Vocento

After three consecutive years of losses and a bruising write-down cycle, Vocento returned to net profit in 2025 with a result attributable to the parent of €6.7m, compared to a restated net loss of €98.9m in 2024, a figure heavily distorted by goodwill impairments and restructuring charges. Revenue reached €337.4m, a modest 1.1% increase on the restated €333.8m of the prior year, but the underlying story is more compelling: adjusted revenues grew 3.3%, advertising income rose 5.4%, and the group’s preferred operating metric, EBITDA excluding restructuring indemnities, more than doubled, from €12.4m to €27.2m, meeting the upper end of the guided range of €26–28m.

The turnaround rests on three pillars. First, an advertising recovery in Vocento’s core print portfolio that materially outpaced a weak Spanish market: the group’s gross advertising market share in the generalist press segment rose from 22.5% in 2024 to 23.3% in 2025, recovering 98% of the market share lost since 2023. Second, disciplined cost reduction, €4m of structural savings against a target of €2.5m, primarily through workforce reductions in the 2024 and 2025 indemnity plans. Third, asset disposals that reshaped the balance sheet: the sale of Pisos.com and a series of property transactions generated approximately €46.4m in cash proceeds, reducing net financial debt (excluding IFRS 16 lease liabilities) by 72%, from €43.1m to €12.2m.

Ordinary cash generation, the measure of whether the underlying business generates cash without asset sales, turned positive for the first time in several years, at €4.5m (FY2024: -€11.5m). The leverage ratio (DFN/EBITDA ex IFRS 16) now stands at 0.99x, below the 1x threshold for the first time in the current restructuring cycle.

Vocento: key financial and audience indicators 2023–2025

Source: Vocento FY2025 results presentation and financial report, 26 February 2026. 2024 figures restated for discontinued operations. 2023 net loss from original filing; revenue comparable not published in restated form. n/d = not directly disclosed in comparable form.

What Vocento Actually Owns

Vocento is Spain’s largest regional newspaper group and the publisher of ABC, one of the country’s two historic national daily newspapers. It is headquartered in Bilbao and listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange. The group is best understood as a portfolio of legacy print franchises (11 regional dailies, one national broadsheet, and a network of supplements) anchored by an advertising and circulation revenue model that is under sustained structural pressure, and partially offset by a set of diversification businesses in digital classifieds, gastronomy events, creative agencies, and audiovisual content.

Its three operational reporting segments in 2025 are the Press division (which includes all newspaper publishing, print and digital), Diversification Businesses (classifieds, gastronomy, agencies, and digital services), and Audiovisual (local DTT television and radio). A fourth segment, currently being phased out, covers Digital Services (the group’s legacy technology outsourcing arm) and Shows on Demand, an entertainment streaming venture that ceased operations in the third quarter of 2025.

Two assets were removed from the perimeter during 2025. Pisos.com, the property classifieds portal that had been the most valuable digital asset in the portfolio, was sold in March 2025 to Apax Partners for approximately €49.7m in total proceeds (€22.5m from the sale of the platform plus €27.2m from the disposal of real estate assets associated with the transaction). Relevo, a sports news website launched in 2022 targeting a younger audience, was shut down in the first half of 2025 after failing to reach sustainable scale. Both had been operational bets on digital-native growth; their exits define the limits of Vocento’s digital ambition in the near term.

Vocento: media asset map

Source: Vocento FY2025 results release and financial report. Pisos.com and Relevo excluded as discontinued operations.

Signals

The advertising recovery is real, but it masks a structural collapse in print circulation

The headline narrative from Vocento’s 2025 results is an advertising recovery, and the numbers support it: total advertising revenue grew 5.4% to €145.4m, outpacing a Spanish print market where gross investment fell 1.4% overall. The group’s share of generalist press advertising rose from approximately 22.5% to 23.3%. In the fourth quarter alone, Vocento’s adjusted advertising growth reached +12.0% against a market that contracted 2.9% in that period.

What the advertising growth conceals is the accelerating decline of the print circulation base that this advertising depends on. ABC’s average daily print circulation fell from 35,211 in 2024 to 31,634 in 2025, a 10.2% drop. The regional titles collectively lost 8.4% of their combined circulation, falling to 109,893 copies per day across eleven markets. Several individual titles are declining faster: Sur (Málaga) was down 17.6%, Las Provincias (Valencia) down 10.4%, La Verdad (Murcia) down 10.8%. The advertising market can recover cyclically; the circulation base does not.

Digital subscriptions are growing, but too slowly to replace what print is losing

Vocento reached 209,000 total paid subscribers at end-2025, of which 174,000 are digital-only, a 13% increase year-on-year. The group frames this as a success, and in the context of Spanish regional press it is respectable. But the pace of digital subscriber growth needs to be read against the rate of print decline. The print audience is contracting faster than the digital one is growing, and the average revenue per digital subscriber is substantially lower than the economics of a print copy sale once distribution costs are factored out.

