Henry Ford once said, “Fifty percent of advertising is always thrown out.

But you don't know which half it is. ”That may have been the case at the time from the perspective of a successful automobile pioneer.

In today's (consumer) world, advertising has become indispensable.

And yet Corona has also shown the advertising industry its limits.

In Germany, Ströer is one of the big players in the advertising sector, and according to its own information it markets and operates around 300,000 advertising offers.

In the past few years, the M-Dax company has already been busy converting to digital advertising content.

The Corona crisis didn't exactly make life easier for the Cologne-based company.

Because the advertising space provided by Ströer is often placed at traffic hubs such as train stations, streets, shopping centers as well as underground and S-Bahn platforms in major German cities.

In the wake of the corona pandemic, however, many people were forced to work from home more often.

Correspondingly, advertisers asked for less advertising space.

The digitization, which has become faster due to Corona, has also shaken up the entire advertising industry.

Corona is shaking up the advertising industry

Instead of linear television, the population groups that are particularly interesting for the advertising industry can be found more and more frequently on video portals such as YouTube, streaming services such as Netflix or the social media offers of Facebook or Instagram. In the course of the corona-related lockdown, the target groups could be found on the Internet even more often than before, which did not exactly simplify Ströer's life. Ströer was able to recover from the Corona dent and has left the crisis behind. When the latest half-year results were announced in mid-August, the company announced that business would be back to pre-Corona levels.

In addition, Ströer is increasingly tackling the issue of digitization.

The medium-term plan up to 2026 was presented at the beginning of October.

The “OOH plus” strategy continues to focus on the “Out of Home” core business.

Customers are offered a wide range of different analog and digital out-of-home media (OOH) there.

There are also the areas of Digital & Dialog Media and DaaS (Desktop-as-a-Service) and E-Commerce (Asambeauty).

The portal t-online, which the company bought in 2015 and wants to develop into Germany’s number 1 media brand, is intended to help.

Solid numbers and a strong outlook

For the core areas of OOH and Digital & Dialog Media, management expects average annual sales growth of 8.5 percent to 2.0 to 2.1 billion euros by 2026.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are expected to increase by an average of 9 to 12.5 percent to around 750 to 850 million euros over the same period.

In the first nine months of the 2021 financial year, group-wide sales rose by 11 percent to 1.1 billion euros.

Organic sales growth was also 11 percent.

EBITDA (adjusted) increased by 10 percent to 319 million euros.

For the full year 2021, the management is assuming sales of around 1.6 billion euros with an adjusted EBITDA of 490 to 510 million euros.

Anchor shareholders provide stability

In addition, the owner families Müller and Ströer ensured stability in terms of ownership in the future.

For this purpose, the main shareholders of Ströer SE & Co. KGaA, Co-CEO and founder Udo Müller and Dirk Ströer have brought a large part of their 42 percent limited partnership shares in Ströer SE & Co. KGaA into a German foundation structure.

The company's plans and forecasts are well received by analysts.

The major Swiss bank UBS has raised the price target for Ströer from 84 to 92 euros.

Meanwhile, Barclays sees a price target of 88 euros, while the German bank Hauck & Aufhäuser even sees the Ströer share at 95 euros.

Exciting chart technique

When looking at the course of the course, such course objectives do not appear to be unrealistic. After the Ströer share price plunged by more than 50 percent in the first quarter of 2020 and hit a low of 37 euros in March, a new price rally began, during which it rose to a record high of 82.50 by December last year Euro went up.

After a correction to 65 euros by May of this year, the price recovered to 72 euros at times. If the recent recovery continues, the December 2020 all-time high could be a target - and also a strong buy signal. Anyone who is already a Ströer shareholder knows about the strengths of the company and its share price. Over a ten-year perspective, prices rose by an average of 22 percent annually. However, the high return on the share price was largely the result of the price rally in the years 2013 to 2015, because in the following years the Ströer share was at times repeatedly set back sharply.

That is why this small cap is more for risk-taking investors who have a lot of staying power to simply sit out intermittent corrections.

On the other hand, Ströer is by no means unattractive for dividend fans.

The M-Dax company has been a reliable dividend payer in recent years, with the dividend yield currently being 2.8 percent being comparatively high.