Axel Springer posts 29% EBIT jump in its first year as an independent company
Axel Springer posts 241 million euros adjusted EBIT in 2025 and a 123% Q1 surge as the restructured, family-owned media group sets its first growth targets.
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Axel Springer today published its first full-year financial results under a new ownership structure, reporting adjusted EBIT of €241.4 million for 2025 - a 29.4 percent increase on the prior year - alongside a sharp acceleration in the opening quarter of 2026.
The Berlin-based media group separated from private equity investors KKR and CPP Investments, completing a structural transition that has reshaped how one of Europe's largest publishing businesses is organised and governed. Today's announcement covers both a full fiscal year and a forward outlook, making it the clearest public statement yet of what Axel Springer looks like as a family-owned transatlantic operator.
The headline numbers
Pro forma Group revenues in 2025 were €2.2 billion, according to Axel Springer, described as slightly above the prior year. The modest top-line progression matters less than what happened lower in the income statement. Adjusted EBIT - the group's preferred measure of operating performance - rose from €186.5 million in the prior year to €241.4 million, a gain of 29.4 percent.
Calculated on a basis comparable with previous years, adjusted EBITDA increased by 12.9 percent to €364.0 million. The spread between the EBITDA and EBIT growth rates - 12.9 percent versus 29.4 percent - points to meaningful improvement in the depreciation and amortisation line, which typically narrows as post-acquisition intangible charges fade and capital investment is managed tightly.
The Q1 2026 data sharpens the picture further. Pro forma revenues rose 2.6 percent year-on-year in the first three months of 2026, or by more than five percent on a currency-adjusted basis, according to Axel Springer. Adjusted EBIT for the quarter came in at €54.1 million, up €29.9 million from the same period last year, representing a year-on-year increase of 123.3 percent. That is a substantial swing in a single quarter, though the comparison base was weak in Q1 2025 and currency movements contributed to the headline rate.
For fiscal year 2026 as a whole, Axel Springer is guiding for adjusted EBIT to grow by a high-single-digit percentage. Pro forma Group revenue growth is expected in the low-single-digit percentage range. The company notes that investment in the further development of business models will partly temper the EBIT rate of growth - an acknowledgement that it is spending on new initiatives at the same time as reporting profitability improvements.
Two pillars: Publishing and Commerce
Axel Springer is structured around two primary divisions: Publishing and Commerce. Publishing encompasses the editorial brands - BILD, WELT, BUSINESS INSIDER, and POLITICO among them. Commerce houses the comparison and affiliate-network assets: Idealo, Bonial, and Awin.
According to CEO Mathias Dopfner, "Both our Publishing and Commerce brands contributed to the good result in 2025." He singled out two assets in particular: "We are particularly pleased with the growth of MORNING BREW in the U.S. and Idealo's continued excellent performance."
Morning Brew is a business newsletter and media brand originally founded in 2015 by Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief at the University of Michigan. Axel Springer acquired it through Business Insider Inc. - itself a prior Axel Springer acquisition dating to 2015, when the German company paid to acquire approximately 88 percent of Business Insider Inc. Morning Brew built its reputation on concise, daily business newsletters and has since expanded into podcasts and video. Its growth is relevant to the advertising community because the brand monetises primarily through sponsorships and newsletter advertising, a format that commands strong engagement metrics.
Idealo, the German price-comparison platform, has been an Axel Springer asset for over a decade and operates as a performance marketing channel. Retailers pay on a cost-per-click basis when consumers use Idealo to find competitive product prices and click through to complete purchases. Axel Springer holds a 74.9 percent stake, according to historical filings. The platform's "continued excellent performance" cited by Dopfner reflects its role as a consistently profitable commerce unit.
Awin, in which Axel Springer holds a 52.5 percent stake, operates as a global affiliate marketing network. It connects advertisers with publishers who earn commission on referred sales. For performance marketers and affiliate managers, Awin is a significant infrastructure layer: the network has more than 1 million affiliate partners and processes large volumes of e-commerce transactions daily. The Commerce segment's health is therefore directly connected to the activity levels of performance advertising across European and international markets. PPC Land has reported extensively on Axel Springer's advertising technology moves, including the company's July 2025 acquisition of cmmrcl.ly, a Hamburg-based social media advertising platform with first-party data partnerships across major German retailers.
The KKR split and what it means structurally
The separation from KKR and CPP Investments is the structural context for understanding these numbers. Private equity ownership imposes particular financial disciplines - leverage, return targets, and often a defined exit horizon. Family ownership operates differently: longer time horizons, different tolerance for investment cycles, and less pressure to maintain quarterly earnings momentum at the expense of strategic investment.
