New Work SE

XETRA:NWO

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the New Work SE Quarter 1 Results Call 2020. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Thomas Vollmoeller. Please go ahead, sir.

[Unknown]

Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. This is Thomas speaking, and Ingo is 1.5 meters away from me. This is a special and challenging time for all of us, and we hope you and your families survived well so far. Here at New Work SE, we will gradually reopen our offices next week after 6 weeks of lockdown. We're extremely proud of our organization and how motivated and productive everyone is. As you can imagine, the current COVID-19 pandemic not only affects the way we work, it obviously affects our members and corporate customers as well. So today's presentation, we will provide you with as many insights as we can about our past performance, current trading as well as the management outlook on how we see things in the long term.So here's what we like to cover in today's call. Our like-for-like KPIs are growing nicely. But we obviously experienced stronger impacts from March onwards. B2C is pretty stable. B2B E-Recruiting is growing but less strongly than we expected originally. The long-term market drivers will remain, thus not affecting our long-term outlook. In the meantime, we continue to build our value proposition and are further strengthening our customer relationships.Let's start with a look at our key financials in Q1 2020. As you can see, we expanded the view to include the underlying operational performance of New Work SE compared to last year's Q1. This is necessary because in both first quarters, we had an extraordinary onetime effect, a positive one in Q1 2019 and a negative one in Q1 2020. Ingo will explain these different effects in more detail during his presentation.What you can see is that our revenues continue to grow by 9% on a like-for-like basis. Our EBITDA grew by 12% and to EUR 18.8 million, excluding the onetime effects. Also very important is the cash conversion. Our operating cash flow without any adjustments here also grew by 12% to EUR 32.4 million.Moving on to our operational KPIs. As mentioned in the beginning, our B2C business is doing pretty well given the current situation. We kept growing our member base by 12% to -- or 1.8 million compared to last year. In Q1 2020, we added around 480,000 net new members to the platform. At our second C destination, kununu, we significantly expanded the content for our users by 51% compared to last year. This strong uptake is supported by the newly launched salary data and culture insights. We provide most -- almost 4 million different data points that help job seekers find the most suitable employer.Let's have a look at our B2B E-Recruiting business. This comes as no surprise at this point. In our B2B E-Recruiting solutions, we already saw the first COVID-19 effects in our March numbers. That is why we also provide data for February as well. As you can see, we are still growing in all core E-Recruiting solutions, but experienced a downturn in March already.This isn't a surprise as most HRD partners currently need to focus on keeping current employees productive, handling furlough schemes for their organizations and introducing higher increases and the like. That is obviously softer growth than expected, particularly given the fact that we still have a low market penetration and plenty of scope for growth. But it seems like COVID-19 is shifting the growth curve a little to the right which brings me to the next slide.Despite the fact that COVID-19 is everywhere right now, I'd like to provide some insights on what we think is going to happen and why New Work SE is perfectly positioned post-COVID-19. Pre-COVID-19, Germany's unemployment stood at about 2.3 million, with around 1.4 million vacancies, so unfilled positions. Pre-COVID-19, Korn Ferry estimated that number of unfilled position is set to grow to 4.9 million by 2030, putting talent scarcity on a new record high. As we are now seeing different negative COVID-19 effects, the situation has changed, but only slightly as we believe. The IAB institute currently estimates about 0.5 million average increase in unemployment for 2020. Even if you assume that another 1.2 million people lose their jobs in the next years because of COVID-19, and that's a worst-case assumption from the management, this will not put our employer branding or E-Recruiting business at risk. This is due to the one stable and very predictable aspect within this hypothetical view, and that's the change in demographics. The statistical office expects the working population in Germany to decline by 4 million to 6 million within the next 10 to 15 years. And even if you deduct the 1 -- 0.5 million or 1.7 million increase in unemployment from the Korn Ferry estimation of 4.9 million unfilled vacancies. You still end up somewhere in the area of 3.5 million, 4 