”We had a good start to the year driven by improved performance in Learning in a seasonally small quarter. Growth in learning content sales in the Netherlands was partially driven by earlier ordering and supported by the continued underlying growth in the Dutch market. Digital learning platform sales increased in Poland, mainly driven by consumer demand. We also saw the first positive impacts of Program Solar in Learning’s cost base, which – together with the net sales growth – improved the seasonally negative operational earnings.
Economic uncertainty has increased during the first quarter. The US trade tariffs are not expected to have an impact on Sanoma's businesses or performance in the short term. However, we expect the softness in the Finnish advertising market to continue in the coming months, especially in comparison to the second quarter of 2024. While the economic turmoil could cause somewhat different quarterly phasing compared to the previous year, our Outlook for the full year 2025 remains unchanged.
The 2025 Sanoma Learning European Teacher Survey, with nearly 7,000 participants, continued to show stable and consistent value placed on high-quality learning materials throughout our markets, with 84% of the teachers agreeing that our learning materials help students in reaching curriculum objectives. The teachers have a strong preference in using printed and digital materials together, and they see the benefits of digital tools on improved inclusiveness among different learners, for instance.
In the first quarter, we continued to advance the use of AI in both businesses with a strong emphasis on its responsible use and human oversight. In Learning, for example, we integrated Speech Coach in some of our learning materials in Finland and Belgium, applied AI translations in editorial processes in Spain and implemented AI tools to improve coding efficiency. In Media Finland, the newsrooms have developed their capabilities for automatic news gathering from public sources and introduced an AI tool pack to support journalistic work processes. AI also assists in creating daily audio news summaries, in the B2C customer service chatbot and in generating B2B customer reports based on their sales results data.