Vend Marketplaces Asa B

Good morning and welcome to our Q3 results presentation. My name is Jan Boye and I'm heading Investor Relations at Vend. And as usual, our CEO Christian and our CFO PC are here also with me to present the performance and highlights for the quarter. Following the presentation, we will also have a Q&A session by Microsoft Teams where analysts can connect. Let me then show you the disclaimer slide before I can over to Christian. Christian, please go ahead.

Thank you Jan Boye, and good morning everyone. Very happy to be here to present our Q3 results. This was a quarter that really showed our progress towards becoming a pure play marketplace company. We advanced monetization across our verticals, we executed with discipline when it came to cost, and we also took further steps to simplify our company. And financially, group revenues ended at 1,595 million, and this represents a 1% year-on-year decline. Underneath the surface, however, the revenue development was positive for our verticals, driven by a solid ARPA growth. So this overall decline is then a result of several factors, reduction in the other HQ segment, the strategic decision to discontinue certain revenue streams in re-commerce and jobs, as well as a continued soft advertising area. Group EBTA increased by 24% to 640 million. And this was driven by reduced operating expenses across the group. And this is a reflection of lower personnel costs, also somewhat reduced marketing, and lower costs related to the phase-out of TSA agreements with Schiffsted Media. As I mentioned, we also continue to simplify the company. This is really to sharpen our execution. And during the quarter, we signed an agreement to sell Lendo, and we also started the sales process for delivery, together with also continued focus on exiting our venture portfolio. In parallel with all this, we are finalizing the removal of the dual share class and also consistent with the capital allocation policy, the board yesterday approved a new share buyback program that will start later this quarter. And here at the beginning, I also want to say that I'm very happy that we have appointed Gail Varti as our new chief commercial officer for Vend. To me, this is an important step in strengthening our commercial leadership for the future for this company. So let's then move to the verticals, and let's begin with mobility. And today, I'd like to, before we go into the actual results, to spend a little bit of time on the latest developments when it comes to dealer product packages and pricing. And one year ago, we announced new dealer packages in Norway, and these went live at the beginning of the year. And I would say that they have been a great success. Right now, around 70% of the volume from dealers is on the plus or premium tiers of these packages. And that is also the reason why we are reporting now a 20% ARPA uplift in Q3. So to me, this model is really a proof that a more structured and a more transparent approach to the market creates value both for dealers and for us. It creates better customer satisfaction and it improves performance at the same time. So we are now taking the next step. That means scaling this to Sweden. And we will launch dealer packages there in February of next year. And these packages will be very similar to the ones we had in Norway. And that means that they will also include features that really strengthen the value that we deliver to car dealers. And that, for example, includes things like integrated car valuation, buyer safety elements, and also better dealer branding. Then there will be additional things that will come throughout the year. For example, insight products will come later. And I also want to mention that with the Blockit launch on our Aurora platform, that will happen a little bit later this quarter, dealers will also benefit from things like improved search, better filtering, and also integration and traffic to their digital stores. So I would say overall, this really marks another step in our path to harmonizing our offering across the Nordics. Now, in addition to these changes that we're doing in Sweden, we're also harmonizing and changing the business model in Denmark, where we are moving to a pay-per-add model. And we will obviously also continue to optimize the dealer packages that we have in Norway. So then let's move to the quarterly results. And here we can see that the average revenue per ad, or ARPA, which is our most important KPI, continues to grow well across all markets and all segments. And as we also saw in Q2, Sweden really leads the uplift here, and this is driven by both strong professional ARPA, and I would say exceptional ARPA development in the private segment, and this is driven by upsell, by value-based pricing, and also new packages. Then in Norway, we also see a solid ARPA growth, and this is driven then by the package launches that I just mentioned that we came in the market with at the beginning of the year. And for Denmark, professional ARPA developed in line with the adjustments that we did at