Stroeer SE & Co KgaA

XETRA:SAX

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 figure 2021 conference call of Stroer SE. At our customers' request this conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions] May I now hand you over to Christian Schmalzl, Co-CEO, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Dear ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining our Q1 results call today. Together with our Founder and Co-CEO, Udo Muller; and our CFO, Christian Baier, we will present the financials for the first quarter 2021 and give more information about the current business dynamics across all segments, but especially Out-of-Home media during the pandemic, how our financials developed in Q1 across the various businesses and subsegments, including an update on our ESG initiatives, and we wanted to take the opportunity to make a deeper dive into the development of Asam and what our strategic road map looks like before we close the presentation with the outlook for the coming months. Since meanwhile, more than 1 year, we are facing the challenges of COVID-19 and Germany was the full first quarter in a hard lockdown with all shops and restaurants closed and significant restrictions public life. So the total advertising market, but Out-of-Home media specifically were suffering. Nevertheless, our Out-of-Home plus strategy gives us a really robust setup for this crisis versus pure players and all long-term strategic business drivers are fully intact. In the first quarter, we focused on a tight management of the semi flexible Out-of-Home cost structure as already last year, but we tried to handle this in balance with strategic long-term targets and negotiated with all business partners in a reasonable partnership-oriented way. However, certain matters like rent adjustments are still work in progress and therefore, not fully reflected and effective. We expect our Out-of-Home business rebounding in V-shape as soon as audience and the ad market recover after the lockdown. At the moment, a vaccination quota of around 45% to 50% of all adults in Germany in the next 4 to 6 weeks, seems to be realistic and learnings from countries like Israel and the U.K. show how quickly infection rates go down afterwards and consumption climate and public atmosphere improve immediately. Our non-Out-of-Home businesses, Digital & Dialog Media as well as DaaS and e-commerce have been strong during the crisis and also in Q1. They were operating overall in normal or even better mode. We have observed in Q1, again, the further trend towards more digital media in combination with a stronger focus on technology, programmatic trading and data products. Given our leading market position in online and digital Out-of-Home media, we are convinced that we will gain market share in the already beginning recovery phase. Our diversified client portfolio from local SMEs to large national key accounts and across all industries has clearly helped to protect our top line in the first quarter. When we compare Q1 with the previous year's Q1, please keep in mind that this quarter was still pre corona with basically no significant negative effects from the pandemic. All in all, the reported revenues of Q1 2021 for the group was EUR 312 million, down by 15% compared to the previous year's quarter. Organic revenue development was on the same level. The adjusted EBITDA decline overproportionally by 37% to EUR 73 million compared to EUR 117 million in Q1 2020. Our adjusted EBIT was down disproportionately compared to EBITDA from EUR 48 million to EUR 8 million, mainly due to the basically unchanged D&A volume compared to Q1 2020. Accordingly, adjusted net income was down 97% from EUR 35 million to EUR 1 million. Operating cash flow for Q1 stands at EUR 27 million despite the full quarter lockdown, driven by phasing effects in our spend, CapEx for the quarter was EUR 14 million, some 49% below previous year's quarter. In the coming quarters, we will accelerate the ramp-up of our digital footprint, especially for digital roadside screens and expect a full year CapEx spend at least on prior year level. So overall, our Q1 revenue developed at the upper end of what we had guided and expected mid of March. In essence, only our Out-of-Home segment was impacted by COVID-19. There were very cautious prebookings for Q1 as the current lockdown already started in November last year, and many clients decided to hold back money unless they have clarity about the pandemic impact for 2021. Nevertheless, given the fact that the whole quarter was in lockdown, the impact was less sharp compared to Q2 last year when only 5 weeks were impacted by massive restrictions of public life. Local sales were still growing in Q1, and we had no problems to get in touch with our SME customer base. But national sales, campaign business and transport media were going backwards, so that the total Out-of-Home business lost 46% revenue versus a really strong Q1 2020. A completely different picture in the 2 other segments. Digital & Dialog Media grew 5%. The digital business with slightly weaker campaigns -- Easter campaigns than expected, but especially our news portals, T-Online and watson were strong. The contact centers as well as the door-to-door business grew