present in 6 markets currently where we help people improve their loans, get better terms with less effort. We do that in a delightful and easy-to-use product. Under the hood, we do the heavy lifting. We gather and send data from our 110 partners, the lenders. We then get offers back in real-time and show these offers transparently and fairly and let users choose what's best for them. 80% use our product end-to-end without ever touching a human, fully digital, fully automated. People come to us because they know our brand and trust us. We have great brand awareness and great user reviews. Speaking of users, I thought it would be quite helpful to talk about this one customer, Erik. He's an entrepreneur and a Lendo customer. He loves his work and a while back, he needed a line of credit to launch this new clothing line to expand this business. Customers like Erik, they have options, and sometimes, too many options. I can tell you that the business loan segment is even less transparent than the consumer segment. We often see things like 0% interest rate and 100% in fees. There's almost no regulation, no transparency, no standard terms and conditions and no end to define print. But for these customers and for Erik, there's no dedicated CFO office and no one to fill out the forms and the paperwork. There's no one to process the fine print. So to get help, Erik used Lendo. He knew our consumer brand and trusted us enough to try it for his business. After a few minutes of work, one form, we started collecting offers for Erik. We took them back, parsed them, sorted them and presented them to Erik. He selected the offer he needed, took the credit, purchased a new collection of clothes and made the launch of Swedish Eco, a premium clothing line. I'm so happy and proud that we could actually help him do that. Now we're going to dig into some statistics on the personal loan market. As a segment, we've experienced healthy underlying growth long term. We see this growth continuing at a higher-than-GDP rate also going forward. One of the reasons is that the users' loans are often better than other products like a card-based credit or point-of-sale credit or installments. Those can often be 20%, 30%, 40% interest rates. And the terms and conditions can be anything but transparent. The average interest rate offered on Lendo is 11%, and it's a fully transparent product. We make sure of that. There is no hidden fees. As you know, we represent the comparison product on top of the loans market, and this market is growing in popularity too. We grow faster than the market and users have realized that just picking the first offer you happen to click on is perhaps not such a clever move. Who knows what price you will get when you click on that banner. User statistics show that our average spread between the best and the worst offer in Lendo is in the range of 10 percentage points. This includes fees, and that's a lot for an average loan of over NOK 100,000. Comparing really makes sense. In the total market, we see the rate of renegotiation increasing as comparison becomes natural for users. In mature markets, we're seeing some 40%, 50%, 60% of loans going through a comparison engine versus going direct to a lender. So all in all, this means that Lendo is growing a lot faster than the underlying loans market. Loans grow, comparisons grow. So we're in a double sense going with the flow on this one. And this has resulted in revenue growth and good margins over the last years. In 2018, 2019, we started investing in internationalization and building up a scalable platform to support that. And during 2020, we weathered COVID with some revenue growth, and stable margins. So if we're digging into that reason that we can achieve stability, we see self-reinforcing wheel of network effects. The more customers we attract, the better we can serve our partners, the lenders. This means our marketplace will be, on average, more attractive for both sides. So on average, we have better offers for customers, which, over time, attracts even more of them to the marketplace. In the words of the capital markets, we have liquidity. We can then generate new business with lower costs or get higher conversion rates and higher commissions. Our prime case is, of course, Lendo in Sweden, where we have consistently managed to both maintain the #1 position, generate the most competitive and transparent marketplace for users and generate good margins. It can also mean better resilience in a tough market like last year. We have adjusted costs where needed and kept up important investments into new markets and new products. We maintained profits. But I want to say we're not all about profits. Schibsted's mission is to empower people in their daily lives. And this is why we chose to invest in Lendo 10 years ago. So instead of a reporter calling around the banks asking for an estimated rate for an average family, publishing an article, looking like a spreadsheet in the paper. Lendo can get a real comparison going. We're committed to help ordinary people navigate the world of finance. We want to make it easy to get interest rates that people deserve. We want to make it transparent. We only work with compliant partners. For example, we strive to improve the industry's ability to provide responsible lending, responsible handling of data, we're not pushing over indebtedness. Last year, we helped our customers save more than NOK 1 billion by finding lower interest rates. On average, if you use Lendo, you save NOK 5,000, and we think that's a pretty good return on invested time. Our statistics show that actual interest rates decrease as we manage to increase the number of offers for a particular customer. So we talked about the market and our position and what we're trying to do for our users. We see that Northern Europe has already a highly digitized banking ecosystem, and that the rest of Europe is quickly following suit. So based on this, we think Lendo has a natural role to play on the European scene. So with that, we're looking for solid underlying markets where challenger banks are increasing the competition in the market, increasing choice for customers where it makes sense to negotiate and compare where Lendo makes sense. In addition, we're looking for a market where lenders have become digital in their back ends with digital processes, so they can and want to become partners to a digital broker like Lendo. We're also looking for emerging digital infrastructure like