Vend Marketplaces ASA (VENDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of our Q4 results here from Oslo. As usual, Kristin, our CEO; and Ragnar, our CFO, will present the results and progress in the fourth quarter. And then for the Q&A, we also have Christian, EVP for Nordic Marketplaces and the EVP for News Media today. If you have questions for the Q&A, please go to slido.com and enter the event code which you can see here on the first slide. And with this, let me hand over to Kristin. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Jann-Boje, and welcome, and good morning, everybody. So I'll start with the highlights before we have a closer look at the development of the quarter. And in a more challenging market caused by macroeconomic developments, underlying group revenues increased by 3% compared to Q4 last year. And in this context, I am happy to report that we are breaking the downward trend seen over the last quarters by reporting a group EBITDA that ended 3% above Q4 last year at NOK 651 million. This positive EBITDA development was driven by great effort in all our business areas. Driven by double-digit growth in classified revenue, Nordic Marketplaces delivered underlying revenue growth of 6% in the quarter despite a decline in advertising. EBITDA ended at NOK 430 million, that's 1% down from last year, driven by Marketplaces Norway. Our News Media operations faced a more challenging advertising market particularly within print. Driven by a resilient subscription revenues, underlying revenues were still in line with last year. EBITDA margin ended at 9%, up from the previous quarter due to tighter cost control, which will tighten further going forward. And Financial Services & Ventures delivered strong profitability with EBITDA at NOK 109 million, driven both by good revenue growth and cost control. Furthermore, as I said, we continued now to tighten our cost control and capital allocation. On the 24 January, News Media announced gross cost savings of NOK 500 million over the next 2 years in order to improve profitability and bring the EBITDA margin back to the target range of 10% to 12% in 2024. Lendo announced on 31 January that it will shift its strategic focus, accelerating its market-leading positions in the Scandinavian markets, and consequently, they plan to cease operations in Finland, Spain, Portugal and Italy. This will increase profitability, and we see that as value creating in the current market environment and in line with our increased focus on capital allocation within the group. And lastly, we sold down 2% of our Adevinta holding and entered into a total return swap, TRS, agreement for the other 3%. This enabled us to increase our financial capacity to reduce our financial leverage and to initiate a share buyback program, which we see as value-creative in the present market environment. Using a TRS enabled us to reduce our financial leverage, while we maintain exposure to Adevinta share price development and thus showcasing our support of the strategy and further value creation potential of that company. Finally, the Board decided yesterday that they will propose to pay a dividend of NOK 2 per share for '22, that's in line with last year and also in line with our dividend policy. So to sum up, I think it's fair to say that we have navigated the rough seas of '22 solidly and have used Q4 to further adapt the changes around -- adapt to the changes around this, focusing on bringing costs down and adjusting our capital allocation. And now I'm looking forward to a year where we will double down on succeeding with the verticalization of Nordic Marketplaces, ensure robustness and continued digitalization of our world-class news media operations and manage and grow our investments with a focus on value creation. So let's have a look at our ESG highlights in the fourth quarter, and I'll start with the environmental impact. So it's really important for us to empower circular consumption through our marketplaces, and we are changing into a transactional model within Generalist. FINN has taken the lead in this transformation and delivered almost 480,000 transactions in the fourth quarter. We believe that this will be an important way of lowering the barriers for our users to increase their circular consumption, and it's a key also for our business model success going forward. Schibsted is committed to lowering our emissions in alignment with the Paris Agreement. We have recently outlined our climate strategy based on a thorough climate risk and opportunity assessment and made a detailed plan on how we can reduce our emissions until 2030. This will be presented together with our sustainability report for 2022. If I then move on to our social impact. Schibsted wants to contribute to uphold a society built on trust and transparency, that's our vision. Because transparency builds trust. And our media houses help create that societal transparency, but then they need to be transparent themselves as well. And VG has developed an interactive tool to visualize more transparency around their journalism. This tool gives the readers, users and customers more background for the choices made by providing insight into editorial assessment, marketing activities and ethical considerations. And then I'm happy to say that our fresh from the press employee engagement survey continues to show stable, high engagement levels in our organization. And we are well above the European benchmark. And we're actually very pleased with the