the year end, and also additional changes that we made in August of this year. Here, private ARPA was boosted by the introduction of listing fees for cars below 50,000 Danish kroner. However, these changes were reverted in mid-September to reboost listing volumes and to strengthen network effects by having more inventory. So we then look at volumes, and here we already announced the July and August numbers in our pre-silent newsletter that came on September 18th. So most of this should already be known to you. But in Norway, we show a volume decline in Q3. This is mainly a result of a drop in subcategories. That means things like boats, caravans, motorcycles, and so on. In these categories, we see a macroeconomic effect in this quarter. Cars, however, remained flat and even saw growth in the private area. For Sweden, pro volume dropped. And this is due to the change in business model that we have mentioned before in sub-verticals in categories like heavy machinery. Cars remain flat in Sweden and private volume declined across categories. And in Denmark, I would say the overall market continues to perform very well. That means fast sell times. And unfortunately for us, that means a decline in average daily listings for our pro segment. And the drop that we see here in the private segment, that is something that we did expect. We have said it before. And this was driven by the introduction of the listing fees that I mentioned before. These are, as I said, they have now been reverted and we see since the reversal growth week after week in this area. Moving then to the financials and revenues in mobility increased 8% overall in Q3. We had a couple of effects that had the negative effect, and that was the closing of Tory output with approximately 8 million, and the split from media with an additional 5 million. If you take these factors into account, the underlying growth was 12%. On the back of the ARPA growth, classified revenues grew by 13%, while the transactional revenues grew by 18%. Advertising, however, was down 14% year on year. Then OPEX excluding COGS remained flat in Q3, and this is despite the continuous investments that we are making both in the transactional service as well as in core product and platform. And all in all, EBITDA increased by 16% compared to Q3 of last year, and this results in a margin of 57%. And if we were to exclude the transactional models, the margin was 64%, and this is up from 62% last year. Moving then to real estate, then let me also take a moment here to address some of the recent updates and announcements that we have made to product packages and pricing in Norway. I think these changes are quite important because they are strategic steps that we are making in aligning, let's say, the value that we deliver with the price that we charge to the market. And going into 2026, we are enhancing our large package. The purpose is to offer even greater value to the agents, but also to home sellers and to buyers. And one of the most important improvements is better agent promotion. This is something that we have designed to improve visibility and to really drive new sales mandates to agents on the large package. And just to give you an example of this, the launch of our home valuation tool that we call PleaseTips. This is a feature that is exclusive to large agents. And it's a feature that on one hand helps home sellers get the valuation of their home. But on the other hand, also it's a source for quality leads for agents. And it's only two months since we launched this service. And in that period, 40,000 homes have assessed their value using this tool. And we receive a lot of positive feedback from this tool. Now, we're also narrowing the price gap between large and medium package. from approximately 40% on average to now around 22% on average. This is to more correctly reflect, let's say, the performance difference between the two package tiers. So overall, I would say that by offering more structure and by strengthening the platform tools, we really see that we benefit both agents but also home buyers and sellers. And we see this as continued positive traction in the market where traffic continue to trend in a positive direction for real estate in Norway. Let's then move to the ARPA KPIs. And in Norway, real estate ARPA grew by 17%. The main driver here was residential for sale, where the ARPA growth was 18% year on year. And this is very much in line with what we have communicated previously. In Finland, we saw 19% year over year ARPA increase. And this is stronger than what we saw in the first half. driven partly by price increases, but also by changes in the product mix between for sale and for rent. We've also done better when it comes to upsell. Looking at the volume, and here in Norway we had an exceptionally strong first half year. And now in Q3 we saw a decline of 3% as we expected. We pointed out this in our Q2 presentation that we expected a volume decline in the second half of the year because of the very strong start and when we see at the historical full year trends. In