digital identification and digital access to data for things like credit scoring. Finally, we're, of course, avoiding markets where the consolidation has gone too far, and competition is just too high. As you know, we're present already in 6 countries. It used to be 7, and I can tell you that last year has not been a walk in the park, especially the initial phase of COVID hit quite hard. For this reason, we shuttered Poland in Q2 last year, quickly reducing costs. We're taking these learnings into new markets and how we launch in new markets and operate. Austria, for example, is right now running on a very interesting remote-operations model. I'm also proud to say that we opened Spain in December last year. We did that mostly on remote, and we're continuously learning and adapting to ways of expanding Lendo. Going forward, we're looking at both organic growth in selected countries and targeted M&A to expand our footprint. We believe our technology, our product and our know-how gives us an advantage in this sense. The guidance for this year is that we will invest in the range of NOK 70 million to NOK 80 million into organic expansion. If you remember Erik, new countries is not our only opportunity for growth. And to help Erik and others, we've been building a product for small business loans in Sweden. Despite a somewhat choppy 2020, mainly on the supply side of the market, actually, demand was record high. We are generating both good growth and meaningful EBITDA contribution already now. Another example that I'm proud of is that we just launched secured car loans in Denmark, which makes us an even better partner in the Danish market for car buyers and for marketplaces. In fact, we believe the Lendo concept is applicable to many other products, like building a new vertical, which is quite cost-effective as we are using our strong brand, our traffic, our relationships with partners and our technology platform to do that. We're pretty much faster than anyone else in the market. Naturally, we're also developing the core product. Lendo has applied for and received PSD2, which is an AISP and PISP license, which means we can go even deeper together with our partners, actually initiate the transfer of money from our end. It can also go deeper with our customers and make their journey even easier with integrations to their banks, so we use their banking data to do hard things. In Spain in one market is where we implemented this kind of technology. Another example is Sweden and Norway, where we help users to get a complete overview of all their loans and credit. And based on this, we can take more informed choices together with the users, such as knowing which loans to consolidate or which expensive cards they could actually cancel. I'm going to sum up this section on Lendo, and I want to reiterate that we're in an attractive segment with an attractive product. There's underlying growth. Number two, we have a profitable and sustainable #1 position in Sweden as a base. Number three, we're pursuing targeted organic expansion into Europe, 6 countries and counting. We're also pursuing expansion into new verticals and products based on our leading position in loans. Examples, as I mentioned before, include car loans and small business loans. Finally, we're looking at targeted M&A opportunities to further accelerate our growth. Now the thing that I promised to come back to, Rocker and the link between fintech and Schibsted. Rocker, as I told you before, is an everyday banking app. They're challenging the banks with smarter banking services, but they are not a bank. We're onboarding customers rapidly there, 120,000 Swedes by the end of Q4 last year, another 14,000 that are queuing for the new app release, which is coming soon. That is impressive in and of itself. One particularly relevant product in this context is Rocker Pay. It's deeply integrated on Blocket with ID, payment and shipping as an integrated part of the customer flow. It makes buying and selling secondhand a lot smoother than any other option. Developed in collaboration between Rocker and Blocket is truly pioneering the use of friendly functionality to improve peer-to-peer classifieds. We think it has great growth potential. Rocker is planning for targeted European expansion as well, and they're continuing to broaden their services. Later this year, they will be looking at the potential for an IPO. So stay tuned for more news on Rocker. If I'm going to zoom out a little bit, this is actually a generic take that fintechs and Schibsted can collaborate. Today in our portfolio, more than 500 colleagues are working on fintech problems. They're solving problems and creating opportunities like digital customer identification or credit scoring based on bookkeeping data or payments for second-hand transactions, as I just mentioned. Together, we are stronger than the sum of the parts. We're learning from each other. And we're leveraging that for new products, new partners, new customers for new opportunities. In addition, together with our colleagues in news and marketplaces, we're supporting on opportunities across the entire Schibsted group, the foundation such as identity, a core fintech problem, we have 15 million accounts in Schibsted today, which is quite impressive. On payments, we have millions of payments on our platforms every year. We see the synergies of connecting fintech to marketplaces and news. And one such example is that Blocket just launched a groundbreaking insurance product for secondhand purchases, peer-to-peer purchases with a partner, Omocom. Buying secondhand is now almost as good as buying new, at least it's a bit safer. Another example is Rocker Pay that I mentioned earlier, where Rocker and Blocket are collaborating to make the experience better. So finally, a recap why we think we are well positioned to create value in financial services: first, we have a solid starting point with continued growth for our leading Scandinavian assets.; second, we see promising organic growth opportunities, no new European markets and new products; third, we see opportunity to complement this organic growth with targeted M&A and continue our fintech venture investments; finally, we see synergies between fintech and Schibsted overall. We believe financial technology is part of the foundation of Schibsted. We have a 10-year track record, 11 great companies in our portfolio today, and we're looking for more. With that note, I'll hand it over to our CFO, Ragnar Kårhus.

