Q2 2026 TX Group AG Earnings Call
Speaker #1: On time.
Speaker #2: Ready? So we— we get going? Then an official welcome to all of you. Thank you for joining our analyst conference for the first half year 2026.
Speaker #2: here on our side is my right, Wolf Benkendorff, our CFO, and also present are— I go around the table as they sit. Christoph Malti, the CEO of Goldbach, Dana Brechbühl, the CEO of 20 Minutes, Tanja zu Waldeck, the Chief Operating Officer of the group, Jessica Peppel-Schultz, the CEO of Tamedia, and Daniel Mönch, the Chief Portfolio Officer and, of course, Urs Fehr, our Chief Communication Officer and responsible for investors relations.
Speaker #2: I will kick it off, then Wolf will run you through our half-year report, and all of us are here to answer any questions you might have in the second part of this conference.
Speaker #2: Overall, as you have already seen, our activities and investments have developed nicely in the first half-year of 2026, and we are pleased with that development.
Speaker #2: As for our portfolio, SMG continued to grow— to grow across all business areas, resulting in double-digit sale growth and also a margin expansion. And in addition to this nice operative development, we have today announced the leadership succession which also we are very pleased with, and we will not go into more detail here regarding SMG as they have communicated themselves their half-year results today, and also have had a media conference and analyst conference to answer any questions regarding— with regard to their business.
Speaker #2: We are also pleased with the other main participation of our group: JobCloud. It has not been growing, but it has maintained a very strong position, and we know that in that business the performance is highly correlated to the open job postings, and they are not in a favorable development, which is explaining the top-line development, but the company as such is very well positioned and is investing in the development of its products and the use of new technologies.
Speaker #2: So we are also very pleased with JobCloud. We do not see any structural issues there, but the correlation with the open job postings, which explains the development of the top line.
Speaker #2: Regarding the media companies, Goldbach Tamedia and 20 Minutes, they all have increased their digital focus, which is necessary for a sustainable development, and at the same time the transformation of the group has been brought to its shape where we want it to get to.
Speaker #2: The decentralization is completed, and that has also helped the media companies to be more agile and to develop the way they have with Tanja zu Waldeck leaving the group for personal reasons and the completion of that decentralization the organization of the group will be further streamlined.
Speaker #2: Daniel Mönch takes over the responsibility for Goldbach, for the Goldbach activities at the group level, as well as the central group services, that means that in addition to his current role as Chief Portfolio Officer he will also assume the role of Chief Operating Officer of the group as from the 1st of September.
Speaker #2: The CEOs of the two publishing companies, Tamedia and 20 Minutes, and our CFO, they will report directly to the board and to myself. As you can see, a lot has been going on, and a lot will be going on.
Speaker #2: First, the group development for the first half-year is encouraging. We see tangible progress. momentum and continue investing in the transformation and expansion of our activities.
Speaker #2: Tamedia and Goldbach Media are in a good market position, but also face major challenges. And we'll have to further develop. Second, our capital allocation follows clear priorities.
Speaker #2: We want to preserve a strong balance sheet and financial flexibility, pursue attractive opportunities, as well as we want to meet the dividend expectations of our investors.
Speaker #2: We invest where we see attractive long-term value creation opportunities within our portfolio. That is the case for SMG, where we have an increased our stake and our, as already mentioned, very pleased with the development.
Speaker #2: Finally, I would want to mention our share back program, through which we return capital to our shareholders. Third, our real estate portfolio represents another important source of long-term value creation.
Speaker #2: We have made progress. We have to continue to work hard. But today we are in a good and promising position, and with this I would like to hand over to Wolf to run us through the half-year report.
Speaker #1: Thank you, Pietro.
Speaker #3: Good afternoon. My name is Wolf Benkendorff, and I'm the CFO of the TX Group. I have the pleasure to walk you through our financial performance for the first half of 2026.
Speaker #3: As usual, I will start with the group results, then look at cash flow and our balance sheet before going into the performance of our individual businesses.
Speaker #3: So let me start with the overall picture. The first half of 2026 shows a clear improvement in our operating performance. Adjusted EBIT increased substantially from 39 million to 67 million, and the adjusted EBIT margin rose from 9 to almost 17%.