million unfilled positions, which will rise year by year since a few hundred thousand workers will leave the labor market each year.In a nutshell, it's pretty certain that we will run out of people rather than out of jobs. And this is precisely why New Work SE will continue to have long-term growth potential once the COVID-19 situation eases further. And as a reminder, we are well positioned and have successfully built a universe of services and entities that are in a leading position, coupled with structural benefits owing to a tight employment market. And in the meantime, our teams remain busy, working on enhancing value for our members. At the end of March, we relaunched our premium offering.In a nutshell, we added a self-assessment tool, which we developed in collaboration with our partner LINC, a spin-off from University of Lüneburg. The assessment analysis strength, highlight areas to be developed and uncovers untapped potential based on the renowned "Big 5" personality traits model. Furthermore, we added a wide range of content helping paying members to develop themselves on a personal and professional level, with partners, including Udemy, Bürgerakademie, Lecturio and Masterplan. The content ranges from professional networking courses to time management sessions and on to digital skills for new technologies.In addition, premium members get free access to a number of articles in German published by Harvard Business Manager. This offering used to be reserved for News Plus subscribers, but now comes as a part of premium membership. Last but not least, all premium members now have access to free regular live webinars to help them get the most out of their XING profile as an online business card. They can learn how to make their profile more appealing, how to boost profile visibility and how to find out which of their profile details is generating the most interesting among other members.Premium members now also have access to a premium hotline for swift assistance and advice. And just 1 month since this relaunch, more than 10,000 premium members already took the self-assessment test. The premium section is also seeing a nice uptake, with traffic almost doubling compared to last year. Also, the famous profile visitors feature is currently experiencing 80% higher traffic compared to last year.Our B2B products team and developers have also been busy working on some improvements to our XTM, which we shipped recently. Furthermore, we just signed a cooperation with the Leipzig Graduate School of Management to launch a New Work seal.Summarize on the seal first. We are going to launch this New Work seal in corporation with the HHL shortly. It rewards companies that create an employee-oriented work environment in which employees can work independently and develop their potential freely. It is intended to offer managers, employees and job seekers a guideline for an attractive employer and demonstrate the diverse dimensions of New Work. What is special about the New Work, it evaluates new working companies for the first time according to quantifiable criteria and takes into account various dimensions such as individual development, transparency and appreciation as well as leadership behavior and organization.On the one hand, HHL has developed the scientific basic for measuring New Work; on the other hand, it analyzes employers who are worthy of sealing according to scientific standard. This analysis includes qualitative employer feedback and employee opinions based on various data that we get from the kununu platform.Regarding the XTM, we improved 2 main services. One, a new module has been added that shows hidden talents. Member CVs are analyzed and their previous positions evaluated. The module then identifies members who might be interested in changing jobs based on their current role. And two, furthermore, the current employer module has been enriched with additional information. Recruiters can now -- cannot only see the largest employers in the selected location, but also whether the company has gained or lost employees. In addition, the next employer indicator shows which company's former employees at a given employer usually switch to.Last but not least, I'd like to give you a COVID-19-related overview of measures we initiated to help our users and customers during this challenging situation. COVID-19 presents us with a variety of challenges, both privately and professionally. Staying away, staying at home and maintaining as little contact with other people as possible, are top of the list of things to do in the battle against the virus. The vast importance of social networks and digital performance during the coronavirus crisis is evident in all 10 of the New Work SE brands, which have launched various measures to help members and customers continue or even improve their working lives.On the B2C side, we have all of our business units producing content, i.e., e.g., corporate