Good morning. Schibsted has delivered superior returns to its shareholders over time. This naturally sets the bar high for the years to come as well. On this note, I have 5 key messages to you in my presentation here today. The first is that we are very well positioned for further digital growth within all our business areas. The second is that we will continue to use disciplined capital allocation as an important tool to unlock growth and value. The third being that we have a solid financial position with some limitations in our flexibility to reallocate capital short and mid-term, but with higher flexibility in the long term. The fourth key message is that we will use share buybacks to adjust our capital structure in line with our financial policy. And the fifth is that the medium- to long-term revenue growth target for Nordic marketplaces of 8% to 12% stands firm, and so does the EBITDA margin target of 8% to 10% mid-term for News Media. I will now go through each of these 5 in some more detail. 2020 and the pandemic has shown the operational and financial resilience of our businesses. We quickly adjusted variable costs in all business areas to the new market conditions in first quarter 2020. We forcefully executed on the cost reduction program in News Media in a way supporting the transition to digital sustainable business models. We also kept focus on the main drivers for revenue growth, leading to a less slight revenue decline of 3% for the group on a foreign exchange neutral basis. This strong top line development was delivered despite the travel and job verticals in Nordic marketplaces, and print advertising and cash flow sales in News Media being hit by negative volume effects from the pandemic throughout most of the year. But altogether, this resulted in a strong EBITDA performance for the year, both for the group and the individual business areas. And despite 2020 being characterized by high uncertainty, it did not lose focus the presentations from Christian, Siv, Raoul and Dan today have shown you that we have identified and are acting on clear growth opportunities within all our business areas. This is setting us in a good position to drive further digital growth going forward. It is important for us that we will continue to grow in a sustainable way, and we will focus on this growth, delivering value to all stakeholders and society at large. We are welcoming the clarification of sustainability brought up by the EU taxonomy on sustainable activities. Even though this framework is mainly focusing on defining the environmental sustainability and less on a societal impact that our type of businesses contribute to. We are looking into how the presented regulation will affect us, and we are especially looking forward to the upcoming definition of circular economy activities that might be relevant for other marketplaces' enablement of circular consumption. We only expect a small portion of our revenues to fall directly within the definitions, as presented by the EU taxonomy in this first phase. But even though our direct negative environmental impact and risks are low, we have clear targets for reducing of the CO2 emissions in line with the targets in the Paris Agreement. And we have, in 2020, defined a sustainable investment policy in the first phase related to the processes for our venture and next investments. But this policy will be extended to cover all parts of investment activities. These cornerstones guide us in our work to drive sustainable growth. And they will also enable us to search for new types of financing through sustainability-linked loans and bonds. Disciplined capital allocation is a key topic for us. Our focus is on organic growth, combined with long-term profitability in all business areas. I give you some examples. Product investments to drive the strong growth profile in Nordic marketplaces are balanced against a healthy profit margin on a continuing basis. The implemented cost program in News media supports the increased EBITDA margin target set in 2020 but is, at the same time, implemented as part of the continued digital transformation of the business. And we are clear on investments allocated to further expansion in Lendo, but we also take action when these investments are not developing as planned for, as we have done in Poland and Austria. Pursuing strategic M&A opportunities has been and will continue to be part of our growth strategy going forward. It is therefore important for us to preserve flexibility to execute on opportunities when they arise, primarily through use of debt instruments. M&A will primarily be used to strengthen our current market positions, and main focus will remain on Nordic marketplaces and opportunities in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. You should, though, also expect some allocation of capital to support the other business areas' growth ambitions. We have, over the last years, spent approximately NOK 200 million per year on venture investments in Next, including additional follow-up investments in the portfolio companies. We plan to continue to build optionality through same size investments also going forward. Out of these portfolio companies, we will, of course, also see exits but expect we'll create net value from these investments. We will use share buybacks or extraordinary dividends to adjust our capital structure and timing of potential M&As. The strength of the balance sheet and the share price development indicate that this is value-creating for our shareholders. We are a financial shareholder in Adevinta and as Kristin told you earlier, you see material value creation potentials for Adevinta going forward, both organically, through developing the strong market positions further, but also through pursuing further M&A and consolidation opportunities. We will not stand in the way for transactions that create value for Schibsted's and Adevinta's shareholders. Longer term, it will be natural for us to explore opportunities to realize value through sell-down of shares, both driven by the value development in Adevinta and to reallocate the added financial capacity this investment represents into larger strategic investments supporting Schibsted's core strategy. Short and medium term, our flexibility is though somewhat limited. In connection with Adevinta's acquisition of eBay Classifieds, Schibsted and eBay have entered into an agreement regulating both parties' opportunities to sell shares for a period of up to 3 years after closing. I'll give you a short summary of the main element in this agreement. For the first 3 months of the closing, Schibsted has a hard lockup, meaning we are not allowed to sell shares in Adevinta in this period. eBay can though during this same 3 months period transfer an amount of shares equal to the amount of nonvoting shares they receive at closing to institutional investors off market. This equals up to 11% of total outstanding shares. After these 3 months lockup, eBay has preferential right to sell shares for a period of 15 months. And if Schibsted intends to sell during this period, we must notify eBay in which eBay may require Schibsted to delay its sale for 90 days. However, there is a carve-out from this limitation, which allows Schibsted to sell up to 3% points without content from eBay after the initial 3 months lock up period. And then following this 3 plus 15 months period is an 18 months tag along period where each party may participate in sell-downs by the other party. Like I said, it is important for us to preserve financial flexibility to be able to execute on strategic opportunities. Hence, we also actively manage our debt portfolio and its maturity profile to maintain the needed flexibility. Over time, our leverage target range is between 1 and 3. We are prepared to lever up for a shorter period of time if attractive investments become available. And the acquisition of the Danish eBay classified assets is an example of how the financing in such a case might be structured. Following this acquisition, our gearing will increase to close to our upper target range of 3. This is lower than we were prepared for at the time of signing of the transaction in July last year. In connection with signing the EUR 350 million bridge loan to finance acquisition, we have received consent from our banks for a temporary waiver of our financial covenants from closing of the transaction until the bridge facility is repaid. And if we, after lockup period, sell up to 3% points of our shareholding in Adevinta, as previously described, the net proceeds from such a sale must first be used to repay the bridge facility but will, of course, still strengthen our financial capacity accordingly. Let me now conclude with our financial targets. These are unchanged from our communication of the Q4 numbers. We keep our important medium to long-term target to grow annual revenues in Nordic marketplaces by 8% to 12%, although this segment will continue to be somewhat affected by the pandemic in the short term. Christian gave a good overview in his presentation on how this growth ambition will be achieved. In News Media, we will focus on the continued revenue transition away from print towards digital while actively managing our cost structure. As Siv described, we work to make the media positions ours digital sustainable while maintaining an EBITDA margin of 8% to 10% midterm. We will continue with disciplined capital allocation, as I have described, and intend to continue to pay a stable to increasing dividend over time from the 2020 level of NOK 2 per share. We are targeting a leverage of between 1 and 3 but are prepared to lever up for a shorter period of time. And finally, over-capitalization will be addressed primarily through share buybacks or extraordinary dividends. That concludes my presentation, and I hand the word over to Kristin for a wrap-up. Before we open up for Q&A.