Speaker #3: This improvement was achieved despite a 6% decline in revenue to 402 million. This is an important development. The transformation measures we have implemented over the last years are increasingly visible in a structurally lower cost.
Speaker #3: Cash generation was also strong. Free cash flow before M&A increased to 104 million, compared with 82 million in the previous year. And our balance sheet remains very solid.
Speaker #3: The equity ratio stands at 77%. Cash outflows were significant, reflecting dividends, the ongoing share buyback program, investments in SMG, investments in the fintech portfolio, and the construction of a new building at our headquarters.
Speaker #3: Despite this, net liquidity excluding lease liabilities declined only moderately to 253 million. Let us look at the development in more detail. Revenue declined by 24 million or 6%.
Speaker #3: There are three main drivers behind this. First, Tamedia continues to face structural decline of the print market. Print subscription and single copy sales declined by 11 million.
Speaker #3: In addition, print and logistics revenue declined by another 4 million, mainly due to the closure of the printing center in Lausanne. Second, 20 Minutes completed its exit from daily print at the end of last year.
Speaker #3: As a result, print revenue was 10 million lower than in the first half of 2025. Importantly, 20 Minutes was able to offset part of this decline through strong growth in digital advertising revenue.
Speaker #3: And third, the portfolio streamlining at Goldbach reduced reported revenue by 4 million, following the sale or closure of Spliqi Goldverteils and Adjunt. So part of this revenue decline is deliberate, and reflects our strategic focus on pure, attractive activity.
Speaker #3: Now let us turn to EBITDA. Despite the lower revenue, EBITDA increased by almost 40%. The main driver was a reduction in operating expenses of 47 million.
Speaker #3: The reduction was broad-based across personal expenses, other operating expenses, and material and service costs. The year-on-year comparison also benefited from 10 million of one-off expenses that were included in the prior year cost base.
Speaker #3: Even excluding these effects, organic operating expenses declined by 33 million. This means that a significant part of the improvement reflects structural changes to our cost base.
Speaker #3: Another important contributor was SMG. Its contribution to our result increased by 9 million. As a result, adjusted EBIT increased strongly by 74% to 67 million, and the margin reached 16.7%.
Speaker #3: This slide illustrates another important structural development in our portfolio. The digital share of group revenue increased from 57 to 60%. This development is particularly visible in advertising.
Speaker #3: The digital share increased from 46 to 52%. A major driver is 20 Minutes. Following the discontinuation of the daily print edition at the end of 2025, 20 Minutes is now a fully digital media business.
Speaker #3: At Tamedia, digital advertising and digital subscriptions also continued to grow. So while the structural decline in print remains a headwind for total revenue, the composition of our revenue continues to move in the right direction.
Speaker #3: This is important for the future success of the group. The shift towards digital improves the quality and stability of our revenue mix, and reduces our exposure to structurally declining print revenues.
Speaker #3: On the reported income statement, the lower cost base and the higher contribution from associates lifted EBITDA to 113 million and supported significant margin expansion.
Speaker #3: We recognize an impairment related to Goldbach excluding out-of-home. As a consequence, reported EBIT amounted to minus 10 million, the financial result was minus 1.4 million, the main negative effect was a 5 million revaluation of the purchase price liability related to neo advertising.
Speaker #3: This was partly offset by positive effects, including the disposal gain from Goldverteiler. Reported EAT therefore amounted to minus 14.6 million. As in previous years, our adjusted income statement removes effects that we do not consider representative of the underlying operating performance.
Speaker #3: The largest adjustment this year is the 46 million goodwill impairment, which is fully adjusted. We also adjust 24 million of amortization of intangible assets for business combinations from fully consolidated companies, and 5.7 million from SMG.
Speaker #3: In addition, there are small adjustments related to the closure of our printing centers and several items in the financial result. After these adjustments, EBIT amounts to 67 million, compared with 38 million in the prior year.
Speaker #3: So despite lower revenue, the underlying profitability of the group improved substantially, supported by structural cost reductions and a stronger contribution from SMG. Let us move to cash flow.
Speaker #3: Operating cash flow increased by 23 million to 120 million. This reflects the stronger operating performance and lower tax payments, despite a negative working capital movement.
Speaker #3: During the first half, we also invested in the construction work for a new building at our headquarters, additional SMG shares, and the fintech portfolio.