beyond 20%, although there were some smaller operational challenges around lockdown restrictions. Similar to the second half of last year, DaaS and e-commerce, Statista and Asam continue to accelerate their growth, and revenue was organically 37% above last year's Q1. Statista slightly ahead of its historic CAGR; and Asam, especially strong in sales via the own shop and digital platform. As all PLUS businesses consistently deliver as in pre-COVID times, the key question is how the Out-of-Home business will recover during the coming and hopefully final months of the pandemic. So how does the order inflow convert into monthly revenues for our Out-of-Home media segment since the beginning of this year?On the left side of the chart, you see monthly revenues 2021 versus 2020. January and February were clearly weak, but the 2 months don't count for much more than 11% of our annual business in normal time. March was already better, but we have missed large parts of the Easter campaign business due to the prolonged lockdown and the beginning third COVID wave. But with the accelerating vaccination, April was already above prior year, and we have seen more and more campaign bookings materializing for May and June. Both months will be probably 60% to 100% above 2020 comparables. But we are looking at COVID 2021 versus COVID 2020 in the second quarter. So how does the current dynamics compare with 2019 and pre-COVID level? That's what you find on the right side of the chart. We see continuous improvement month-over-month since the beginning of the year. And in May and June, despite the lockdown, we are probably only 15% to 20% behind 2019. In case the lockdown ends sometime in June, vaccination dynamics increases as expected so that we get closer to herd immunity in July. We should see 2019 Out-of-Home spending levels and beyond in the summer months again. And PLUS plus businesses have a consistently robust outlook also based on Q1 initiatives and achievements. Despite the lower demand for our Out-of-Home media, we have worked on our midterm opportunities and added more than 100 new roadside screens in Q1, 16 different cities. We see how COVID has accelerated the demand for digital media products in general, and we prepare our infrastructure to benefit from that trend in the recovery phase and beyond. T-Online, the largest acquisition we have made in the last 8 years, had, again, a really strong start into the year, and it's not only COVID-driven momentum for a news publisher. It's a logical consequence of our development plan since 2015. We outperformed our competition reached more than 31 million uniques every month across desktop and mobile devices at the moment. And for the first time, we are also the #1 news portal in the age group under 49 years. When we moved the editorial team to our newsroom in Berlin and hired a new leadership team, we wanted to constantly improve the content offering and carefully broaden the user base of the portal. With the new finance section, the locality T-Online portals for meanwhile, 28 cities and the health section kicking off, the positive journey is definitely not over yet. Our third-party sales acquired new mandates like water build, health and pharma, our -- or [indiscernible] in holiday check, which will benefit from the tourism revival at the end of the pandemic at the beginning summer season. And we see more and more new business traction for our Dialog marketing business coming from our key account structures for Out-of-Home and digital media. We just signed clients from touristic insurance and medical branches that will help keeping the growth pace you have seen already in Q1 for Dialog Media. Back to our total group performance, what trends do we see for the second quarter based on the Q1 achievement? Out-of-Home will be, as you've already seen on the previous slides, between 40% to 50% above last year's Q2. Local business growing around 20%, and national business fueled by constantly increasing campaign volumes week over week. The trend for Digital & Dialog Media looks like 35% to 40% growth for Q2 as we are running against softer comps. Ranger marketing couldn't operate for half of last year's Q2 and also our online business had at least some smaller challenges, the peak of the first COVID wave last year. So the relative performance is excellent, and the absolute revenue development will be the consequent prosecution of what we have seen in Q1. Our clients invest in premium digital media solutions and increase their Direct & Dialog Media investments. Asam and Statista, DaaS and e-commerce are running against tougher comps, but we expect another quarter with around or beyond 30% growth and overall, similar dynamics as in Q1. And Udo will talk in detail about Asam later in our presentation. And just to round up our soft optimism for the coming months for our core Out-of-Home business, we have integrated the latest advertising market forecast for Out-of-Home media from Nielsen. They expect continuously growing momentum quarter-by-quarter for the rest of the year and see both Q3 and Q4 above 2019 levels and especially Q4 with catch-up effects. Let me hand over to Christian Baier, who will guide you through the financial details and the results of the first quarter 2021.

