XING continues growth course in first quarter

• 29 per cent rise in revenues
• Premium segment: Strongest revenue growth for five years
• 83 per cent rise in EBITDA compared to Q1 2014

Hamburg, 6 May 2015 – XING AG, operator of the leading professional network in German-speaking countries, posted total revenues of €29.3 million for the first quarter of the year, which is a 29 per cent increase compared to Q1 2014 (€22.8 million). The main drivers behind this rise were the Company’s Premium and E-Recruiting segments.

Premium segment: Strongest revenue growth for five years
The measures implemented to further accelerate growth in the Company’s core paid membership segment have paid off during the first quarter. More than 19,000 members opted for Premium or ProJobs memberships to gain access to additional products and services. This had an effect on revenues with XING posting its strongest quarterly revenue growth for five years. Revenues rose by 19 per cent to €16.6 million (Q1 2014: €13.9 million). The strongest revenue driver during the quarter was again the E-Recruiting segment which reported revenues of €9.8 million, a 40 per cent increase over Q1 2014 (€7.0 million). With revenues of €1.3 million, the Events segment remained at about the same level as last year (€1.4 million). Revenues for the period also included positive currency effects, without which organic revenue growth amount to around 24 per cent.

CEO Thomas Vollmoeller: “XING is continuing to grow rapidly, and the measures we’ve taken to continue developing our Premium segment are bearing fruit. We’re also very happy about the member growth we’ve seen.” Q1 saw XING achieve the best quarterly member growth in the Company’s history with 439,000 people choosing to join the platform. As a result of this growth, XING had more than 8.4 million members in German-speaking countries as of the end of March 2015. By including events customers, XING has a total of approximately 8.8 million users in the German-speaking market. The number of paid memberships in Q1 came to a total of 855,000 (Q1 2014: 823,000).

Thomas Vollmoeller added: “We’re taking an active role in the current discussions on the future of the working world. We want to use this as a basis for providing our members with services that help them find a job that fits in with their lifestyle.” During the first quarter of 2015, XING acquired Jobbörse.com, the largest jobs search engine in German-speaking countries. The aim of this acquisition is to provide members with more and a better choice of job ads. Non-XING members will also be able to enjoy access to job ads in XING Jobs.

83 per cent rise in EBITDA compared to Q1 2014
The Company’s EBITDA for the first three months of this year amounted to €8.2 million, which equates to an 83 per cent increase over Q1 2014 (€4.5 million excluding the non-operating kununu earn-out obligation). This rise is largely attributable to the dynamic revenue growth the Company has seen as well as a disproportionately low increase in personnel costs of 17 per cent to €11.25 million for Q1. In spite of the TV campaign conducted during Q1, Marketing expenditure for the period dropped slightly from €3.8 million in Q1 2014 to €3.6 million in Q1 2015.

About XING
XING is the social network for business contacts. XING has around 8.8 million users in its core German-speaking market, more than 8.4 million of whom are XING platform members. XING is a platform where professionals from all kinds of different industries can meet up, find jobs, colleagues, new assignments, cooperation partners, experts and generate business ideas. Members can meet and exchange views in over 66,000 specialist groups, while also getting together at networking events. The platform is operated by XING AG, which was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003, has been publicly listed since 2006, and listed on the TecDAX since September 2011. In December 2010, XING acquired amiando AG, a Munich-based company and Europe’s leading provider of online event management and ticketing. Since the end of 2013 the company has been trading under the name XING EVENTS GmbH. The acquisition of kununu, the leading platform for employer reviews in German-speaking countries, allows XING to extend its position as the social recruiting market leader. At the start of 2015 XING also acquired Intelligence Competence Center AG, including its Jobbörse.com website which is the largest jobs search engine in German-speaking countries with over 2.5 million jobs. Visit www.xing.com for further details.