communication, XING News, kununu and HalloFreelancer in connection with COVID-19. They offer guidance and information for both employers and employees in times of crisis.The XING service, HalloFreelancer, has put together various measures, specific contact points and other helpful links on its block to have freelancers and solopreneurs during the coronavirus crisis. The initiative also calls on companies to offer freelancer support by purchasing vouchers for services, which can be redeemed at a later day. Payment is made immediately after the contract is concluded, so freelancers can bridge the financial gap caused by downturn in projects.Kununu launched a Covid Employer Transparency Ticker to promote collaboration between employees and employers. This ticker allows employees to anonymously share their employers dealing with COVID-19. Employers can also report on their experiences as well as planned or implemented measures by e-mailing [e-mail] already launched a number of initiatives to our B2B customers. XING E-Recruiting offers free job advertisements for essential medical institutions looking for urgently needed professional groups. In addition, the XING TalentpoolManager can be used free of charge during the current crisis. And the XING TalentManager has free trial period of 30 days, so companies can specifically target new employees. Furthermore, there are individual consultation hours for all XING E-Recruiting 360 customers in form of webinars, online training or one-to-one consultations. With a focus on recruiting and employer branding during the COVID-19 crisis. Anyone who opted for an E-Recruiting solution in April benefits from a later contract start date by being able to use their purchased products for the first 2 months free of charge.XING Events launched and adapted local campaign "Stay at home, meet online" to promote online events. The XING Events team are using the #zuhauseaufXING #StayAtHome to encourage people to organize and to sign up to online events. They also offer various online events such as the Afterwork, Expert Dialogue and XING Pulse series.Ladies and gentlemen, that completes my final IR update for you. I obviously hand over management of the company to my successor, Petra von Strombeck, at the Annual General Meeting at the end of May. I know that the future fortunes of New Work SE are in very good hands. The house is in good order, and New Work SE is in an excellent position. I'm convinced that the company will weather this storm well and develop under Petra's leadership in the best possible way. I would like to thank you, to our many members -- I would like to say thank you to our many members, users and customers. They are the reason why we like to get up every day and work with the utmost dedication to improve their lives. And I'd like to thank our employees who right now are proving once again how impressive they are. Thank you to my colleagues on the Board because the success we have achieved over the last few years are not the result of individual efforts but rather the result of a healthy and trusting teamwork. And last but not least, thank you, guys. Thank you for your and your clients' money which you invested in our company and for the trust you put in our whole team.And now I'm handing over to Ingo.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thanks, Thomas. Hello, everybody. This is Ingo, and I'm going to talk to you about our Q1 numbers in more detail. All in all, yes, these are very interesting times [Audio Gap] Let's start with the [Audio Gap] Number one, we're showing continued growth in Q1, but of course, our business is also impacted from COVID. If you look at our Q1 main non-financials and our revenues, they are up. If you look at Q1 EBITDA, that's up on a like-for-like basis. Number two, we have strong cash flows. And number three, April, as the first full COVID month here in our region shows an impact, especially on new business development, transactional businesses such as marketing solutions and events, and off-line dependent activities, such as events. Number four, generally speaking, however, we believe that our business model compared to most other businesses is quite resilient. And number five, we're updating our full year outlook for the year 2020 to revenues of EUR 275 million to EUR 285 million and an EBITDA margin around 30%. We leave our dividend proposal for this year unchanged. I'll get into more details on the following chart.On the next slide, you can see an overview of our P&L. What you see here are our reported figures. Generally speaking, this quarter, reported figures are distorted because on the one hand, we have changes in our business portfolio versus last year, and on the other hand, we have negative extraordinary effects in Q1 this year and positive extraordinary effects in Q1 last year. That distorts especially our bottom line figures, and I will try to make that transparent for you. Also, as we