Speaker #3: We treat these investments as inorganic, so they are excluded from our free cash flow before M&A definition. On that basis, free cash flow from M&A increased from 82 million to 104 million.
Speaker #3: Financing cash flow was minus 127 million. This reflects dividends, lease payments, and our ongoing share buyback program. Overall, cash decreased by 39 million during the first half, but importantly, this decline reflects active capital allocation, not pressure on the operating cash generation of the group.
Speaker #3: This brings me directly to capital allocation. Our public share buyback program is progressing as planned. By the end of June, we had repurchased 327,000 shares for 53 million.
Speaker #3: At the same time, we continue to invest where we see attractive long-term value creation opportunities. During the first half, we acquired additional 250,000 SMG shares for 7 million.
Speaker #3: Our stake now stands at 31.4%. SMGs opt up provision, raises the mandatory tender of a threshold to 35%. This is consistent with our strategic view of classifieds and marketplaces, as a core pillar of the TX Group portfolio.
Speaker #3: Despite this active capital allocation, our balance sheet remains very strong. During the first half, we returned 71 million to TX Group shareholders. This consists of 41 million in dividends and 30 million through share buybacks.
Speaker #3: In addition, 21 million was distributed to minority shareholders. At the same time, we continue to invest in SMG, fintech companies, and our real estate portfolio.
Speaker #3: The Goldbach impairment also reduces reported equity by 46 million, but has no cash impact. Despite all of this, our equity ratio remains to close to 77%.
Speaker #3: And the net liquidity excluding leases stands at 253 million. This gives us substantial financial flexibility both to continue investing in the transformation of our businesses and to pursue attractive capital allocation opportunities.
Speaker #3: From a balance sheet perspective, TX Group remains in a very comfortable position. Let us now turn to the individual businesses. The TX market segment consists primarily of job cloud and our investments in Carrera and SMG.
Speaker #3: Let me start with job cloud. The Swiss recruitment market remained weak during the first half. This continued to pressure on job cloud's revenue. As Pietro mentioned, we do not see a structural issue at job cloud or fundamental concern around monetization.
Speaker #3: It is also worth remembering that 2022, the starting point shown on the slide was the peak of the post-COVID rebound. The number of open vacancies was 30% above today's level.
Speaker #3: Despite this environment, job cloud maintained a very attractive profitability level while continuing to make significant investments in AI-based products and services. This reflects disciplined cost management alongside continued investment in the future.
Speaker #3: The Austrian labor market remained even more challenging than Switzerland. Which is also visible in the development of Carrera. We continue to believe in the long-term attractiveness of digital recruitment.
Speaker #3: On SMG, I will keep my comments deliberately brief today. SMG published its own half-year results earlier today, and I would therefore refer to its detailed disclosure.
Speaker #3: From the TX perspective, SMG is an increasingly important earnings contributor. In the first half, we also received a 25 million dividend from SMG for the 25 financial year.
Speaker #3: Let us turn to Goldbach. Here, it is important to distinguish between the advertising sales business excluding out-of-home and Goldbach neo-out-of-home. Goldbach excluding out-of-home has been undergoing significant portfolio transformation.
Speaker #3: During 25 and the first half of 26, Goldbach exited or sold several non-core activities, including splitting advertising head unit. This consequently reduced reported revenue.
Speaker #3: At the same time, this creates a much more focused organization with a significantly lower cost base centered on Goldbach's core competencies in TV, audio, and increasingly convergent video advertising.
Speaker #3: Goldbach excluding out-of-home generated revenue of 35 million compared with 44 million in the prior year. Despite the revenue decline, adjusted EBIT improved from zero to 2.7 million corresponding to a 7.7 margin.
Speaker #3: The core business in linear television advertising remains highly profitable. However, the linear TV advertising market continues to decline structurally. Goldbach's digital video activities including connected TV and convergent video formats are developing positively, and provide an important growth opportunity.
Speaker #3: Given their smaller scale, however, they only partially offset the structural decline in linear TV. These two factors led us to reassess the carrying value of the business.
Speaker #3: As a result, we recognized the 46 million goodwill impairment. Again, this is a non-cash accounting charge and is fully adjusted in our adjusted EBIT.
Speaker #3: Goldbach neo-out-of-home shows a very different development. Revenue increased by 6%, adjusted EBIT reached 10 million, corresponding to a margin of 14%. The first half also benefited from unusually high political advertising spend, including major campaigns around popular votes and elections.
