Ströer SE & Co. KGaA (ETR:SAX) reported preliminary, unaudited results for fiscal 2025 and outlined a multi-year plan to transform the business from what management described as a largely manual, silo-based advertising sales organization into an AI-driven platform model. CEO Udo Müller and CFO Henning Stute said the group delivered a “robust performance” in a challenging ad market, while also emphasizing strategic initiatives centered on the planned Ströer Ad Manager and an analytics layer called Public Mind.
Preliminary 2025 results and cash flow
Management said total revenues rose slightly in 2025, increasing by 1% year-over-year, and were in line with expectations and guidance. Ströer also highlighted several operating metrics: overall revenue up 4% to EUR 989 million, digital out-of-home up around 8% to EUR 398 million, and programmatic digital out-of-home up 12% to EUR 151 million. Adjusted EBITDA ended 2025 essentially unchanged at EUR 626 million, while adjusted EBIT declined 4% to EUR 307 million. Adjusted net income was “just above” EUR 165 million, and adjusted free cash flow was roughly EUR 107 million. Capital expenditures were stable at around EUR 93 million, and adjusted EPS was EUR 2.70.
Net debt was up EUR 33 million year-over-year, which Stute reconciled to EUR 107 million of adjusted free cash flow, dividends to Ströer shareholders of EUR 128 million, dividends to minority shareholders of EUR 13 million, M&A and transaction costs of around EUR 3 million, and other items. Sequentially, net debt declined EUR 74 million from the end of Q3 to Q4, supported by EUR 88 million of adjusted free cash flow in Q4. Leverage ended 2025 at 2.3x, up from 2.1x a year earlier, but improved by about 0.2x versus Q3.
Q4 performance and segment commentary
In the fourth quarter, Ströer said organic growth was flat, while sales increased 3% mainly due to an acquisition in the call center business, which Stute said contributed about EUR 20 million to revenue in Q4. Adjusted EBITDA improved by EUR 7 million in the quarter, driven by the acquisition contribution and better earnings in Out-of-Home Media and Digital & Dialog Media. Adjusted net income improved to EUR 79 million in Q4.
Within Out-of-Home Media, Q4 sales increased by almost 2% amid a market described as challenging and characterized by declining TV sales. Both classic and digital products grew moderately, and adjusted EBITDA rose by about EUR 10 million, including an “exceptionally strong year-end performance” in Poland and higher IFRS 16 effects. Stute said the business delivered around 4% growth for the full year with a stable cash EBITDA margin, reflecting cost control measures introduced after the ad market weakened in spring 2025.
Digital & Dialog Media posted Q4 revenue growth of 9%, with organic growth of 0.7%. Management highlighted the acquired AMEVIDA call center assets, purchased in insolvency proceedings for what Stute described as a negligible price. He said Ströer integrated the business into existing overhead, optimized locations, and renegotiated leases to operate profitably “from day one.” For 2026, the company expects more than 1,200 additional FTEs on average from the acquisition, generating more than EUR 70 million in revenue and a “high single-digit” EUR million EBITDA contribution, on top of roughly EUR 3 million recognized in Q4 2025. In Q4, management later broke down the segment’s EUR 23 million sales increase as roughly EUR 20 million from the acquisition, around EUR 5 million underlying growth in call centers, and a roughly EUR 2 million decline at Ranger.
In Data as a Service and eCommerce, segment revenue fell 4%. Statista sales rose 3.5% organically (excluding currency), and management said outbound and ranking held up better while inbound platform sales remained under pressure. Ströer also said it disposed of a small non-core Statista unit focused on customized strategic consulting; the unit generated roughly EUR 8 million of sales in 2025 with no relevant earnings contribution. At asam, management cited a difficult quarter due to a weak consumer environment and issues following a webshop migration, including fraudulent guest-account purchase orders that triggered an extraordinary receivables write-off of around EUR 2.5 million recognized in adjusted EBITDA.