So this concludes our presentations. Thank you to everyone who has been following, and thank you also to the presenters. I'll try to give a very brief wrap-up before we go to Q&A. So we have told you that we have delivered on our strategies since the last Capital Markets Day. We are a financial owner of Adevinta with the knowledge and capabilities to drive further growth. We have become a true Nordic player within the online classifieds with the acquisitions in Finland and Denmark. And we have shown strong operational execution and shareholder value creation. Now looking ahead, we are uniquely positioned in the Nordics with brands and capabilities that are set for further growth. And we have products and services that our users find valuable, making them part of their lives in ways that change how they act, how they consume and how they understand the world. And we are more than the sum of our parts, with strong businesses and brands building on a solid foundation, reaching for a shared purpose. And finally, we have a proven track record of willingness to rethink our positions, to think big and to go for growth. So with that, let's take some questions.

Thank you, Kristin. We are now ready for the telephone Q&A. So operator, please go ahead.

[Operator Instructions] We will take the first question from Andrew Ross from Barclays.

Great. I have got 2, please -- in fact, 3. First one is on the organic -- on the growth target for Nordic marketplaces at 8% to 12%. Is that an organic target is the first question. And then the second one is what are you thinking in terms of margins for Nordic marketplaces going forward? And I guess within that, if we're thinking that transactions are going to become more meaningful in the revenues? How do you think about the margin flow-through from that? And then my third question is the disclosure you gave on the ventures, both for Next and in fintech. I think you said for -- on a 100% ownership basis, it was NOK 500 million revenue in Next and NOK 250 million in fintech. What would it be on a proportionate basis for your stakes? Just so we can get a sense of what your share of that is across all the various investments.

Great. Thanks, Andrew. Ragnar, maybe you do the margin ones, and Raoul, you could do the one on venture. Ragnar, you start?

Yes, I can do that. On -- let's start with the growth targets for Nordic marketplaces. That includes, let's say, bolt-on acquisitions that we might do in in the various markets as well. And then I have to sort of come back with sort of more detailed guidance [ depending on ] the size of the acquisitions. With respect to margins, so we will not sort of comment specifically on that. But as we have presented today, we are continuously working to balance top line growth with healthy margins. And in general, our growth focus is also fueled by product development to sort of create increased value to customers and, hence, the opportunity to increase ARPA. So that is sort of the recipe that we have been using for some time and then we plan to follow as well. And then as Christian also said, sort of moving into more transactional services. When we get sort of closer to mid term and they become a bigger part of the business. They might also sort of influence margins somewhat, so negatively compared to what we are used to as of today.

Yes. And regarding -- if we take our ownership share of the top line, I would say that I don't have the exact figure but, generally, we have between 10% and 50% in these companies of ownership. So if you take approximately 30% of the figure, I think that you should be quite close. But of course, we cannot give you a more precise figure.

Operator, is there another question in line? Operator, could you just please confirm if there are -- if there's another question in line for us?

[Operator Instructions] We'll now move to the next question from Christian [indiscernible] from Arctic Securities.

My question relates to the transactional models and the monetization of the generalist vertical. Could you please elaborate on how much of the NOK 34 billion in gross merchandise value that you think is monetizeable? And also, do you expect the shipping costs to come down? As it is relatively expensive to ship in Norway and Sweden, I would myself think that this is a challenge for monetizing the low-value items?

Christian, please go ahead.

Yes. So as I said, we don't think that this [ 2 ] set of gross merchandise value is applicable for the transactional models but the [ rating ] parts of it is, and particularly the shippable goods. And that could be somewhere between 25% to 50% of the volume. Yes, and part of that will probably be monetized above [ as we've mentioned ]. And then with regards to shipping, yes, we think that the shipping costs will come down over time but [ we will be in ] competition in this area, so yes.

Please mute yourself in the background. [Technical Difficulty]

I've got 3 questions. The first is about News Media margins. If you do the simple math and you say flat revenues, and obviously, NOK 120 million of costs to come out to get towards 14% margins. Why -- what's in the guidance? It's said you're expecting to have to do a lot of investment in content you talked about and other things in order to deliver the digital subscriber growth? How best to think through that guidance to understand and why you're sticking to the [ 8% ]? That's the first question. The second question is when you talked about what you're doing around transactions in autos, in Norway and Sweden in particular. The focus has been very much to be about enabling C2C transactions between consumers. I just wondered why you're pursuing that approach? In other markets classified, you're looking at enabling consumers to buy from dealers online. But [ that ] seems to be a focus for you. So I just wanted to understand that. And the third question is, there was a comment at the end in the financial presentations about there were plans to grow Nordic marketplace from 8% to 12% medium to long-term. So that there was going to be COVID impacts shorter term. Are you trying to say that the growth in Nordic marketplace will be below 8% to 12% in 2021?

Okay. Ragnar, if you do both the margin on news and also the COVID impacts on the classified margin first. And then Christian, maybe you can come back and answer the question on focused transactional.

