Jann-Boje Meinecke
Good morning, and welcome to our Q2 results presentation this morning here from Oslo. My name is Jann-Boje, and I'm heading Investor Relations at Vend.
As usual, we have our CEO Christian, and our CFO PC, with us to walk you through the development and key performance in the quarter. Following the presentation, we will have a analyst Q&A session with Microsoft Teams.
Before I hand over to Christian, let me just quickly walk you through the disclaimer slide. Our presentation includes forward-looking statements, and please refer for their full text on this slide for more information.
With this, Christian, the floor is yours.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Thank you so much, Jann-Boje, and good morning, everyone. At the start of the year, I described Vend as now being a focused pure-play marketplace company moving into full-scale execution.
Our second quarter results demonstrate this execution through expanded profitability, accelerated cost management, and continued strategic progress. Group revenues ended at 1,696 million.
That's flat year-on-year, or 2% up on a constant currency basis. Our four verticals increased by 10% in constant currency, and this was partly offset by the phaseout of transition service agreement revenues from the Schibsted split.
Group EBITDA increased by 16% to 674 million, with the margin expanding around 5 percentage points to now 40%. This was driven by cost discipline and strong revenue development in real estate and recommerce.
Jobs continued to grow as monetization more than offset softer volumes. In Mobility, both Norway and our transactional businesses performed well, but Sweden remains affected by the ongoing platform stabilization and Denmark by dealer adaptation to our new business model.
On the strategic side, I will cover the platform transition and AI more in-depth on the next few slides. On costs, we're actively capturing the savings that our simplification and platform transition make possible, and we have now taken further steps ahead of plan.
We now expect OpEx excluding COGS to decline around 150 million year-on-year, and this is up from the 100 million that we indicated at Q1. PC will cover this more in detail.
We also remain disciplined on capital allocation, and the first 2 billion tranche of the buyback program is well underway, and we had repurchased around 1.6 billion as of July 10th. In summary, while parts of Mobility remain challenging in the near term, the underlying health of our business remains strong, with growing revenues in the verticals, expanding margins, and accelerated strategic delivery.
Moving then to the platform transition. In Norway, the FINN migration was completed on time.
This was a backend focused and more technical transition with no changes to the user interface or the product experience, and this was delivered without any disruptions. The legacy platform shutdown is also progressing well.
Now with FINN complete, the consumer-facing marketplace migration is essentially done with Tori, DBA, Blocket, and FINN. If we then turn to Blocket specifically, we see key metrics continue to improve.
User satisfaction, for example, has more than doubled from the post-transition low, and it's now approaching the pre-transition levels. Total Blocket visits also continue to improve.
The private car listings recovered to -9% year-on-year. This is up from the -35% that we had just after the transition.
Leads per visit in Mobility are now up 26% year-on-year. Going forward, our focus remains on the private ads, on the app experience where we have the greatest engagement, but also increasingly on the sub-verticals.
What remains then of the transition, that's fairly limited in scope: Bilbasen in Denmark, which is planned for 2027, and professional tools across our brands, most notably Dealer Hub. Completing this allows us to shift more of our resources from migration to new value-creating products and features.
On AI, we continue to experiment broadly. We're also increasingly scaling the things that we see work, and the result is better products for our users and customers, and greater internal productivity.
I'll just give you a few examples from the product side. In recommerce, for example, natural language search is now available across all markets, improving the share of users who see relevant results.
In real estate, we have now advanced the virtual staging, or the redecoration, feature. We have improved the AI-assisted valuation, and we're continuing to experiment with conversational search.
In jobs, we're deploying AI matching application tools for both candidates and recruiters. I'll show you a concrete mobility example on the next couple of slides.
I also want to comment on the productivity side, and these are some numbers from our internal survey from June that shows that 86% of our employees now use AI on a daily basis. 42% say that they save more than 4 hours per week from this, and we have doubled the number of employees who are building reusable AI solutions since our last survey in February.
