Raketech Logs Third Consecutive Increase in EBITDA Margin Even As Revenue Falls, Former CFO Now Joins Direct Competitor Company

Key Points

• The EBITDA margin of Raketech increased to 24% in Q2 2026 from 21.2% in Q2 2025 with revenue declining from €6.8m to €5.6m.
• The company ran the biggest sports campaign so far in the FIFA World Cup through the bundling of traffic on owned as well as external publishers via AffiliationCloud.
• Måns Svalborn, the CFO at Raketech between December 2019 and April 2026, will be the CFO at direct rival Gentoo Media, effective October 2026.

Raketech Is Getting Leaner – Whether That Is Enough Is the Question

A record of three successive quarters of positive changes in EBITDA may look like a sign that a company is on track. However, it seems like Raketech has been making a turn which just shifts away. Revenue from continuing operations declined by 17.6% year-on-year in Q2 2026, declining from €6.8m to €5.6m, whereas the dynamics of revenues two years back look even worse, since then €17m was gained in the same quarter. What Raketech has succeeded in, taking into account these figures, is gaining more profit out of lower revenue – an achievement that needs not only respect but also critical analysis.

The second quarter margin of EBITDA rose to 24% (from 21.2% in Q2 2025), whereas the adjusted EBITDA stood still at €1.3m (against €1.4m in the previous year). The trend of rising from €1.1m in Q4 2025 through €1.2m in Q1 2026 to €1.3m is what Raketech expects to attract people’s attention. The first half margin of EBITDA in 2026 was 22.6%, as against 15.5% in the previous year.

The Cuts Behind the Margin

Raketech’s profitability improvement has not come from revenue recovery. It has come from a sustained cost overhaul that most coverage has treated as a footnote. Headcount dropped from 87 to 54 employees year-on-year, dragging employee benefit expenses down 41%, from €1.7m to €1m. Publisher costs fell 17%, largely because the Paid Publisher Network within SubAffiliation continued its deliberate wind-down. At 54 employees, the company is running lean. How much further it can cut without compromising execution is a question management has not put a number to.

There is also an accounting change that most reports have underplayed. In Q4 2025, Raketech revised the useful life of certain websites and domains from indefinite to a finite eight-year period. That accounting shift pushed Q2 2026 depreciation and amortisation to €905,000, versus just €205,000 in Q2 2025, and it is the primary reason operating profit collapsed by roughly 65% year-on-year to €392,000. The EBITDA figures, which sit above that depreciation line, tell a different and more stable story. Readers seeing the operating profit figure without this context would draw the wrong conclusion entirely.

A World Cup Campaign, and What It Proved

Q2 2026 included what Raketech described as the largest sports campaign in its history. Two new media products launched ahead of the FIFA World Cup, both built on concepts tested earlier in the year. CEO Johan Svensson confirmed in the official report: “Both launches were an operational success, and the two products added meaningfully to the traffic and commercial inventory we brought to operators during the tournament.”

Through AffiliationCloud, the company bundled traffic and commercial inventory across its Owned Sport Publishers and External Publishers into a single commercial process, rather than negotiating with operators asset by asset. Sub-affiliation volumes in Sweden and Denmark grew compared to Q1, with the World Cup lifting activity sharply towards the end of the quarter. Preliminary July 2026 data showed Affiliation Marketing revenues running slightly above the Q2 average, carried by tournament momentum extending into the knockout rounds. Raketech remains on track to launch seven media initiatives across 2026 in total. Two are done. Five are still to come.

The Sector Is Struggling, and Raketech Knew It First

The affiliate industry broadly is under pressure in 2026. Google’s algorithm changes, the spread of AI-generated search results, and tighter operator marketing budgets have squeezed revenues across the sector. Raketech’s own revenue decline has been running longer and sharper than most, but its pivot away from growth-at-all-costs toward profitability-first now looks prescient rather than defensive.

“Manual Stan, CEO of Catena Media, noted during his Q2 earnings call the structural challenges that traditional affiliation faces.” The revenues of Catena have become stagnant, and profits are declining, leading to a new restructuring. Raketech’s restructuring, by contrast, is now in its third year and producing a measurable margin recovery, even if the revenue base is still contracting.

The geographic picture within Raketech remains concentrated and patchy. The Nordics produced 75.2% of group revenue in Q2, up from 66% a year earlier, though Nordic revenue itself fell 6.2% year-on-year to €4.22m. Revenue from the rest of the world dropped 37.7%. The rest of Europe fell 36.9%. US operations declined 48.9%. Management named the US market as a stated H2 2026 priority, confirming it has not yet returned to growth. There are no public targets attached to that commitment.

Casumba Behind Them; Italy Ahead

The €12m sale of Casumba assets in September 2025 remains the defining strategic move of Raketech’s recent history. Casumba had been a persistent drag, and its removal freed the company to focus on AffiliationCloud and its Nordic publishing portfolio. Raketech received €0.9m in Casumba proceeds during Q2 2026 alone, with monthly instalments continuing through December 2029.

The next test is Italy. After the Q2 reporting period closed, Raketech signed a new entrepreneurial partnership to launch an iGaming media platform targeting the Italian market, expected to go live towards the end of Q3. Svensson confirmed this is “the first application of our media-led product model outside the Nordics.” It follows the same logic as the Nordic launches, pairing a local entrepreneur with Raketech’s technology and commercial infrastructure. Whether a model built in Scandinavia travels well into a mature, competitive regulated market like Italy is the real question. The answer will take more than one quarter to become clear.

The CFO Who Crossed the Line

There is also one event that merits more detailed attention. From December 2019 to April 2026, Måns Svalborn held the position of Chief Financial Officer at Raketech, being responsible for managing its finance, laws, compliance, investor relationships, and cross-border mergers & acquisitions during the most turbulent period in the history of this company. He became a member of the Board of Directors at Raketech’s AGM in May 2026. But on 13 July 2026, Svalborn announced his resignation from the board because he agreed to become the CFO of Gentoo Media, which is Raketech’s direct competitor.

Raketech’s own announcement confirmed the reason for departure plainly: as Gentoo Media is a direct competitor, continued board service was not compatible with the new role. Svalborn brings over 20 years of finance experience, including work at Nordea Bank and Ernst & Young, into a rival affiliate business facing many of the same pressures he spent six years navigating at Raketech. The move does not affect Raketech’s reported numbers, but losing six years of institutional knowledge to a sector competitor during an active restructuring is not an inconsequential loss.

What the Second Half Needs to Deliver?

Svensson’s forward guidance was deliberate rather than bullish: “With EBITDA improvement, a stronger margin, and revenue growth across both business areas, we believe Raketech is entering the second half with a stronger foundation for gradual improvement.”

The word “gradual” reflects where the company actually is. For the margin story to hold through H2, Raketech needs the US market to show early signs of stabilisation, the Italy partnership to generate commercial returns, the remaining five media initiatives to launch cleanly, and AffiliationCloud to keep drawing Organic Publisher Network growth. Stall on any of those and the three-quarter EBITDA improvement streak becomes harder to extend.

Expert Analysis

Raketech’s Q2 result is a study of what happens when a company runs out of growth options and decides to win on margins instead. The cost cuts are real, the EBITDA recovery is genuine, and the World Cup campaign demonstrated that AffiliationCloud can deliver at scale. The honest limit of that story, though, is that cost cutting eventually stops working. At 54 employees and with revenue still declining across every geography outside the Nordics, Raketech’s path back to growth depends on the Italy expansion succeeding, the US recovering, and new media products generating revenue the company cannot currently replace from existing sources. The margin is proof of discipline. What comes next needs to be proof of something more.