Earnings Call Transcript - SBBTF 2026-10-27

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 results presentation. My name is Malin Ebenfeldt, and I'm Investor Relations Manager in Vend. As usual, our CEO, Christian, and our CFO, PC, will walk you through the key developments in the quarter. We will then finish with a Q&A session for financial analysts via Teams. Please use the raise hand function. Before I hand over to Christian, let me quickly take you through the disclaimer slide. This presentation contains forward-looking statements, so please refer to this disclaimer on this slide for more information. And with this, please go ahead, Kristian.

Christian, CEO

Thank you, Malin, and good morning, everyone, and big congratulations to Jan Boye, who became a father last night. That was why Malin was stepping in this morning. So, our third quarter results show further progress for a simpler vend. Revenue growth, a lower cost base, higher margins, and continued capital returns. But there are also areas that need further work, most notably the recovery of blockage and continued improvement on cost efficiency. Over time, we see clear potential to keep growing revenues and increased margins. Group revenues in Q3 were 1,641 million, up 3% year-on-year, or 6% in constant currency. Our four verticals grew 11% in constant currency. That was partly then offset by the phase-out of transition service agreement revenues from the ship's dead separation. Group EBTA increased 11% to 711 million, with the margin expanding around three percentage points to 43%. Our focus on cost is delivering ahead of what we indicated earlier in the year. And we now expect the 2026 cost base, OPEX excluding COGS, to decline by around 250 million year on year, which is up from the 150 million we indicated at Q2. And this is why we retain flexibility to invest, as we do in re-commerce. Year-to-date, our EBTA margin is 40%. That is up from the 27% that we had in the same period in 2024, but it is still below leading international marketplaces, and improving this remains a key priority for us. Our capital allocation remains focused on long-term value creation. We have returned excess capital consistently since 2024, and the first 2 billion tranche of our current 4 billion buyback program was completed in august, and the second tranche had reached around 1.4 billion as of October 23rd. And as we announced last night, we are now taking steps to enable continued share buybacks beyond the current program. And our 14% stake in Adevinta continues to develop well operationally. PC will come back to this a little bit later. And its valuation increased by 3.9 billion NOC in the quarter to 11.1 billion NOC. And our view on AI as a meaningful opportunity for marketplaces has not changed. If anything, we are more convinced. And I will come back to this and our AI agenda and product updates a bit more in detail in a few pages. But first, I want to give an update on Blocket, where we continue to see positive momentum following the platform transition. User satisfaction reached 3.5 in September, that is up from 3.3 that we had in June, and well above the post-transition low of 1.5. It's now approaching the pre-transition levels. And importantly, Blocket continue to benefit from significant scale. Strong market position. We attract on average 70 million visits and more than 8 million visitors every month. And we have a stable and strong brand position with 97% brand awareness in Sweden. In mobility, Blocket continues to hold a strong competitive position. We have a significant advantage in both traffic to car listings, but also in available inventory. At the same time... Private car listings continue to recover, and the year-on-year decline is narrowing from 26% in Q1 to 8% in Q3, and further to 5% in September. And this is, in fact, in line with the market. The C2C ownership changes declined by 5% in that month. Professional car listings increased by 1%, and this is actually outperforming the B2C market, which also declined by 5%. And if we look at the demand side, both visits, leads per visit, and the share of ads generating leads within 14 days are all up year on year. And at the end of August, we launched Tryggad Bil Affair. This is our transactional C2C solution, which is based on smidig bilhandel from Finn. I can say that our priorities remain strengthening the private car supply, driving traffic and growth in the subvertical categories, and increasing app traffic. We are still not where we want to be on these things. In re-commerce, transacted GMV grew 17%, and private listings are approaching last year's levels. And in September, we launched our seller benefit program, which aims to increase volumes further. And all of these developments increase our confidence in the progress towards bringing Blocket back to growth. And now over to AI. And, of course, there's been a lot of debate whether AI agents will bypass marketplaces. But when you look at how people across the Nordics actually use our platforms, I am confident that they won't. In fact, I think that AI makes our direct-user relationships, our proprietary data, our transactional services, and our strong brand trust even more valuable. Our core positions remain strong and robust. In a study we did in August 26, with nearly 4,000 respondents across the Nordics, 70% had used an AI tool in the last month. 25% of these AI users had used it for something related to cars or real estate. Yet, yet. Our user behavior remains unchanged. In fact, Finn grew in number of visits over the past year. 95% of our traffic is still owned, more than half of it comes through apps, and less than 0.5% of our traffic comes through external AI tools. Our brands lead the Nordics when it comes to awareness, and also consistently ranks highest when it comes to trust, safety, and also being fun to use. So you can say that people come to us to search, to decide, but quite many also come to us to browse for inspiration, dream about a cabin, a car, look for these interesting second-hand finds, and this is an engaging, habit-driven behavior that I think is very unlikely that AI will replace. Secondly, I believe that we will lead the agentic future with our unique data. The key here is that AI agents will only be as good as the data they rely on. They can, of course, pull open listings from multiple sources. That is not different from what Google has been able to do for years, but that doesn't mean that it will be the best experience. To get the best outcome for consumers, these agents need data that cannot be scraped. What is the right price for this exact car? Which models are holding up in value? And which sellers replied within the hour? This is data that we have, that we have earned transaction after transaction over many years and it compounds every day through these four layers of data that we are showing here, real-time ads, aggregated outcomes, verified users and behavior and transaction history. We are now building on this advantage, scaling