[Christian Baier, CFO & Member of Management Board]

Thank you, Christian, and hello to everyone. Before we get into the details of the Q1 2021 figures, let's note again that we are comparing 2 quarters from different economic environments here. Q1 2020 before corona with basically no negative effects versus Q1 2021, the quarter with 3 months of lockdown. Taking this into account, Q1 marked a solid start into the year. Revenues were down only by 15% on absolute terms from EUR 368 million to EUR 312 million. Organic growth developed accordingly. As in the previous quarters, we continued to look at all cost positions with focus on the semi flexible cost structures of Out-of-Home. This, again, included deploying the instrument of short-time work and renegotiating rents with landlords. Despite these efforts, adjusted EBITDA declined overproportionately compared to sales by 37% from EUR 117 million to EUR 73 million. This development was driven primarily by the significant decline of our highly profitable digital Out-of-Home business, mainly public video due to the lockdown effects caused by the corona pandemic. Exceptional items are minus EUR 2.4 million compared to the minus EUR 4.7 million in Q1 2020. This contains EUR 1.3 million for incentive schemes for executives and EUR 1 million for a broad variety of different smaller topics. Depreciation and amortization, including mainly the depreciation effects from IFRS 16 was minus EUR 75 million and EUR 6 million below the level of Q1 2020 due to declining PPA depreciation. With minus EUR 7 million, the financial result is just EUR 1 million higher compared to Q1 2020, mainly because of IFRS 16 effect. Tax result was positive with EUR 3 million compared to a tax expense of EUR 5 million in Q1 2020 due to the negative profits from the pandemic. Thanks to our diversified business portfolio and our stringent cost management, we were able to meet the challenges of the quarter with a 3-month lockdown and still achieved a positive adjusted net income of EUR 1 million. Besides the traditionally weaker cash flow in the first quarter of the year, the cash flow development of Q1 2021 must be seen in light of the lockdown. All in all, free cash flow adjusted for Q1 2021 was down versus prior year from minus EUR 4 million to minus EUR 34 million. The main driver for this development, of course, was the decline in earnings, which was partly mitigated by a comparably lower CapEx of EUR 14 million in Q1 2021 with EUR 27 million in the prior year period. All other cash flow items, such as tax or changes in working capital are basically on prior year's level. Please keep in mind that our cash flow development is, as usual, more backloaded, and H2 is the crucial period for our cash flow generation. Our bank leverage ratio increased to 2.96% due to the negative effects from COVID-19. As the calculation of the leverage ratio includes the EBITDA of the last 12 months, the leverage ratio will be reduced again in the upcoming quarter as the weak Q2 2020 will be eliminated by a stronger Q2 2021. In our last presentation, we already shared with you our initial ideas for a new segmentation. The new structure should reflect the dynamics, changes and developments of our business, especially since the introduction of Out-of-Home plus. Q1 2021 is now the first quarter that we report in the new segment structure. Let me briefly reiterate the changes. Out-of-Home and public video are combined in one segment. This should make things easier to compare our core business with other pure-play Out-of-Home company. Furthermore, the PLUS businesses with a focus on advertising, marketing and sales services are grouped in Digital & Dialog Media. Finally, Asam and Statista from the third segment, data as a service and e-commerce. With regrouping the segment, it is our ambition to maximize transparency and to unveil the potential of Stroer and the Out-of-Home plus strategy. Let us now have a closer look at the segments. The new Out-of-Home media segment faced quite some challenges as the lockdown had a massive impact on the business. Due to changed commuting habits in the pandemic with significantly reduced public transportation and consequently, significantly lower audience and with that lower number of contacts, digital Out-of-Home faced a decline of 56% in sales, which is also reflected in lower adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. Revenue declined from EUR 180 million in Q1 2020 to EUR 98 million in the reporting period and adjusted EBITDA compared to EUR 36 million. Due to our original cost management, we were able to stabilize our gross margin and achieved an EBITDA margin of 37% despite the lockdown. As mentioned, several times before, our Out-of-Home plus strategy is well balanced. This particularly -- this is particularly evident and -- in difficult times. Our new Digital & Dialog Media segment performed well in the challenging business environment caused by the pandemic. Revenues increased by around 4% from EUR 154 million to EUR 161 million in Q1 2021. Our online advertising and constant publishing performed slightly below the strong pre-COVID period of Q1 2020. In contrast, our call centers and door-to-door business continued to grow strongly. Adjusted EBITDA grew from EUR 37 million to EUR 38 million in Q1 2021, and adjusted EBITDA margin remained stable above 23%. Asam and Statista continued their success story in the first quarter of 2021, exceeding our high expectations. In total, segment sales increased by 35% from EUR 42 million to EUR 56 million, with organic sales growth of 31%, Statista, once again significantly accelerated growth compared to the average of previous years. The same applies to Asam, where sales growth of 41% is well above pre-corona levels, with growth of around 80% in e-commerce segment, in particular, contributed to Asam's success. Despite increasing investments and accelerated growth and the expansion of our international business, we were able to improve the margin from 9% to 12%. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment developed positively and increased from EUR 4 million to EUR 7 million. Now let's go even one level deeper to product groups, and let me give you an overview of which products we've clustered and which product groups we are reporting on. In the segment, Out-of-Home media, we have a total of 3 product groups. First, classic Out-of-Home. Here, we have clustered all forms of traditional advertising, such as city light posters, bus shelters, et cetera. This area accounts for approximately 72% of segment sales. Second, digital Out-of-Home, which is made up of all digital inventory. In addition to public video, this also includes the entire digital roadside portfolio. This product group represents approximately 18% of segment sales. Third, Out-of-Home services. This product group includes all other Out-of-Home-related products and services, such as management of our displays, but also printing of posters and giant posters. With around 10%, this is the smallest product group in terms of sales. In our new Digital & Dialog Media segment, we've split sales into 2 product groups. First, with a share of around 53% of sales, the digital product group, in which we have combined our content publishing activities, including our flagship forward to T-Online and our online advertising activities on third-party websites. Second, the dialog product group, where we bundle our call centers and our door-to-door business ranger, this makes up some 47%. Finally, our Data as a Service and e-commerce segment contains Statista and Asam. This breakout is intended to ensure greater transparency and an easy accessibility of the value we see in these potential Unicorn. As commented on the previous slide, both performed very strongly in Q1 2021. With 59% of segment sales, Asam forms the larger part of the segment. Accordingly, Statista, or Data as a Service business is 41% of segment sales. Let us now come to another important topic for us, ESG. Since our last update, we've continued to push this important issue forward. The central point in the last weeks was to determine our CO2 footprint. Together with the renowned agent de climate partner, we've initiated a group-wide project to determine where we stand in terms of CO2 emissions. First, preliminary data shows that we are within the typical range for our industry. In parallel, we have been working on several topics to reduce our carbon footprint quickly and sustainable. For example, we have started to switch electricity procurement to green energy where possible. Another step towards reducing our emissions is the gradual conversion of our company car fleet to hybrid and e-vehicles. In addition, we successfully participated for the first time in environmental rating, Gaia. We were also active on social matters. Many of our female colleagues actively participated in International Women's Day and at the hashtag, choose to challenge. In this way, we were able to set a sign to challenge gender bias and to promote equality. On the G, governance side, cybersecurity is a top priority. We pushed this topic and conducted cybersecurity checks in all business areas. We are pleased to see that we achieved the overall satisfactory security level, but we also identified some improvement areas, which are now being tackled by the respective business unit. In addition, we've launched a comprehensive cybersecurity program to further mitigate risk. The focus of this program is to install a group-wide cybersecurity organization. This includes central governance, standardized asset and risk management, structured user management and professional incident response management. To implement this program successfully, we are working together with cybersecurity expert at USP. Let me now hand over to Udo, who will give you an update on Asam.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