said, we're beginning to see COVID impacts on our business.Now reported revenues came in at EUR 68.9 million. That's 10% year-over-year. Organic growth is 9%, if you take out Honeypot revenues, which were not yet included in Q1 last year. Reported EBITDA amounts to EUR 15.9 million, that's down year-over-year. Year-over-year development is distorted. Pro forma EBITDA is up 12% year-over-year. Q1 EBITDA margin is 23%, pro forma EBITDA margin is 28%. And reported net income amounts to EUR 7.2 million, which is down year-over-year. Again, here, the year-over-year development is distorted. Pro forma net income is up 29% year-over-year.Now I'll give you a more detailed picture on the [ XO ] effects and the scope effects on the next slide. On the left-hand side, you see our reported Q1 figures 2020. And as I said, they include several distorting effects relative to last year's Q1. Effect number one is this year's Q1 has a different scope compared to last year's Q1. This year includes Honeypot start-up losses, whereas last year, Honeypot was not included since we acquired it only as per April 2019. To adjust for that, you have to take out EUR 0.6 million in revenues and minus EUR 0.7 million in EBITDA. Effect number two is severance pay for our Board member, Alastair Bruce, which has left the company. To adjust, we're taking out minus EUR 1.2 million in cost above EBITDA. Effect number three is according to IFRS, the COVID pandemic is a triggering event. So we have to do a new impairment test for all of our acquisitions. Rules are especially tough on acquisitions, which are still in the start-up losses phase. So we had to book an impairment of minus EUR 6.2 million for Honeypot.Now the important point is this does not change our perspective on the Honeypot opportunity as such. We still believe in the opportunity. We believe in the business model. We believe in the team. Actually, for us, COVID means just a shift for Honeypot to the right on the time line. And independent of the impairment, we still expect the deal to be value-creating because of the mix of base price versus earnout. In the deal structure, the impairment basically applies to the expected earnout. Number four, we've had a positive nonoperating effect from earnout adjustment of EUR 7.1 million, most of that for Honeypot. That's the other side of the coin of the impairment.Now Number five, we are now showing fluctuations of our cash investments in our financial results. We used to show those in the line other comprehensive income below the net income line to keep those nonoperating effects out of our P&L. However, IFRS does not allow that anymore. These are accounting losses in Q1. They are not realized.Now if you look at Q1 last year, there are 3 items to adjust for a sensible year-over-year comparison. Number one is on an EBITDA level, you will remember that we had a positive onetime effect of net plus EUR 0.9 million from signing our rental contract for the new headquarter: EUR 3.8 million in operating income and minus EUR 2.9 million in other costs.Number two, you will also remember that last year, in our financial result, we had a positive effect of plus EUR 1.3 million from the first-time consolidation of kununu US. And number three, last year in Q1, we had a gain on cash investments of plus EUR 0.5 million in the financial result.If you adjust our numbers for these effects to assess how our operating business has really developed year-over-year, the picture is as follows: Pro forma EBITDA amounts to EUR 18.8 million, that's up 12% year-over-year. Pro forma EBITDA margin is 28%, which is up year-over-year by 2 percentage points. Pro forma depreciation amounts to EUR 6.1 million, slightly up year-over-year. Please note that this also includes depreciation from purchase price allocation from our acquisitions.Pro forma financial result is minus EUR 0.1 million, slightly around last year's level. Most of that basically is accounting only noncash cost for discounting future earnout liabilities according to IFRS. And with that, pro forma net income amounts to EUR 9 million, which is up 29% year-over-year. And with that pro forma EPS was EUR 1.60. So overall, in Q1, our underlying like-for-like business has grown in revenues as well as an EBITDA and net income. And that, despite first impact from COVID. I'll give you more info on COVID later.Now let's have a look at the Q1 profitability by business line. Let's start with the B2C segment. In Q1, B2B (sic) [ B2C ] segment contributed EUR 7.9 million (sic) [ EUR 7.4 million ] in segment EBITDA, which is up year-over-year, while margin is constant. The B2B E-Recruiting segment contributed EUR 25.4 million to profitability. That's up year-over-year. Return on sales is down year-over-year. These are the reported figures, which means in Q1 2020, this segment includes the Honeypot start-up losses. Whereas in Q1 last year, we had not yet acquired Honeypot. If we took that out, margin would