Ströer SE & Co. KGaA

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Struer Q1 Figures 2026 conference call. I am Sandra, the course call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been listed in only mode and the conference has been recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and 1 on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and 0. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand over to Udo Müller, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Yes, thank you, Sandra. Dear investors, dear analysts, welcome to today's Q1 2026 earnings call. Let us dive straight into the numbers and details. On the top line, revenues in Q1 amounted to €495.6 million representing an organic growth of 1.1% compared to 475.5 million euros in Q1 2025. On a reported basis, revenue grew by 4%. Moving down the P&L, adjusted EBITDA reached 119.3 million euros compared to 117.4 million euros last year. This represents a stable year-on-year development with EBITDA adjusted remaining essentially flat at a higher margin level. On adjusted EBIT, we reported 41.7 million euros up from 39.7 million euros in Q1 2025. This corresponds to a 5% increase, highlighting that operating efficiency improvements continue to support earnings despite moderate top-line momentum. Adjusted net income amounted to 70.6 million euros compared to 16.2 million euros in the prior year period. This translates into a 9% year-on-year increase. Turning to cash flow, free cash flow adjusted improved significantly. In Q1 2026, we reported an adjusted free cash flow of minus 9.7 million euros compared to minus 35.1 million euros in Q1 2025. This represents an improvement of 72% year-on-year. Henning will elaborate on this in detail later in the finance section. Finally, CapEx before M&A amounted to 16.5 million euros, down 8% year-on-year from 70.9 million euros. This level of investment reflects our continued focus on disciplined capital allocation while maintaining the operational flexibility required to support our core activities. All in all, Q1 2026 demonstrates a stable and resilient financial performance. We deliver positive organic revenue growth, protected profitability at both EBITDA and EBIT level, improved net income, and achieved a very strong improvement in free cash flow, all by keeping capital expenditure under control. Let's have a look at the news numbers in the middle of the chart first. As always, and please keep in mind that those show gross rate card developments, and the net revenue is on average six to seven points lower. On a like-for-like and cross basis, the out-of-home category is outperforming all other media except for desktop mobile. With a share of around 10%, out-of-home maintains its strong position in the German advertising market. Translating the gross need numbers into net revenue, in Q1 2026, not only that market in total was negative by around minus five to minus six. At the same time our total out of phone business was up by more than 5%. DOH alone delivered 12% growth and programmatic DOH grew at the same rate. So far my remarks and with that I hand over to Henning.

Thank you Udo and a very good morning everybody. With that let us start the final section with a quick look at the Q1 26 P&L where Udo already has touched upon the key items. In total, we delivered a decent set of results for the first quarter. Given the good performance of the out-of-home sector and the digital and dialogue segment, we were able to more than offset the comparatively weaker performance of our third segment, data as a service and e-commerce. Overall, these developments enabled us to increase revenue by around 4% to 496 million. Reported growth includes a net scope effect of approximately 400 basis points, support from the acquisition of Amivida in October last year, offset by minus 40 basis points from the disposal of the Statista strategy unit at the beginning of this year, and a currency headwind of 50 basis points, minus 50 basis points, primarily US dollar related at Statista. Excluding these effects, organic growth came in at 1.1%. EBITDA adjusted amounted to €119 million, €2 million or 2% higher compared with Q1 2025. The exceptional items for the quarter were €9.2 million after €2.5 million in the prior year, mainly due to restructuring measures. Accordingly, reported EBITDA was down by 4%, from €115 million to €110 million. Depreciation and amortization were basically unchanged, with €80 million compared to €81 million in Q1 2025. With that, reported EBIT for the quarter came in at €30 million, some €4 million lower compared with Q1 2025. The financial result was €-17 million up to €-15 million in the prior year period. This is due to currency effects. Accordingly, earnings before tax came in at €13 million compared to €18 million in Q1 of the prior year. The tax rate was basically unchanged with around 30% in the reporting period. And with that, the tax result follows the