All of this is managed, as we have said before, within our existing financial framework. Before we move to the verticals, I'd like to give you a concrete example of how AI is creating value in Dealer Hub.
We sit on massive amounts of data: pricing trends, buyer behavior, competitive positioning. We are now using AI to turn all of that into actionable insight on every single car on our sites, helping dealers to spot underperforming cars and sell faster.
This is live in Norway with good feedback, and it's planned for Sweden in the second half. Let me give you a short demo of this.
This is Dealer Hub, and when a dealer logs in, they can see all their active listings sorted by priority. Here on the right, there's an AI summary for every car, also the recommended actions for that car.
Let's click on this Volkswagen Polo at the top. You'll see a side panel open with the daily AI review.
This tells the dealer what's working and what isn't. Below that, you can see the recommended actions.
For this one, it's renew the ad and add missing equipment. Then before taking action, the dealer can check the data themselves: the historic performance of this car, a number of different metrics that shows how this car stacks up against the market in general to get a better understanding.
Once the car dealer has looked through all of this and is convinced, he or she can go back up and, with one click, renew ad, confirm, done, and then over to the next action, add missing equipment, and done, and over to the next car. This is AI reviews in Dealer Hub.
With that, let's go to the regular walkthrough of the verticals, and as usual, we will start with Mobility. In Norway, ARPA growth continued to be strong, up 19% for professionals, 13% for private.
This was partly driven by the annual price increase, but also further boosted by packaging and improved upselling. Car volumes in both professional and private segments increased, although this was offset by a decline in the sub-verticals.
In Sweden, the platform situation for car dealers is now stable, and as planned, we implemented the price increase on May 1st. As a result, professional ARPA increased 3% in the quarter.
This is then the net effect of the price increase, but it was partly offset by lower voluntary spend from dealers, such as reduced upselling and add-ons such as the bump, as an example. Private ARPA decreased due to various mix effects.
If we look at volumes, professional volumes increased 1% year-on-year, but pro car volumes grew by 5% in Q2, and that was boosted by a particularly strong June. As then said, offset by a decline in the sub-verticals.
For privates, the picture improved in Q2. Car listings declined only 9% compared to the 26% drop that we reported in Q1.
In Denmark, the professional ARPA at 771 Danish kroner increased compared to the 644 that we reported in Q1, and this was supported by improved package splits and renewals. Private ARPA declined.
This is due to the reversal to the free-to-list model of cars priced below 50,000 kroner that was done on DBA in September last year. On volumes, the Danish market has improved compared to Q1, and the continued decline that you see now in professional volumes is primarily driven by dealer adaptation to our new business model rather than market conditions as such.
Private volumes turned positive. This was also driven by the mentioned reversal to the free-to-list model, and the private volume is up 27% year-on-year.
On to the financials for Mobility. Revenues increased 6% in constant currency.
Classifieds revenues also grew 6% in constant currency. Strong growth in Norway at 17%, partly offset by Sweden at -2%, and Denmark at +7%.
Transactional revenues increased 13%, driven by Nettbil and Autovex. Advertising revenues declined 13%, and this was mainly driven by Sweden.
OpEx excluding COGS increased 10%, primarily driven by personnel costs and marketing investments in Sweden, where we have elevated our marketing activity to support the Blocket recovery, and it also reflects the continued investments in our C2B businesses. Overall then, EBITDA decreased 4% year-on-year to 365 million, resulting in a margin of 53%.
Then moving to real estate. In Norway, ARPA grew 16% year-on-year, with residential for sale the primary driver at 17% growth.
On volumes, residential for sale was flat year-on-year. This is a very resilient outcome, I think, reflecting sustained high activity in the Norwegian housing market.
Total new approved ads were down 3%, but that was driven by the rental and leisure home segments. Then moving to Finland.
Here, following the shift to the fixed monthly pricing that we introduced at the beginning of the year, we are now tracking the number of offices as our primary volume metric, and ARPO, or average revenue per office, as our pricing metric. In Q2, ARPO was up 5% quarter-on-quarter, driven by package upgrades and increased value-added services.