Yes. So as stated we have chosen to give, let's say, a short to midterm guidance on the margins in News Media. And what you need to take into consideration is the development of the revenue mix, and that's sort of -- what's important, catering for the fact that in both field, we will see probably -- the future is depending on the development of the revenues from advertising. It's sort of a high-margin kind of revenue component. It's about the development of the traditional print business and then, on the other hand, how we are able to grow and how fast we're able to grow the subscription business as such. And in this, also sort of need to cater from some investments into particular the content side, as Siv described earlier today. So it's a little -- it's sort of a mixed picture, and that's why we have sort of chosen to be certainly very short to midterm also on the margin side there. So what's important, I think, is that we are very close to sort of turning News Media back to a growth business again. That is the core focus of ours for the time being. With respect to the effect of COVID for Nordic marketplaces, I think it's not very visible for the time being, in particular, sort of for the next couple of months due to what we see in both Norway and Sweden for the time being with respect to the closedowns and so on. So the actual growth in 2021 will be very much dependent on some of the bounce back, particularly in jobs, but probably also with respect to the travel vertical and [indiscernible]. But we expect to be within the range of 8% to 12% also this year. As you see the strong bounce factor, should probably be in that range for that.

Yes. And with regards to transaction models on motor, we do see potential in both the C2C area and B2C area. And we are -- as I briefly mentioned, actually in the presentation, we are actually testing also the B2C model in Sweden. But you're also right that the primary focus is C2C. And keep in mind here that both in Norway and in Sweden, we have huge revenues today from the private markets, which is a little bit different from some other countries. And we see a big potential in kind of raising the take rate in the C2C market. So that's why we are prioritizing that first.

Great. I have a few questions, [indiscernible] members can just address here before we switch back to the operator. First one is our Nordic marketplaces and expand and consolidate. In the slide you mentioned Sweden is a country for further consolidation, and we know that Hemnet is rumored to change ownership over the next months. Do you think it's likely that Hemnet will do an IPO? Or what do you think is a preferred track here? Can you comment on that?

You want to do that, Christian? Or you want me to do it?

You can take it. You can take it.

Oh, I can take it. Okay. Well, yes, I mean, when it comes to Hemnet, as we have said all along, I mean, it's obviously an interesting asset for our portfolio, but it needs to be available and it needs to be at an attractive price. It seems like the preferred path right now for the current owners is an IPO, and we will just have to follow that development.

Great. Then a couple of more. One on News Media. You're stating in your presentation that you focus on healthy margins in the News Media going forward. Could you just elaborate what you mean by healthy margins long term? And on the business economics as well, I mean, we see already a strong part of the tickets revenues in News Media. But when this tickets part will continue to grow, how should we think on the margin effect when the [ digital ] share increases for News Media.

Yes. Go ahead, Siv.

Yes. Thank you. Yes. We -- I understand the question, but I think we really need to understand that the News Media is still in the middle of the digital transformation. 2020 was a very special year with the artificial low-cost due to COVID-19. And we have implemented this cost program. But of course, the effect of this will decrease over time. It is important to invest in quality content, as I said in my presentation. So our confirmed guiding on the margin is 8% to 10%, and we stand by that. And I think we have documented over time that we are very good to adjust our cost base if we need to do so. So we just need to follow the revenue development, and we'll, of course, work very hard on our digital revenue development going forward.

Great. And then I have another one for Raoul for you on the distribution. You state that if market share of [ around ] 11% today. Could you just comment here what was 2019, the market share? Second one on distribution is who do you see as your competitors in the Norwegian market here? And maybe then a third one on distribution. If you have considered to buy out the minority shareholders in Helthjem and Morgenlevering, if we currently don't own 100% of these companies.

Yes. Well, as I said, the market share increased a lot during 2020. And I think it was around 6% in 2019. So we took market shares. And it's -- well, of course, because of good work, but also the segment we are in is growing a lot. So we grow our market shares in 2020. Then the competition, I mean, the competitive situation is quite different in Norway and Sweden. In Norway, I would say it's mainly postal, postal office which is the main competitor. In Sweden, there are a lot of different newcomers that are competitors. So it's -- and we expect that the competitive situation will be tougher in Norway as well. But today, I would say it's mainly the postal office. And then ownership in Helthjem. I mean we are a strategic owner of these companies, and we have a long-term perspective. And -- but very often, as we do in Sweden now with [indiscernible], we will have a work -- to work with partnerships. But I can't comment on if we are going to change that ownership near-term or long term.

I also I want to add, I think it's important to realize that we own this together with the other media partners that own the actual distribution network. And I think that gives strategic strength and stability to the constellation around these companies, which is actually a positive.

Good. Then I think I just continue with the mail currently because people are struggling a little bit over the phone line. So if you have question, you can just mail to [email protected], and then I will try to take the questions after a bit over 1:00 CET. Next one is for you, Christian, on Nordic marketplace. This is you can just -- if you can just elaborate a bit more, the revenue how to monetize the transactional business, if you can explain that a little bit? And if you maybe also have some ideas how big of a share that revenue could become over time? And maybe a third question on marketplace is either for Ragnar or for Christian. If you can just say again the 8% to 12%, is that pure organic growth? Is there -- or is M&A included in the growth target here for that segment?

Yes. So I'll comment on the revenue model of our transactional business. And keep in mind here that this is still under development, and kind of we are learning new things as we develop this. But there are also some best practices from both our own sites and the international comparisons. But in C2C on the generalist, the generalist market, it's usually a model where the buyer pays and they pay transaction fee, a buyers fee, which is a percentage of the value of the goods sold. And on top of this, it's usually some freight costs on top of it. So that's the model we are also exploring in Nordics. Then when it comes to cars. We haven't really solved this entirely yet. But here, we're probably going to have a combination of some transaction fee. And also some revenue coming from partners. For example, we can have partners who get to distribute insurance products or financing products, or other things as part of the transactions, that could also lead to revenue for us. And then, of course, we have the transactional modeling deal, which is also where we have a shared value of the car. And I don't think the second question about what share of the revenue this will become? I don't think we will guide on that from where we stand today.