Finland, residential for sale volumes declined by 8% year on year. And total volumes declined by 10%. And this also reflects the ongoing transition of rental listings from the, let's say, traditional classifieds model to the transactional business model that we have with Casa. So for real estate, classified revenues grew by 9% year over year. And this was, of course, then driven by the aforementioned ARPA growth in residential for sale in Norway. But our transactional models, Kasa and HomeQ, they have also developed very well in Sweden. I can also add that our launch in Norway is also showing very promising signs. And overall, this segment of the transactional business models, here we saw revenue growth of 29% in the third quarter. OPEX, excluding COGS, increased 5% year-on-year in this quarter, and this was driven by the marketing efforts that we're doing in Finland. And overall, this results then in an EBTA margin of 48% for the quarter. And again, here, if we adjust for the transactional business and only look at the more traditional classified business, the margin was around 53%. Then to jobs. And here, we continue to deliver exceptional ARPA growth of 17%. This is driven by our segmented price model, also changes that we have made to discounts, as well as improved performance in our distribution products. Volumes, however, continue to decline. This reflects the macroeconomic environment in Norway. And if we look at, let's say, the year-to-date trends and compare it with the numbers from Statistics Norway, we see that they mirror each other and that this confirms that we are tracking with the overall national averages on volume development. So jobs delivered then 1% underlying revenue growth in Norway. Classifieds grew by 2% driven by the ARPA growth, but of course then counteracted by the volume decline that was around 13%. For jobs, OPEX excluding COGS decreased by 25%, and this was primarily driven by the exits in Sweden and Finland, as well as some reductions in FTEs in Norway. And EBITDA grew 11% year-on-year, and this resulted in an EBITDA margin for jobs of 55%. And finally, re-commerce, here transacted gross merchandise value or GMV continued to grow across all our markets while our take rates remained solid. And this underpins our belief in the strong demand and the scalability of the re-commerce transactional model. Overall, re-commerce revenues declined 2%. This is driven by softness in advertising as well as the phase-out of low margin and non-core revenue streams, while we still have a strong transactional growth with a revenue increase of 20% year-on-year. And transactional gross margin improved significantly in the quarter, and this was driven by lower cost of goods sold. OPEX, excluding COGS, decreased 2% year on year, and this was driven by FTE reductions from the platform consolidation, among other things. And these cost reductions were slightly counteracted by increased marketing efforts in this quarter. So overall, EBITDA improved to minus 44 million, and this was a 6 percentage point margin improvement for e-commerce. And with that, I'll hand it over to PC to go a little bit deeper into our financials. Thank you.

Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the highlights of the financials for Q3. In total, revenues ended 1% below Q3 last year, primarily driven by the decline in other HQ, offset by continued improvement and underlying growth in mobility, real estate and jobs. Total EBITDA ended at 640 million, up 24% from last year, driven by positive developments across all our verticals, but also other HQ. Christian has already covered the development in the verticals, but let me give you some color on the other HQ segment. The year-on-year decrease in other HQ was, as earlier quarters, mainly affected by change in our allocation model, and the revenue decline following the split from Shipstead Media. Revenues from Shipstead Media are declining a bit faster than expected due to earlier termination of certain TSA services. Other HQ had an EBITDA of minus 8 million in the quarter compared to minus 31 million in Q3 last year. So far, we've been able to reduce our costs faster than the reduction in the TSA revenues. Now let's move over to cost development in the quarter. This slide shows the development of OPEX excluding COGS. The overall cost development and workforce reductions are progressing well. Earlier termination of certain TSA revenues, as I mentioned, has enabled an additional 25 million in reduction in external costs. In total, OPEX excluding COGS declined by 14% in the quarter. Personnel costs were down 13% year on year driven by significant FTE reduction, mainly from the downsizing process that we executed last year, but also from the process of exiting the jobs business in Sweden and in Finland, as well as ongoing FTE management throughout the year. Our total workforce continued to trend slightly downwards, and at the end of Q3, we are a little bit below 1,700 FTEs in the company. Total marketing costs were down 7% year-on-year, driven by the job exits in