be up year-over-year for the segment. The B2B Advertising & Events segment contributed EUR 0.8 million to profitability. That's down year-over-year. Margin is down as well. Here, you can see the first COVID impact on our Events business.On the next slide, you can see our revenue development by segment. B2C revenues came in at EUR 26 million. That's up 2% year-over-year. The segment is developing in a stable manner. Growth was driven mainly by the premium business. If we look at E-Recruiting, B2B E-Recruiting revenues came in at EUR 38.4 million. It's up 24% year-over-year. Organic growth was 22% year-over-year. Our modern E-Recruiting offerings, such as employer branding, active recruiting and the 360 packages, which are all subscription businesses, are growing double digit in Q1. Passive recruiting, our classical job ad business, which is transactional in nature, is flat year-over-year. Clearly, you're seeing first signs of COVID impact here.Now finally, let's look at the B2B Advertising & Events segment. Revenues amount to EUR 4.6 million. They're down year-over-year. Now as expected, so far, we've seen the strongest impact from COVID in this segment. Both businesses are transactional. They're not subscription, and events is particularly harmed by lockdown and accounts for most of the contraction year-over-year in this segment.On the next slide, you'll see an overview of our cost structure. In Q1, personnel costs before capitalization amounted to EUR 36.9 million, equivalent to 54% of revenues. Costs are up year-over-year. These are the reported figures. You will find severance pay in this figure. So compared to last year, it includes a severance pay, as I've said, and Honeypot, which last year had not yet been acquired. Year-over-year, we added 301 full-time equivalent employees. And thereof, 113 accounts for Honeypot and 188 were added organically.If you look at marketing in Q1, overall marketing costs came in at EUR 9.2 million. That's 13% of revenues, and that's basically on previous year's level. As you know, we always have a big branding campaign in Q1, and we are happy with the outcome of the campaign.Last cost line is other operating expenses. As you all know, it includes as usual external services, legal, audit consulting, payment processing, server hosting and other costs. In Q1, other operating expenses before capitalization amount to EUR 14.1 million or 20% of revenues, which is down year-over-year. As mentioned earlier, in Q1 last year, other operating expense impacted by onetime cost for our new headquarter, if you take those out to normal cost increase in line with our top line development.On the next slide, you can see our cash flows. Very nice picture here. Operating cash flow, excluding organizer cash, amounts to EUR 32.4 million, up year-over-year. As usual, Q1 is seasonally strong in operating cash flow with net working capital as the key driver. Cash outs for operating investments amount to minus EUR 9.2 million, that's up year-over-year. Cash outs for interest paid, foreign exchange and rent amounts to minus EUR 1.5 million. These are mainly our cost for rent. And with that, free cash flow, excluding organizer cash, amounts to EUR 21.7 million. As you can see, our business has continued to be very cash generative. At the end of Q1, we had cash reserves close to EUR 90 million, and we are debt-free. So we do have a very comfortable cash position. Liquidity at this point is no problem.So what is the COVID impact on our business so far? And what you see here on this slide is basically what we've learned this April, which is the first full month with COVID versus previous year's April. Now if you look at the B2C segment, XING member adds are slightly down, but we are still adding members very nicely. So that's no concern. If you look at activity at XING, that's up, especially the news activity, which is good, especially if you take into account that currently with disruption of daily life, user attention is elsewhere.If you look at the premium business, the premium existing payer base, that's rather stable. Churn is fluctuating. But so far, we are unconcerned and the existing payer base is the majority of our B2C revenue base. Okay, so that's good. The premium payer adds are down a little bit. That's okay. But it's only a very small part of the premium revenue base comes from new payers. And although even we believe that job insecurity is increasing, we believe that, that's not yet -- will not yet show in our payer figures because user attention currently is elsewhere.What do we believe will happen post-COVID in this segment? Member growth and activity will be back to normal. We'll probably have an over-proportional job search activity as job insecurity driven by the overall macroeconomic situation will become more effective, and that also might have premium as we've seen in 2009. Long-term outlook is unchanged. If you look at B2B E-Recruiting, again, let's