Sanoma published Q3 2026 results this morning, and with me here is President and CEO Rob Kolkman. Welcome, Rob. Thank you. I think it's a very important quarter for Sanoma, thinking about the seasonality in the business, but then also the efficiency work you've done in Learning. How would you wrap up the quarter results?

Yes, I think it is ultimately summarized by us also updating our guidance to the high end on the earnings side, so we are very pleased. A good quarter we had in quarter three, of course driven very much, as you already indicated, by the growth on the Learning side. Standout performance was of course in Poland, where we saw 25% growth year on year, but this is really all the hard work of bringing these new methods to market and really being very close to the teachers with your solutions that is now paying off across Europe. And then of course you always have things that slightly differ by market, but overall very strong performance there, and on the Media side another good quarter, solid quarter, some improvement in the profitability, and we highlight a specifically strong Events quarter as well. Small part of the business, but we're always proud of it.

There have been some curriculum changes in the markets. This is the year for that, and it is also a time where you can increase your market share. So we've seen the changes in the Polish market and some new financing in the Spanish market. Can you tell something about your market share development here?

Yes, the official numbers on that, as we know, are always published by markets after the year end, but our indication is that we have further strengthened our position in our core markets, so that includes the Netherlands, it includes Poland and it also includes Spain.

Then jumping onto the profitability side of Learning, obviously there is the big SOLAR efficiency program you worked on for a couple of years and you expected over 20% margin in the business. Were you tracking on that level this year? How would you comment on the current profitability, the efficiency gains? How satisfied are you with the current level? Maybe what happens in the future?

Yes, I think you can see the step change, of course, very visible in this quarter, right, towards clearly above 23% that we've indicated, and that's also why we are on track to do that for the full year. And part of that, to your point, really comes from now benefiting from the scale, so the higher volumes, all the cost efficiencies and making our work effective that we did as part of the previous SOLAR program is now starting to pay off, on top of the fact that of course we also see really good uptake on our methods. So the combination of that really causes the step-up in margin and, as indicated in the Capital Markets Day a year ago. We also expect, of course, long term to be mid-single-digit revenue growth, high-single-digit profit growth, effectively continuing improvement in Learning.

Then let's jump into the Media business. We have also seen a clear profitability improvement there. Can you remind us what are the drivers there, what are you working on, and where do you still see room to improve?

Yes. First and foremost, Media does a fantastic job quarter on quarter, year on year. When you think about managing the business, when you think about containing the costs as well, it is very important because we are of course still in the middle of that transformation towards more digital, and that's what you see. High level-wise, continuing, if you look at the growth of digital both in subscriptions and in advertising, is very, very clearly there, and that of course on the subscription side is really offsetting the decline that we see in print. Advertising, of course, is still a bit more challenging market, but clearly expected to change much more positively next year with the opening up of the gambling market.

The specific thing I mentioned now for quarter three was also the really good performance that we saw on the Events side. So we had four events, but they were much better attended and they also had much better profitability, and we also had the four concerts as well.

You mentioned gambling markets, so let's continue on that. We are expecting a big, big change in the market next year, which will impact the advertising market. As we're getting close to that, do you have any new thoughts on how the market will shape out? There's been discussions about the market size and so on. Is there any potential upside or downside risks, or how do you view the market outlook overall?

We're still, what is it, nine months out before it actually of course starts. There's a lot of conversations with the players that are potentially entering the market. I think it was also public that there's quite a lot of new entrants expected, so all that is reflected in our activity as well, in seeing how we can then support the branding, which is of course a key element. So I think those signs are all encouraging, very much also in line with that step change in the advertising market that we do see, but of course it can only really be visible in numbers from the first of July onwards, when the market actually opens up, right?

Then let's jump into AI, which is a hot topic in pretty much every business currently. You recently rolled out the new AI tool called Sana in the Learning business. Can you help us understand what this tool is about and how do you plan to leverage your portfolio in rolling this out?

Sana is really the support for teachers in the day-to-day work across Europe. So this is one of those clear examples of you develop once and then you roll it out across all our markets, and that's why we're doing so. It's really aimed to help teachers become more efficient and of course clearly also a big step towards helping them make our own high-quality content ever more personalized for the children in the classroom. And over time we'll be adding more features and functionalities that will help save the teacher time as well, so we do it out of course with one brand across Europe, which is indeed Sana, and then it's a matter of now rolling this out and also learning from the teachers. What would you like to see more of? But fundamentally it is personalized learning opportunities, saving the teachers time on top of our high-quality content that they use already on a day-to-day basis in the classroom, right?

Then let's think about AI adoption more broadly at Sanoma. Can you help us understand how you're taking advantage of AI currently and then maybe if you have some areas where you're expecting the biggest changes?

Yeah, of course, we always do all the AI initiatives internally with a clear focus on human oversight, right? That's very, very important because of course we are very much trusted by our customers, and here in Finland of course the readers, but also teachers and students across Europe, so that is a very important base point to make. Having said that, of course the opportunities to become more efficient, to have better learning solutions, but also to become more efficient in our own operations is happening, so we do a lot of work together with colleagues. How can we help them in the day-to-day work? A lot of training around that so that they can also use it to the best of their ability, which ultimately will lead to even better let's say journalistic outcomes as well. The same happens on the content side in Learning, and then of course you see across the business initiatives in other areas as well, for example sales. We can do a lot also to improve our sales approach in both businesses, and that ultimately will lead to better solutions, more tailored solutions for your customers, advertisers as well as the teachers and students in Learning.

Right. Lastly, you updated your guidance for this year, so a slight change in the revenue guidance and obviously the profitability also. So can you help us understand what were the drivers of this change and how do you overall look at the rest of the year?

Yeah, so this is of course our usual moment where we say we now got nine months and the big Learning start behind us, so we can narrow our guidance. That's why we've done that on the top line. I think it reflects several elements, right? It reflects a little bit more pressure on the advertising market, it reflects strong growth in Poland, it also reflects slightly less growth than we had originally expected maybe in Spain. So all these things come into play there, to a very solid performance on the top line, but of course on the profit this really is an indication towards the higher end, so indicating a 14% to 20% profit growth year on year for all the elements that I mentioned just as well. But fundamentally because of the step change in Learning margin growth if you correct for this low-value distribution contract on the line growth in the Learning content, the strong position we have across Europe and as a result the improved margin as well.

Thank you, Rob, and all the best for the rest of the year. Thank you very much.