Sweden and in Finland, partly offset by higher marketing costs in real estate and in e-commerce. Other costs decreased 18% driven by general cost reduction across, but also positive effects from determination of the TSA revenues or TSA services with shifted medium. So overall, this resulted in a 7 percentage point improvement in OPEX excluding COGS over revenue from 58% in Q3 last year to 51% in Q3 this year. Let me move to the income statement. Our operating profit for the quarter increased to 440 million, up from 263 million last year. This is mainly due to the improved EBITDA, but also somewhat lower depreciation and amortization costs and also lower net other expenses. The fair value of a 14% ownership stake in Advinta has decreased from 20 billion Norwegian kroner in Q2 to 18.9 billion Norwegian kroner now at the end of Q3. The decrease is due to a multiple contraction in the industry, partly offset by improved performance for Advinta. And then based on the updated evaluation, a loss of 1.1 billion Norwegian kroner was recognized as a financial expense in Q3. Our valuation methodology is kept unchanged. In totality, net loss for the group ended at around 650 million minus. Let's move to cash flow. Cash outflow from operating activities for the continuing operations ended at 442 million, driven by the strong EBITDA. Cash outflow from investment activities in Q3 ended at minus 21 million, and this includes a capex of 108 million, offset by proceeds from sales processes within the venture portfolio, and also some additional proceeds from the pre-start transaction. And then finally, cash flow from financing activities ended at minus 18 million, mainly due to lease payments in the quarter. On the financial position, net debt amounted to 25 million Norwegian kroner at the end of Q3. There were no refinancing activities in the quarter. Due to the still strong cash balance, Vend has deposited a total of 1.6 billion Norwegian kroner in short-term liquidity funds to achieve a slightly higher return than bank deposits. The scope rating of BBB Plus with a stable outlook confirms Vend as a solid investment-grade company. Then let me end my presentation with a reminder of the financial framework and some comments on the outlook. I want to once again reiterate our strategy, our medium-term targets and also the capital allocation principles that we laid out at the Capital Market Day in November last year. Our strategy execution is going well and we are on track to deliver on our medium-term targets. Regarding portfolio simplification, we are on track, and we have, during the first nine months of 2025, made multiple divestments. In addition to selling PreSelect and Lendo, we have also divested several of our venture portfolio investments. The exit processes for our skilled trade marketplaces is progressing as planned, and also during the quarter, we have initiated a process to sell delivery. The collapse of the A and B share structure is currently ongoing and will be completed during November, well ahead of the end of year deadline. And once the share collapse is completed, we will, as announced last night, launch another 2 billion NOC share buyback program. A couple of messages related to outlook before we move to the Q&A. As we enter the final quarter of 2025, we expect continued solid ARPA momentum across all our verticals. Volume trends, though, remain difficult to predict. Our simplification agenda will continue to affect the results also in Q4, reflecting the final effects of the phase-out and the consolidation of revenue streams in re-commerce, but also the exit of our jobs position in Finland and in Sweden. And following the separation from shifted media, advertising revenue continued to be under pressure, at least compared to the last year. Our cost agenda remains firmly on track. The cost base is expected to stay below last year's level, although we expect the rate of the decline to moderate a bit in Q4 as we start to analyze some of the big savings that we did last year. Looking beyond 2025. We have already launched and are in the midst of launching go-to-market activities in all our verticals aligned with our product and pricing strategy. These actions are expected to drive revenue growth across our verticals in line with our medium-term targets. Structural initiatives, including common platform consolidation, divestment and support function realignment, will continue to deliver efficiencies over time. Revenues in other HQ will continue to be under significant pressure also going into 2026, and then this is driven by completing the TSA with Shifted Media by the end of 2025, combined with effects from progressing on the other exit processes that I mentioned. Based on the current knowledge that we have, we expect a temporary EBITDA headwind of up to 100 million Norwegian kroner in 2026 compared to 2025. And we expect to be able to mitigate this fully in 2027. Overall, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on the medium term targets. And with that, I hand over to you, Jan Boye, and go into the Q&A.