We had 1,562 offices active on Oikotie, and that was stable quarter-on-quarter. This means that real estate delivered another strong quarter.
Classifieds revenues grew 13% year-on-year, with solid growth across all segments. Norway contributed 15% growth, with residential for sale then as the key driver.
Finland grew total revenues 18% year-on-year, and this was driven by the move to the subscription-based model in Q1. Also, our transactional businesses, the rental businesses, continued to perform well, with revenues up 18%, led by Qasa and HomeQ in Sweden.
On costs, OpEx excluding COGS increased 7%, reflecting continued investments to grow the business. EBITDA then reached 248 million, which is up 24% year-on-year, with the margin expanding to 58%.
Moving to jobs. Here, we continue to deliver strong ARPA growth, with ARPA up 15% year-on-year in Q2.
This was driven by two factors. First, upsell products performed really well, and we also continued to refine our discount model.
On volumes, new approved ads were down 9% year-on-year. This was partly due to timing of Easter, which fell differently from last year.
If we look at the year-to-date, the volume decline is 6%, which mirrors the publicly available figures from Statistics Norway, SSB. Then on the job financials, revenues increased 5% year-on-year as the ARPA growth of 15% more than offset the 9% volume decline.
OpEx excluding COGS increased 9%. This was driven by planned investments in the team to support continued revenue growth, as well as some temporarily higher consultant costs.
This led to EBITDA growth of 2% year-on-year to 275 million, and a margin of 58%. Then finally, we have recommerce.
Here, the transacted gross merchandise value showed a positive picture in Q2. Norway continued to grow, with GMV up 17%.
Importantly, following the platform transition, Blocket in Sweden returned to GMV growth, which is a positive signal, 2% up. Finland delivered a strong development, with GMV up 32%, and Denmark up 68%, although from a smaller base.
Take rates also remained solid across all markets: Norway at 16%, Sweden at 10, Finland 17, and Denmark at 15%. Recommerce then grew revenues 21% year-on-year on a constant currency basis.
Transactional revenues grew 20%. This was driven by the strong volume growth across all markets.
Classifieds revenues increased 13%, and advertising revenues increased 17% year-on-year, also with growth across all markets. Gross margins continued to improve.
This was supported by a number of successful COGS and pricing initiatives in recommerce. OpEx excluding COGS increased 5%, and this was driven by marketing investment, a deliberate choice to support the volume growth.
I think it's really good to see the continued EBITDA development and improvement. EBITDA increased by 23 million year-on-year to -33 million, and margin improved 14 percentage points to 14% in this quarter.
Keep in mind that this improvement came despite intensified marketing in the quarter, and recommerce continues to advance towards its medium-term targets. With that, I'll hand it over to PC to go through the financials in more detail.
Per Christian Mørland
Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Let's dive into the financials for the second quarter.
In total, revenues on constant currency basis increased 2% compared to Q2 last year. Vertical revenues, as mentioned, grew 10%, driven by solid double-digit revenue growth in both real estate, recommerce, while we see a mid-single-digit revenue growth in Mobility and in jobs.
Revenues in Other HQ declined 72%, as expected, driven by the exit of TSAs with Schibsted Media. Total EBITDA ended at 674 million, 16% up from last year.
EBITDA growth is driven by real estate, recommerce, and Other HQ. The vertical performance is well covered by Christian, but let me give you some additional comments on the Other HQ segment.
Despite a significant revenue drop, Other HQ EBITDA improved from -114 million in Q2 last year to -81 million in Q2 this year. This is driven by accelerated cost takeout more than offsetting the revenue decline from the lost TSA services, in addition to some negative one-offs that were carried in the first half of 2025.
Now, let's look closer at the cost development in the quarter. As before, this slide shows OpEx excluding COGS.
In total, OpEx excluding COGS in the quarter declined by 10% compared to last year. Other costs decreased 33%, driven by positive effects from our simplification and cost-efficiency agenda.