native vertical agents across our platforms. In addition to that, we have set up what we call Team Aura. This is a small, independent unit, and in our portfolio of bets, they are tasked with thinking more radically, answering one question. If we were building a marketplace from scratch today, with AI at the core, what would it look like? And third, I would say we are very excited about the opportunities we see, that our markets are getting bigger, because we can serve needs beyond search. In fact, search is only a small part of the deal, but AI lets us do so much more. Think about all the things that a consumer needs as part of a deal. Valuation, comparison, financing, negotiation, and many more things. And it's the same thing for the professionals. And I think the logic here is quite simple. The more of the transaction that we coordinate, the more we can create trust for the two parties, and the more unique data we can capture, and in the end, also the more value that we can create. And we are fortunate to have significant transactional services already, such as fix-ferdig, smidig bilhandel, netbil, casa, and others, and we will continue to build services that help users beyond the search, so to speak. So, in essence, you can say that our brand trust, our domain, deep domain insight, our real-time transaction data, that is what gives us the best foundation in the Nordics to build native AI agents. We are certainly not sitting back, waiting to see how AI impacts our marketplaces. We are using actively all the things we have built over many years to make sure that Venn stays the best place also in the future to find your next car, your next home, your next jobs, or your next pair of sneakers. And that is no matter where you come from, who does the search, or what starts the search. So, let me now take you through a few of our recent products and AI-powered features. In total, we now have around 30 AI-driven products and features, and these are some of them. In mobility, AI is now working for both car dealers and car makers. DealerHub gives dealers AI advice on price, on ad content, and on visibility. And the usage of this tool doubled from August to September. With New Car, which is now live on Blocket, it's actually AI that builds the car makers' brand stores over a few hours, and that extends our marketplaces into the new car sales. In real estate, we have our AI tool we call BitSteel, which lets users redecorate a home virtually and to see its potential. And it's interesting to see that the users who try it are six times more likely to sign up for a viewing. We've also launched image-led discovery on Oikoti, Megler-promo on Finn, and this latter feature is a new agent promotion feature, which is part of the large package. In jobs, we have Agentic Apply. This is a feature that simplifies how candidates apply to jobs. Here, we use an AI agent to fetch the recruiter's application form, and it fills it in with data from the candidate's profile on Fin. And this is actually solving a significant pain point for many users. We're also piloting two AI-powered offerings for recruiters, FinPartner for our largest customers, and TalentSearch, which is a completely new business model, which I will come back to in just a moment. And finally, we have re-commerce, and here we are building the foundation for agentic item creation. AI already helps sellers through the whole listing flow with everything from photos to titles to description to price. And what we see is that these AI-generated ads, they actually have 42% higher liquidity in the market. And as I mentioned before, we've also launched a seller benefit program, which is a key source of the volume growth that you will see in re-commerce. So all in all, we're excited about these things. These products and features make our marketplaces more valuable. And we're also monetizing these things through a number of measures, packages, upsell, transactions. But Talent Search actually takes it one step further with a new outcome-based business model. And let me just go a little bit more into this product. Now, as you know, historically, our recruitment business has been built around visibility, but of course, recruiters and employers, they are not looking to buy clicks or applications. They want to hire the right people. And this is where we see that AI and agentic technology actually opens up an entirely new space of opportunities for us. So with TalentSearch from Finn, instead of publishing an ad and waiting for applications, we have an AI-powered recruitment agent that helps employers find relevant candidates. It handpicks them, invites them directly through Finn, and our vision is to be able to serve interview-ready candidates in as little as three days. And this builds on all the strengths and advantages that we have. A proprietary candidate database, unmatched reach in Norway, and of course, a trusted brand. So I think we are still, of course, at a very early stage with this product, but the first pilots are showing some promising signals. And I think this product also signals something bigger for Venn as a whole, namely that we are focusing more on outcome-based revenue streams beyond the traditional ads. So with that, let me now turn to the verticals. And as usual, we will start with the mobility. And this time, before we go into the numbers, I would highlight some of the progress that we are making on the product offering and go-to-market. Now, one year ago, we announced the introduction of car dealer packages in Sweden that followed a successful launch in Norway the year before. And today... Around 50% of dealer ads are on our higher-tier packages, and throughout the year, we have continued to introduce new features, strengthening our value proposition, and improving the dealer performance. The results are reflected in the measures and the metrics you can see here. That includes higher traffic to ads, improved conversion rates, and most importantly, fewer standing days. We've also completed the rollout and migration of all customers to DealerHub, and as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing encouraging performance and positive customer feedback on this product. DealerHub really strengthens our value proposition through AI-driven recommendations and add optimization. They also add new lead management and integrated insights based on the unique insights that only we have. And we will begin the rollout in Sweden in November, which then will benefit all the Swedish dealers with these capabilities. And to align pricing with the value that we deliver, we have recently announced price increases for our car dealers. This will be effective from February 1st, 2027, 10% for Blocket in Sweden, 18% for Finn in Norway, 8% for Bilbasen in Denmark. And these increases are then expected to support our financial growth in 2027 and beyond. With that, let me turn then to the financial performance. And we start with Norway, where ARPA growth remained strong, up 17% for professionals, 10% for