score given the challenging environment around us. And actually, Schibsted is scoring better than other companies we are benchmarked against on almost every single question in the survey. We do have every season room for improvement. We need to continue our focus on providing career opportunities across Schibsted, and we need to ensure even better that our employees have a clear understanding of our strategic direction in the turbulent times that we're in. Moving to governance. We have recently updated our sustainability ambitions and strategic priorities using the so-called double materiality framework that we have to comply with from '24. And these ambitions are aligned with Schibsted's strategy. And then Schibsted has been carrying the torch for independent media and freedom of speech since the beginning, and we continue to do so. These are absolutely fundamental values in the democratic society. And we're so privileged in the Nordics. We have high ethical standards, and we have editorial guidelines governing how our media houses can and should act. Our public policy team has recently worked closely with the EU Commission to ensure that the proposal for a new European Media Freedom Act will not impact the established Nordic model negatively. But at the same time, we want to help establish better fundamental conditions for independent media in other parts of Europe where this cannot sadly be taken for granted. Lastly, it's great to see that our efforts within sustainability is also recognized by Sustainalytics. It's a well-known global sustainability research rating and data firm, they recently ranked us as a top-rated ESG performer, both in our industry and region. All right. Then we move into the different business areas, and as always, we start with the Nordic Marketplaces. So looking at the financial results here, Q4 ended with a softer revenue growth than previous quarters, classified revenues delivered double-digit growth, though, primarily due to strong revenue growth driven by Motors and Real Estate in all markets, in addition to the transactional Generalist offering Fiks Ferdig in Norway. On the other hand, this was partly offset by the job vertical and advertising revenues that continue to show a negative trend in all markets, affected by the challenging macroeconomic environment. On a foreign exchange neutral basis, revenues increased 6% compared to Q4 last year. EBITDA margin for the segment ended at 36%, that's below last year. It's due to a change in revenue mix and continued investment in product and technology to drive new business models. If we then move to Marketplaces Norway, we see they delivered a solid quarter with 12% revenue growth compared to Q4 last year, driven by Real Estate, Motors and the Transactional Generalist offering, Fiks Ferdig. The real estate vertical experienced higher volumes and ARPA due to the new product offering that we launched at the beginning of 2022. Motors delivered a solid quarter due to volume growth in cars for sale, supported by continued growth in Nettbil, however, at a somewhat softer level than previously. Q4 was also a solid quarter for Fin's transactional offering Fiks Ferdig, and as I said, delivering almost 480,000 transactions in the quarter. With nearly 750,000 transactions passing through the new transactional business in '22, I am proud to report that we exceeded that goal we had of 600,000 transactions within the Generalist vertical. On the other hand, the job vertical saw negative revenue growth in Q4. That was the first quarter in a long time that, that happened. The volume growth continues to slow down, both as a result of strong comparables, but also as a result of the macroeconomic environment. And the increased ARPA cannot compensate for that volume loss in this quarter. For advertising revenues, we saw a decline of 13% in the quarter due to strong comparables and the challenging macroeconomic environment. The EBITDA margin ended at 44%. This is a decline compared to last year and the lower margin is mainly due to a shift in revenue mix where we see a decrease in the higher-margin jobs business and an increase in the transactional business for Generalist, that is diluting EBITDA margin. In addition, the costs were higher than last year, primarily due to increased number of FTEs to drive further transactional product development and the verticalization of the Nordic Marketplaces that we are in the middle of. We are, however, cautious with regards to investments going forward. If we then move to Sweden, we see that total revenues ended 2% above Q4 last year. And the Motor vertical continues to be the main growth driver with a 12% year-on-year increase in the quarter. The growth comes from higher ARPA from professionals due to upsell products as well as price increases. The job vertical had a softer development in Q4, mainly due to stronger comparables and the slowdown in the market. This was, however, mitigated by a higher ARPA. The C2C Generalist revenues declined compared to last year as seen in the previous 2 quarters. This is caused by the removal of ad insertion fees at the end of May. And while this affects financial results negatively in the shorter term, it has strengthened our market position and the listings grew by 109% in the quarter. And this will enable the transition to a fully transactional model, entailing promising growth potential over time. If we look at the margin, I'm happy to see that revenue growth in the Motor vertical, combined with good