The transition also affects how the group reports. The use of "pro forma" revenues across both 2025 and Q1 2026 is a standard adjustment to account for acquisitions and disposals as if they had occurred at the start of the comparison period - giving a cleaner view of underlying trading performance rather than consolidation timing effects. The improvement in adjusted EBIT on a comparable basis is therefore not a product of portfolio reshaping alone; it reflects operating leverage and cost management within the existing business perimeter.
Mathias Dopfner characterised the year directly: "Our new corporate structure at Axel Springer has proven effective."
Expansion in the United States
The U.S. push is one of the more consequential threads running through Axel Springer's current strategy. Two deals frame the near-term picture.
First, the company confirmed the successful acquisition of Bisnow, described as a B2B real estate and events platform. According to Axel Springer, Bisnow will be combined with Morning Brew Inc. inside a newly formed entity called Brew Media Group. The combination places two U.S. B2B media brands under a single operational structure, with Bisnow's real estate vertical complementing Morning Brew's broader business audience. Real estate is a category with deep advertising budgets, particularly in the B2B segment where event sponsorships, branded content, and digital advertising all converge. The creation of Brew Media Group is therefore a consolidation of two revenue streams that serve overlapping professional audiences.
The Morning Brew and Bisnow combination raises a practical question for media buyers: whether a unified Brew Media Group will develop combined advertising packages, audience extension products, or integrated sponsorship deals across both brands. That kind of scale matters for advertisers who want to reach U.S. business decision-makers at volume, particularly as contextual and newsletter advertising have gained favour against walled-garden alternatives.
The Telegraph acquisition: close but not yet complete
Perhaps the most closely watched element of Axel Springer's current deal pipeline is the acquisition of Telegraph Media Group in the United Kingdom.
According to Axel Springer, the company is "close to completing" the acquisition. The forecast for fiscal year 2026 therefore does not include any effects from the Telegraph transaction - a standard precaution when regulatory approvals are outstanding.
PPC Land reported in March 2026 that Axel Springer agreed to acquire Telegraph Media Group for £575 million in cash, displacing a prior agreement with DMGT. TMG reported £279.4 million in revenue in the year to December 2024, with digital subscriptions revenue rising 18 percent year-on-year to £81.1 million and total subscriptions reaching 1,086,000.
In April 2026, PPC Land covered the UK regulatory clearance: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed on April 14, 2026 that the Secretary of State was not minded to issue a Public Interest Intervention Notice under section 42(2) of the Enterprise Act 2002. The deal still requires approvals from Irish and Austrian regulators before completion can occur, with the company targeting Q2 2026 completion.
The Telegraph acquisition, if completed, would add a significant English-language broadsheet to Axel Springer's publishing portfolio. With POLITICO, BUSINESS INSIDER, and WELT already in the stable, a fully owned Telegraph would substantially increase the group's reach in English-language news and its presence in the UK market.
What this means for the advertising and marketing industry
Axel Springer's financial performance matters to the marketing community for several interconnected reasons. The group's Commerce division - anchored by Awin and Idealo - is embedded in the performance advertising infrastructure that many brands and agencies rely on daily. Awin alone connects tens of thousands of advertisers with affiliate publishers across more than 180 countries.
Newsletter and contextual advertising, formats that Morning Brew's growth reflects, have become more significant to media plans as third-party cookie deprecation and privacy regulation push buyers toward higher-quality, consent-based environments. A well-capitalised Morning Brew, under a structured Brew Media Group umbrella, may develop more sophisticated advertising products over time.
The Commerce division's solid performance also signals that price-comparison and affiliate-network spending held up through 2025 despite a mixed macroeconomic environment in Germany and Europe. Idealo's performance in particular reflects sustained e-commerce activity and willingness among retailers to pay for comparison traffic - relevant context for anyone managing shopping or performance campaigns in German-speaking markets.
At the same time, the Telegraph acquisition - when it closes - will create a new premium advertising environment in the UK. The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph carry substantial display advertising and have a subscriber base that advertisers value for its demographic profile. How Axel Springer approaches advertising monetisation at TMG, particularly in relation to digital subscriptions and first-party data, will be watched closely by UK media buyers.