Cloud costs and other IT-related costs are significantly reduced after the exit of the different TSAs. Marketing costs increased 23% year-on-year, driven by supporting our growth agenda in the verticals in the quarter.
Personnel costs increased by 2% from increased personnel costs in Mobility, real estate, and in jobs, largely offset by decline in recommerce and Other HQ. Total FTEs ended at 1,648 at the end of Q2, compared to 1,660 at the end of Q1.
The reduction during the quarter is driven by a reorganization reducing around 30 FTEs in our common product and tech units. Then also, as mentioned by Christian, during June, we executed another reorganization with reducing around 70 FTEs within the Mobility vertical and the support function.
This is not included in the Q2 FTE numbers and takes effect from July 1st. The accelerated reorganization initiatives with reduction of around 100 FTEs during the quarter is enabled by our solid progress on the company simplification and the platform transition agenda.
These were earlier planned to be executed at the end of '26 into 2027. Overall, despite the limited revenue growth, the cost reduction resulted in almost 5 percentage points improvement in OpEx over revenue, with the ratio improving from 57% in Q2 last year to 52% in Q2 '26.
Our operating profit for the quarter increased to 448 million, compared to 330 million in Q2 last year. The positive development in operating profit mainly reflects the improved EBITDA and somewhat lower net other expenses compared to last year.
The reported other expenses in Q2 this year includes 95 million of costs related to the accelerated reorganization from the previous slide. The fair value of our 14% ownership stake in Adevinta remain more or less unchanged at 7.2 billion Norwegian kroner in Q2.
A small gain of 53 million Norwegian kroner was recognized as financial income in the quarter. In totality, net profit for the group ended at 401 million Norwegian kroner.
Now, let's move to cash flow from continuing operations. Cash flow from operating activities ended at 517 million, an increase of more than 200 million compared to last year.
The increase is driven by the improved EBITDA, but also a phasing of taxes paid. Cash flow from investing activities ended at -62 million, including 31 million in proceeds from the sale of Insr, Vello, and Bookis.
CapEx in the quarter ended at 105 million, down 27 million compared to last year. A clear majority of our CapEx continued to be associated with the ongoing platform transition.
Then finally, cash flow from financing activities ended at -1.9 billion Norwegian kroner, impacted by the mentioned share buyback program of 1.4 billion in the quarter and a payout of dividend of around 0.5 billion. In accordance with our principles for capital allocation, we continue to return excess cash to our shareholders.
At the Q1 results, we announced a new share buyback program of total 4 billion, split in two equal tranches. During the second quarter, as mentioned, we bought back shares for 1.4 billion of the first 2 billion tranche.
As of July 10th, total share buybacks amount to approximately 1.6 billion, and we expect to complete this tranche during Q3 this year. In May, as we've talked about, we paid out an ordinary cash dividend of 2.50 Norwegian kroner per share, up from 2.25 Norwegian kroner per share last year.
The total amount is 527 million Norwegian kroner. At the end of Q2, we had a strong balance sheet with a net cash position of almost 2 billion Norwegian kroner, and this gives us ample financial headroom to continue the share buyback program in the second half.
Wrapping up, I'd like to reiterate that our strategy, our medium-term targets, and our capital allocation principles remained unchanged as presented at the CMD in '24. On outlook in 2026, the vertical revenue outlook remained unchanged from Q1: real estate, jobs, and recommerce to grow in line with the medium-term targets, and Mobility to grow mid- to high single digits.
For Other HQ, we now expect revenue reduction in '26 of around 350 million, driven by the termination of TSAs with Schibsted Media and the divestments of non-core assets. As mentioned by Christian, we expect OpEx excluding COGS to decline by 150 million in '26 versus 2025, up from the previous guidance of around 100 million communicated before.
This reflects the accelerated cost initiatives that we have taken in Q2, while we retain the flexibility to invest into growth, primarily in marketing. With that, I hand over to Jann-Boje to guide us through the Q&A.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, PC. Let me just look here at Microsoft Teams.