The reader margin, the group’s measure of profitability from circulation across all formats, improved only marginally, by €0.3m in 2025. Digital subscribers now account for 28% of that margin, up 3 percentage points. The strategic target for 2026 is +17% digital subscriber growth, to be supported by a redesigned product, a new native app, and unified editorial workflows across the regional titles and ABC. The February 2026 ABC relaunch and the planned April 2026 regional product launch represent the most significant editorial investments Vocento has made in years. Their commercial outcome is genuinely uncertain.

The Pisos.com sale solved the debt problem but removed the most valuable digital asset

The decision to sell Pisos.com to private equity (Apax Partners) for approximately €49.7m in total value was the single most consequential strategic act of 2025. The transaction resolved an existential balance sheet pressure (net debt fell from €43.1m to €12.2m) and the book gain of €18.5m was the primary reason Vocento reported a net profit at all. Without Pisos.com, the continuing operations recorded a pre-tax loss of €2.2m.

What is less clearly articulated in the group’s communications is what the sale cost strategically. Pisos.com was a profitable, growing digital asset in Spain’s recovering real estate market: it generated EBITDA contributing to a segment that, combined with Sumauto, was delivering the group’s highest digital margins. The sale leaves Sumauto (automotive classifieds) as Vocento’s sole remaining scaled digital platform. Whether that is sufficient to anchor a long-term digital transformation is one of the central questions the 2026 results will begin to answer.

Sumauto is the most important asset in the portfolio that almost nobody discusses

Buried within the Classifieds segment, Sumauto, Vocento’s automotive classifieds marketplace, is the group’s most commercially dynamic asset. Revenue grew 11.4% to €21.6m in 2025, with an EBITDA margin above 25%. The growth drivers are data and AI-driven ARPA expansion (average revenue per advertiser), a 65% increase in renting revenues, and new social media-based advertising products for dealerships. The performance marketing consultancy Premium Leads, housed within the same segment, grew 44%.

For a group that trades on the equity markets primarily as a print media company, Sumauto represents a fundamentally different type of business: platform economics, recurring subscription revenues from dealers, and technology-driven monetisation. It is not separately valued or disclosed as a standalone asset. In a sum-of-the-parts analysis, a standalone auto classifieds platform growing at 11%+ with 25%+ EBITDA margins would typically command a double-digit EV/EBITDA multiple, materially different from the low multiples at which the print assets would be valued. As Pisos.com is gone and Digital Services winds down, Sumauto’s visibility within Vocento’s reporting will be cleaner in 2026, which may prompt a more honest conversation about what the group is actually worth.

An internal fraud investigation: modest in financial terms, significant in governance terms

One disclosure that received little attention at the results presentation concerns a material governance failure. Vocento revealed that an internal financial review uncovered discrepancies in raw materials inventory figures at several printing and distribution subsidiaries. A forensic investigation by an independent external adviser confirmed the existence of fraudulent inventory certificates, amounting to an accumulated overstatement of approximately €5.9m in the 2024 balance sheet. The amounts have been corrected through a restatement of 2024 equity. Disciplinary and legal proceedings have been initiated against those responsible.

The group is at pains to note that the irregularities were detected by its own internal control systems and that the financial impact is not material to solvency. However, the incident raises questions about the adequacy of controls in the printing and distribution operations, which are precisely the parts of the business undergoing the most significant operational restructuring. For a listed company subject to CNMV oversight, the governance overhang from ongoing legal proceedings will persist until those proceedings are resolved.

The ownership structure concentrates editorial control tightly around founding shareholder interests

Vocento’s shareholder structure is not explicitly discussed in the FY2025 financial report, but it is central to understanding the group’s strategic decision-making. The company’s founding shareholder families, principally the Ybarra and Bergareche interests from the Basque Country, associated with the historical ownership of El Correo and El Diario Vasco, retain control through share structures that have historically insulated the board from external capital market pressure. The group’s strategic choices, including the decision to retain the ABC brand despite its chronic losses, the selective approach to digital investment, and the geographic footprint centred on the Basque Country and northern Spain, reflect a particular vision of what Vocento is for as much as what it earns.

ABC, whose EBITDA ex indemnities was -€2.3m in 2025, is the clearest example. A purely financial assessment would question the continued investment in a loss-making national broadsheet with declining circulation and a heavily contested editorial identity in a polarised political environment. The group’s continued commitment to the ABC brand, including the significant product redesign investment announced for February 2026, reflects ownership priorities that are partly non-financial.

The 2026 targets are achievable but dependent on advertising conditions Vocento does not control

The group’s guidance for FY2026 is EBITDA ex indemnities of €30–32m, a 10–18% increase over the €27.2m achieved in 2025. The three pillars of the plan are advertising growth (expected to add approximately €1m), operational transformation savings from the seven-hub efficiency programme (€1–2.5m), and diversification business growth primarily in Classifieds and Agencies (€1–1.5m).

What the plan cannot control is the trajectory of the Spanish advertising market, which was Vocento’s primary beneficiary in 2025. Spain’s economic performance in 2026 will determine whether the advertising recovery continues, plateaus, or reverses. The group’s exposure to local and regional advertising, which accounts for roughly 60% of total press advertising revenue, means it is particularly sensitive to the confidence of small and medium-sized regional businesses, a segment that tends to cut marketing budgets faster than national advertisers in uncertain conditions.