private. This was driven by the annual price increases and also for professionals, the basic package adjustment that we did in June. And this comes alongside improved packaging and upselling. Car volumes grew in both segments, while private subvertical volumes declined. In Sweden, professional ARPA for cars grew 15% following the price increase from May 1st. This was partly then offset by lower voluntary spend from dealers. Including sub-verticals, professional ARPA was up 12%, that is back then to double-digit growth, private ARPA was flat, and I covered the volume development in my section of Blockit. If we then turn to Denmark, professional ARPA continued to improve. This was supported by the package split and renewals. Private ARPA declined. This was as expected because that reflects the reversal to a free-to-list model for cars below 50,000 kroner on DBA that we introduced last December. And the professional segment in Denmark continues to face headwinds from market developments and also some structural shifts from the changes we have introduced. Private volumes increased 39% year on year. This was driven then by the same free-to-list model on DBA, but also 16% growth on bilbassen. Turning then to the mobility financials, revenues increased 8% in constant currency, classified revenues grew 8% in currency as well. That was driven by all markets. Transactional revenues also increased 8%. Advertising revenues declined 2%. That was mainly driven by Sweden. OPEX, excluding COGS, decreased two percent. That follows the organizational changes we made at the end of the second quarter, while we have continued to invest in marketing and also in our C2B models. And overall, EBITDA increased seven percent year on year to 406 million, with the margin expanding two percentage points to 59 percent. Moving to real estate, and here we've also focused on strengthening our package offering. This autumn we launched several product enhancements. They are all included in the large package. Priestips, which is our price estimation tool, is now easier to find. Monthly price estimates have nearly doubled to 16 000 per month. Megle Promo now generates 25% of agent profile leads and together these two send agents a lot more sellers who are ready to act. The large package continues to outperform the medium package with 31% more clicks to bid, 24% more unique visitors in the first days after a listing goes live. And we are also now changing how we prove our value to customers, moving from traffic and clicks to real buyer intent. And by tracking qualified leads like bid clicks and viewing signups, we give agents and sellers clear proof of Finn's unmatched value in Norway. And these were some of the key messages that we took out to customers when we announced our new packages and prices for 2027 this autumn. I think agents have received them very well, and we expect these changes to improve ARPA in line with our medium term. Thank you. In Norway, then, total ARPA grew 16% year on year, with residential for sale as the primary driver at 17%. On volumes, residential for sale declined 4%. This is against a very strong quarter last year, and total new approved ads were down 6%. And in Finland, average revenue per office and the number of offices were stable quarter on quarter. That means that real estate delivered another strong quarter with revenues up 14% in constant currency. Classified revenues grew 12%, driven by the ARPA growth in residential for sale in Norway. Total revenues in Finland increased 13%, or 22% in constant currency. This follows the move to the subscription-based model in Q1, but also growth in Casa. And if we look at our transactional rental business as a whole, Casa and HomeQ grew their revenues 10%. OPEX, excluding COGS, increased 2%, driven by higher personnel costs. This means that EBITDA reached 206 million, up 23% year-on-year, with the margin expanding to 53%. Then moving to jobs. Here, our work on product and pricing changes for 2027 is not final yet. The plan is to adjust prices in line with the index across our products, but also to continue to simplify the discount model and to refine our segment model. So we continue to deliver strong ARPA growth in jobs, that's up 11% year-on-year in Q3, driven by upsell products, but also this continued refinement of the volume discount model and the index increase. And on volumes, new approved ads were down 3% year-on-year, and this is an improvement from the 6% decline that we had in the first half as a total. And then on the job's financials, revenues increased 8% year on year, as ARPA growth of 11% more than offset the 3% decline in volumes. And here, OPEX excluding COGS increased 6%, driven by higher personnel and marketing costs. And this led to an EBITDA growth of 7% year-on-year to 146 million and a margin of 55%. Finally, let's continue with the re-commerce. Here in Q3, we stepped up marketing, shipping campaigns, and seller benefits in Norway to really accelerate our transaction growth. We see positive results. GMV growth accelerated in Norway to 28% from 17% in Q2. On blocket, GMV grew 17%, which is a clear sign of traction of the transactional model in Sweden after the platform transition. Finland grew 33%, Denmark 52%, away from a smaller base. Take rates were stable in Sweden at 10%, Finland at 16%, Denmark at 14%, but in Norway, the take rate declined 0.7 percentage points to 15%, which reflects the shipping campaigns we had in the quarter. Recommerce then grew revenues 16% in constant currency. Transactional revenues grew 19%, driven by the record volumes, but it was partly then offset by the shipping campaigns. Classified revenues grew 5%, driven by the private segment, and advertising declined 3%, primarily in Finland. OPEX excluding COGS increased 11%, and that was driven by the aforementioned marketing investment in Norway. I just want to say that this is a deliberate choice that we have made. We are investing to strengthen our position to accelerate growth, and this investment has led to an EBTA decline of 8 million to minus 43 million. But with that, let me hand it over to PC for the financials. Thank you.