Ströer presents a successful fiscal year 2022 and a strong start into 2023

• Consolidated revenue up by 9% to EUR 1.77b
• EBITDA (adjusted) rises by 5% to EUR 541m 
• Q1 2023 growth anticipated in the mid-single-digit percentage range amidst advertising market contraction
• New growth impetus expected from lowest carbon footprint of all classic advertising media

Ströer SE & Co. KGaA presents a successful fiscal year 2022 with the preliminary figures. Despite the wider economic challenges stemming from the war in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and high inflation, consolidated revenue bucked the negative trend in the advertising market and grew by 9%, from EUR 1.63b to EUR 1.77b. EBITDA (adjusted) was up by 5%, rising from EUR 513m to EUR 541m, and net income (adjusted) increased by 1% to EUR 172m. The leverage ratio stood at 2.2 as at December 31, 2022.

This robust level of earnings highlights the performance of the OOH+ strategy – the combination of the core OOH business with the related business segments Digital & Dialog. In a generally restrained advertising market, outdoor advertising proved resilient and unimpressed, driven by the unchanged strong structural growth of OOH media due to the ongoing digitization of infrastructure – 34 percent revenue growth of digital OOH media (DOOH) in 2022 underlines this development.

In the past fiscal year, the digital infrastructure was further expanded by more than 1,000 premium digital screens. Ströer currently markets more than 7,000 large-format digital premium screens outdoors and indoors at highly frequented traffic hubs such as streets and train stations in 170 major German cities as well as more than 40,000 small-format digital screens predominantly at the POS. The reach of digital out-of-home advertising is growing steadily: Four out of five people are now reached within a week with digital OOH media in Germany.

For the future, we expect additional structural growth impulses for our OOH media, due to the continuously increasing importance of life cycle assessments (LCA) in the context of our customers' marketing and advertising strategies. We assume that in the future, in addition to traditional campaign performance indicators such as reach and CPMs (cost per thousand contacts), the carbon footprint will be of increasingly greater importance for our customers. In this respect, we expect that our customers strive to continuously improve their CO₂ values, i.e the carbon footprint of their advertising campaigns year over year in the future. We expect this development to provide positive growth impetus for Ströer's outdoor advertising business - especially for Digital OOH (DOOH). Digital OOH is by far the most energy-efficient and resource-conserving medium with 0.007 grams of CO₂ (green power) per contact, while all the other classic advertising media produce a much higher carbon footprint between 0.4 grams to 11 grams per advertising contact. In concrete terms, a higher weighting of OOH and especially of digital OOH means an improvement of the carbon footprint for every advertising campaign of our customers in the future. Structurally, this is largely based on the fact, that OOH as a mass medium – with one sender and many recipients - is always superior to a one-to-one media usage situation in terms of carbon footprint.

"With the strong results in 2022, we have once again proven the efficiency of our OOH+ strategy. At the same time outdoor advertising is by far the most energy-efficient advertising category with the lowest carbon footprint in the entire media mix. Digital out-of-home outperformed all other segment with strong growth of more than 30%, driven by programmatic demand. The other business units also contributed to the overall successful development. Asam and Statista for example convinced with growth rates of more than 20% in 2022," says Christian Schmalzl, Co-CEO of Ströer. "Contrary to the current ongoing difficult situation in the overall advertising market, we had a good start into the year 2023. We expect organic revenue growth in the mid-single-digit percentage range for the first quarter."

All figures for 2022 are preliminary and have not yet been signed off by the auditors. The final figures for 2022 will be communicated when the annual report is published on March 30, 2023.

Disclaimer

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" regarding Ströer SE & Co. KGaA ("Ströer") or the Ströer Group, including assessments, estimates and forecasts regarding the financial position, business strategy, plans and objectives of management and the future business activities of Ströer or the Ströer Group. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the results of operations, profitability, performance or achievements of Ströer or the Ströer Group to be materially different from any future results of operations, profitability, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and are based on numerous assumptions that may also prove to be incorrect. Ströer makes no representation and assumes no liability with respect to the fair presentation, completeness, correctness, adequacy or accuracy of the information and assessments contained herein. The information contained in this press release is subject to change without notice. It may be incomplete or abbreviated and may not contain all material information relating to Ströer or the Ströer Group. Ströer does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or other information contained herein, neither as a result of new information, future events nor otherwise.