Speaker #3: This creates a particularly strong comparison base for the first half of next year. Demand for out-of-home advertising remains attractive, and the business continues to benefit from the expansion and increasing utilization of its inventory.
Speaker #3: Overall, Goldbach today has a more focused portfolio. The video advertising activities are adapting to structurally changing markets, while out-of-home continues to provide attractive growth and profitability.
Speaker #3: Let us now look at our two publishing businesses. I will start with 20 minutes. The first half of 26 was the first reporting period without a daily print edition.
Speaker #3: This is an important milestone in a much broader transformation of 20 minutes from a commuter newspaper into a fully digital media platform. The transformation was broad.
Speaker #3: It included bringing advertising sales back in-house and a major editorial restructuring combining the German and French-speaking organizations. 20 minutes also refreshed the brand, identity, and digital product before exiting daily print.
Speaker #3: The financial impact is clearly visible. The digital advertising revenue increased by 20%. This strong digital growth was supported by an exceptionally strong advertising market in the first half, including major advertising-relevant events such as the FIFA World Cup.
Speaker #3: At the same time, total revenue declined by 15%. This comparison still includes print revenue in the first half of 25, while 26 is fully digital.
Speaker #3: On the cost side, the cost associated with the daily print edition disappeared, and the broader transformation significantly reduced the overall cost base. As a result, adjusted EBIT improved from minus 5 million to positive 11.7 million.
Speaker #3: The prior year result included a 5 million social plan provision, so the underlying operating improvement is smaller than the reported swing, but still substantial.
Speaker #3: The business is now in a position to step up investment in digital product innovation and growth. During the first half, for example, 20 minutes launched its short video format, expanded its football offering, and introduced additional formats designed to increase engagement and commercial opportunities.
Speaker #3: The exceptionally high first half margin should therefore not be extrapolated. Now to Tamedia. Here, the transformation is at a different stage. Revenue declined by 9% to 175 million.
Speaker #3: The main pressure continues to come from print. The print advertising market remains particularly challenging. Print subscription and single copy revenues also declined. Print and logistic revenues were lower following the closure of the Lausanne printing center.
Speaker #3: The Zurich printing center is scheduled to close at the end of 26. At the same time, the digital development is encouraging. Tamedia now has 601,000 paid subscriptions in total, of which 207,000 are digital.
Speaker #3: Digital subscriptions increased by 7% year on year, while digital advertising revenue increased by 18%. Tamedia has made strong progress on the cost side, but revenue pressure in both the reader and advertising markets has been stronger than expected.
Speaker #3: As a result, the transformation process will take longer. We remain committed to the adjusted EBIT margin of target of 8% to 10%, originally targeted for 27, and now expect to achieve it over the medium term.
Speaker #3: Finally, let me comment on group and ventures. I will start with ventures. The fintech portfolio continues to develop positively. The fintech fund is now more than two-thirds invested and several portfolio companies completed successful financing rounds.
Speaker #3: Adoodle additional AI capabilities were built in preparations for a new B2B offering advance. At Zattoo, consumer sales in Switzerland and Austria continue to grow, while Germany remained challenging.
Speaker #3: Turning to the group functions, the decentralization of TX Group was completed during the first half of 26. This is reflected in significantly lower intercompany revenues from central services.
Speaker #3: Group revenues declined by 14 million year on year, while the adjusted EBIT deficit increased by only 1.6 million. This shows that a substantial part of the previously central cost base was either transferred to the businesses or structurally reduced.
Speaker #3: The result is a leaner central organization. Let me conclude with three messages. First, the first half demonstrates that our transformation is having a tangible financial impact.
Speaker #3: Revenue remains under structural pressure, but our cost base has adjusted significantly and adjusted EBIT has improved strongly. Second, the development across our group business is increasingly differentiated.
Speaker #3: Third, our cash generation and balance sheet remain strong. With that, I will hand back to Pietro.
Speaker #1: Thank you, Wolf. And now we are here to answer any questions you might have. Wolf, myself, and the colleagues I mentioned and introduced at the beginning of the session.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Pietro and Wolf. Before we start with the Q&A, please let me give you some instructions. You can either ask your questions via the chat, if you do that, I will read out the questions for the guests who are on the phone so that they know what the question is about.