And then last one on top line growth, 8% to 12% organic or not organic?

Yes. Do you want to take it, Ragnar? Should I comment -- I think you commented on it already.

As I said, on a previous question, that it includes also, let's say, bolt-on acquisitions that we are doing so in the various countries as well. So -- and of course, those acquisitions were sort of at the time of the acquisition. Probably give us a little shift upwards, but over time, and it depends on the trajectories of the assets that we are acquiring. Should -- so as overall thinking include sort of M&As as well in that number.

And just to follow up on that, what I think people -- what people like to understand. I think when you say bolt-ons do you refer to smaller things like Next deals, probably you don't refer to bigger ones like Oikotie, right?

That's right. So smaller bolt-ons is included in our -- if you are doing large M&As in all these countries, and so that will come on top and then we have to sort of come back with some sort of comments on how that will influence the growth trajectory going forward. But that said, also, for instance, we have commented on the assets in Denmark, which over the last -- if you look a little bit back on the history of those assets, the growth trajectory has been in the lower part of the, let's say, 8% to 12% band. And we sort of expect to accelerate that growth to [ be valuable contributor ] to the growth -- the growth development of Nordic marketplaces.

Thank you. Then the next one, going a bit to Next in the portfolio. Very good run throughs today. But the question is, okay, looking at the scope of these assets, which you control today. It seems there is some movement in the market, price runner, but also competitors in Lendo, we see some activity here when it comes to consolidation or rumors about listing of these competitors. Are you also saying that Lendo other parts of the business could be assets you might want to sell or list going forward?

Should I take that 1 or Dan? Okay. Well, as I said, I mean, we are basically industrialists. And we invest in companies where we think that long term, there may be a part of Schibsted and where we have synergies with the rest of our business. But at the center, we are -- we must be within this area, opportunistic as well. So we're always looking at possibilities for these companies. As I said, doing things with competitors, doing exits can be possible, listing these companies can sometimes also be a possibility. Then I will not comment on specific companies. But from a principal point of view, that's definitely things we can do.

Thank you. Then going a bit back to Nordic marketplaces and also capital allocation. Here's a question, if you -- how should we think about capital allocation? Is it mostly allocated to new parts in Nordic marketplaces or the more in market consolidations within Sweden, for example, or new markets like Denmark? And can you also remind us of the synergies, which you have in the portfolio in marketplaces as you move into more countries? And then the other one is on buybacks. Can you please talk more about under what leverage conditions you consider starting a buyback program? And how you favor dividend payout in comparison to buybacks here?

Can you repeat the first part of the question, the first question? I actually didn't get that.

The question was when it comes to you say you will continue to allocate capital to Nordic marketplaces. Is it more to go into new Nordic markets? Or is it more like in market consolidations? Like what is the main focus here?

I think to that, the answer is that it's both. We are, of course, investing into strengthening the positions we have and expanding on those, but also getting new positions. And then with regards to synergies, I think there are synergies on several levels. One obvious one is, of course, just kind of best practice sharing of -- between the different countries, let's say, ongoing transactional. We also have technology synergies. Some of those are on Schibsted level like account and tracking, ad stack and so on. And then we are more and more exploring technical synergies within marketplaces. And here, we have some of the initiatives like Next deal and [ CASA ], which are models that we are rolling out across the Nordics. And then as we develop new products, we are also seeing if we can develop some of these models, with, let's say, shared components across the Nordics. So it's strength -- having similar countries like this is strengthening our rollout capability across the Nordics.

Thank you. And Raoul, back to you, it's about Helthjem. Could you comment a little bit here what kind of margin profile you see for the business going forward, and maybe you can also share how should we think about profitability for that business in 2020, given the strong growth that we've seen in revenues here?

Well, first of all, Ragnar, is this for me or for you?

I think -- I can comment on the margin development. I think in general, we haven't sort of given any guidance on the margins for Helthjem. I think what's important here is that this is -- Helthjem is in a very sort of strong, let's say, situation not to have and focus on growing their business. So it's the top line growth that is still, let's say, is the main priority and focus for the time being. And growing that business as we're doing now will also take some, let's say, some step-wise costs but also influence margins. But it's also so that at least as long as we are in, let's say, the pure distribution part of the e-commerce enablement space that the margin picture of that kind of businesses are sort of to some extent limited due to the competition. But we are very focused on both growing the company and over time, making sure that we have a business model that are able to -- so that I have feel that are competitive in that space. I think that's what I can say on that.

Yes. And I can perhaps add that if you look long-term on this, of course, the pure distribution part of the business, that's long-term low markets, even though it will be definitely profitable. But then as you understood, our strategy is to build on top of that. And then, of course, when you come to business like Morgenlevering, if -- I mean, if it works, and the growth continues, then, of course, that kind of business will be higher margin. I can't exact -- I can't say exact what kind of levels, but definitely higher than we'll say, traditional distribution.

Thank you. Then I have a couple of questions here from Miriam at Morgan Stanley. First one, Lendo. You have a strong position in Sweden. How should we think about the opportunity for market consolidation in other countries for Lendo. Second one is for transaction in Nordic marketplaces, how should we think here about what capabilities have to be developed to get more traction. And should we expect more acquisitions like Nettby going forward? And then third one on News Media, how should we be thinking about the mix between subscription and advertising going forward?