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Thank you, Christian, and good morning, everyone. Let's move to the financials for Q3. In total, revenues on a constant currency basis increased 6% compared to Q3 last year. Vertical revenues, that's a better read on the underlying performance, grew 11% in constant currency, driven by double-digit growth in both real estate and e-commerce, and 8% growth in both mobility and jobs. Revenues in other HQs declined 58%, as expected, mainly due to the lost revenues from exiting the CSAs with Shipstead Media. Total EBITDA ended at 711 million, up 11% from the same period last year. The EBITDA growth was mainly driven by real estate and mobility. And Christian have covered the vertical performance already, but let me give you some comments on the other HQ segment. Despite the significant revenue drop, other HQ EBITDA improved to minus $8 million from last year to minus $4 million this year. Lower personnel and consultancy costs following the reorganization and optimization efforts after the ship's media separation more than offset the lower revenues. The low loss in the quarter also reflects seasonality, as it also did in Q3 last year. The personnel costs are lower during the summer months, but the allocation that we do from other HQs to the verticals are stable throughout the year. Now, let us look closer into the cost development in the quarter. As before, this slide shows OPEX excluding COGS. In total, OPEX excluding COGS in the quarter declined by 6% compared to last year. Personal costs declined by 2%, where the lower FTE base were partly offset by salary inflation. Total FTEs ended at 1,565, down 83 from Q3, and down 119 from Q3 last year. And this is mainly driven by the reorganization processes that we executed on during the second quarter. During the last two years, we have reduced the total workforce with around 500 FTEs. At the same time, we have invested into key capabilities, but also supporting the growth in our scaling units in mobility and real estate. As Christian has commented on, we have invested into marketing in quarter, so the marketing cost is up 15% compared to last year, driven by the mentioned increase in e-commerce. Other operating costs declined 18%, following lower consultancy costs and the exit of the ship's TSAs. Overall, despite limited revenue growth on a reported level on the group, the cost reduction resulted in another four percentage point improvement in OPEX excluding COGS over revenue. The ratio has improved from 58% in Q3 24. to 51% Q3 last year, and to 47% in Q3 2026. Working towards an OPEX to sales ratio around 40%, as stated in our last Capital Markets Day, continue to be a key priority for us. Let me also say a few words on Advinta. The carrying value of our 14% stake has been revised to 11.1 billion Norwegian kroner, up 3.9 billion Norwegian kroner in Q3. The main driver was a multiple expansion of around 4 billion. Around 3 billion of this comes from removing the 15% discount to the peer group, And around one billion comes from rolling the valuation model into 26 and 27, similar as we also did in Q3 last year. The 15% discount was originally introduced mainly due to two reasons. First, Atavinta has a higher share of mobility revenues that had a structurally lower multiple compared to the peer group that had a higher share of real estate revenues. And then second... The Adivinta performance at the time was expected to grow less than the peer group, but as we have seen over the last two years that the actual performance has been very strong, and also the expected performance of Adivinta is in line or actually better than what is expected by the peer group. And therefore, we cannot really justify any discount on this stake. I cannot comment more on forward-looking performance, but the financial for the first half of 2026 Shows that Advinta's performance remains strong. Total revenues grew 11% year on year, and the three key position that in totality constitutes more than 80% of the revenues grew more than the total 11%. Adjusted EBITDA grew 22% with an EBITDA margin of 50% up five percentage points from last year. At the Vintas net debt, as of end of Q2, was around 5.9 billion euros, slightly down from Q4 2025 due to underlying cash generation. On the income statement, our operating profit for the quarter increased 26% to 555 million compared to 440 million in Q3 last year. The positive development in operating profits reflects improved EBITDA, lower depreciation and amortization costs, but also lower net of their expenses. The other expenses reported in the quarter is mainly related to headcount reductions. The 3.9 billion gain related to the increased value of Adavinta that I mentioned before is included here under financial income. In totality, then, net profit for the group ended at almost 4.4 billion. Now let's move to cash flow from continuing operations. Cash flow from operating activities ended at 590 million, an increase of around 33% compared to last year. The increase is mainly driven by improved earnings, reduced cash flow or flows related to separation and transaction costs. Cash flow from investment activities ended at minus 73 million, where the main driver is the capitalization of our own workforce in totality of 81 million, Down 25% compared to Q3 last year. And finally, cash flow from financing activities ended at minus 1.5 billion, but this is all driven by the share buybacks around the 1.5 billion number. In accordance with our capital allocation principles, we continue to return excess cash to our shareholders. The first 2 billion tranche of our 4 billion share buyback program was completed in August. The second 2 billion tranche was also started in August. And as of the end of the quarter, we have bought back shares of around 0.8 billion. As of 23rd of October, we have bought back 1.4 billion of our own share, and we expect the program to complete during Q4. We ended the Q3 with a strong balance sheet and a net cash position around 1 billion Norwegian kroner, despite buying back 1.5 billion NOC of shares during the quarter. As announced last evening, the board has resolved to call an EGM of 23rd of November to renew the authority to buy back shares and to delete 14.4 million treasure shares. And this gives us the flexibility to initiate a new share buyback after the second tranche is completed during the fourth quarter. Wrapping up, I'd like to reiterate that our strategy, our medium-term targets, and our capital allocation principles, as we introduced in our Capital Market Day in 2024, remain unchanged. For 2026, we expect real estate, jobs, and e-commerce to perform in line with the respective medium-term targets. But based on the results for the first nine months of 2026, the current market conditions, but also evaluating the effects of our mitigation activities, four-year mobility revenue growth is expected to grow in the lower end of a mid-to-high single-digit percent range. Our medium-term targets for mobility remain unchanged. We now expect our full year, 2026, OPEX excluding COGS to decline by around 250 million compared to last year. This is revised from around 150 million that we communicated in Q2 this year. And this reflects an accelerated cost and efficiency measures across the whole group. At our CMD, almost two years ago, we communicated an ambition to improve OPEX to sales from the current level at that time of 65% to around 40% in the medium term. And then despite the good progress I have to say on this metric over the last two years, more work is needed to deliver on this promise. And this remains a key priority for us. And with that, I'll now hand on to Marlin to guide us through the Q&A. Thank you.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, PC. I see quite a few raised hands already, and first in line is Andrew from Barclays. Please unmute yourself and go ahead.