start with the existing subscription customer base in E-Recruiting, that's the modern forms of E-Recruiting, active recruiting and employer branding. Renewal volume at this point in time is stable. That's good. And again, here, that's the majority of the revenue pace.New subscription business is year-over-year significantly down. However, we do still have new business, which is good. If you look at the transactional passive recruiting, order entry, that's as expected significantly down. What do we believe will happen post-COVID? It certainly depends on the macroeconomic development and rebound in general.But at least in the scarce segments, the likelihood is high that we'll have a fast return to a normal situation. What to believe -- do we believe long term? Our long-term view on the B2B E-Recruiting segment is unchanged due to the megatrend demographics. Pre-COVID, and Thomas has shown you the figures. Pre-COVID, we had 1.4 million open positions. And even although COVID will reduce the demand for labor in the short run, current estimates are around 0.5 million more unemployment to 1 million more in unemployment.Due to demographics, we will lose much more on the labor supply side, i.e., more than EUR 4 million within the next 10 years. So that long term, we expect the number of open positions to increase. As a consequence, demand for E-Recruiting and employer branding solutions will increase. And given that we own the best access to candidates through XING and kununu, we are in a unique position to deliver these solutions.Now if we look at B2B Marketing Solutions & Events. Marketing Solutions is a transactional business, slightly down. That's expected. And fortunately, it's not a large part of our monetization strategy. Events naturally is strongly affected from social distancing policies. And we are currently seeing a trend, and that's a potential opportunity for online events. That's promising, but it's too early to tell. What will happen post-COVID in our mind, Marketing Solutions probably will be back to normal pretty fast because we do have a very attractive audience. Events is open. Our long-term outlook is changed -- unchanged.So what does that mean for our business model and for our outlook? Well, there's, of course, lots of uncertainty in these times. However, in general, we believe that compared to many other businesses, our business model has relatively good resilience. Approximately 80% of our revenues is subscription -- are subscription based, and most of that is on automatic renewal. We do have a very diversified user base, a very diversified customer base with low ARPUs, both in B2C and in B2B. And these together lead to probably a more stable revenue base than many other businesses have. Our operations are purely digital. So there won't be any disruptions in operations from lockdowns, et cetera. We don't have supply chains. And if you look at the fact that most of our subscriptions are prepaid, that is also very cash generative. So taking all these elements together, we believe, compared to many other businesses, our business model is quite resilient.So what does that mean for our outlook? Well, we don't have a crystal ball, unfortunately. But based on the learnings so far, based on our scenarios at this point in time and based on a general character of our business model, our current outlook for the full year 2020 is revenues between EUR 275 million and EUR 285 million and an EBITDA margin of 30%. Our outlook on our long-term opportunity is unchanged. And of course, we will give you updates over time.So to sum it up for Q1. Like-for-like, we have grown our operating business in top line and bottom line. We've generated cash. We're seeing a COVID impact on April, but the existing businesses are running -- the existing business base is stable so far. We believe that our business is quite resilient, and we're looking for an outlook of EUR 275 million to EUR 285 million in revenue and a 30% margin. That's it for our numbers. Numbers are important, but people are actually even more important. So let me allow me a few personal words. Thomas? He's getting scared now.No, this is our last call together, and we've worked together for 8 years, 8 very successful years, company's 4x now. Compared to when you started, stock price pre-COVID actually is 10x. So I don't have to say more about the success. I want to say thank you. Thank you for the success. I want to say thank you for the fun we've had together. Thank you for finding a great successor with Petra, and thank you for being a friend. I wish you all the best for the next stage of your life.And now we take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. I hope you can hear me. Well, first of all, also from my side, Thomas, just wanted to say, I hope to hear or see you again sometime at later points. Thanks for excellent execution during the last years, and I think you did a remarkable job. Then on to my question.