Speaker #2: Alternatively, you can use the phone by dialing star 9. You can raise your hand to indicate that you would like to speak. If you want to withdraw your questions, you can again dial star 9.
Speaker #2: Once you get the permission from the operator to speak, please unmute yourself by dialing star 6. You don't need to put that down. The tool will tell you that once again, but we wanted to make it sure how it's going.
Speaker #2: So now we are happy to take your questions. Let's then start with the questions on the phone. The next question goes to Andy goes to the number.
Speaker #2: I can only see the number. It's 794542775. Please, you are you can ask your questions. If not, we move on.
Speaker #1: Can you hear me?
Speaker #2: Next question.
Speaker #1: No, can you hear me?
Speaker #2: Oh, now we can. Thank you.
Speaker #1: Yes, thank you. That's only a beautiful Zurich Cantonal Bank. I would have three questions. The first on career IT, obviously sales are down, but profitability held up well.
Speaker #1: So it's meaning they are also doing some cost measures in Austria. That's the first. Then the second, Tamedia obviously you're really far away from your target even taking out a lot of costs.
Speaker #1: What other strategies you can apply to get to your target midterm? And finally, on Goldbach, with this impairment, you still have something to impair or to write down or was this the whole Goldbach amount?
Speaker #1: Thank you very much.
Speaker #3: So I propose that the responsible colleagues answer the various questions. Daniel, do you want to start with?
Speaker #2: Can you just close it?
Speaker #3: Thank you.
Speaker #1: Yeah, sure. I can maybe start with the question or the observation on career IT. I think it's the right observation. Cost measures are very important, not only in Austria but also in Switzerland.
Speaker #1: It's a combination with this challenging market environment that Wolf has outlined quite well. It's on the one hand side very important to be cost disciplined and on the other hand it's very important also to invest in product and to use the technology that is available now to increase efficiency but also to improve the product and to create even more customer value.
Speaker #1: And as I said, it's not only the case in Austria but also in Switzerland that we're working heavily on costs. And to trying to compensate some of the revenue declines that we're seeing over the last couple of years.
Speaker #2: The questions regarding Tamedia, I would like to answer it briefly. First of all, there are two pillars to achieve our midterm target goal. First of all, we have to focus still on the transformation program, which we set up in 23 because there is a long way to go.
Speaker #2: For example, as mentioned, the closing of the DZZ is just at the end of the year. So we really have to focus on what we plan to do.
Speaker #2: Still, it is first of all the restructuring program. And we have a project next to the closing of the print centers like automatization and so on.
Speaker #2: And we still have to focus on the digital growth. So to see and to launch new product as we did on the digital advertising side, we launched AI lab and we are searching for new talents and developing new talents for that.
Speaker #2: So in both areas, we have consistently implemented all these measures but as said, we need more measures to do so to reach our midterm goal because AI for sure changing the rules of our games, of our markets and so we have to consider it as well.
Speaker #2: So we have new competitors, new users and new economics which we have to consider. And so build on the foundation which we already built up.
Speaker #2: We have to launch new measures based on AI, for example, new products but also in implementation we could gain efficiency measures here.
Speaker #3: Okay. I will answer the impairment question. The 46.4 million reflects the impairment requirement resulting from our current impairment test. There are still goodwill and indefinite life intangible assets related to Goldbach on the balance sheet, which will continue to test for impairment going forward on the sizes roughly 80 million.
Speaker #1: Thank you.
Speaker #2: Thank you. Is that all right for you, Daniel?
Speaker #1: Yes, perfect.
Speaker #2: Thank you very much. So the next question goes also via the phone to Andy Schneider. Please ask your questions. Andy, you should please unmute yourself by dialing star 6.
Speaker #1: Yes, can you hear me now?
Speaker #2: Yes.
Speaker #1: Perfect. Yes, I'm on Zoom. There is no star 6, but it worked out. Thanks for taking my question. Wolf, can you explain me again the high margin of 20 minutes?
Speaker #1: What was the reason for that? Is it just all lucky? And you mentioned something that there will be investments. So should we expect the margin to go down to the target corridor, which is much lower?
Speaker #3: That's the perfect question to be answered by Bernhard directly.
Speaker #1: The better.