Andrew, Analyst — Barclays

Hi, guys. Morning. I've got a couple, please. First one is on the extra OPEX savings you've announced, now up to $250 million this year. Please, can you help us understand how much that fell in Q3, how much will come in Q4, and then how we think about the annualization of that into 2027? And then when we think about the OPEX XCOGs into 2027, appreciating and not guiding at this point, but what do you think is a likely direction? Can that continue to be down year-on-year as we think into 2027? And then my other question is to get a bit more colour as to the investment that's going into re-commerce in Norway and to better understand the timing of that. Is it in reaction to something that's changed in the competitive environment? Just trying to understand why now? And the third question builds on the first two, which is, are you kind of assuming that re-commerce investment And we'll continue in Q4, and therefore we should think about these extra OPEX savings as a cushion to that extra investment in Q4, or should we think about the extra OPEX savings as being something that's incremental to how ConsenSys was thinking about EBITDA previously? Thank you.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Thank you. So I'll start on the first one, and then we can, maybe Chrissy can start on the second, and I can fill in if needed. I think year to date, nine months, in 26, we are a bit, let's say, higher than 250 million year-on-year cost reduction, so that implies that Q4 will be, you know, broadly stable year-on-year. Remember that during last year, we winded down both the revenue and the cost significantly from the TSAs. Some of that happened in Q4, but you got full effect in Q3 and then full effect in Q4. Looking into 27, I'm not going to give a sort of a cost outlook for 27, but I think what you can read into our message, what the actual development that you have seen over the last two years and also now in the first nine months of this year and also including the whole year, will continue into next year. And also then combined with the midterm ambition to work towards 40% OPEX to sales, that will require us to continue to work on cost and efficiencies also going forward.

Christian, CEO

Yeah, and on the e-commerce side, I think it's important to remember that e-commerce is a scale game, where in the end it will be volume that will be driving success. Yes, we've done a lot in the past year or so to improve our unit economics, and we now saw the opportunity to further strengthen our position, further grow volume by investing then in marketing, but also in the seller benefit program and campaigns and such. And we've seen great success with that, and I think you should expect that to continue also going forward.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Okay, next in line is Julia from UBS. Please go ahead.

Julia, Analyst — UBS

Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, if that's okay. So, on Adivinta, I believe previously your plan was to disclose revenues and EBITDA once a year, whilst now we have this 1H update. So what's your plan going forward? Are you planning to give us this update two times a year, or like that would be helpful to understand? And also in the beginning of the presentation, you mentioned that you continue to see a lower voluntary spend in Swedish mobility in Q3 in the professional division. Can you please elaborate on this and what's driving this dynamics? Why is it, you know, still not recovered at this stage? Thank you.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

I can start on Advinta. Yes, you're right. We disclosed the full year 25 numbers when we reported Q4. I think what Q1, sorry. So what you see now, we intend to also report on a quarterly basis going forward.

Christian, CEO

Yes, and on the voluntary spend in Sweden, you are absolutely right. What we're seeing is that the price changes that we implemented in May, they are kind of holding up while, let's say, the bumps, they are somewhat reduced. That is also something we have seen at the earlier price changes and something that tends to come back over time. This is also what we expect here. But there is also an added element of electric vehicles selling very quickly in Sweden so that you don't need to bump your ad as often because they will sell quickly anyway. So it's kind of both those two things. We think it will be a gradual recovery of that over time.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you very much. Next in line, we have Olav from Pareto. Please go ahead.