Yes. Thank you, Christian. Also updating you in the past quarters regularly about Statista and in successful and sustainable development, we would like to shed light on Asam, another upcoming unicorn in our portfolio. Since the acquisition of Asam in 2016, the team around Marcus Asam has transformed Asam successfully in a high-performance German beauty brand. In today's presentation, I would like to focus on Asam's key investment highlights such as Asam is one of the fastest-growing European beauty brands. Asam's organic growth in Q1 was above 40%. Asam is targeting EUR 500 million turnover by 2026. Asam is highly profitable in developed markets, currently GSA with margins around 20%. Asam is kicking off its international business rollout in Q3 -- Q2, Q3, 2021, targeting up to 50% international sales in 2025. Asam is the first mover in the new and disruptive megatrend live shopping, video commerce in Europe. Asam is currently launching a new style live video brand platform. Asam products are based on best-in-class and proprietary IP active delivery technologies. Nature meets science in Asam high-performance product portfolio. Asam is constantly improving its advanced AI and data-driven sales and marketing strategies. Asam stands for propriety active skin delivery technologies for the most powerful and active ingredients. This is a result of Asam's true belief and conviction that they are in almost every plant, an effective ingredient, the nucleus for Asam's intense R&D activities. This ensures a continued development of performance-focused innovations in our beauty categories, such as anti-aging care with high-dose active ingredients. Our full vertical integrated setup in our own Germany-based facilities and laboratories, ensures superior product quality and speed of innovation. As a result of our dedication towards quality, performance and delivery technologies, we are the #1 digital beauty platform with own brands in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, GSA. The next important step to bring us to the next level will be the rollout of our proven concepts into international markets. The success factor, therefore, is our new and unique video brand platform, which is perfectly scalable and an enabler for global rollout. Science meets nature is not just a phrase at Asam, but rather true conviction. This is reflected in extensive in-house R&D for efficient natural ingredients such as rejuvenating grape extracts like resveratrol. We combine such powerful active and patented delivery technologies, which enable deep penetration for maximum effectiveness. Our broad portfolio from innovative makeup mouses to instant skin perfecting formulas has international best seller format. In addition to our intensive R&D activities on the product side, the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence in the area of customer acquisitions and campaigning play a decisive role for us. Based on our broad knowledge of our customers, we can use these innovative analysis tools to deliver interactive customer-specific and, above all, exciting light beauty content for the best experience and maximum customer performance. This is supported by a full integration of our relevant touch points to maximize our customer lifetime value. We have created a one-stop shop beauty platform, which addresses our beauty categories with a unique customer journey. A key success factor for the future is our newly developed live video commerce beauty platform, which disrupts existing online shopping concepts. The platform integrates video with customized inbound channels, live stream formats and brand experience video to the fullest extent and forms an important growth accelerator. This leverages our 20 years live shopping experience into a dedicated live streaming e-commerce strategy and brings it to the next level. Already today, we achieved up to EUR 50,000 turnover per hour with our pilot shows, which proves a strong turnover potential of this new marketing format. In order to have more flexibility and to produce constantly more shows in the future, we invested in our own streaming studio in Munich, which went live this month. In the past few years, together with the team around Asam, we have built up a German beauty brand where fast growth and profitability go hand-in-hand. With our disruptive live streaming video platform and our highly scalable e-commerce concept, we are ready to ignite the next stage and significantly accelerate our growth across all channels and significantly increase our international footprint. We are planning to achieve EUR 500 million revenue already for 2026, fueled by significant growth in life and online shopping in the GSA region as well as in international markets. As mentioned before, we will lever our 20 year's experience in live shopping into Asam's new live video brand platform. Asam is clearly the first mover in European live shopping, the next big thing in the e-commerce arena. The combination of our international rollout plus a push into live shopping makes us confident that we can continue and accelerate our profitable growth. We expect an average growth of 27% over the period 2017 to 2026. Our fast-growing and highly profitable business in our German-speaking home markets forms a solid foundation for the future growth of the whole company. Internationalization will be the second key growth driver for Asam. With the kickoff of our international rollout, sales growth in the non-German-speaking areas are going to accelerate. And the share of our international business will reach around 50% already in 2025. Of course, investing into accelerated growth, new technologies and streaming platforms also costs money. Therefore, our profitability will decline temporarily and then return to our target margin of 20% very quickly after we have established the platform for sustainable and profitable growth also in our new international markets. Let me now talk briefly on our business outlook for the second quarter and our expectations for the full year 2021. We have given you already a quite detailed outlook for the second quarter by segment. And for the group, we expect our revenue 35% to 40% above prior year and EBITDA growing beyond 60%. Furthermore, we foresee a significant acceleration of Out-of-home business towards the end of Q2. But it's still challenging to come up with a detailed guidance for the full year as there is no clarity when the current lockdown on is really going to end. There's a potential risk that mutations could cause new problems at the same time, vaccine works and the plant timings in Germany might also accelerate. So we expect our business in 2021 on 2019 level, minus lockdown effects, plus catching up in the quarters 3 and 4. As you expect, a lot of dynamics and also more clarity over the next 4 to 6 weeks, we will give you a trading update in the second half of June to share more information in Q2 and Q3 that might help quantifying lockdown effects as well as the business dynamics going forward. As already shown in the second half of 2020, we do not expect any medium and long-term structural changes in our revenue and profitability profile. If there are any, they are rather positive. Based on the development during the pandemic and our international long-term efficiency targets, we also decided to accelerate our tech and IT development projects and to broaden our leadership team. Christian Baier will take over the Chief Operating Officer role from June 1 onwards to bring even more focus on the optimization of our tech infrastructure and ERP systems and therefore, lay the foundation for the optimized monetization of our growing DOoH infrastructure. They are currently also increasing synergy potentials across the business segments where tech plays a key role. In addition, Henning Gieseke will join our group on June 1 as our CFO and focus on our core financial teams as well as cost management. Having worked for many years for the Metro Group being responsible for business development, controlling an Investor Relations and the CFO and Co-CEO of real - Holding retail business with EUR 6 billion revenue. We will make the official announcement later today and are happy to have an even stronger team to execute our long-term growth target beyond the pandemic. Our financial calendar for the upcoming months, we have planned a trading update on Q2 and Q3 in the second half of June. As many things are in motion at the moment, end of the lockdown, decreasing incidence rates, increasing availability of vaccines and rising vaccination rates and thus, many topics affect public life, but especially the economic environment, we would like to share with you on June 26, a trading update on the current development of Q2 so far and our expectations for the third quarter and second half of the year. Our half year financial report will then be published August 17; Q3 results, November 10. Our AGM is scheduled for September 3. Thank you, everyone. We are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question we've received is from Annick Maas of Exane BNP Paribas.

