Translation: Original published in Finnish on 08/12/2026 at 11:15 pm EEST

Alma Media’s Q2 earnings exceeded our forecast thanks to good development in all business areas. The company's impressive operational performance provides a good basis for strong earnings growth in the coming years. Earnings growth in the coming years thus forms a significant part of the attractive expected return for the next few years. Considering this overall picture and the upward revisions to our estimates, we raise our target price to EUR 16.5  (was 15.0) and our recommendation to Buy (was Accumulate).

Impressive performance continued in Q2

Alma Media's revenue grew by 5% to 87.9 MEUR in Q2, slightly exceeding our expectations. The estimate beat was broad-based, with the development of several of the company's businesses being slightly better than anticipated Alma Media's adjusted EBIT in Q2 was 24.4 MEUR, corresponding to a very good profitability of 27.7% (Q2'25: 25.2%). The significant overperformance in profitability was partly due to a larger-than-anticipated decrease in depreciation, but even with this taken into account, the profitability development was broadly convincing. Alma Media has long been able to grow in a challenging market while keeping its cost level under tight control, which has significantly strengthened its profitability in recent years. We commented on the Q2 report in more detail on Wednesday, which can be read here.

Reaching the guidance looks easy

Alma Media reiterated its guidance for 2026, expecting its revenue to remain at the previous year's level and adjusted EBIT to grow. Since H1, the company's revenue has grown by 5% and earnings by 17% from the comparison period. Considering this background and the domestic economic development, which has recently shown signs of improvement, we believe achieving the guidance will be easy. If domestic economic growth broadens and the recovery in consumer confidence materializes into consumption, we consider a guidance upgrade for the rest of the year to be quite possible.

Our estimates continued to rise

In line with a stronger-than-expected Q2 report and a slightly improved economic growth outlook, we have raised our estimates. At the revenue level, we made marginal adjustments across the board, so current and next year's estimates increased by 1%. At the adjusted earnings level, EBIT estimates were raised due to lower depreciation estimates, but our profitability estimates for Marketplaces and News Media in particular increased due to good cost efficiency. However, some of this was offset by an increase in group costs, but our adjusted EBIT estimates for the coming years increased by 5-6%. We expect scalable growth from Alma Media in the coming years, as the average revenue growth of 4% translates into an average adjusted EBIT growth of 12% in our estimates for 2026-2028.

High expected return from earnings growth

Based on the LTM results, the adjusted P/E and EV/EBIT multiples for the stock are around 17x and 14x. In our view, considering Alma Media's high return on capital, good cash flow profile, and growth outlook, these valuation multiples are neutral. The expected return is based on our estimated strong earnings growth in the coming years (2026-2028 EPS growth-% 15%). This, together with our estimated dividend yield of around 4%, raises the expected return for the next few years clearly above the required return. The moderate valuation is also suggested by our DCF model, which stands at EUR 17 per share. We therefore consider the risk/reward ratio of the stock to be very attractive.