cost control, were able to balance out the decline in advertising revenues and the effect from the removal of the ad insertion fee in addition to continued investments in product and tech to drive new business models. So all of that means that we are reporting a stable margin of 40% in the quarter, which is in line with both last quarter and last year. Then we move to Finland. We see that revenues here were in line with last year. Real Estate, Generalist and Motor revenues increased in the quarter, all driven by volume combined with improved ARPA in the Motor vertical. On the other hand, market headwinds affected also here, the Job vertical and advertising revenues negatively in the quarter. Margin continued to improve compared to last quarter and last year due to tight cost control, ending it at a solid 18%. And lastly, I'm happy to announce that Schibsted in December acquired 79% of the Finnish consumer-to-business used car auction marketplace AutoVex. By becoming a majority owner in AutoVex, we continue to invest further into the growing Finnish market, and we further expand our portfolio of next-generation marketplaces in the motor vertical. And we are really excited to include AutoVex in our family of digital brands, and we look forward to supporting the company's growth and further solidify its market position in Finland. Then finally, we have Marketplaces Denmark, where revenues continued the trend from Q3, growing 3% year-on-year. The revenue increase is driven by both the Motor and Generalist verticals. Within Motors, revenues increased by a solid 9%, driven by improved volumes and the effectuated price increases in both January and August. The Generalist vertical continues a positive trend and is growing 4% year-on-year. This is driven by higher volumes in both traditional classifieds and transactional revenues. Advertising revenues declined compared to last year, again, due to the macroeconomic situation. EBITDA margin has improved, both compared to previous quarter and to last year, driven by the increased revenue and the tight cost control. And it's also worth mentioning that the separation from eBay and the integration to Schibsted was finally completed in December, and I think many of our Danish colleagues are quite happy with that. All right. Let's then move to News Media. So despite a challenging year with changed conditions resulting in a NOK 500 million cost reduction program communicated a couple of weeks ago, our Media division is well positioned to succeed with its continued further digital growth. Our newsrooms create world-class journalism, and through 2022, we were awarded more journalism awards in total than ever before. Our users are clearly engaged by our content with all our major brands having double-digit growth in digital subscription revenue throughout 2022. And in total, we now have above 1.5 million subscribers with almost 1.2 million of them being digital. And lastly, our advertising positions are truly unique, offering top-level reach frequency and amount of logged in users in our markets. And despite a challenging advertising market in 2022, we managed to deliver underlying growth in advertising revenues, if we look at the full year. If we then look at the financial results in the fourth quarter, News Media was affected by the more challenging advertising market. However, thanks to resilient subscription revenues, total revenues in News Media were still in line with last year on a foreign exchange neutral basis. The print value chain continues to be under significant pressure with decreasing revenues combined with higher paper prices, electricity and other input factor prices for the print products. In Q4, the drop in print revenues in combination with higher costs affected News Media's profitability with approximately NOK 120 million. And on a yearly basis, last year, that number was about NOK 350 million. Despite this, the total cost levels in News Media saw positive effects from savings implemented in the second half of '22, resulting in lower cost growth in Q4 compared to the previous quarters. EBITDA margin, therefore, increased compared to the previous quarter, while declined compared to the last year due to the lower revenue and the higher cost base. If we take a closer look at the main revenue streams, we see that subscriptions total revenues grew by 8% on a foreign exchange neutral basis compared to Q4 last year. Digital subscription revenues continued their strong growth and were up 20%. And we're pleased to see continued double-digit growth for all our main news brands, driven by both higher volumes and improved ARPU. In addition, the solid growth in PodMe continued. And with this, a new milestone was reached in the fourth quarter. We had NOK 3 billion in total subscription revenues in 2022, and they really like these milestones in News Media. News Media's all-access bundle continued its positive development in Q4, and we are experiencing high demand for this product and good growth in the subscription base. And encouragingly, figures show that all-access subscribers, they're more loyal, they churn less and they use our products more than other subscribers. So this is an exciting development. If we then move to advertising, we continue to see growth in digital advertising revenues in Norway, where all-time high content marketing revenues drove that growth. In Sweden, the market was more challenging and the macroeconomic conditions have a direct impact on the investment levels. In addition, the