[Annick Tonie Maas, Analyst]

So my first question is, can you just give us a bit more detail around what lockdown assumptions you have for your Out-of-Home guidance in Q2? The second one is, you say on Slide 1 or 2 that the rent adjustments are not fully reflected yet, so can you just maybe give us an update on how these conversations are going and what the new type of rent might be looking like? Then of course, you've even has suggested that it won't sell Flaconi. I know the Asam model is slightly different, but it's the same space. So what are your thoughts on the back of that news? And then if you could tell us just how many digital roadside screens can you put out in Q1? That would be great.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Annick, thanks for your questions. Let's start with the lock down assumptions. I think the kind of revenue, yes, I don't know if it's a guidance, but the kind of current trend that we've shown is based on the assumption that at least until mid of June, lockdown restrictions are going back significantly. I think we've seen the first careful signs already in 2 or 3 states in Germany. So I think that sounds to be reasonable, also seeing at the current development of infection rates. I mean if the total lockdown ends a week earlier or later, it probably won't move the needle based on the lead times that we have for our Out-of-Home medium. But I think right at the moment, it's reasonable to assume that at least until mid of June, the whole harder lockdown is over. Rent adjustments. It's an ongoing process. I mean we've kicked it off more than 12 months ago in the first wave. We've then finalized most of the deals with municipalities and also private landlord companies towards the end of last year. So we then immediately started, especially, I think, last week of January, first week of February, again, when it was -- became obvious that the lockdown might last a little bit longer. So I would say, in 50% of the negotiations, we have some kind of indication what seems to be realistic. In 50%, we are in the middle of negotiating it. And I think those aspects are also influenced by the fact how quickly the business will recover. Because at the end of the day, if we do not only talk about Q1, maybe a little bit about Q2 as well, then the question is, how big are the catch-up effects and what are the total revenues for the year.So on the one hand, we want to be fair with partners and have more clarity and visibility about the full year. On the other hand, negotiations need a little bit of time. But of course, the rent adjustment, that we mentioned, means there will be less rent than what we have currently in the Q1 P&L. On the Flaconi topic...