Already some raised hands, and first in line is Joe from UBS. Good morning, Joe.
Please unmute and go ahead.
Joe Barnet-Lamb
Excellent. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
My first question is on professional ARPA growth in Mobility in Sweden. You reported 3%, which is only a few percentage points improvement from 1Q, although you obviously increased prices in May.
You mentioned the underlying price rises were partly offset by lower voluntary upsell. Can you please quantify the drivers behind this, underlying price versus upsell versus any other factors?
Secondly, sort of given the sustained issues here, can you also talk to us about the evolution of the competitive environment in Swedish Mobility, please? Then finally, you previously announced you received a notification from the Norwegian Tax Administration related to VAT treatment.
I think the potential exposure was 500 million NOK. Could you please just update us on that process?
Is it still relevant? That'd be helpful.
Thank you.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Yeah. On the first question, on the professional ARPA, I don't think we can give a lot more flavor, but it is right, as you said.
The ARPA growth was 3%, and of course, the underlying price increase was higher than that, but that was offset by lower voluntary spend. For example, the bump ratio went down a fair bit in Sweden as a result.
That is kind of the choices that the car dealers can make in the market. We've seen that also at previous price changes, and it's something that we have been usually been able to over time recover through active work with our customers.
Then on the second question, on competitive situation, I think we still remain in a very strong position in Sweden. Of course, the recovery also strengthened that.
We have not seen any, let's say, negative development on the competitive side. Tradera is, of course, there.
They now have around 40,000 cars, compared to 120,000, 130,000 cars for Blocket, and we are still in a, let's say, 17 times larger traffic situation than them. We are in a robust situation, competition-wise, I would say.
Then
Per Christian Mørland
on your third question on the VAT case, there is no new information at this stage. Yeah.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Maybe just one more comment on the competition. We don't see any substitution effect to Tradera.
It's more that some professional car dealers then choose to multi-home. They have their ads both on Blocket and Tradera.
They're not kind of choosing away Blocket.
Joe Barnet-Lamb
Thank you.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Okay. Next in line, we have Andrew from Barclays.
Good morning, Andrew. Please go ahead.
Andrew Ross
Morning, guys. Three from me as well, please.
First one is on the trends for C2C new listing volumes in Swedish Mobility. I think you gave the headline stat of -9% for the quarter, but can you give us a sense as to how that has trended through the quarter, and give us a sense as to what the exit run rate was in June, and ideally into July?
Maybe building on that, it looks like the non-car areas are maybe weaker than in cars, just give us some color around that. Second question is on your guidance for OpEx ex-COGS for the year.
Just to state the obvious, it's down more in absolute terms in H1 than you're guiding to for the year, what are the factors as to why OpEx ex-COGS is going to grow in absolute terms in H2? Then third question is on CapEx, which obviously came down in Q2, but it had been up in Q1, it's run-rating about 245 million NOK for H1.
Is that a kind of sensible run rate for the year? PC, maybe talk us through how you reduce that CapEx to improve cash conversion into 2027?
Thanks.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Yeah. On the private volume side, we have seen a continuous improvement since the transition.
Post-transition, it was -35%. In Q1, reported -26%, I believe, and now we are reporting -9%.
It is a clear positive trend. It's hard to say much about July.
It's the summer vacation, I don't think we should draw too much out of that. We feel that we are on the, let's say, the right trend and the right momentum in this development.
It is also true, as you said, it's better in cars than it is in the sub-verticals. Then,
Per Christian Mørland
the question on the OpEx guidance and outlook. Yes, you're correct.
We are down by around 200 million after 6 months. Remember, there's a lot of phasing last year with first half carrying a lot of TSA costs that we didn't carry in the same extent in the second half, and also the first half last year carried quite significant negative one-offs, it is quite easy comparison.