fall in print advertising revenues accelerated further in the quarter, was down 18% in both countries compared to 7% for the full year of 22% on foreign exchange neutral basis. This led to a total of 1% year-on-year decrease in overall advertising revenues in Q4 on a foreign exchange neutral basis. And we are leaving behind us now 2 years with historically high investments in marketing in both countries. So looking forward, we do see an overall larger degree of uncertainty in the development of advertising going forward. And then based on that macroeconomic uncertainty and combined with a pressured print business, we take measures now to improve profitability and to get News Media back to the 10% to 12% target margin range. To further tighten our cost control, a 2-year cost reduction program of NOK 500 (sic) [ NOK 500 million ] gross savings has been initiated at the start of this year. In order to achieve this, we will focus on 3 different areas. The first area is about improving profitability in the print value chain. This is both related to the cost pressure affecting the print business and because we want to protect a digital business as much as possible. The second focus area is more classic, increasing operational efficiency across the organization, setting tougher priorities, reducing complexity, being more efficient, et cetera. And the third focus area is establishing a more effective and efficient organization by merging our product and consumer business functions and thus also better cater to user needs. And the last 1 there is more of an internal organizational change. And then it's worth noting that net effects of savings will be somewhat reduced by price and salary increases. And further details about this, including restructuring cost, will be communicated at a later stage. So with that, we leave News Media, and we move to eCommerce & Distribution. This area consists of the legacy newspaper distribution as well as new business, mainly consisting of Helthjem Netthandel and Morgenlevering. And after a year with revenue decline due to the slowdown seen in e-commerce -- in the e-commerce industry in general, revenues grew by 3% in the fourth quarter. That growth is driven by Helthjem Netthandel that grew 22% in the quarter, driven by increased volumes in B2C, combined with higher C2C volumes related to FINN's transactional service, Fiks Ferdig. On the other hand, Morgenlevering saw a continued decline of 33% driven by lower volumes. That decline is driven by macroeconomic trends and inflation, but also, we had exceptionally high numbers last year as society then had lockdowns due to COVID still. EBITDA was positive in the quarter, that is an improvement, both compared to last quarter and last year, and we managed that despite higher costs, primarily due to increased fuel prices. Then finally, we have Financial Services & Ventures. Here, this consists of brands like Lendo and Prisjakt, in addition to other digital services where we either have a minority or -- majority or minority ownership. So Q4 was a strong quarter for this division with revenue growth of 14% on a foreign exchange neutral basis. And when we adjust for previous -- for sold operations that we adjust previous years for like Let’s Deal, for example. In addition, I'm happy to say that EBITDA more than doubled in the quarter. The growth is driven by continued growth momentum in Lendo, but also in Prisjakt and MittAnbud that both had a strong quarter. Q4 is always a very important quarter for Prisjakt, with both Black Week and Christmas shopping, and they delivered a strong quarter with revenue growth of 17% on a foreign exchange neutral basis, driven by higher earnings per click due to price increases. And thanks to stringent cost control, mainly within marketing spending, that growth translated to the bottom line. EBITDA margin for the segment increased to 19%, driven by revenue growth in all main brands, whilst maintaining stringent cost control. And lastly, our Venture operations saw another quarter with lower activity, focusing on supporting our current portfolio companies to balance growth with increased focus on revenues and reduced spending to extend their runway. If we then look at Lendo, the good momentum continues. Underlying revenues ended 16% above Q4 last year, thanks to strong results in both Sweden and Norway. The growth was primarily driven by continued strong growth in inflow of applications in both countries and revenues from the improved credit card offering that we launched in Norway about a year ago. EBITDA margin decreased compared to last year. That's due to increased marketing spend as well as development of new product verticals. On January 31, Lendo announced a shift in strategic focus. We will grow and strengthen the market positions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. And consequently, we plan to seize operations in Finland, Spain, Portugal and Italy. This shift in strategic focus will enable Lendo to accelerate its market-leading positions in the Scandinavian markets to pursue new opportunities within other credit verticals in these markets, and we can strengthen our profit growth, all of which we see as value crave in the current -- value creating, sorry, in the current market environment. The strategic review in Lendo will continue in parallel, and we now expect to have some more visibility on the outcome of that by the end of this current quarter. And with that, I'm very happy to hand it over to you, Ragnar.

