Dear Shareholders,
(as of 19 March 2026)
A year ago, I announced that, if we obtained the required regulatory approvals, WP Holding would complete the largest acquisition in its history and that Travel would become larger than Media for the first time. We obtained those approvals, and in April 2025 the Invia Group became part of WP Holding.
We have now completed the first quarters as an enlarged Group, with 60% of its revenues coming from Travel and annual sales in this category reaching €3 billion. A new scale, new commitments. But also conclusions I would like to share with you, including those drawn from our own mistakes.
Travel: integrations, leadership changes and outlook
The total transaction value of our Travel business reached nearly €3 billion in 2025, as mentioned, growing 13% year on year. Revenues in this segment increased by 7% on a pro forma basis in 2025, and by 10% in the fourth quarter alone. Importantly, cash flows also grew by 12% over the same period.
To recap, our Travel operations serve both customers booking organized international trips through Invia and Wakacje.pl across the DACH and CEE regions, as well as those planning domestic stays, with accommodation offered via Szallas Group across several CEE markets.
The post-acquisition integration of our international Travel companies in Central and Eastern Europe is underway, including Wakacje.pl, Travelplanet.pl, Invia.cz, Invia.sk and Invia.hu. This area is led by Dariusz Górzny, who combines the roles of CEO of Invia CEE and CEO of Wakacje.pl.
The integration of Wakacje.pl and Invia in CEE is progressing according to plan across all key areas. We have resumed cooperation with TUI in Poland. In the coming months, customers will be able to book this tour operator’s offers across all sales channels, including mobile applications and call centers.
Our path to value creation is clear. Central and Eastern Europe continues to lag behind Western Europe in the frequency and scale of usage of tourism services – 45% of Poles travel every year, compared with 67% of Germans. Most sales in the CEE region still take place offline, which means the digitization of this market offers us a substantial structural opportunity.
Michał Brański, previously VP Strategy at WP Holding and CEO of Audioteka, has taken charge of our packaged international Travel business in the DACH region. This sends a clear signal of the founders’ commitment to reversing the trend in the acquired business. Michał, who leads the Ab-in-den-Urlaub platforms across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, is focused on improving both the e-commerce product and marketing performance.
Domestic Travel has been under the management of Adam Rogaliński, VP Corporate Development at WP Holding, since October. And not without reason. I will be direct: we did not avoid serious mistakes in Szallas.
Over the years, we built Szallas Group through a series of acquisitions totaling nearly PLN 570 million, including Nocowanie.pl, Szallas and Litoralul Romanesc. A rushed migration of key markets to what turned out to be a flawed technology platform led to a significant drop in organic traffic. Instead of fixing the problem, we made it worse. We centralized business functions in a way that did not fit local market cultures, and some of our personnel decisions were a flirtation that should have ended after the first date. On top of that came adverse market changes: the removal of price parity and the phasing out of government tourism subsidy programs in Hungary and Romania. This resulted in a PLN 150 million impairment of Szallas Group.
I hope that our early years in Szallas will be for us what Gallipoli was for Churchill: a lesson in how badly one can misjudge a situation, but not something that will delay our march toward victory. We have drawn both organizational and personnel conclusions. A new technology platform is already being implemented, and we are refreshing brand positioning and performance marketing. This lesson will directly influence decisions in other companies, including the potential migration of parallel Travel businesses on both sides of the Oder onto a single platform.
Another strategic decision was the divestment of Fluege.de, a German OTA focused on flight tickets. We are concentrating on packaged travel, which we see as offering the strongest growth prospects and the main driver of the entire Travel segment.
These prospects, however, depend on geopolitical stability. We are closely monitoring the situation in the Middle East. Turkey accounts for nearly one-third of our sales, while Egypt represents a further approximately 20%. In outbound Travel, we observed double-digit growth in the first nine weeks of the year, followed by double-digit declines from week ten onwards. There is no better way to describe it than a small Covid. If the war in the Persian Gulf persists for longer, we will face difficult decisions. We have scenarios prepared and contingency plans in place. We hope they will prove as unnecessary as an umbrella in a desert, but we are ready.
The industry is holding its breath. The only beneficiaries at the moment are consumers. Prices for destinations considered safe, such as Turkey and Egypt, are currently at levels unlikely to be seen again anytime soon, with discounts reaching up to 40%. This is the calm before a pricing storm.