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

On the Flaconi topic, I think, this is not influencing our thoughts here on Asam. I think it's also important to realize that Flaconi and Asam are totally different assets. I mean Flaconi is a retailer. And retail -- a relatively small e-commerce retailer, which was mainly pushed by TV advertising from [indiscernible]. So without this, let's say, favorable prices on TV commercials and [indiscernible], Flaconi will be -- we have a much more difficult situation. The margins are super small. And Asam is zero retail, Asam is only own products, it's a brand business. They're not a retailer. So it's -- and we also don't sell-through Flaconi, for example, we only -- except retail in stationary sales, Asam is -- especially, in online and the new video commerce arena, is only selling an on platform. So that's why Asam is highly profitable and also much easier now to rollout international. So it's almost impossible for German -- mostly German-based retailer like Flaconi to go international rollout because it's totally crowded out there. There's a lot of competition in other markets, and you have absolutely no USP, why a German retailer should be successful in America, for example? They have really no upside on the long run. So Asam is now entering a very exciting phase because on one hand, we started kicking off right now internationalization of the business. And second, live shopping will be clearly something which is pushing Asam's turnover and valuation a lot. Live shopping is the next big thing in e-commerce coming mainly now from Asia, but live shopping is nothing else than a good TV shopping, where Asam is based on streaming new technology, same concept. And Marcus Asam, I think, he himself sold for, I don't know, EUR 2 billion or EUR 3 billion products in his life in the TV. So Marcus Asam knows better than anybody else how live shopping is working, it doesn't matter if it's TV-based or streaming-based. And I think this is also, by the way, a reason why we decided to focus on value crystallization in the second half of next year. Because we are pretty sure that we're going to see EUR 200 million turnover next year. And that's also, by today, the first time we publish now the numbers, which we expect for the next 4 or 5 years. So this is actually more or less now the kick off of that, what we already announced, H2 next year is clearly the timing for value crystallization. Asam is a trade sale or an IPO.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

The last question, 104 roadside screens that what we've built up in Q1.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

And that's, by the way, is the reason also why we go for transparency here on Statista, by the way, like on Asam. That's what we -- this is, by the way, unchanged in case the other questions are coming up. So Asam targeting second half next year and Statista, most likely 1 year later. And by the way, we just got approached like 4 weeks ago, one of the big global PE funds of EUR 1 billion for Statista. And -- but we said no. It's too early for both assets, we still stick to our communicated strategy, EUR 200 million turnover. And it's exactly the starting point for our value crystallization strategy on both assets.

[Operator]

The next question is from Craig Abbott of Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Craig Abbott, Head of Mid and Small Cap Research, Germany]

I just have a very specific question, please. In the Digital & Dialog Media division, I was just trying to understand a little bit better why the digital sales were so weak in Q1, down 10%. If you could maybe explain that and how that was potentially lead to lockdown and what your expectations there are for the coming quarters.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Well, I think there's -- we've had a disposal last year, I think, at the end of Q1 with Q1 networks. That is probably the biggest chunk of the delta. And in parallel, I think, January and February were relatively good. There were a couple of Easter campaigns, I think, in general, canceled because it just happened when the lockdown was prolonged, and the third wave came up. So I think it was not dramatic. That was maybe 2 or 3 points. But I think in general, the momentum was okay given the overall situation. I think the disposal explains most of the delta.

[Craig Abbott, Head of Mid and Small Cap Research, Germany]

Okay. So the underlying on the ad trading and so forth is fine.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Exactly. Yes.

[Operator]

Then we'll go to the next question, it's From Julien Roch of Barclays.

[Julien Roch, MD & European Media Analyst]

Yes. Just -- I didn't hear the numbers on -- I just want to double check. You said you were approached 4 weeks ago by a global PE fund and they offered EUR 1 billion for Statista. Is that what you said? That's my first question. The second one is, thank you very much for all those details on Asam, very helpful. Just on Statista, based on the current run rate, what kind of growth rate do you expect this year? That's my second question. And then my last question is, can we have a split of the new Out-of-Home segment between Germany and international, please?