I'll start with the question on Lendo. I think consolidation is, of course, an option for any market. Right now, we are focusing on organic growth and looking with an eye to good bolt-on acquisitions. So if there's an opportunity, we can think about participating in consolidation, but it's not top of the agenda for us right now.

Yes. I can comment on transactional models. First of all, this differs a little bit from vertical to vertical. It's not necessarily the same on motors as it is on generalist. But in general, it's a quite a broad set of capabilities that you need to deliver a really smooth transactional experience. And it can be everything from improving how you actually insert the ad on the site because you have to capture more data let's say, about -- are you willing to ship it? How big is it and things like this? 2 things that are directly related to the actual transactions, such as payment, dispute resolution and things like this. So we are investing in developing those things connected to our existing marketplaces. And then I think the second question was about, can we see more acquisitions? I think if there are new transactional models that come by us or is caught by the Next team or something, then we will certainly be interested in looking at those and connect those with our marketplaces.

Yes. Should I do the one from News Media? Yes. Even though we see a tremendous growth in the digital subscription revenues, advertising is and will continue to be very important for the business model for News Media. And we are working a lot on innovation and product development also when it comes to advertising. As I said in my presentation, content marketing is really a growth area for us. And I think that will also be very important for our competitiveness in the digital advertising market. So for us, the focus is still a balanced model between subscription and advertising.

But I guess it's fair to say that given the strong growth in subscriptions that it will gradually have a larger share of the total revenue mix. I think that's fair to say.

Yes. And you can see this at the numbers that have started already.

Thank you, Siv. I think there was 1 question, which we haven't answered yet, and that was a question on where does leverage need to be before we do buybacks? And also how do we favor dividends in comparison to buybacks going forward when it comes to capital allocation and returns?

Yes I can comment on that. I think, as I said, so the target leverage is between 1 and 3. And sort of the question was -- and it's not possible to say that we will initiate a sort of a share buyback sort of directly linked just sort of a number on that scale. It will also depend on the potential timing of M&A and other things that we are working with. But in general, I would say that sort of we are -- we have shown that we have probably somewhat higher sort of flexibility in our way to finance both M&As and all sorts of -- that are through sort of potential selldowns of shares and other [indiscernible]. So the exact timing of where we will be on the leverage scale before deciding on our share buyback, that is something that sort of we have to come back to. And in general, I think the feedback and we see is most likely. So beyond the fact that we are sort of paying sort of stable to increasing dividend over, let's say, over time, but we will sort of use share buybacks as the main vehicle for distributing back to shareholders.

Thank you, Ragnar. Next one is actually on data. I think it's great to see your -- someone's commenting there your efforts on data and first-party data log in. Two questions here. Have you considered to open the Schibsted ID for companies outside of Schibsted? And are there like also efforts which you have to do or develop before cookies [indiscernible] is supported? Or is your product basically ready now, and you just have to focus on increased log in going forward?

I'll try to answer those. When it comes to sharing the ID, I think there's been several initiatives and thoughts and ideas around having a more common digital identity in our various markets. And we are -- I would say we're very open to those discussions, and it could certainly make sense to share that type of log in solution for different partnerships that we enter into. So we're open to that. When it comes to the whole question around cookies, I would say that's -- I wouldn't say necessarily ready at any point because there's always work being done to optimize and improve and prune how we can approach it. But I think we've come very far, and we are in a very fortunate position that we have such a large access to primary data. So I believe that relatively spoken, we will be okay in handling that new situation without third-party cookies. I would just also like to add that we've done a great lot of work when it comes to contextual marketing in which we are succeeding really well.

Great. Thank you, Kristin. Back to Nordic Marketplaces, slightly different angle here, Christian. Denmark, how do you see the drug market? Do you think there is potential to do also entering the drug vertical in Denmark going forward and maybe do M&A to enter that field? And second question on the drug market in Sweden with Blocket. It seems like your volume here declined quite a bit lately. While a local competitor [indiscernible] has rather a slower decline. Is there any comment which you can give on that?

Yes, I can comment on those. So it's a little bit early to be very concrete on things in Denmark since we haven't yet closed the deal with eBay classifieds on that. But of course, we are interested in structural opportunities also in Denmark. And it would be natural for us to get jobs and real estate. But we have to come back to that later, I think. Then with regards to Sweden, it's right that jobs volumes in Sweden have been weak throughout last year, and we haven't seen the same uptick in the jobs market in Sweden as we have in Norway and Finland. So we are following that quite closely and looking forward to that coming back. But we don't see that we have lost any market share or anything like that.

Thank you. Then 2 follow-ups for you, Christian. A lot of attention on the transactional model today, not surprisingly. First one, can you comment, when do you think that really picks up? I think it seems like Blocket has maybe has some [indiscernible] so far, products are in place. When you expect like an uptick here in that revenue? And second question, do you have a ballpark how we should think about margin for the transactional business here going forward? Or is it too early for that?

Yes. So the transactional models in both the Norway and Sweden are a key priority for us. That said, this is an area that takes some time for the result. So I don't see that there will be meaningful revenue on the transactional model this year in Sweden. It's going to increase quite a bit, but it will just take a little bit longer than that. When it comes to margin, we don't give any guidance to that, but I can repeat what Ragnar have said before that we are, of course, trying to optimize margins as much as possible, but there could be a slight margin impact from these transactional models.

Thank you. Going a bit back to fintech then. It seems here that the valuation of the portfolio is maybe not reflecting these assets. I don't know if you can comment a bit on the last funding round, maybe especially in Rocker. Or you would take it? Or is it numbers which you kind of disclosed due to agreements with the founders?