development of the EBT. All in all, reported net income for the quarter came in at close to €9 million after €13 million in Q1 2025. Adjustments were up to €5 million, mainly because of higher pre-tax exceptionals as described before. Accordingly, net income adjusted was €80 million after €16 million in the prior year. Let us now switch over to the cash flow. Main driver for the cash flow development was working capital, which followed seasonality with an outflow of €12 million. This is 26 million Euro better than in last year. While earnings, as we have just seen, were below prior year and IRPX 16 lease payments were just a notch higher, cash outs for taxes, others and investments were a notch lower. Cash outs for interest were on prior year level, whereas lower interest rates are being offset by higher debt. So altogether, free cash flow adjusted was minus 10 million Euro after minus 35 million Euro in Q1 25. Let me come to the net debt development. In the sequential view from the end of Q4-25 to the end of Q1-26, net debt was up by roughly €10 million in accordance with the adjusted free cash flow for the first quarter of minus €10 million. Net debt year over year was up by €17 million to €881 million, including adjusted free cash flow of €132 million, our dividend payment last year of almost minus €129 million, dividend payments to minority shareholders of minus 13 million, minor M&A payments of minus 2 million, and cash out for the share buyback of minus 2 million. The remaining difference of minus 3 million euro is, among others, due to an increase of overpayments from customers, a decrease of accrued interest expenses, and lower financial liabilities recognized from profit transfer agreements at companies with minority interest. With that, our leverage ratio increased slightly compared to the prior year period to now 2.33 times, where there's 2.18 in Q1-25. Let us now take a look at the performance of the individual operating segments in the past quarter. As is customary, let's start with out-of-home media. In Q1-26, we were able to increase our revenue by 5.4%. With revenue growth of 12%, digital out-of-home was the key driver supported by jumpstart of our flagship billboard, The Whale. in the Hamburg main station. While out of home, saw a slight decrease of 0.6%, the services division grew by nearly 17%, mainly owed to newly won clients. Overall, we increased segment revenue from 210 to 220 million euros. Adjusted EBITDA grew on a comparable basis from 86 million euros to 97 million euros, or 12%. The adjusted EBITDA margin followed a similar trend, improving from 41% to nearly 44%. A similar picture emerges when looking at the adjusted EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 effects, our cash EBITDA proxy. This increased by nearly 33% to 44 million euros, while the margin improvement by over 4 percentage points from just under 16% over 20%. Lease expenses before IFRS 16 were 65 million euros, 29.4% of sales, which is less than in last year's quarter, 30.2%. The delta between both EBITDA figures, the effect from IRF-16, decreased slightly year over year. As explained in our last call, owing to recent renewals, we expect a reduced fixed trend exposure going forward. In the digital and dialogue segment, revenue increased by 12%, from 206 million to 231 million euros. This positive trend was driven by the dialogue division, which achieved organic revenue growth of over 8%. Taking into account the successful acquisition of AmiVida, revenue rose by 26% to €136 million. Revenue in the digital segment amounted to €95 million in Q1-26, as positive programmatic public video performance could not offset or not fully offset lower revenues in the online media. This trend is reflected in adjusted EBITDA and came in at €27 million or 11.6% from a margin perspective due to a revenue-driven earnings reduction at our content business. As expected, performance in our third segment fell short of the results from the same quarter last year. Revenue declined in both sub-segments, causing total segment revenues to drop from €91 million to €79 million. Let's take a closer look at this development. Developments in e-commerce should be viewed in light of the weak consumer environment. At the same time, Assam's online business was migrated to a new platform. With that, revenue for the quarter came in at 42 million euro, minus 14% below the prior year. In addition to the sale of Statista's strategy and consulting business, data as a service was impacted by the weak US dollar, which during the transition from a seed-based to a data and volume-based business model could not yet be offset by growth in Statista's core business. Excluding scope and FX rates development, segment revenue declined organically by minus 9.4%. Adjusted EBITDA came at 6 million euro compared with 11 million euro in the same quarter of the previous year. With that, let me hand you over back to Udo for the outlook and closing remarks.