Thank you, Kristin. I will start by giving some comments to the consolidated result for the group. The foreign exchange-neutral revenues ended 3% above Q4 last year, despite a more challenging market caused by the macroeconomic developments. In this context, we are pleased that the group's EBITDA in the quarter also ended 3% above last year at NOK 651 million, breaking the downward trend seen in the recent quarters. The revenue growth was driven by Nordic Marketplaces and Norway, in particular, digital subscriptions in News Media as well as all main brands in Financial Services & Ventures. When you look at our EBITDA development, you can see from the graph on the right, that it is primarily Financial Services & Ventures that drives the net EBITDA increase compared to last year, but improved cost control in all our business areas contributed to the positive overall EBITDA development. EBITDA in Nordic Marketplaces ended at NOK 430 million, NOK 4 million less than last year. And while the results in Sweden and Denmark were in line with last year, and Finland showed a significant improvement in EBITDA, the somewhat weaker consolidated result is primarily driven by Marketplaces Norway. The client comes as a result of a change in the revenue mix, as Kristin described, and continued investments to drive new business models. The latter includes investments in Nordic Marketplaces in the young fashion hyper vertical click as well. In News Media, we are starting to see positive effects from cost savings implemented in the second half of 2022, resulting in lower cost growth in Q4 compared to previous quarters, despite continued high cost for print products. Approximately NOK 120 million in negative EBITDA in News Media in Q4 can be attributed to the print value chain. And compared to the Q4 2021 EBITDA, so this quarter, the overall News Media EBITDA declined with NOK 49 million. That shows the underlying positive profitability development in digital. EBITDA for eCommerce & Distribution continued to improve compared to last quarter and reported a positive EBITDA in Q4, driven by improved revenues combined with cost control. And in Financial Services & Venture, EBITDA increased year-on-year by NOK 56 million, driven by strong revenue growth in all main brands, combined also here with tighter cost control. Other headquarters had an EBITDA of minus NOK 72 million compared to minus NOK 80 million last year. When looking closer at our income statement for Q4. Operating profit for the quarter ended at NOK 285 million, which is in line with last year. As part of other costs, cost for the completion of the integration project in Denmark, project costs connected to the verticalization of Nordic Marketplaces and some minor restructuring costs are included. Items below operating profit in the quarter is to a large degree influenced in 4 ways by our ownership stake in Adevinta. Firstly, share of profit and loss from joint ventures and associates includes Schibsted share of Adevinta's result for the third quarter of 2022, adjusted for amortization of excess values and fair value differences, net minus NOK 207 million. Secondly, during the fourth quarter, we saw a modest increase in share price of Adevinta compared to the start of the quarter, which led to a partial reversal of just over NOK 400 million of the impairment loss that we had previously accounted for. And thirdly, in Q4, we disposed off 5% of Adevinta and simultaneously entered into a total return up with financial exposure to 3% of Adevinta through the TRS, a gain of NOK 686 million was recognized from the sale of the 5%. And then finally, the TRS is accounted for as a financial derivative with changes in fair value recognized in the P&L. A decrease in share price from NOK 77.25 per share at commencement of the agreement to [ NOK 65.6 ] at quarter end, led to an unrealized loss of NOK 438 million on the TRS. Net profit for the group ended at NOK 464 million in Q4. Our operating cash flow improved at NOK 50 million compared to last year, the increase primarily driven by improved gross operating profit and a positive working capital development, partly offset by increased tax payments. Capital expenditures are up 17% compared to Q4 last year. CapEx in the quarter includes investments in a new package sorting machine in our distribution business, in the new printing plant in News Media and in the final part of a new group-wide accounting system. All these investments made to reduce OpEx and improve efficiencies going forward from second half of 2023. These investments come in addition to investments in product and tech, the large part within Nordic Marketplaces. Schibsted has a solid financial position at the end of Q4. The net proceeds from the sale of 2% of the Adevinta shareholding amounting to NOK 1.7 billion will be used to buy back up to 4% of total share -- outstanding shares in Schibsted and the ongoing buyback program is expected to be completed by the end of Q2 or first half of Q3. The net proceeds from the -- of NOK 2.8 billion from the TRS reduces our debt leverage and will primarily be used to repay debt maturing within the next 6 to 9 months. During December, we repaid debt and expiring bonds and bought back part of our bond expiring in June this year in total NOK 950 million. The final part of the bridge loan was fully repaid as part of this. And consequently, the temporary waiver of the financial covenant is now terminated. After these transactions, the financial gearing ratio is both back to the target range and is by the end of Q4 at 1.3. The total cash balance amounts to NOK 3.7 billion. And as mentioned by Kristin, the Board proposed to pay a dividend of NOK 2 per share for 2022, in line with last year. And I will end my presentation with some comments around our financial targets and the outlook. Overall mid- to long-term financial targets for Nordic Marketplaces and News Media remain unchanged. For Nordic Marketplaces, we remain confident in the growth potential and our medium- to long-term target to grow annual revenues with 8% to 12% for this segment. For 2023, we do, though, expect the growth to be in the lower end of the range due to softer volume development for jobs and potential also for advertising revenues. With the effect from January 1 this year, Nordic Marketplaces has transitioned from a country to a vertical-based operating model to further strengthen the execution of high growth ambitions particularly for new transactions models and also to strengthen operational leverage across verticals in the Nordics. The rationale and consequences of this change and the new reporting structure will be presented in more detail at our Capital Markets Day on 28 March in Oslo this year. Why we target low single-digit revenue growth and an EBITDA margin of 10% to 12% for News Media in the medium term, we expect that margins will be lower in 2023. The 2-year cost program -- reduction program of NOK 500 million in gross savings is initiated to bring News Media back into the targeted margin range by 2024. Then some short comments to the revenue trends seen at the start of Q1. For Nordic Marketplaces, we see underlying volume developments roughly in line with Q4 for Motors and Real Estate, but somewhat weaker in Jobs. CPA-based price increases will have a positive effect on revenues for Nordic Marketplaces in the quarter. For News Media, we see a continued solid growth in digital subscriptions, but the negative trends within advertising observed in Q4 has worsened somewhat, particularly -- or primarily for News Media in Sweden. And finally, a short recap of what have been our focus and priorities in Q4. While we, through the quarter, have had limited visibility on the short-term market developments, we have used the last months to tighten our cost control and capital allocation with focus on value creation and capital returns. Examples are the cost reductions in News Media, the shift in focus for Lendo, investments with a clear focus on our core like AutoVex and our transactions in Adevinta in November, enabling a lower leverage and also the initiated share buyback program. We will bring with us the same focus and priorities also through 2023. And with that, let's go over to our Q&A session.