Yes. I can't sort of comment on the historic funding rounds outside what we already published in press releases. But I would say we continuously strive to, of course, increase value. That's our job as a strategic owner. When it comes to Rocker, the company has said that they will be looking at opportunities for possible IPO later this year. And that's, of course, an event we are also looking forward to, to put fair value on the company. And that kind of mechanism is always what we try to achieve. We published some numbers on the total portfolio, but not on individual assets over and above the press releases.

Thank you, Dan. Maybe the question more like shorter-term. Can you comment a bit on the development, what you've seen in motors and real estate in Nordic Marketplaces safely. At the Q4 presentation, you said that December was very strong, January, maybe a bit weaker, and you saw some very high turnover on these 2 verticals.

Yes. It's true that Q4 was very strong, particularly towards the end of the quarter. And particularly in jobs in Norway and motors also in Sweden. The reality in motor and real estate is that in motor, it's actually a shortage of cars in the market. So that's more of a problem than the lockdown in a way that the dealers don't get enough cars to sell. So that's limiting our upside at the moment. And also in real estate in Norway, I'm now commenting on. There is a very hot real estate market at the moment, which means that properties are sold very quickly, which means that there is less need for upsell products and republishment of ads. So that's also a bit of a limiting factor in this market. So these are the kind of natural variations that you have in these markets.

Thank you. I think we take a couple more questions before we then round off very soon. First one is maybe for you, Kristin. As we saw -- [ recently seen ] announcement in the U.K., Shpock, Gumtree and also motors U.K. is up for sale. If Schibsted is qualified to acquire assets or are there possible M&A targets for Nordic Marketplaces?

I believe it's an advantage for that process that any buyer of those assets would be as independent as possible of Adevinta and eBay.

Thank you. Again, going back to Nordic Marketplaces, quite some questions here today. First one is on Finland. Media lately reported that [indiscernible] privately owned Finnish job classified portal has expanded into Sweden. Could you comment on what that means for Blocket and also remind us on the revenue model you have for jobs in Blocket like how sticky is that customer base? And then second question, overall, really appreciate it to get like good details here on ARPA development for the different assets. But is there a comment which you can make, how much the increase is pure price-driven versus product-driven features here?

Yes. Starting with [indiscernible]. So [indiscernible] is a jobs play from Finland, that operates an aggregator model, so a bit different than the model that we operate usually. They expand into Sweden recently. So it's very early days. We can't kind of say anything about the development. But we are used to these aggregators. We have indeed, and we also have our own aggregator in Sweden with Jobbsafari. So we don't see this as kind of changing the situation in Sweden at all, actually. In Sweden, the revenue model for jobs is a regular listing model. I'm not sure exactly what the -- if you're right what were the specifics to that question. And then with regards to ARPA development, it's a broad set of initiatives that drives this ARPA development. And some of it is new products that we launch. Some of it is just better ways of selling and upselling. And some is driven by price and packaging. But usually, the way we think about this is that we want to create more value for our customers. So we kind of think, okay, how much value do we have to create for our customers in order to be able to also charge more for these products. So that's the general approach that we have to these markets.

Thank you. I think the question for the jobs board in Sweden and Blocket is, is it subscription or ad-based. And here the answer is it's ad-based. We don't have a subscription business or also not for jobs in Sweden. So I hope that answered the question. I think maybe the last question, again, going back to data. I think it's good to finish maybe the Q&A with that. You mentioned that you're well positioned when it comes to third-party data regulations. Are there remaining challenges when it comes to this? And are you as of today, actually also selling your data to third parties? If you can comment on that here.

Yes. No. We have a very clear data policy. We do not sell data, and we use data to enhance our services and user experiences. And we are doing very thorough review of our whole portfolio. Schibsted is now the data owner, as I mentioned in my presentation, and we're taking great care that we handle that data with prudence and transparency. We also have services on our sites, where it's very easy for users to access and see what type of data that we actually have about them. When it comes to the cookies and all of that, I mean, I think we are relatively well positioned. I mean some opportunities in terms of programmatic advertising, for example, might go lost when these rules change. But on the other hand, that will somehow shift the market a little bit, and I believe we are well positioned for those shifts to take place. So that was my point. And I also foresee that there might be other changes that we haven't seen yet. But I think there's so much scrutiny and attention now to how different players in this market treat data and privacy that I believe we have more regulations in this area to come. And I believe that Schibsted is very well positioned, both with our access to our own primary data, but also with the prudency that we have in our own data policies at the moment, I believe we will -- be very well positioned for future regulations in this space.

Thank you, Kristin. I think then we can round off the Q&A here. So from my side, thank you very much for attending the presentation and the Q&A today. I'm very sorry, it seems we have some issues with the telephone line for the Q&A. I hope that the e-mail format work fine for you. And a replay of the webcast will also be available on our website, so you can listen again to the question and answers afterwards. And of course, please feel free to also contact me by phone or by e-mail afterwards. Before we say goodbye from our side, I'll just maybe hand over to Kristin and Ole Jacob for some concluding remarks and talk to you soon.

Yes. I can start by thanking everyone for watching and your continued interest in Schibsted. And we believe that we're well positioned and that we have exciting times ahead, and we look forward to keep sharing those results with you going forward. So thank you all. And Ole Jacob, maybe you want to say a few concluding remarks.

Yes. Hello, everybody. What I can say is that the day has met my expectations. I think we have been able to show you the diversity of our business. We are actually now well positioned in taking a larger share of the value creation within our markets in the Nordics. And I'm very happy to see this taking place. And I would also like to say thank you to Christian and the management group. You're doing a great job. So keep it up.

Okay, then thank you, and have a nice day.