Olav, Analyst — Pareto

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I was just wondering if you could give some color on the development of IT expenses here today, as it was a big part of your other operating costs in 2025. And I was just wondering if IT costs have come down here today, given the platform migrations, or if that's a potential lever for 2027. And then I'll ask my second question afterwards.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Yeah, on IT expenses. So that goes in the bucket of other costs. And as you have seen, we have a quite sort of big reduction in that. Part of that is coming from we can reduce IT expenses as well when we exit the Shipstead TSAs. And then we have a multiple set of initiatives within the IT domain addressing that cost as well, because we carry with us quite a lot of complexity from our own Shipstead days that we are working quite proactively to address. When it comes to the platform transition, that will also help us to address IT expenses, you know, going forward. But the biggest effect on that will come more on the resourcing side, you know, so number of people needed to operate, maintain and develop and a little bit less on the IT expenses. The exception of that is on cloud costs, where we will see a reduction in cloud costs as we, you know, migrate into one common IT stack.

Olav, Analyst — Pareto

All right, thanks. And then secondly, I was just wondering if you could give an update on how Swedish dealers are now distributed across the different package tiers and how this is developed into Q3, and then just some commentary on how this is tracking compared to Norway at the same time when launching the similar packages. Thanks.

Christian, CEO

So, I don't have the exact split between the packages. I'm not sure if you do, Malin, but I think in general, they're tracking in a positive way. I don't believe we are still at the place where we are in Norway, so there's still room to grow and improve, let's say, the package distribution.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

And let us come back to the package distribution.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Yeah, and just remember that the market dynamics is a bit different in Norway and Sweden, so I don't think you should expect the sort of exact same distribution in the two markets. In Norway, we have a lot of customers on the higher tier, while in Sweden it's more around the mid-tier, but we also have a higher degree of voluntary spend that Christian commented on in the previous question.

Olav, Analyst — Pareto

All right, thanks.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Next up, we have Ole Martin from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Ole Martin, Analyst — DNB Carnegie

Thank you for taking my questions. I'll start just to follow up on the professional ARPA in Sweden. It was of 12%. Can you give any comments on how it evolved during the quarter? How was the exit rate in September? It would be interesting. And also on the price changes they're implementing. Have you made any comments with regards to private for next year in Sweden?

Christian, CEO

So, I don't have any comments on the development in the quarter on the pro ARPA, and I think we are still focused, on the private side, we are still focusing on the, let's say, the block it back to growth and the block it recovery, and as we have said before, we want to be very confident in that before we kind of start thinking about price increases in the private segment. Volume is more important for the time being.

Ole Martin, Analyst — DNB Carnegie

But if you were to sort of, where is the voluntary spend now compared to what is a normal level? Are we at 20%, 50%? Where are we?

Christian, CEO

I don't think I will go into detail of where we are on the voluntary spend. We are at a lower level than what we have been before. And as I said, it's partly driven by, let's say, the price increases that we introduced. That's a pattern we've seen before. But it is also partly driven by the market situation where EVs are selling very quickly.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

But just to comment on it, this was a big topic in Q2, When we saw, you know, quite a big hit on ARPA compared to expectations, given the price increase in 1st of May, I think what you see now in Q3 is exactly what we expected and also guided at that point in time. So we're very much sort of in line with the recovery momentum that we have outlined before.

Ole Martin, Analyst — DNB Carnegie

And then a second question. There's this press focus around this new potential entrant in Norway, supported by Polaris Media, Amedia, and Shipstead. Were you aware of this, and what do you know about this initiative, considering that one of your largest shareholders looks to back this new entrant?

Christian, CEO

We were not aware of this before it was announced. It's not, it doesn't have any connection with us at all. We don't know much about it either. But also I would say that we are concentrating all our efforts on, let's say, the agentic future and the opportunities that come with that and less on this specific competitor. Okay.

Ole Martin, Analyst — DNB Carnegie

And on that note, when do you plan to launch your own agent?

Christian, CEO

Well, we already have agents, right? Many of the services that I went through before are agents working on behalf of both pro customers and private people. So we do have them. If you're talking about having a chatbot on the site, that's another question. That's just another, let's say, incarnation of an agent that is also coming. And we have a team working on that.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Okay. Thank you. Let's move to Giles. Please go ahead.

Giles, Analyst — Jefferies

Thank you. I wanted to come back to e-commerce and get a better understanding, please, Christian, of what your long-term plan is for solving the operating leverage problem that you've got in that segment. You mentioned scale earlier, but if you wanted to expand on that. And then the second question was on the two senior leadership appointments to the AI Ventures unit, I think you called it Christian, the AI Aura unit during the presentation, and it would be interesting to hear what you think success would look like for that unit over the next two years.