Yes. I think when we can just continue where you left, Ragnar. So if you can just maybe comment a little bit more on the listing and advertising trends in Q1 so far, if you can provide some more color maybe?

I don't know whether it's that much more to be said. I think if you look at Motors and Real Estate, in particular, I think you see that, let's say, the volumes keep up pretty well and more or less in line with what we saw in Q4. There are some weakening within Jobs throughout all that we -- the Nordic countries. So -- and then, of course, as I said, that is the volumes. And then bear in mind then that we also have increased sort of prices according to the CPI towards our business, let's say, in the B2C part of the business. And then for advertising, we see a continued weakening trend, but then primarily in Sweden compared to Q4. And there is a rather stable but weak -- sort of weak development in -- within Nordic Marketplaces for advertising.

And maybe just to follow up on this a little bit, maybe, Christian, you want to elaborate a little bit, like how do you think about real estate in the first half, maybe the full year in the cooling market overall? Last year, there were new regulations. So 2022, maybe was a bit soft in the beginning of the year. So what are your thoughts on the development in real estate? And if you can also then give like an update a little bit what has done on pricing, both in August last year impacting our 2023, but also in FINN now in January.

Yes. I think when it comes to real estate, I wouldn't expect the big changes in either direction. The real estate market has proven to quite stable in terms of volumes even in a more negative economic market, even in those cases, when the sales cycles for properties are longer, you can even have a positive contribution because agents have to republish their ads. So I would expect it to be stable. Then when it comes to pricing, I would say that we have quite a number of things that affect this in a positive way, both things we did last year that will have full year effects this year and now new changes from the beginning of the year. So if I just take some of the things we did last year, first, in the second half, we -- in Sweden, for example, we did some changes in the mobility area, where we increased the prices. We did -- in Finland, we changed -- we increased the prices 9%, 10% in all the professional categories. In Denmark, we did the same in the summer, 5%, 6%. And now going into the New Year, we have increased the prices through this CPI adjustment in Norway with 6.8% in Sweden, in Motors with around 5.7%. So there are quite a few things that pull us in the right direction here.

Thanks. On the strategic level, maybe a question for you, Kristin. Can you comment a little bit when you're thinking about Adevinta stake given the transactions which happened in the end of November? And going forward, what kind of options do you have to further reduce your stake? And are there any implications on the tech side for Schibsted that given the different options, which we're looking into?

Yes. I would say the transactions we made at the end of November does not really change our overall strategy concerning the Adevinta holding. It's still true what we have been saying all along. It's a financial investment, and we will over time seek to lower our exposure because of the dominance it has in our overall portfolio. It doesn't mean we don't believe in the company. But we have basically 3 options. You can have a partial sale. You could have a more structural event or we could have neither of those, and we could hand out shares to our current shareholders or we could see a combination of these 3 options somewhat. And let me just remind everyone that we have this lockup until end of October this year. So it's -- nothing is likely to happen very short term.

