Welcome to InderesTV. Sanoma published Q1 2026 results today and with me here is Sanoma's president and CEO. Welcome.

Thank you.

Kicking off with the Q1 figures, how would you describe them?

Yes, I think we had a really good start to the year in Q1. Of course, it's always usually small from a revenue point of view, but we did improve our profit in both learning and media. And there were several steps that I consider really important. and towards our growth. Clearly, we also announced as part of that an acquisition in Spain that we acquired at the end of April, so technically after the quarter, but of course very much part of our story today as well. Really highly synergetic, goes to the core of what we want to do. And that will become visible in our numbers, of course, going forward. Quarter one was also the quarter where we We launched our AI teacher assistant across seven markets, so really benefiting from the scale, developing once, rolling it out in a lot of our markets, including very important ones like also the Netherlands. There's a small acquisition as well, which again helps around the AI topic, personalized learning. personalised learning. If you think of Media Finland, we've got a fair bit of questions on that actually in the Q1 results presentation. But we of course added the New York Times subscription, and we announced that we won, that's for next year, the Champions League rights, which we are very happy about. So all those kind of things really, you know, positive elements in the quarter one, which in itself is of course relatively small. And then the last thing is around the growth that we see in leveraging AI with new solutions, like I mentioned on the personalised learning and you see it in media. in media also on the journalistic side, but also in the way we work more efficiently across everywhere, including in uh for our sales uh uh teams as well to support them as well. So a lot happening, um and only part of that you see in the numbers at the moment, a lot of it is also going forward.

For sure. Talking about efficiency, you improved clearly your profitability in Media Finland, a clear step change compared to year-on-year development. Should we expect this to continue, and then maybe you can highlight the drivers behind this?

Yeah, so we're very pleased with what happened in quarter one on the media side. I think it's a big testament to Pia Kalsta and the team on how they are able to really constantly work on the cost containment, but in a smart way. Of course, it's against the backdrop of still a challenging economic environment that for us mainly shows in the advertising sales, which is still challenging, but we do see on the subscription side, of course, the continued growth if you think about Ruutu+ and also digital subscriptions. So to your point, can we continue to see this kind of improvement if the economy stays more subdued? Of course we will do our very best, but there's no guarantee of course on that, but we are very pleased that again for quarter one we managed to do that very well.

Then continuing on Media Finland and the advertising market. We've seen a surprisingly weak market, I would say, for the past few quarters, and then on the report you mentioned that you expect it to stay rather soft.

Yeah.

And then uh on the other hand you're guiding for a somewhat stable market for the whole year. How would you uh describe the the expectations going going forward?

Yeah. So the way I look at that is, you know, clearly when we gave the guidance we said like underpinning that is a relatively stable market. But of course But of course we work with scenarios. We work really hard, even if it's not stable, to try to mitigate the impact

Mm-hmm.

on the bottom line and that will continue to be the case. And, you know, nobody has the visibility at the moment where that exactly will end up. And of course that will very much also depend on what happens in the broader Finnish economy, right. But we work very hard to work on different scenarios that could be stable, could be slightly declining. That doesn't necessarily mean that our guidance changes. It is a part of why we are saying at this point we're keeping our guidance unchanged because you could also argue with the acquisition of Vries en Vrievers that clearly gets us more towards the higher end of the guidance, which it does, but at the same time you have a very important quarter three for learning still ahead, and then you have this uncertainty in the media market.

Right. Let's dive deeper into the acquisition you just mentioned. Can you explain how it complements your current offering in Spain and why it was a good acquisition target for you?

Yeah, so I'm very excited about adding the company to the Sanoma family because I think it goes to the heart of what we also said, for example, in the Capital Markets Day, of where we really see benefits of adding to our scale. Because why? In core K-12 it has fantastic methods. Its assets complement us in certain areas of the subjects that it covers, but also from a regional point of view it's a further strengthening in parts of Spain. There's clear synergies, the usual 10 to 20 percent that we really can see here. But it's also great people with real passion for education that we are adding to our family. So yeah, it doesn't get much better than this if you think about it from the point of view of adding to our scale.

Continuing on the synergies, like you mentioned, last year's CMD you presented the historical figures on 10 to 20 percent

Yeah.

synergies in this kind of acquisitions. Is this the case where you'd expect to reach that exactly

Yeah.

that level, and then maybe what are the drivers there?

Yeah, so there's always, you know, every situation is a bit unique, but roughly speaking that is very much the case. And that is the usual elements. Of course it's around printing and paper and the production of that. That is definitely an element of it. In this particular case we also have some really great people that have been added to our organization, and some of them work on products at the moment where we also have an equivalent of that product digitally in our own offering. So that will be one of the ones where we can see how we are dealing with that. But fundamentally, of course, there we will benefit from the scale and at the end of the day have one product, but still the people we would love to see if we can also you know, if they can be part of our growing organization somehow as well. So all these things are happening, but fundamentally we see real growth opportunity.

Then thinking about the deal sizes. I mean you've done smaller in-market acquisitions and and bigger entries to new markets. Uh what are the pros and cons of uh big and small acquisitions and and do you have any preferences on

Yeah, so if you look at our track record, when we step into a new market geographically speaking, we like to be number one, number two or number three like we were in Italy, but really sizeable from that perspective. And then it's really adding to the scale overall. And if you think about my example of the AI teacher assistant, yeah, it's great that we can now roll that out in seven markets in one go with the same technology and the same development team effectively. So very happy when we can add to that, and there's clearly still an ambition to do more of that. When you think about markets we're already in, it then depends on the type of market we're in. Spain is a really good example now of we had a really strong position, but there's still a lot to be added as well. It's still a very fragmented market, and a step like this really supports that kind of building the scale, benefiting from the scale. Then as well, like the Dutch market we mentioned there as well, there of course it's less about still a fragmented market. It's more about what new, especially personalized learning solutions, can we then add to the offering. And I think we're making good steps there too.

You mentioned a fragmented market in Spain. Would you say there is still more room for add-on acquisitions.

Oh, definitely, it's still fragmented. I mean it's a little bit less fragmented now with the acquisition that we have done, but there's still more. Obviously you can never know exactly how that will play out, but we do see that there is an increasing realization across players in our market that scale does matter, particularly in light of AI and personalized learning solutions. And of course we continue to see where we can add to our scale and and add businesses that are really very similar to us in a positive way with the same kind of passion and quality for K-12 education.

Perfect. Thank you very much, and all the best for this year.

Thank you very much.