PPC Land has been tracking how Axel Springer has been building its advertising technology stack alongside its editorial brands. The cmmrcl.ly acquisition in July 2025, as covered by PPC Land, expanded its social media advertising capabilities, particularly around purchase-intent targeting using first-party retail data. That deal was subsequently followed by Bonial's acquisition of cmmrcl.ly from Axel Springer in March 2026, operationalising the data within a dedicated retail marketing context and marking the beginning of a more distinct retail media strategy within the Commerce division.
Forecast and strategic direction
Axel Springer is guiding for continued growth on both top-line and earnings metrics in 2026, while acknowledging that investment spending will moderate the rate of EBIT expansion. The high-single-digit EBIT growth guidance - set against a 123.3 percent Q1 2026 baseline - suggests the strong Q1 pace will normalise through the year as costs build. Low-single-digit revenue growth is a modest target, reflecting both the maturity of some core assets and the exclusion of the Telegraph transaction from forecasts.
The CEO's framing - "Our goal is to continue building momentum over the course of the year and further drive Axel Springer's growth" - is characteristically measured for a company that is managing simultaneous expansion in the U.S. and a major pending acquisition in the UK, all while operating under a new corporate structure for the first time in many years.
For a media group that spans editorial journalism, price-comparison commerce, affiliate networks, and newsletter media, the structural picture is one of deliberate diversification. Publishing brands generate brand equity and journalistic reach. Commerce assets generate predictable performance-marketing revenues. The two divisions are managed separately but marketed together as part of a coherent transatlantic identity.
Whether that identity translates into a more integrated advertising proposition - one that combines Awin's affiliate scale with Business Insider's audience data, or Morning Brew's newsletter engagement with Idealo's commerce intent signals - remains an open question. The numbers today show the foundations are financially sound. The strategic question is what the group builds on them.
Timeline
- September 29, 2015 - Axel Springer announces agreement to acquire approximately 88 percent of Business Insider Inc.; Axel Springer ultimately holds around 97 percent post-closing
- 2020 - Morning Brew is acquired by Insider Inc. (then a subsidiary of Axel Springer's Business Insider operations)
- July 30, 2025 - Axel Springer acquires cmmrcl.ly GmbH, a Hamburg-based social media advertising platform with first-party retail data partnerships across German-speaking markets
- 2025 (full year) - Axel Springer completes its first fiscal year under the new corporate structure post-KKR split; pro forma Group revenues reach €2.2 billion; adjusted EBIT rises 29.4 percent to €241.4 million; adjusted EBITDA grows 12.9 percent to €364.0 million
- March 5, 2026 - Bonial acquires cmmrcl.ly from Axel Springer, creating a retail media data hub combining first-party data from more than 25 partners
- March 6, 2026 - Axel Springer agrees to acquire Telegraph Media Group for £575 million in cash, displacing a prior DMGT agreement; TMG had £279.4 million in revenue in 2024 with 1,086,000 total subscribers
- April 14, 2026 - UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport clears the Telegraph acquisition; Irish and Austrian regulatory approvals remain outstanding
- May 21, 2026 - Axel Springer publishes Q1 2026 results and 2025 full-year figures; adjusted EBIT up 123.3 percent in Q1 to €54.1 million; Bisnow acquisition confirmed; Brew Media Group announced; full-year 2026 guidance issued
Summary
Who: Axel Springer SE, a family-owned transatlantic media company headquartered in Berlin, operating Publishing brands including BILD, BUSINESS INSIDER, POLITICO, and WELT, and Commerce brands including Idealo, Bonial, and Awin.
What: The company published its first full-year financial results under the new corporate structure following separation from KKR and CPP Investments. Adjusted EBIT rose 29.4 percent to €241.4 million in 2025, on pro forma revenues of €2.2 billion. Q1 2026 adjusted EBIT grew 123.3 percent year-on-year to €54.1 million. The company also announced the creation of Brew Media Group - combining Morning Brew Inc. and Bisnow - and confirmed it is close to completing the acquisition of Telegraph Media Group in the UK.
When: The 2025 full-year and Q1 2026 financial figures were announced today, May 21, 2026. The fiscal year covered is January 1 to December 31, 2025. Q1 2026 covers the three months to March 31, 2026.
Where: Axel Springer is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Its primary operating geographies are Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom - the latter pending completion of the Telegraph acquisition.
Why: The announcement marks the first formal financial accounting of Axel Springer's performance as an independent, family-owned structure. It demonstrates whether the split from private equity ownership has been accretive or disruptive to earnings, and sets the trajectory for a company simultaneously managing a major U.S. expansion through Brew Media Group and a pending £575 million acquisition in the UK.