And when it comes to tax implications, if you can comment on that maybe, Ragnar?

Yes. I think or there are some -- for Schibsted, there is no immediate tax implications of the -- for neither of the 3 alternatives that Kristin mentioned, but for our shareholders, there might be different implications depending on particular then sort of what kind of withholding tax structures that is in place for each shareholder, so that...

In their domiciles.

In their domiciles, yes.

Moving over to News Media. Looking at the gross cost program of NOK 500 million, does the target include like an assumption of lower paper and electricity prices going forward? Or like this kind of potential savings outside of the program?

Yes. I -- we believe that the paper prices will peak now in Q1 2023. And then we think we will see that the prices decrease throughout the year. But the ambition is really to do the NOK 500 million without an effect of more decrease of paper prices or other raw material costs going into that value chain.

And then if you maybe can comment on the new subscription bundle, all-access, which was launched, like can you say anything on the progress? Or are you happy with the development so far?

Yes, we are very happy with the development. We see it is very well received in the market. It is a very attractive product. And we also see that the customer that is either buying this product for the first time or they are having this as a sell-up from our other products. They are more loyal. The -- they use our products more and they -- yes, and they are more loyal to us. So that's good. And we will launch this product in Sweden during the springtime. So now this is only in Norway. And the churn is reduced in this user group as well, which is, of course, very good news for us.

Quite some questions on Norway today. Given like the revenue mix, we saw that margins decline in Q4. Can you play a little bit of the dynamics like how big of an impact on revenues and cost side is coming from Fiks Ferdig transactional Generalist product? And how do we think about this going forward coming into 2023?

Yes. So I think the shift in revenue mix was present in Q4, and we expect that to also be present in '23. To give a number on the kind of the size of the impact, NOK 27 million was the revenue from Fiks Ferdig in Q4 compared to 0 in the -- in Q4 in '21. So it's a big change there from the previous year. So that's maybe 1 example.

And how should we think about like EBITDA? Was it like -- is it like negative in Q4? Or can -- do you want to comment on that?

Yes. So the gross margin for the Fiks Ferdig product is negative in this quarter. Going into '23, it's an ambition for us to turn that into a positive gross margin. So profitability around this business model is now much more of a priority now that we have shown that we can grow the volume.

And then also looking at margins, 43% for FINN in Q4, 52% for the full year. How should we think about 2023? Could FINN still deliver the margin above 50%, given like the shift in revenues, not just Fiks Ferdig, but also Jobs and advertising. Do you want to comment on that, Ragnar?

I think we don't sort of comment on the margins for FINN as such. But you will see, as Christian mentioned, a little bit of the same development in Marketplaces Norway due to the change in revenue mix. And of course, the margins will be dependent on particular how the job market will develop throughout the year. So -- and of course, that said, I think we saw some increased costs in our Nordic Marketplaces in the -- in Q4 as well. We will sort of focus more on the, let's say, the cost control and the cost development also in Marketplaces Norway in 2023? And also, of course, see how we can sort of use that -- those resources more efficiently also across the Nordics within the new Nordic market -- new vertical operating model.

Thank you. Then moving over to the venture part? How do we think about the Venture portfolio coming into 2023? Do you think that like more funding needs for the companies you have? Were you increasing like spending after you've been more cautious over the last quarters? Or what is your message here?

Yes. I think given the circumstances, the overall health of that portfolio is quite okay. And as I said, we -- the team there is focusing on maximizing the value of already existing holdings and ensuring that we extend the runway. They -- I think they will -- or they are entering '23 still with the cautious approach, let's say, to new investments, and it will -- they will continue their work on optimizing both performance of existing assets, but also the potential divestment of some of those assets.

And when we think about the current investments which you have in the portfolio, should we expect that you don't take part in future once being diluted going forward? Or what is your strategy here to the current investments?

Yes, there is not 1 answer to that because there are some of these assets that we find very valuable and also very relevant to our core portfolio. So I wouldn't rule out that we would invest more in some of our current holdings, but I think there will be a mix because also some of them will maybe not be considered a priority and a core going forward.

