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Scout24 Se
5/3/2022
Welcome, everyone, to Scout24's Q1 2022 results call. My name is Ursula Caret, and I am head of investor relations and treasury at Scout24. As usual, we have Tobias Hartmann, our CEO, and Dirk Schmelzer, our CFO, on this call. Tobi will kick off the presentation, and Dirk will dive deeper into our Q1 financials. These are now, for the first time, based on our new segmentation. Please note that previous year comparables are pro forma numbers. As always, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session. You can find today's presentation on our website under Financial Reports and Presentations. If you are using the web link we provided beforehand, you can also follow the presentation live. This session will be recorded and a replay will be made available as quickly as possible after the event. Please be aware of the disclaimer on page two, and let us now turn to page three, where I hand it over to Tobi.
Thank you, Ursula, and welcome, everyone. At the start of our presentation, I want to remind you of our five value drivers, which we introduced at our Capital Markets Day in December last year. And I want to share with you, we are in full motion with regards to moving to the next level. As a quick recap, the five value drivers are. For professional, the first value driver is our agent membership business is our core offering. Second value driver are seller leads that we sell directly to our core customers via the realtor lead engine product or hand over to our Immo4Kauf24 partner agents who agreed to a commission split. The third value driver on the professional side is the mortgage business, where we aim for a strong mortgage lead engine together with providing mortgage advisory with our partners. For private, value driver number four entails the plus consumer subscription products. And last but not least, the fifth value driver is to increase the number of landlords, which we keep in our system, with the help of additional services provided via vermietet.de. Our five value drivers are firing on all cylinders thanks to our strategic focus on them. Let me update you on our key strategic initiatives in Q1. For Value Driver 1, we launched loyalty levers, which we already mentioned at the CMD. While the effects of these measures will materialize at a later stage, The aim is to increase customer satisfaction and decrease churn. Membership migration was completed last year, so we now worked on enhancing the underlying rate card mechanism and value proposition of each membership. As an example, you might have seen we renewed and enhanced our partnership with some of our largest core agent customers, such as Colliers, Von Paul and Engel & Völkers, among others, to help them on their path to more effective digitization. Value driver two. For future seller lead growth, we worked on optimizing the distribution between RLE and Immo4Kauf24, targeting 2,000 commission-based transactions in 2022. And we accelerated our marketing efforts across all channels. Regarding Value Driver 3, we are on track to build out our own mortgage advisory team, ramping it up from two advisors in Q1 to over 20 at the end of H1, i.e. more partners for our commission split mortgage product to then shift more and more leads. Value Driver 4. Here, we were able to substantially increase the number of plus subscribers. This is partly the result of an improved paywall and conversion efficiency. and there is still further optimization potential. We also reviewed the pricing of our Plus products in Q1 with the result of optimizing customer lifetime value versus merely driving customer acquisition. With regards to Value Driver 5, Vermeeted.de, we further integrated the offering into ImmoScout24 and vice versa, i.e., making ImmoScout24 landlords to Vermeeted.de subscribers, and directing Formita.de subscribers to Immoscout24, platform-wise and branding-wise. We are also in the process of developing monetization schemes. This includes testing different price points, but also subscription options. As you can see, we are full steam ahead to deliver against our five value drivers. All of them are contributing to our accelerated growth path. On page four, we are showing how those five value drivers have contributed to our growth in Q1. This is fully in line with what we wanted to achieve. Let me go through them one by one. Professional membership revenue has increased by 5.6% in Q1 year on year. Note, this is at the upper end of the range of our midterm 2026 target range of 4 to 6% CAGR. We grew seller leads revenue by more than 50% compared to the first quarter of 2021. This exceeds our midterm growth guidance of 30 to 40% annual growth on average until 2026. Please remember, when looking at ARPU growth, you need to consider this part as on top contribution as well. Our mortgage business-related revenue increased by 26%, which compares to a 2026 guidance of 18 to 20% growth per year. On the private side, the private subscription revenue without permitted DA grew by over 70%, with a healthy margin above midterm guidance of 26 to 28% average growth per year. With regards to Vermieter DE, we grew the number of registered units on the platform