Speaker #4: So thank you for your question. So the reasons are equally on the revenue side and the cost side. On the revenue side, we took back the advertising apartment in-house by beginning of 25 and developed it further.
Speaker #4: So it was a strong growth in the first semester of 26. And this is due to being closer to our clients to work directly with them, also being closer to our own product to create all the environment and the surroundings for great advertising solution.
Speaker #4: So that was really the driver for the growth. Doing the advertising sales and the entire advertising operations ourselves. And then it was, of course, the exit from print, but this actually removed revenue block and the cost block.
Speaker #4: They were more or less of an equal size. So this didn't result in a jump of EBIT. Of course, it had an influence on the margin.
Speaker #4: That was a factor. And then as Wolf mentioned, we reduced costs significantly through restructuring last year, especially by bringing the two editorial departments together, merging them the German and the French speaking editorial teams.
Speaker #1: That's good for the reasons. But now looking into the future, will you take some of that margin and invest back into the product? And as long, let's say, a sales keeps stable, should the margin still go back to 14 to 60%, which was the target?
Speaker #1: Or can it be just higher? Or longer?
Speaker #4: As Wolf mentioned, so this result now is allowing us to step up our pace of innovation. This requires investment and will increase costs. That's one thing that's going to happen.
Speaker #4: We really see challenges for the media industry and we want to position 20 minutes much broader. More AI resistant for the future. And there are going to be considerable investments for that.
Speaker #4: That will bring the margin down and then the other thing Wolf mentioned is the advertising market. We had a very good first semester in the advertising market.
Speaker #4: The market was in general up and this was due to some big sport events like the FIFA World Cup. And we are still we still have a positive outlook on the second semester, but it might be not so positive compared to last year as the first semester.
Speaker #4: But I won't give a guidance regarding the margin. What we can say is that we're probably coming closer to what we once announced. From the number you're seeing.
Speaker #1: Already in H2, you think, or over time?
Speaker #4: For sure over time. And.
Speaker #1: Okay.
Speaker #4: And probably in H2 you will see an effect of what happens.
Speaker #1: That's good. Congrats to that. And then on Goldbach, we found out of home still quite a gap. TV obviously coming down more than expected probably the main cold print.
Speaker #1: Maybe also looking forward there, where can we go? How quickly can we go? Where do you have the plans? Already in mind how to bring costs down to adjust to a lower TV market.
Speaker #1: Is 2H looking better? Because there is no foosball VM on the SRF TV channels and you should have bigger part of the market. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Speaker #4: So maybe starting with the plan, yes, we have a plan. I hope that we can announce it announce the plan for the future of Goldbach without out of home in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker #4: We will have a better half too because it was not only the FIFA World Cup, it was the Olympic Winter Games and it was the ice hockey World Championships.
Speaker #4: They all happened outside our portfolio commercially. Or commercial wise. So we believe with all the forecasting we are doing and with all the feedback we get from customers that we will have a lower decline in the second half.
Speaker #4: Which also means that structurally the linear TV market will remain on the heavy pressure also in the next year.
Speaker #1: If I may ask, what is your expectation? The basis of your plan for the TV market for the next few years. Do you see a structural decline of one, two, three, four, five percent?
Speaker #1: Do you have any scenario you can give us there to give us a feeling where we're heading?
Speaker #4: Yes, we have these scenarios, but I don't think that these are the public they will be publicly announced. So we have of course with our partner shareholders in Germany, we have a base for scenarios because they are a little bit ahead of us in the structural decline.
Speaker #4: We also are marketing a French TV stations which is another important country for us for an outlook and scenario planning. So I think the linear market is one thing, but also we have something that nobody has around us with replay ads.
Speaker #4: And replay ads the public channels SRG, they joined in spring. Which was an additional boost. So we have something besides CTV or on top of CTV that helps us to be strong in the digital environment as well with replay ads.
Speaker #4: So it's a combination. We look at this market overall linear plus replay and then in the second pillow it's the pure CTV digital market.
Speaker #4: So that's how you should think about we are doing a scenario planning.
Speaker #1: Great. Are you marketing the replay ads for the Schweizer fans?
Speaker #4: Unfortunately not. They are doing it on their own. Never say never.
Speaker #1: Great. Thank you. And then last question on my side. On top cloud and a little bit career out there. You talked about the market development there.