[Unknown]

Thank you.

[Unknown Analyst]

Firstly, can you break down the guidance by segment? For example, I personally read about 10% to 15% expected growth into the B2B segment. Is that the right ballpark? And also you've given us a range of revenue. What kind of recovery scenario have you assumed on both ends of the range?

[Unknown]

Well -- okay. I can give you some directional breakdown. We believe that on a year-over-year development perspective, the largest contribution will come from B2B E-Recruiting as before. A small contribution will come from B2C, and we would be really happy if there were a contribution to growth from the other segment. But so far, this is unlikely. That's it.

[Operator]

And we'll take our next question.

[Patrick Schmidt, Analyst]

It's Patrick from Warburg Research. I've got 2. So first of all, could you remind us of your B2B E-Recruiting subscription figure as of the full year 2019 and maybe comment on the quarter-over-quarter development? That would be great. And then secondly, maybe a bit more color on your guidance would be great. What are your, let's say, assumptions? Do you assume B2B to remain relatively flat in absolute terms at Q1 level, for example? Or B2C, I assume, is relatively flat. And what do you expect for events and marketing? You said you're looking into online events. How are they received in the market? And can you monetize them potentially? And thirdly, yes, of course, thanks to Thomas, and I wish you all the best for the future and might see you some time.

[Unknown]

Yes. Patrick, thank you.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Patrick, thanks for the questions, very detailed questions. As I've tried to say in -- when I was going through my charts, uncertainty is very high, and we don't have the crystal ball, unfortunately. And also internally, there is no other way than working with scenarios. And based on the bandwidth of these scenarios, we arrive at the guidance that we've given out now and actually would not be sensible to go into a more detailed level because uncertainty is just too high for that. We're certain with the group figures that we've provided. We're confident with that at this point in time, but it's not sensible to just give you a guidance as detailed.

[Patrick Schmidt, Analyst]

Yes. Just to get kind of idea of what your base assumptions are, I mean are you expecting events and marketing, for example, to half in your, let's say, EUR 275 million scenario and that's B2B is declining even in the remainder of the year? Or what is your kind of scenario to arrive at the lower end?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Well, it's -- as I said, and I could repeat myself, but I'm not going to say more at this point in time. I hope for your understanding.

[Patrick Schmidt, Analyst]

Okay. Yes, fair enough. But maybe on the first question on the subscription figure as of full year 2019 in your B2B E-Recruiting segment?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

So basically, the subscription part from B2B E-Recruiting is the modern forms of E-Recruiting. So that's active recruiting and employer branding. Also, you have a little bit of the prescreen, the applicant tracking system in there, which is subscription. And yes, you could -- around 80% is probably a good assumption also for the segment.

[Patrick Schmidt, Analyst]

Okay. I was actually asking for the figure you put on, on Page 6, so the 13,393 customer subscription in E-Recruiting, what was that figure at full year 2019?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Oh, you mean at the end of Q4, what was the -- Patrick -- the other Patrick tells me it was flat. I don't know. You can look it up on our IR website because I'm sure...

[Patrick Schmidt, Analyst]

Yes, I just wanted to make sure I have the figure of -- I was just wondering whether it's correct that it's flat quarter-over-quarter.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes.

[Operator]

And we'll take our next question.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

It's Sarah Simon here from Berenberg. Thomas, I will miss our walk in the park. So I hope you stay safe with your new life.

[Unknown]

Thanks, Sarah.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

So just a couple of questions. Ingo, I think the first one you've already answered. So you were talking about 80% subscription. I was going to ask about classified and just to confirm, that's about 20% B2B. Secondly, are you seeing any difference in terms of the success in driving new business between, say, employer branding versus the active search products? Just if there's any difference in the trends there in a post-COVID scenario? And thirdly, I mean, maybe a bit premature, but obviously, you've got a good cash pile, you've done a number of M&A deals in the past. Is there anything that you think might be thrown up? Or are you looking at anything more actively now that the market has softened, because obviously, there will be other people out there who are going to be much worse affected than you.

[Unknown]

I'll take the second one.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thomas wants to take the second question.

[Unknown]

This is nice one. This is nice one. Play it over to Petra.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Okay. Thomas, so...