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

Yes. So to go more in detail, Julien, with Statista. So the offer was to sell around 50% on a valuation of EUR 1 billion. And then I ask the guys, why should we do that? And then the said, then we sell it for EUR 2 billion in 3 years together. And -- but that's exactly the point. We can also sell it for EUR 2 billion in 3 years alone. So Statista doesn't need any cash. Statista management knows exactly what to do. The business is growing by 30% in the first quarter. It makes absolutely no sense because the argumentation was an -- but it gives you a value of crystallization now. But it's -- I think, we would destroy value for our shareholders. So that's why -- I mean, this was not the first offer because normally, we -- actually, we don't even take the calls. But this was just the latest development. It was one of the biggest, whatever, 5 global funds, which has a clear proven track record, but nobody can -- from our point of view, we don't believe that anybody can help us in developing faster assets anyway doing. So that's why we declined the offer, but this was exactly the approach here. But again, this was not the first one. So we see that every, let's say, 4 weeks, something like that. Something is calling me, want to have a talk to Statista, et cetera, or to Asam. So now because now that we have more visibility on the stuff, it's clear that and as I said, it was a bit funny for me now to give the information about the beauty business because we are out of business, and it's clearly at the time of Asam is limit in our portfolio. The expected growth, it's around 30%, I would say, Q4 and Q1 was better than 40%. It's a very, very strong start. I have to say, Marcus and his team is doing a great job. What I already said before, we are quite excited now with live shopping because the Asam team believes that live shopping is the next big thing in e-commerce. And clearly, Marcus is better prepared than anybody else to take advantage from that. So we'll relaunch the new studios in Munich in this month. By the way, if you're interested and to see that, you're more than welcome to have a look what the guys are doing there. And it's really interesting to listen also to his ideas about what is the future in beauty e-commerce around developing a live video brand platform to give -- create a completely new experience for the customers. So around 30%, maybe a bit better, it's too early. We are fully on track also in the second quarter. So business is running really good in -- extremely good in Statista as well as Asam.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

And on the non-German Out-of-Home business, so concrete number in Q1, we've made EUR 5.8 million revenue outside of Germany. That's U.K. and Benelux flow up and the Polish Out-of-Home business, I think it's a little bit less than 6% of the segmet. Performing a little bit better than the German Out-of-Home business but looking at the full year as well, I think the non-Out-of-Home business -- sorry, the non-German Out-of-Home business will be plus/minus a little bit around 6% of the segment. Based on the current forecast, it will pretty much perform in line with the German business. So that's why maybe that's also one of your -- the underlying questions that why we felt like it's too small and not crucial to disclose it as a dedicated subsegment because the development of the German business, analog versus digital, in combination with how do we package the Out-of-Home business with incremental services on top of the more relevant subsegment structure, but we can disclose the information always any time. I think it will be quite a robust number over the quarters.

[Julien Roch, MD & European Media Analyst]

Okay. That was great. Just my question because I think you gave us what you were expecting for Asam for the full year. My question was for Statista for the full year. So are you saying Statista grows around 30% for 2021?

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Yes. I think we'll get there somewhere between 25% to 30% at the moment, yes, being at the beginning of the year. But looking at the dynamics, we've seen 30% as probably realistic.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

And by the way, I mean, the EUR 1 billion was 10x turnover in today's environment, it might change next year. 10x turnover is also not a very demanding valuation for a business like Statista, if you look on the American capital market right now for comparable businesses valuation. It's 30%, 40%, 50% higher than even that offer was right now. And Statista is still without any competitor. I think this is very important to see. There is no competition for Statista. So Statista's success is only based on our own execution quality. And I think this is something what is quite rare in digital arena today, if you look on DaaS businesses -- or if you look on comparable DaaS business system.

[Operator]

The next question is from Clara Kamenicek of Stifel.

[Clara Kamenicek, Analyst]

You gave some very interesting insights into Asam. Could you as far as possible, give us some more details on the Statista's margin outlook as well? In the past, you said that Statista stands at around 20% EBITDA margins and could potentially reach 30% at some point. Looking at your numbers, it should have been around breakeven in Q1. When do you see profitability here? And where does it stand now? And where would you expect it to go structurally?

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Well, I think at the moment, we focus completely on top line growth and diversifying into more and more markets, investing and deepening the product offering, working on key accounts. I think we already have reference points from the past from mature and fully developed markets like Germany. That's where the EBITDA margin was -- or is already between 30% and 35%. So that means when you -- we have a completely rolled out robust product in combination with a very well-developed sales infrastructure in the market. And I think, ultimately, if you get to that stage globally, that's a realistic, I think, ultimate margin. At the moment, we are completely in growth mode and also try to make sure that we do the right things that make sense for Statista's development mid to long term and quarterly margin can even differ by 10 points or so. It's just the necessary results from -- or the logical result from what we think is the right thing to do on the investment side. But I think in many markets, we're in the year 1 or 2 with a real rollout and in countries like Germany or Austria, Switzerland, we talk about 7, 8 years development. And there you see, over time, you get to that margin profile.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question we've received is from Patrick Wellington of Morgan Stanley.