Speaker #1: Kind of stabilization in Switzerland maybe you can talk a little bit about what you expect for the market over the next few years.
Speaker #4: Yeah, that's a very, very tough question to answer because what we're perceiving in all segments is that volatility is increasing and that it's really hard to predict one month's upfront.
Speaker #4: So it's really hard to say what we're expecting for the next couple of years. We are planning with scenarios that are not assuming that we're getting back to the peak that Wolf mentioned.
Speaker #4: That was in 2022. So we also working on products that can increase our value chain without assuming that numbers from 2022 are coming back.
Speaker #4: But at the end of the day, we need to prepare for those scenarios and then to see how at the end of the day they turn out.
Speaker #4: But I can assure that we're working on those scenarios and that those scenarios are not best case scenarios but more blackish scenarios.
Speaker #1: And very last add-on question to that. You showed us before I'm not sure if six months or 12 months or 18 months ago. You showed us the nice chart of job cloud versus your competition there, the big international ones.
Speaker #1: And that was showing us that you are not losing market share. Is that still true today?
Speaker #4: Yeah, I think Wolf mentioned it that there's also mentioned that I'm not quite 100% sure anymore. I think we still don't see any structural change.
Speaker #4: And that would be a structural change that we don't see. The chart would look similar also the seeker activation that we're showing on or we're showing on this slide is still the same.
Speaker #4: Like seeker traffic and a number of applications is very, very high. The only metric that is not in our favor is the open job listings that Wolf has mentioned.
Speaker #4: But the distance to our competitors is still the same.
Speaker #1: Thank you.
Speaker #2: First one, I think it's addressed to Jessica. The question comes from Philip Albrecht and it is a two-year period during which Tamedia promised not to cut any more jobs is set to end in September.
Speaker #2: Will there be another round of job cuts at Tamedia starting next month? Since in your view, Tamedia's figures are not satisfactory.
Speaker #3: Thank you for that question. So as mentioned, we started a big transformation program and our focus is in generating growth, digital growth opportunities. And in parallel, for sure we have to decrease our cost side.
Speaker #3: With the focus on really accelerating our growth in terms of revenue because this is the bigger part of the problem and of our challenge.
Speaker #3: We have to focus on really all initiatives based on growth and digital sustainability. In the meantime, we are looking on the development of our revenues.
Speaker #3: So we have not decided to have any layoffs right now. But as usual, in our situation with a big structuring changes, we will have from print to digital for sure we could never say that there will be no layoffs at all.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Jessica. Then we move on to the questions from Adrian Lechthaler. He has submitted quite a few questions and I will start with two job cloud related questions that might be probably answered by Daniel.
Speaker #2: The first one is Group Rajui today reported a year on year revenue growth of almost plus 10% in job classifieds. For the past five years, the PMI has been similarly low to that in Switzerland.
Speaker #2: The unemployment rate higher and job growth also stagnant. Why is Prajui growing faster than job cloud and career punkt at? And the additional question is to job cloud, the weak labor market is a concern, but when does but when where does the structural growth potential lie?
Speaker #2: Is higher penetration among SMEs evident?
Speaker #4: Yeah, maybe starting with the first questions, we're following the numbers quite closely. Also the CEO of is member of the board of directors of chocolate.
Speaker #4: So we know the company quite well. I think the two markets are not comparable to each other. So I think we cannot compare the markets one on one.
Speaker #4: I think also the companies are structured a bit different. I'm not going into too much details about but they are also considering their selves digital tech platform and not recruiting platform because they have heavily invested in ATS software and software as a service and I think that's one difference between job cloud and and then also the market that I've mentioned kicks in.
Speaker #4: And then that also explains a bit the difference between the two companies. And then the second question on the SMEs, I think this is one of the big advantages of job cloud and also of the Swiss market that Switzerland is kind of an SME market and that a lot of our roughly 25 to 30K active customers at chocolate are SME customers.
Speaker #4: And we see very nice development in the SME segment and I think this will also be the case in the future.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Daniel. I will continue with the next two questions from Adrian. The next one is about capital expenditures, capex. Maybe Wolf, roadmap for future years, particularly regarding investments in investment properties.
Speaker #2: And then maybe Daniel wants to explain the other one. Could you give an update on the real estate portfolio development of?