Then, the other factor, as I was quite clear on, we have also retained flexibility to invest into growth, and particularly then in marketing, so that's gives you some color on that. Then on CapEx, from our side, CapEx is mostly capitalization of our own people, so as we become a smaller organization, that also carries everything else equal, a lower CapEx level, and we're happy where we are.
I think looking ahead, we don't have any new guidance other than the 5% to sales indication from the CMD in '24, we are working ourselves towards that, and I think we are at shooting distance at this point in time.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks for good questions, Andrew. Then next in line is Marcus from J.P.
Marcus. Good morning, Marcus.
Marcus Diebel
Hi, everyone. PC, just to follow up on your marketing comments.
Just wanted to understand a bit more how directionally we should think about marketing, not only next quarter or next two quarters, but also conceptually longer term. It seems that some of your peers talk about more brand marketing, putting this in sort of the estimates.
Where does Vend stand on this? Yeah.
Again, not only in the next two quarters, but more conceptually also longer term, what do you think about brand marketing and where does it go? Thank you.
Yeah. No,
Per Christian Mørland
thanks for that, Marcus. I'm not going to comment in detail by quarter because we need to have the flexibility to adapt linked to our commercial agenda and also the competitive situation in the different sort of markets and verticals.
We are, as you also see in Q1, we are investing quite heavily into growing our number one position in Finland. We're investing, taking the long-term perspective on Blocket, making sure that we recover as soon as we can in Sweden, and you should expect us to continue to do that in the second half as well.
Then so it's important for us to have the flexibility to increase investments if we find that necessary and not be too limited by a very sort of what becomes now very short-term outlook statement for the second half focusing on an absolute cost level. If we look sort of overall, I think, in general, we're quite happy.
We've been quite successful on the brand marketing side. We actually see an opportunity to improve both, I would say, on the levels and invest more, but also to get more out of performance marketing.
We're coming a bit from behind and we're actually building up also organizational capabilities to do a step-up around growth marketing.
Marcus Diebel
Thanks, Marcus. Thank you.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, and let's move on to Fredrik from Handelsbanken. Hi, Fredrik.
Fredrik Lithell
Hi there. Thank you for taking my question.
I'm going to keep it to one. I want to come back to the OpEx side.
You have been very clear on your ambitions to take the OpEx now down with 150 million, so that's very clear. When you look at the divisions, you have an increase of OpEx in 10% in Mobility and 7 in real estate and 9 in jobs.
What happened in Q2? Was that sort of necessities due to the sort of shift in platforms and more, or was it temporary staff, or how should we view that trend we saw in Q2?
Yeah.
Per Christian Mørland
No, thanks for the question, Fredrik. If you also take us back to Q1, when we gave you a quite sort of detailed breakdown of the FTE development since the CMD, split by our different verticals and functions, you can see that we actually are operating with more FTEs in our vertical, particularly then in Mobility and real estate.
Part of that is because those are key investment areas for us on the core classifieds, but we also carry our scaling businesses with C2B models in Mobility with Nettbil, but also with Qasa and HomeQ in real estate. That is part when you look only at the cost picture, you need to bring that into consideration.
Then also in the quarter, as I mentioned, we have stepped up on marketing. That will fluctuate from quarter to quarter, and but Q2 was more than 20% higher in marketing basically across all our verticals.
I commented on that also to Marcus' question. I think that gives you at least some perspectives.
I think I leave with that.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Maybe one additional comment, because you pointed out Mobility specifically, and there the increase in OpEx came from both marketing to support Blocket recovery, but also personnel costs. That trend on the personnel costs, that is addressed by the reorganization that we now did in June, you'll see a different trend in the second half.
Fredrik Lithell
Perfect. Very clear.
Thank you.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, Fredrik. Then we have Henriette from Danske.
Good morning, Henriette.
Henriette Trondsen
Thank you. Good morning.
Two questions, if I may. The first is the Other Headquarters EBITDA.
