Metro Investors Day
It was hot as hell in Amsterdam today, tropical temperatures. When I was biking around the city and looking for a place on a terrace to have a beer, the Metro-investors were sweating it out in the Crown Plaza Hotel.
CEO Per Mikael Jensen laid out the strategy for the next years. “Focus on consolidation in Western Europe and North America” was the main theme, indicating that sales in the Czech Republic, Sweden and Denmark were not the last.
Stand-alone launches are probably not to be expected: “Launch Metro in new markets, often as franchise-operations, joint venture or other kinds of partnerships”.
Other highlights:
- Target growth in Russia, Latin America and Asia.
- Grow in existing markets by becoming the no. 1 or no. 2 newspaper in each market.
- Extend the Metro brand to other platforms such as online and magazines.
- Increase the editorial and brand quality significantly by producing unique global content, and thus improving local quality, through new designs and concepts.
- Continue focus on cost control – further reduce some HQ-costs.
- Decrease CPT-gap to main titles in local markets.
The second feature will be a difficult task for the Spanish operation, while the fourth point is rather confusing: unique global “thus improving local quality”.