[Unknown]

Petra is also sitting in the room. So I am now putting some weight on Petra. No, But I think being in the situation as we are that we, a, can digest and have proven in the past, and we really can use other start-ups and can integrate them very easily. And given the fact that these days, prices have significantly come down in the area of start-ups. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of start-ups out there, we have problems getting their financing round through. I think it's a great time to hunt and to harvest. So I think the corporate development team is currently looking right and left, and left and right. Still, this doesn't mean we will make a deal. This doesn't mean that -- for sure, we have a deal. But I think it's a good time for us in these days to look for targets and for integrations.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

And then regarding the mix of the B2B E-Recruiting products, well, you know that even pre-COVID, the part of the transactional classical old fashion recruiting, the passive recruiting has gone down over time. And the proportion of active recruiting and employer branding, the modern forms of E-Recruiting have increased. And this trend -- we believe that this trend will continue post-COVID.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

And it's down about 20% of the total, right, the passive recruiting?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Say again. 20% of what?

[Unknown]

Of the total of the EUR 140 million.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. Yes.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

Of B2B passive. I'm sorry, you said in the answer to Patrick before that something was flat. So what was flat? The passive base.

[Unknown]

The passive revenues in Q1 were flat, yes, year-over-year.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

I'm sorry, there was a question about kununu versus...

[Unknown]

Okay. Okay. Okay. I did -- you have -- are you in Jamaica, again? The acoustics are not so good.No, the quarter-over-quarter, so for Q1 -- Q4 to Q1, the subscription customers in B2B E-Recruiting are more or less flat. That's true. That's what I said to Patrick from Warburg.

[Operator]

And it does show that we have one question left in the queue. [Operator Instructions]

[Fathima-Nizla Naizer]

This is Nizla from Deutsche Bank. Could you hear me?

[Unknown]

Yes, we can.

[Fathima-Nizla Naizer]

Firstly, all the best to you, Thomas, and it's been great things evolve under your leadership. So good luck to you in your future endeavors.

[Unknown]

Thank you.

[Fathima-Nizla Naizer]

And I have a couple of questions from my end. Firstly, on the new B2C premium product, could you just remind us what the pricing is of this new premium offer? And would the previous premium members automatically be sort of converted into the new sort of B2C offering? Or is this an entirely new product that you've launched?Secondly, on XING 360, could you give us some color on the renewals as, I guess, the COVID-19 situation unfolded? Are the XING 360 customers now asking for more of an à la carte sort of offering to come out of that subscription offers? Some color on their behavior would be great.And lastly, on 2020, how much do you intend to spend on CapEx? And are you curbing any plans at this point, just to give yourself more liquidity? And what do you intend to spend on this year? Some color there would be great.

[Unknown]

So the liquidity question is easy when I give that one over to Ingo there.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. So first of all, we do have a lot of liquidity, even if we pay out the dividend that we've proposed and if that's decided 3 weeks from now, which we expect on the AGM. We still have nice liquidity plus we're generating cash. So with regards to CapEx, we've always said that CapEx will be between -- will be above 10% of revenues. That was pre-COVID. And we've said that this year, we will have an extraordinary CapEx effect onetime of up to EUR 10 million because of the move to our new headquarters next year.Now the EUR 10 million, if it happens this year, it will be there this year, independent of the COVID crisis. With regard to the rest, of course, we are managing our cost, and most of our CapEx is capitalized software development. Of course, we are managing the investment in future growth at this point in time to keep our 30% EBITDA margin. So that will probably go down. But relative to revenues, it will be still in the same order of magnitude.

[Unknown]

Okay. And B2C just the premium is an upgrade of the current premium. So current premium users simply get the better premium now. We don't have to take them over. We don't -- we didn't charge more. So it's the same premium business. The key idea was really to increase the value proposition for our users, have more for them in the premium business, which is self-learning, as I said, it's self-assessment. It's also some other features, which are in there, which are better than before. So it's really a relaunch, a better product. And I think from all we see from all we hear is well received. In terms of renewal on 360, my reading is that we are not seeing any churn -- significant churn increase on any of our subscription products on the E-Recruiting side currently. So there is no significant churn increase anywhere.

[Operator]

And we do not have any further questions.

[Unknown]

Okay, guys. And this was it for this quarter. And this was it for me. And thanks from all of us. Thanks from Ingo. See you next time or you see us yourself next time. So have a great day.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Bye-bye.

[Unknown]

Stay happy and healthy. Bye.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Bye.

[Operator]

Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.