[Patrick Thomas Wellington]

A couple of questions. Firstly, on the guidance. On Slide 8, most of the businesses, I think, being shown there are growing at above the 35% to 40% rate for the group. So how do we square that? Are we basically looking at some very conservative guidance? We've got 40% to 50% growth in outdoor media. We've got 35% to 40% in Digital & Dialog Media. We've got 30% in digital commerce. And yet, the overall growth is at 1.35% to 1.40% looks a little bit conservative, particularly as you're expecting that acceleration of growth in outdoor media. That's the first question. Second question, Udo, very good to hear you talk about beauty products. I'm sure your skin is looking particularly good at the moment. You did previously talk about a target valuation of EUR 200 million in 2023 for AsamBeauty. Given that you've been talking about the potential valuation of Statista, what do you think the potential valuation for Asam should be given that you're ahead of schedule on the sales growth?

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

Thank you, Patrick, and for the last question indeed. Indeed, my skin looks amazing. I was talking about EUR 200 million turnover, maybe there was a misunderstanding on valuation. So I mean, I'm not the one who should decide what is the business really the right valuation that other people have to do it, also the valuation, which I just cited from was a third-party valuation, not from our side. We have a clear idea of what we think what the businesses are rightly valued, but we prefer to keep that for our own. I mean if you look on -- I mean -- but I have to admit, I also try to understand the last week, what could be a potential valuation. So if you look on a comparable businesses and clearly, growth, it's a very -- it's a key matter here. So if you look at businesses in this area, growing above 20%, then for me, a bit surprisingly, you also talk about one of our multiples. They are, I say, beyond 6 or 7 or 8x even is higher. And so I think Asam right now has a very effective combination from growing on -- we couldn't find anything faster than Asam, but you never know, maybe there's of one company grows faster. But if you look at the companies who could be identified by 2 investment banks, which we're talking to, Asam is a fastest growing asset in the arena right now, and it's profitable. So we believe it's -- we have something in mind, but I hope you can understand that we don't want to talk about it because if you say something where somebody's not agreeing, people will say, oh, s***, pushing valuation and this and that, so we don't want to do that. I think other people should put the price target on Asam, we don't want to do that.

[Patrick Thomas Wellington]

Okay. I've got EUR 250 million in, so that's obviously way too low.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

I mean there is a misunderstanding, I think, let's give it affect. I can give you one quote from analysts from last week. He said that he sees right now EUR 750 for Asam, based on turnover and EBITDA multiples. This was a quote from last week. What we are saying in the presentation, we were saying an upcoming unicorn that -- it's difficult to say. I mean if you look on the IPO from -- what's the name in the German...

[Unknown Executive]

Mytheresa.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

Mytheresa. For me, totally not EUR 2.5 billion, how much it was, I think, for -- 10x turnover for retail business and almost -- and 100x EBITDA. This was totally exaggerated, clearly. But in today's world, it's quite -- I think -- what we expect that in the next 12 months, we see really that quality will remain to have high valuations, but there's obviously a lot of lower quality assets in the market. And from my point of view, I think all the spec hype is actually pushing companies and the capital markets, they should maybe stay private. So -- but that -- we believe you're going to see a big shakeup in the next 12 months between low- and high-quality assets. And we had an intensive discussion also internally, if you should hurry up with Asam, for example, to capitalize this in case that this was really materialized. But as the MP decided, no, we stick 100% to our strategy, which we communicated from the beginning. The moment, we see EUR 200 million turnover, it's really the moment we're going to start that, and this is still unchanged in H2 of second year. But turnover multiples right now in this industry, for our business growing in this speed, is clearly above 5, 6x. So that's what we're seeing right now.

[Christian Baier, CFO & Member of Management Board]

Patrick, and then on the question of our guidance for Q2 that we stated on Page 8, how we look at it is basically segment by segment. And the index figures, we stated there, that's really, at the moment, our best guess, looking at the current order intake, the trends that we see. We talked about our assumptions about when the lockdown is coming to an end. So that's our view at the moment. And then just kind of like doing the math brings us more or less to what we've stated on the group level, probably more on the upper end. The reason for that is simply that, obviously, Q2 2020 was a bit of a peculiar quarter. Actually Out-of-Home sales in Q2 was only 40% of our entire revenue base in 2020. And then doing the weighting brief was roughly to this 135 on 140 probably mathematically, just more the upper end of the corridor.

[Udo Müller, Founder, Chairman of Management Board & Co]

Better to add one thing. Why it's difficult for us to say something. Maybe if you look at the last 20 quarters, we really like to outperform what we are forecasting. And therefore, it's necessary to have a very stable environment, which is here in valuation right now, difficult. I mean if you really look on a global scale, on valuations right now, you can even see 15x turnover for beauty businesses without any profit. So for me, it's totally nuts, and I don't believe this is sustainable. So that's why it's really not easy to predict 100% what will be the outcome next year. And so that's why, I think, if you talk about something north of 6x turnover from this perspective, we would be still on the safe side.

[Operator]

As there are any further questions, I would like to turn back to you.

[Christian Schmalzl, Co]

Thank you very much for your time. As we said, we'll do a trading update second half of June, hopefully, then we have more insights and can give you more details about the rest of the year. Thanks for your time, and see you soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attendance. This call has been concluded. You may disconnect.