Do you think that the current EBITDA level is a suitable estimate for the remainder of '26, and also, could you give any indications of this level for next year? Also, secondly on Mobility, on the Denmark professional volumes, can you give any comments on what you have seen on volume trends in Denmark recently, and also expected timeline for dealer behavior to normalize in relation to your guidance?
Thank you.
Per Christian Mørland
I can start on Other HQ EBITDA. Our expectation is the same as before, to have a deficit on Other HQ on a similar level as we saw in 2025, around 300 million.
I think we, if I remember correctly, we're around 150 million down after 6 months, you should expect a similar total development in the second half. We have not given any specific guidance beyond that, but we are working as part of our company simplification agenda and we becoming smaller, you should also expect that over time, that the deficit of Other HQ will become smaller.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
On the professional volume side in Denmark, in Q1 we said that there was an effect both from, let's say, the underlying market and from dealer adaptation to our new model. Now the market has come back, the volume decline that you see now is purely from the dealer adaptations.
We have worked quite a bit with our customers during the quarter. Mostly we have been focused on, let's say, customer satisfaction, and one key initiative that we have done is to roll out what we call 2-for-1, where you get both, let's say, a sale for cash and a leasing ad at the same time.
This is something that the dealers have been very interested in, and we see good pickup of that product, but it's not something that they pay for. The other thing we have been working on, which is a bit more longer term, is to improve their republishing of ads.
I think that will over time also drive some recovery of the volume.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, Christian. Very very clear.
Then we have Will from BNP. Good morning.
Will Packer
Hi there. Many thanks for taking my questions.
This is Will Packer from BNP Paribas. A couple from me, please.
We've heard from a lot of your peers on LLM traffic in the property and auto verticals that the impact is pretty benign so far, very low levels of referral traffic from LLMs, and it's not impacting direct traffic. Could you talk a little bit about how LLM traffic is impacting your jobs business and your generalist business?
Is it the same message, which is the impact is minimal and referral traffic is low? It'd be interesting to draw out any different dynamics there.
Then my second question is, in recent history, there's been some tensions with the agents in Norway in your real estate business. It's encouraging to see the operating trends fairly back on track.
Could you just talk about the evolution of the relationship there, what's been positive, what's been less positive? Any color would be helpful.
Thank you.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Yes, very good questions. On the second question first, we have very good relationships and continue to be in good dialogue with all our real estate customers in Norway.
On the LLM question, we see the same picture as you've referred that others are seeing: very low referral traffic from the LLMs, still below 0.5%, and hardly increasing, perhaps slightly. That is also true for jobs.
We also see actually from our own, let's say, conversational search efforts that we do that some of the feedback from users is that when they use the AI search, they lack some of the, let's say, control that they have on the regular search experience. I think that might be one reason why they don't use the LLMs so much for search.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Okay. Thanks for a good question, Will.
Then next, we have Marcus from SEB. Please go ahead.
Marcus, can you hear us? Seems like you're unmuted, but we can't hear you, Marcus.
I suggest to put you back in line, and then we can move on to Martine from Nordea this morning. Martine, if you're ready, please go ahead.
Martine Kverne
Perfect. Thank you.
I have three questions. I'm sorry if something is going to be repeated.
First on Adevinta, is it possible to have some more color on the underlying performance now in H1?
Per Christian Mørland
Okay. I can answer that.
Unfortunately we cannot give more specific information than what we have published in the Q2 report. In Q1, we gave the update for '25 on both bottom and top line, and also the net debt.
As you can see in the valuation, it's broadly stable, and that goes that there's a small currency effect, but if you sort of exclude that, the valuation is stable, with a quite stable multiple development in the peer group, and also an unchanged sort of underlying assumptions on the performance. What you can read into that is that we have kept sort of increasing that, and it had never gone down, we're happy with the operational performance in Adevinta, both what we have seen, what we expect for this year, but also going into next year.
That goes for both the top line and the bottom line.
Martine Kverne
Perfect. Thank you.
Very clear. On the 70 FTEs for the restructuring, you talked now a little bit about it.