Rising aviation fuel costs will lead to significant increases in travel costs regardless of destination. The temporary protection period will soon end, as tour operators typically hedge fuel prices only about three months ahead. Additionally, potential reductions in hotel allotments by tour operators seeking to limit risk exposure may constrain supply and further drive prices up. This is an unpleasant mix of risks that we cannot rule out today.
Advertising: investment, investment, investment
The year 2025 marked the 30th anniversary of WP’s advertising operations, but action was more important than celebration. It was a year of record investment. Anyone claiming that we spent too little on expanding newsrooms, video production and, above all, artificial intelligence, is showing a lack of basic moderation.
The WP Booster family of advertising products has become a hallmark of our new efficiency. New editorial tools have raised newsroom standards to a level where even looking at the old system feels like stepping into the Middle Ages. In February 2026, we launched WP Premium, offering high-quality journalism free of charge, unlike comparable products from competitors. In recent months, we have also introduced five new video formats. These were deliberate choices followed by further investments. In total, we spent PLN 14.4 million more on these areas in 2025 than in 2024. Across the two years, we invested nearly PLN 50 million in Polish technology development, including AI teams, WP Ads, WPartner and WPlatform.
Increased spending raises obvious questions about returns. We believe they will come soon, and we have solid reasons to support this view. Since August 2024, when we resumed active management of WP Media, with a user experience resembling rough timber, we have focused on a single goal: improving user engagement. The number of articles published has doubled. Since October 2025, improved recommendation technologies have driven growth in page views. We implemented hundreds of small product improvements and doubled user satisfaction. The most important audience, our users, appreciates these changes. The true currency of this world is not money, but trust.
At the same time, we are carrying out a deep transformation of our advertising sales organization. Our mission is now to help our clients achieve their business objectives. This shift is supported by artificial intelligence. For the first time in 30 years, display products from the WP Booster family are reaching efficiency levels comparable to email marketing, which has historically dominated this category. Anyone familiar with performance marketing understands how fundamental such a shift would be.
WPartner brokerage continues to grow, now accounting for around 9% of advertising revenues, with 45% of sales generated on international publisher inventory, supporting clients across the DACH and CEE regions. It is a good example of a business line built from scratch in recent years, growing like a flower on rock.
Revenues in the Advertising and Subscriptions segment were under pressure in 2025, declining by 1% on a pro forma basis. The positive news is that we expect year-on-year growth in the first quarter of 2026.
Investors expect us to accelerate, and we understand that. It took us a moment to figure out where the front was and where the bottom was, while at the same time facing internal calls to slow down. We chose our own path. Not the fastest, but once through hell, never stopping. Today, we are focusing on reviewing our cost base, especially investments made in the past year, and assessing their alignment with initial assumptions.
Subscriptions: strengthening our leadership
Audioteka continues to perform very well and is strengthening its position as a leader in the audiobook markets in Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. Our priority is to grow the subscriber base across all markets and systematically increase the share of subscription revenues, as subscriptions provide predictability and user loyalty.
At the same time, we are expanding our presence in Germany, where we see strong growth potential, and continuing to grow across CEE. We consistently deliver high-quality original audio productions that build unique platform value and differentiate us from global competitors. We are continuously improving the application by removing purchase barriers, enhancing content matching and increasing user engagement.
On a pro forma basis, Group cash revenues for 2025 reached PLN 2.46 billion, up 7% year on year, an increase of PLN 159 million. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to PLN 630 million, down 2% pro forma, mainly due to deliberate investments in Media, including AI and editorial development. This is not a result we are overly proud of, but it reflects a conscious choice to invest in people and products. We know what we are doing. Let me be clear: the rhythm of quarterly results announcements will never stop us from investing in the future of our company.
Let me close with something that goes beyond quarterly results.
Running a complex media and Travel group is a series of turns. Some are taken with elegance, others with the sound of screeching tires. What matters is drawing conclusions faster than the competition. The biggest mistakes business owners make do not happen when they take risks. They happen when they start trusting people whose only objective is their next paycheck, and whose primary moral imperative is their own survival.
We are building this Group with people who care. And that is why, despite mistakes, course corrections and difficult decisions in recent months, I am convinced that the best chapters of this story are still ahead of us.
Best regards,
Jacek Świderski
CEO Wirtualna Polska Holding SA.