And moving back to finance, Ragnar, to CapEx development in Q4, which was up roughly NOK 40 million in Q4. How should we think about 2023 for CapEx? And can you comment also looking at the increase in Q4 if this was driven by Nordic Marketplaces? So what were the drivers for the increase in CapEx?

Shortly on Q4 first. I think if you look at the net increase compared to last year, that those can be attributed to the, let's say, to the 3, sort of, let's say, core concrete investments that I mentioned in my presentation, meaning the partial automating service within distribution, the printing plant in News Media and also the finalization of the new group-wide accounting system. That sort of is the net increase. Within sort of the remaining part, the -- sort of the most significant part is then going to investments with the Nordic Marketplaces. Looking into 2023, I think as part of the focus on both, let's say, cost development and also capital allocation, we are also working and expect that the overall CapEx will be somewhat lower in 2023 compared to 2022.

If we then go back to Nordic Marketplaces a little bit. I mean, we saw that listings increased in Motors and Real Estate, Jobs was down. You did some price increases, both in August, now in January. But do we have any changes planned for the product side for bundling, like it was Real Estate in FINN last year? Or how should we think here for this year?

Well, I think -- maybe you can think of this in 2 avenues. One is that we are, of course, continuing to work on ARPA optimization across our verticals. So that's 1 area. And the other 1 is our focus on transactional models in all the verticals. We are, of course, continuing on the transaction model in the generalist area, but also in motors with C2C transactions in Norway, Nettbil, now with AutoVex, of course, but also in real estate with [ CASA ] being -- starting to become a real success in Sweden. So we'll see that there will be quite a bit of growth from those.

Then a question on Nettbil in Norway, which over the last quarter has contributed quite a bit on the revenue side. I think 2022, roughly NOK 200 million in revenue contribution. What is his status on the current appeal?

Yes. So the appeal was heard in the Supreme Court in the middle of January. We feel at least that went well, but it's impossible to predict these things. We will know from the Supreme Court and their judgment in a couple of weeks, so we're very excited and anxious about that. So yes, we will know soon.

And what would you do if the outcome would be negative?

Well, then we have hedged our option somewhat by acquiring AutoVex, and we will make sure that we keep growing that segment, but we will have to do it in other ways than we would prefer. We, of course, hope for a positive outcome here.

Another question on Nordic Marketplaces margin. I think you commented on that earlier, Ragnar, but just the last time, for 2023, margin consensus for Norway is currently at 52%, in line with 2022. That sound optimistic according to, for example, Will at BNP. Do you want to comment on that? And then also, given like the change with the verticalization this year, how should we think about the impact on margins for NMP in total? Is it an upside or downside potential in the shorter term here?

Short comment. I think I commented on the development in Norway. So have -- we don't have any further comments to that. I don't know whether on the verticalization...

No. I mean I think we are now going into a new phase. Since we have now kind of implemented the new organization where we will focus much more on using all the great talent that we have in our organization more effectively across the Nordics. So I think you will see more cautious approach to growth in number of employees in '23 than what we have seen in the past 2 years. So, yes.

Then a question on capital allocation from [ Christian ] at Arctic. Looking at Schibsted-Adevinta, if you look at EBIT, not EBITDA, they valued not similar multiples. Do you think it's still value accretive for shareholders to sell yourself down [indiscernible] Adevinta and buyback Schibsted or have you made new considerations here?

I think I don't have any sort of clear statements on that. Sort of -- from our perspective, in general, with respect sort of to the share buybacks and so on, we will continue and sort of finance the share buyback program as is. And then of course, we will sort of focus on -- or then sort of taking a stand on sort of on future possible share buybacks at a later stage if we have a balance sheet that allows for that.

Then on group EBITDA for 2023, we didn't issue a new guidance for today. Consensus is for the time being at NOK 2.6 billion for 2023. Do you want to comment if you're happy with that number? Or...

As I said, sort of we do not comment or guide on group EBITDA. So I think we still are of the opinion that the visibility on the, let's say, short, medium term, driven by the macroeconomic development is low. So the result for the year will be influenced by the development, particularly for Jobs and advertising. What we are focusing on now is the things that we can do something with, which is then, of course, continue to focus on cost control and capital allocation and then also as Kristin and Siv mentioned, sort of what we can do on pricing. And of course, then that will sort of to a large degree, influence where EBITDA will end up for the year.

Okay. For the time being, I don't have more questions on the web, I just checked my inbox as well. No. But I think that we are covered for today. So thank you very much for tuning in.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.