Is it possible to say something on additional cost cut from this, or is that included in your additional 50 million now that you guide for on the OpEx cost cut base?
Per Christian Mørland
This is included.
Martine Kverne
Perfect. Just on the Mobility, the reason for the advertising sales being much more down in this quarter, are there any specific reason for this, or should we expect this to normalize into H2?
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
I think we had a similar pattern also in Q1. The sales force in Sweden has been very concerned with, let's say, the overall Blocket Mobility situation, I think that is at least part of the reason for the weak results in advertising.
I hope to see that when the situation normalizes for Blocket in general, you will also see the advertising situation normalize over time, but it's hard to predict the timing of that.
Martine Kverne
That's fine. Okay.
Thank you very much. Very clear.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, Martine. Then we go to Giles from Jefferies.
Good morning, Giles.
Giles Thorne
Morning. Thank you.
My first question is on recommerce. In fact, both questions are on recommerce.
First one is that there's some speculation, Christian, that you're close to launching cross-border listings. If you'd like to confirm that, and if you are about to launch cross-border listings, some commentary on how you expect that to impact your main metrics within the recommerce business?
Then secondly, sticking with recommerce, a philosophical question: Why not drop your take rate to drive scale benefits that can reduce your overall cost to serve? Thanks.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
On the cross-border, we are not commenting on that for competitive reasons, sorry for that. On the pricing, I think what we are is that we are evolving our pricing logic quite a lot on a per-category basis, and even per-price-point basis, and so on.
We are optimizing both capture rate and volume at the same time, I think we've found a good balance on that, and that will continue to evolve also going forward.
Giles Thorne
A follow-up on that second answer. I'm assuming you don't feel boxed in by your medium-term guidance for recommerce, you have the agility, or the room to maneuver around the interplay between take rate and cost to serve within your guidance envelope.
Hopefully, that makes sense.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
I can say that we see that we are on a good trajectory to reach the medium-term guidance for recommerce, and I think we have flexibility, as we see it, within that to make the tradeoffs necessary in volume and take rate.
Giles Thorne
Thank you.
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Thanks, Giles. Then Marcus, let's try again.
Marcus from SEB.
Marcus Widén
Hi. Can you hear me?
Jann-Boje Meinecke
Yes.
Marcus Widén
Great. I would like to go back to professional Sweden, because it looks like your volumes in June are very high compared to April and May.
Then you mentioned this effect with less bump, but it seems to be higher volumes. Is there a dynamic here within the new packages that we should be aware of, that this is a dynamic also for the coming quarters, and also on the ARPA, is there some lag effects or timing effects from when prices are increased to when they are actually booked in the numbers?
That's the first one.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
I don't think you should read too much into the volume numbers with relation to bumps and so on. I don't think there is a connection between that.
Per Christian Mørland
I can comment that there's no delayed effect when we increase pricing, you get an immediate impact on the revenues. There is this effect that Christian mentioned around, let's say, the bump level.
We saw a similar pattern, if you remember Q1 in '25, where we increased pricing, there was a sort of temporary reduction in the bump rates that then recovered, and we don't know what's going to happen going forward, but we expect this sort of a normalization. In that sense, there is some delayed effect if we see a similar situation as we saw last year.
Marcus Widén
That's clear. Thank you.
Then moving to the ARPA, professional ARPA in Denmark in Mobility, it seems to be up quite a bit from Q1. You spoke about more upselling and uptake of products.
Can you elaborate more on the seasonality here or how should we think about the ARPA in Denmark, which seems to have been quite much better in Q2 than Q1?
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
There isn't much to add beyond the commentary I already made. There is no seasonality effects into the ARPA, as far as I know.
Marcus Widén
That's good. Thank you.
Okay. Then
Jann-Boje Meinecke
I don't see more questions or hands here, I think with this, we can round off the session today and wish you all a great summer.
Per Christian Mørland
Thank you.
Christian Printzell Halvorsen
Thank you.
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