Christian, CEO

All right. It was a little bit difficult to hear you, Giles, but let me try. The first one was about the re-commerce and the long-term plan and how we think about scale and leverage. I think what we have seen with the re-commerce in the past year is that it's a strong improvement in profitability, like a 10 percentage points improvement in EBTA. Okay. So we are really seeing that scale kicking in. But I also think it is important to build a robust, strong position in the market. And this is what we are now seeing the opportunity to invest in with the seller benefit program, with campaigns and with marketing. So that we are doing. But we are balancing these investments with the goal that we have clearly communicated before to reach profitability in the medium term. On AI, and this separate independent team, Team Aura, as I said, this is one bet out of many in our AI portfolio. We've set this team up to operate outside of the line organization, to have more freedom to innovate radically. And I think we will see over time what comes out of this, but I hope it will be user experiences that are well received by many people in the Nordic. So it's primarily looking at, let's say, that part of the space, the consumer adoption.

Giles, Analyst — Jefferies

Thank you. Just to follow up on the first question, do you feel like you've got the right type of partnerships or the right type of partnership ethos in the markets, I guess, but primarily Norway around the delivery side of the e-commerce business?

Christian, CEO

Yes, I think we have good partnerships. We have multiple providers that provides, let's say, a competitive environment for shipping, which is important to keep prices low. And as you know, we are selling our delivery business, but we think that we can uphold this competition in the market also with, let's say, an arm's length agreement with Helt Jem. Thank you.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Giles. Next up is Marcus from SCB. Please go ahead.

Marcus, Analyst — SCB

Thank you. So I have two questions. The first one is on the classifieds growth in mobility Denmark, up 5% year over year. And it seems like that's a slight slowdown year over year since Q2. Can you elaborate on how much of that is an actual deceleration or how much is due to revenue recognition under your new revenue model? That's the first one.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

As you might recall, when we changed our business model in Denmark, we were benefiting in the first half from some legacy revenues on top of the new one. So it was reported a bit better than the actual underlying. So that revenue is fading out and it's quite small now in the third quarter. The underlying business performs in line or better than what we saw in Q2, but also I think Chris mentioned that there is a quite weak market in Q3 in Denmark, so that is sort of holding us back. But there's no changes in, let's say, the commercial offering, the underlying momentum of that, and we're quite happy with where we are.

Marcus, Analyst — SCB

That's good. Then my final question is on the outcome-based pricing models that you're alluding to here, and you illustrated in jobs that you're adding AI tools that can potentially be monetized per lead or per outcome, and maybe you can elaborate how you see this more of a broader journey for Venn as you move to this outcome-based pricing and leads-based pricing. Will it be additive, or will it be sort of a transition period where it could impact your monetization and be some lumpiness as you transition to these models, or how do you see that transition?

Christian, CEO

Well, that's a great question. I think we've said before that, I mean, for quite some time, we have seen that, let's say, the long-term direction of our business models is towards more performance-based, outcome-based, transaction-based models. So that has been the direction of travel for a long time. I think now with AI, this becomes even more important and even more possible also. So I think we will see more of this. We will, of course, use the opportunity that when we do these changes to also capture value in the market that we see is on the table. So I think it's an opportunity. Of course, it will also be hard at times to do this transition, but I think generally it's an opportunity.

Petter, Analyst — Abiga

Thank you.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Marcus. Next up is Petter from Abiga. Please go ahead.

Petter, Analyst — Abiga

Thanks, Marlin. Two questions from me. I take one at a time. On block at first, you say car listings improved 5% or down 5% in September. Are all the private mobility categories recovering too? And how do you see your market shares within car listings versus the other platforms? Thanks.

Christian, CEO

Yes, so we saw an improvement, both from Q1 and to Q3, and then further in September. I would say in other categories, like the subverticals, we still have a tough situation with significant declines. That is a priority going forward to address that. I think in general, we uphold our strong position in Sweden, both in terms of the number of cars listed on our sites, we're like three times bigger than Tradera, but also in terms of traffic to our sites, we're many, many times larger than them, and we don't see a significant shift in that position.

Petter, Analyst — Abiga

Okay, perfect. Thanks. And then a question for PC on costs. You have now raised your Costco savings target three times for 2026, from a flat cost base to now down to $250 million. What has proven better than expected, and why has the guidance been what you can call relatively conservative? Thanks.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Yeah, good question. I think when we give an absolute guiding for the year that we chose to do, you need to keep some flexibility because you don't want to lock yourself in because you don't know how, let's say, our product launches will come in time and how we want to sort of fuel that with marketing. We don't know how the competitive situation develops. So that means that when you are a year, you know, in front, you will be more conservative and as you progress throughout the year, you can kind of, you know, gradually become more in line with the actual development and what you expect. So that's what we have seen happening. What we also have seen happening is that throughout the year, we have, you know, accelerated initiatives that has been, you know, planned in the future to do them earlier. We see that we're able to get, you know, bigger effects on initiatives that we have done. Both towards our own workforce, consultants, IT cost, and so on. And we are also progressing well on the platform transition. So I think you need to see all of these in combination why we've been able both to deliver, but also then to raise the guidance for a full year.

Petter, Analyst — Abiga

Thanks. I'll jump back in the queue.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Next up is Yulia. Did you have one more question?