Speaker #4: I would start to answer the first question regarding capex. So from running business, we have it here on page number 11. We are not heavy capex driven, a business.
Speaker #4: We are capex light. And the number that you see here, 15.6 for the first half year of 25 and 16.2 for the second half, that's basically the run rate that we do not expect to change.
Speaker #4: For the running business. And I think the question regarding real estate, I will hand over to Daniel. Starting with the more concrete question on the development of W25, kind of the building we're building here next to our headquarters.
Speaker #4: I think it's going as planned. Everybody that is in Zurich can see that we're making big progress and have now reached almost the point where we're starting to really build the building.
Speaker #4: At the moment, we are deconstructing the old one. So this is going as planned. And it's very positive. On the other question, on Bloomberg, as Peter have mentioned, and as I have stated last time, we're working on property strategies for each location.
Speaker #4: And I understand that this is quite of interest for you and that this is a significant value pool within TX, but at the moment we cannot communicate any news to that, but we will for sure do as soon as we are as we are ready and as decisions are taken.
Speaker #4: But as Peter has also mentioned I think we're making good progress and are very positive on that.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Daniel. The two last questions from Adrian probably go to Wolf. The first one is structural cost savings of 32.7 million Swiss francs.
Speaker #2: Do you see further cost reductions or have you almost reached a normalized level? And the last one is the loan to general Atlantic of 147.8 million.
Speaker #2: When will it be repaid?
Speaker #4: I will start answering the first question. There's no general answer to the cost-based question because it's heavily depends on the businesses we are looking at.
Speaker #4: There are businesses that are further ahead in their transformation process. 20 minutes, for example, was one of these examples they did heavy restructuring last year and now we see the result of that.
Speaker #4: There are other companies within our portfolio that are not at that point at the moment. So there's, let's say, not a group answer for that.
Speaker #4: It's more within the individual businesses. That was the answer to the first question. And the vendor loan, from General Atlantic, yes, it has a due date.
Speaker #4: So it runs for another roughly two year. And the first repayment will be done next year. So yeah, we are have a schedule here and also all the dividends from SMG that GA receives are used to pay down this loan.
Speaker #4: So we also receive their proportion from SMG dividends as well.
Speaker #2: Thank you, Wolf. We have one more questions in the chat. So this would be currently the last one if you would like to ask a question, please either put it in the chat or raise your hand if you're on the phone.
Speaker #2: The last question is about this from Mark Bossa and it's about the SMG participation strategy. It's probably for Wolf or maybe for Daniel. You have increased your stake to 31.4%.
Speaker #2: What exactly is the threshold before having to make a public offer? I think you said 35% legally it is 33.3%. So what is exactly valid in the TX group case?
Speaker #4: Yeah, thank you for the question. And it shows that you were following our presentation quite active. It's right what Wolf has mentioned. It's 35%.
Speaker #4: And as it was stated in the IPO documentation of SMG, there was an opt-up for TX group from 33.3% to 35%. So if we go over 35% we would be forced to make a takeover offer.
Speaker #4: But at the moment, as Wolf has also mentioned, we at 31.4% and have an opt-up to 35.
Speaker #2: Thank you. And now we have received another questions from Manuel Bottinelli. He says, congratulations to the progress showed in half in the first half.
Speaker #2: Capital allocation. Is it intended to maintain the pace of share buybacks?
Speaker #4: We are kind of limited to the number of shares that we can buy back on each trading day. But we will keep for sure this pace.
Speaker #4: And since we have already finalized half of the program, yeah, it will be the first or the second quarter next year where we have finalized the whole program if we continue like that.
Speaker #4: So and that's what we really aspire to do.
Speaker #2: Thank you. And there is another additional question from Mark. Is the introduction of a complete opt-out still possible in the case of SMG? Daniel?
Speaker #4: I'm not sure if I understand the question 100% correct, but I think there are no plans to go any further than the opt-up that is at 35% at the moment.
Speaker #2: Thank you. Right now we have no further questions. So I think I will then close the Q&A and hand back to Pietro for the closing of this event.
Speaker #2: Many thanks for your participation from my side already.
Speaker #1: Thank you very much for your interest, for your trust. And thank you to all my colleagues. As said, we are pleased with the development in the first half year 26 and we continue to work on further development.