AI platform transformation: Ad Manager and Public Mind
Müller described AI as “the operating system” of Ströer’s future model, arguing that recent advances now allow the company to shift from selling predefined advertising packages to an integrated platform that generates individualized offers. He said the planned Ströer Ad Manager would automate quotation, configuration, booking, delivery, and billing, supported by dynamic pricing and yield management. Public Mind would serve as the predictive intelligence layer, using mobility and behavioral data to help predict, measure, and optimize campaign impact and feed learnings back into planning and pricing.
Management outlined a development timeline:
- Ad Manager: MVP concept phase starting now, data pipelines built between Q2 and Q4 2026, an “agentic AI” layer added from Q3 2026 to Q2 2027, sales interface and reporting built from Q2 2026 to Q3 2027, and testing/rollout from Q3 2026 through Q4 2027.
- Public Mind: proof of concept in Q3–Q4 2026; an MVP with five “quality and impact indicators” in Q1–Q2 2027 (PDI, PCS, 3L, CHA, IROS); multi-partner testing in Q3–Q4 2027; and enterprise rollout beginning in 2028.
In Q&A, Müller said expected investment was “maximum around EUR 2 million” in CapEx for the Ad Manager and around EUR 2 million to get Public Mind live, calling both “negligible” relative to the perceived impact. He also said the company does not expect to hire more people for the initiative, citing about 100 programmers working on its supply-side platform and anticipating lower expenses there over time.
t-online reach, Statista integration, and 2026 outlook
Müller said t-online has become Germany’s number one news and advice portal, reaching 47 million unique users across desktop, mobile, and public video, with 43% reach among German-speaking adults. He also cited page view growth following the broad rollout of AI-based search and summaries (“Google Zero”) in early 2025, stating that January 2026 page views were up 10% versus 2024 and February 2026 page views were up 13% versus 2024, attributing resilience partly to direct traffic.
On Statista, management emphasized the value of verified data in AI workflows and described expanding distribution beyond statista.com via APIs and integrations, including with partners such as Perplexity, Canvas, and Microsoft Copilot. In Q&A, executives said they are seeing usage/consumption rise under a changing model, but results vary by customer; they cited Shopify as an example with materially higher credit usage and Omnicom Group as an example where the new model has not yet increased consumption, leading Ströer to focus on activation programs for Statista Connect customers.
For 2026, Ströer guided to low- to mid-single-digit organic revenue growth, with cash EBITDA (EBITDA before IFRS 16) expected to develop broadly in line with sales. Adjusted free cash flow before M&A is expected to improve, while adjusted EBITDA after IFRS 16 is expected to be largely stable, reflecting lower IFRS 16 effects and a shift from fixed to variable rents following contract renewals. Management said out-of-home media sales in Q1 2026 should be slightly above last year’s level despite a strong prior-year comparison that included German federal elections. Digital & Dialog Media sales growth is expected to be broadly in line with Q4 2025 momentum (+9%), while DACH & eCommerce is expected to decline by roughly EUR 9 million, including the effect of disposing the Statista strategy and consulting unit.
Management also attributed lower fixed rent payments in renegotiations to consolidation in the German market and reduced competition, noting that under IFRS accounting, lower fixed rents can reduce reported IFRS EBITDA even as cash economics improve. Stute said Ströer expects declining IFRS 16 effects in 2026 after several city contracts were renewed with significantly lower fixed-rent components.
About Ströer SE & Co. KGaA (ETR:SAX)
Ströer SE & Co KGaA provides out-of-home (OOH) media and online advertising solutions in Germany and internationally. It operates through three segments: Out-of-Home Media, Digital & Dialog Media, and Data As A Service (DaaS) & E-Commerce. The company offers various OOH advertising media services, such as traditional posters media and advertisements at bus and tram shelters and on public transport; and digital advertising services. It also operates t-online.de, which publishes news, analyses, reports and interviews through digital channels; information services for digital natives through special interest portals, such as giga.de, kino.de, desired, familie.de, spieletipps.de, and SpielAffe.de; and call centers focus on customer experience and sales for telecommunications, energy, retail, financial services, and medica sectors.