Julia, Analyst — UBS

Hi, yes. Thank you for the opportunity. I have two, actually, if that's okay. I just wanted to come back to the OPEX XCOX target of 40%. At the CMD, you indicated that the largest benefit from the platform consolidation would be realized from 2027 onwards. And I believe at that time, the expectation was that medium-term targets would cover a period until 2027. So, I appreciate you've commented already and confirmed that the 40% ratio remains your priority, but do you still view the 40% target as achievable in 2027? And alternatively, if the timing of the benefits has shifted, should we view the 40% target as a longer-term ambition rather than a 2027 target? And my second follow-up question would be on buybacks. So with regards to the potential size of the new buyback program, what is your current thinking? Thank you.

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Yeah, I guess that's two for me. On the cost side, yeah, so you're right. We said in November 24 that the 40% was for the medium term. We didn't say exactly, you know, a timeframe for that, but when asked whether it was like 25 or 2030, we said around 2027, but we're not locking ourselves to a calendar year. But that gives you some indication on the timeline that we are working towards, but I'm not going to give you sort of a guiding for 27 as a whole. Then in terms of the effects, I think we have communicated and shown that we've been able to take our costs faster than what we expected at the CMD, and we are quite happy with that, and that doesn't stop us, right? We will continue on that journey going forward, and then we have had some headwinds that we've been growing less than what we expected, as we also have discussed earlier in this call, right? So the combination of that, but we have not given up, we're working, you know, hard towards delivering on that promise. On the share buyback, I do not have any information around, you know, we have now created the flexibility to continue buying back shares even after this current program is finished, and we will come back to you in due time with more information about the future.

Julia, Analyst — UBS

Understood. This is very helpful. Thank you.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Great. Then we have a last question from Martina Nordea. Please go ahead.

Martine, Analyst — Nordea Markets

Thank you for taking my questions, Martine from Nordea Markets. I have four questions, two very specifics. The first is just on the other HQ personal costs. That was like 194 million, down from 222 million. Is that run rate now stable after the July reorganization? Or how should I think about that?

Per Christian (PC), CFO

Yeah, so if you look at other HQ, I mean, compared to last year and also what we've been executing this year, this is the big elements of that is part of, you know, resetting the cost base after separating for ship's time media. That doesn't mean that we are done and we see more potential going forward. But I think you need to sort of calibrate a bit of the expectations in terms of further reductions, because we are now, you know, closing in a bit on what we can call is a relevant baseline. But we will continue across all our verticals and segments to optimize the cost.

Martine, Analyst — Nordea Markets

Okay, thank you. And the other one is just on the gross margins in re-commerce, which was a bit down relative to the two previous quarters. Is it possible to have any view on your expectation now going into Q4 and 2027?

Christian, CEO

Well, the reduction in take rate and gross margins is due to the campaigns, the shipping campaigns, and as I said before, we expect to kind of continue to invest in re-commerce to strengthen and grow the position at a faster pace, so I think that should give you some guidance.

Martine, Analyst — Nordea Markets

Perfect. And also on volumes in the block in Sweden, how confident are you for them to return in 2027? And when you say you are taking specific measures, what are you exactly doing to get those volumes to return?

Christian, CEO

Well, first of all, if you look at mobility, the volumes are back, right? Compared to the market, we are where we should be on the private side. We are actually ahead when it comes to the professional side. So the real challenge now lies with the subverticals, and that is where we are going to focus going forward. And there is also more to do on the private side, of course. I mentioned this Trygga Bil Affair, which is one way to improve the offering in the Swedish private market to get even more of the volume to block it. So I think we will continue this journey going forward.

Martine, Analyst — Nordea Markets

Perfect. And one last question on AI. When you say that less than 0.5% comes through AI tools, that is, of course, not so weird still, because it's still in the early phases. But when you track the actual data in nominal terms, it seems to have like more than triple over like only the last two and a half months. So that implies that this number might look a little bit different, like if you look like next 12 months forward. And also with the Muse AI now being launched in the Nordics over Christmas, that way of working is that they will redirect you, like for example, directly to the Facebook marketplaces, which might challenge, especially like re-commerce at first. Just like, how do you think? Well, Finn, of course, they have a strong position in Norway, but how do you think this specific competition and development will look like in Denmark and Sweden?

Christian, CEO

Well, first of all, we are not surprised at all by, let's say, MetaMuse, Instinct, other agents that are coming to the market. This is very much in line with how we predicted this would develop even a year, year and a half ago. And all the actions we have taken are to be prepared for that. What we do see, as I indicated, is that the maturity of AI is quite good already in the Nordics, but we don't see this translate into a changed user behavior on our sites. It's incredibly small that comes through these tools. It is growing, as you indicate, but it is growing quite slowly, in my view. And the way I see it is that I don't think the search is actually the biggest problem to be solved by these AI tools, but it's rather to understand the car, understand the house, and those kind of user needs around it.

Malin Ebenfeldt, Head of Investor Relations

Okay, thank you for your answers. Thanks, everyone. It looks like there's no further questions. So that concludes today's call. And thank you for joining us today.

Christian, CEO

Thank you. Thank you so much.