by 27% compared to the previous quarter at the end of last year. Multiply that by four to get an estimate of the annual growth run rate. Vermieter DE has only been a part of the Scout24 family since May 2021. Therefore, we are showing quarterly growth. Our goal remains to reach 4.5 million registered units by the end of 2026. For your reference, this requires an average annual growth rate of circa 55% starting from the September number we showed you at the CMD. We are fully on track to achieve this. Page 5 now shows you our strong performance in Q1. In line with our new segmentation structure reporting, we have also adjusted the KPI scoreboard. Along with group numbers, it shows professional customer segment KPIs and those of the private customer segment. At group level, Q1 revenue totaled €107.9 million, a 15.1% increase over the same quarter in the previous year. This is the highest growth rate of ImmoScout24 since 2015. ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came out at 58.6 million Euro, representing a margin of 54.4% and a growth over Q1 2021 of 6.5%. To give you a sense how that number comes together, if we excluded Fermita DE and PropStack, ordinary operating EBITDA would come out circa 1 million Euro higher 59.7 million euro at a margin of 55.7% and a growth of 8.5% over Q1 2021. Our professional customer subscription revenue increased by 11.5% to 64 million euro in Q1. This impressive growth is built a on solid professional customer growth of circa 3% to more than 20,800, as well as B, on an 8% higher ARPU with this increased customer base. On the private side, subscription revenue, including Vermietet.de, rose by more than 75% to 13.8 million Euro. This was fueled by growth of more than 85% to over 280,000 private customers. Private ARPU, on the other hand, decreased to €16.20. This is due to the longer subscription duration, which we have implemented over the last couple of months. That resulted in slightly lower revenue per month per user, but on the upside and in line with our strategy, we increase customer lifetime value with a better visibility over the next 12 months. DIRT will now provide more detail on our financial performance at group level and for each of the segments.
Thank you, Tobi, and welcome everyone also from my side. Slide 6 presents our new reporting structure and reflects well what Tobi said at the beginning of the call. Our Q1 growth accelerated on the back of the five value drivers we presented at the Capital Markets Day across all segments. The 11.8% revenue growth in the professional segment is based on a strong core membership business. Plus, especially seller leads fueled the growth with additional tailwinds from an enhanced mortgage lead business. Including respective holding costs, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the professional segment came in at 60%. The private segment showed a revenue growth of 27% in Q1, strongly backed by the private subscription revenue, which grew by almost 77%, including for metered DE, as mentioned before, while private PPA slightly increased. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the private segment, including the allocated holding cost, was at 47.7% in Q1 2022. This margin reflects the higher selling cost for the integrated credit check, which comes with more plus products. It has an increased cost of goods sold, if you will. This is being mitigated in the future by higher revenue over a longer time horizon per customer. It also reflects the investments into Vermieter.de. The media and other segment revenue increased by 7.5% in Q1 2022. This includes the ImmoScout24 Austria business, which grew strongly by 14.5%, as well as our CRM business Flowfact and PropSec, which grew by 11.5%. The third-party media business showed declining revenues. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the media and other segment fell by 5.5 percentage points to 29.4%. Let's turn to page 7 and to the professional segment. As a reminder, the professional subscription APU takes into account the residential and commercial core membership revenues and the revenue from seller leads such as the Realtor Lead Engine and ImmoVacauf24 leads. all divided by the number of professional customers. These customers include our core customers and those Immovacauf agents who concluded a transaction in the respective period. Concerning the quarter one professional APU, which is free of inorganic effects, we see an increase of 8% year on year from €947 to €1023. Driven by a combination of customer growth, rate card and product upgrades for the membership business and additionally the very strong seller leads business, the subscription revenue grew substantially by 11.5%. Increased marketing spend contributed to get more leads into the funnel and improved lead qualification resulted in a better in-funnel conversion. While professional PPA business remained flat, the mortgage business increased by more than 26% from €3.5 million to €4.4 million. This was achieved by increased marketing as well as an improved algorithm, which led to further enhanced lead quality. Overall, this is resulting in an ordinary operating EBITDA of €42.8 million, a 2.6% increase compared to last year. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin came in at 60%, which is 5.4 percentage points lower, mainly due to the additional marketing investments. On page 8, let's have a look at the private segment and resulting APU. The year-on-year increase in the private segment revenue in the first quarter 2022 was 27% up to 28.2 million euros. The subscription revenue grew even stronger with 76.6% to 13.8 million euro, which now accounts for nearly half of the segment revenue. Customers increased by 86.6% from 152,000 in Q1 2021 to 283,000 in Q1 2022. The strong development of paying customers and the extended lifetime led to a slightly lower APU of €16.20 in Q1 2022 compared to €17.10 in Q1 last year. This is reflecting that the new customers pay lower monthly subscriptions, mainly because they subscribe to longer periods, which is in line with what we want to achieve. The EBITDA contribution from ordinary operating activities from the private segment increased by 26.2%, in line with revenues to 13.4 million euros in Q1 2022. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin came in at 47.4%, which is on a comparable level to Q1 2021 with 47.7%. Turning to page 9, let us go through the main ordinary operating items. And note that this includes growth investments that are naturally affecting our margin temporarily. I will go a bit deeper into these on the following page. Own work capitalized increased by 30% to 7.3 million euros in Q1. This translates into a capitalization ratio of 6.7%, which is above our target ratio of around 6%. This has mainly to do with capitalized developments and integration projects at Famita DE, which came on top of other accelerated product innovation efforts. However, I expect that by the end of 2022, the capitalization ratio will be near our target again. Personal costs increased by 10.8%, mainly due to integration of Vermieter DE employees and regular increases in wages. A significant portion of the temporary growth investment is in marketing. The higher marketing expenses reflect our strategic focus to generate valuable homeowner contacts through search engine optimization, search engine advertising, and performance marketing. With these leads, our agent customers can digitally accelerate their mandate acquisition efforts, eventually leading to more transactions. Our marketing expenses increased by 69.8% to €13.7 million in a year-on-year comparison. This also includes expenses for TV and online advertising. The year-on-year growth in IT cost by 35.3% to 5.3 million euro results from the integration of Formated DE and increased AWS cost. Selling cost increased mainly due to the offered Shufa service integrated into an increased number of Plus subscriptions. I already elaborated on that before. Putting all together, we get to a 6.5% higher ordinary operating EBITDA of 58.6 million euros in Q1 2022. The resulting margin is at 54.4%. Coming to page 10, this provides you with an update on our temporary strategic growth investments. We are focusing on high impact, high return on invest growth within the framework of the five value drivers. In the first quarter of 22, 11.5% of the operating effects, or about 6.5 million euro, were invested in future growth and can be classified as temporary investments. That is exactly in line with the investments announced at the capital markets day of around 26 million euros for a full deployment within one whole year. Adjusting for these temporary investments, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin, excluding these effects, comes out at 60%. You can see that we focused the investments along our Value Drivers 2 to 5. Most of the investments, in fact, contribute to Value Driver 2, the Seller Leads business, and Value Driver 5, Vermietet.de. We invested in particular into marketing, affiliate, and performance marketing spend to generate leads for Realtor Lead Engine and ImmoVerkauf24, but also for mortgage. Rolling out the business of Vermietet.de and getting as many units on the platform as possible is one of the key challenges in 22. That requires investments in the staff base of Formita DE, in marketing, and also in infrastructure investments, which appear within IT cost. As evidenced in Q1, our growth investments translate into catalyzed value accretive growth. Let's turn to page 11, where you see the items below the ordinary operating EBITDA. First point to mention here, non-operating cost increased by about 82% to 5 million Euro in the first quarter 2022. the increase is mainly due to higher M&A costs and a higher share-based compensation. The reported EBITDA of €53.6 million in Q1 is 2.5% higher in a year-on-year comparison. Depreciation and amortization decreased significantly by 43.3% due to the termination of the purchase price allocation amortization of the ImmoScout24 customer base, which overcompensates the higher non-operating effects. This leads to an overproportionate and sustainable growth in EBIT of 18.2% to 46.1 million euro. The financial result of minus 16.6 million euro is driven by the negative performance of our managed liquidity due to negative returns in the equity and interest rate markets. Since the sale of AutoScout, the overall performance of the managed liquidity of minus 0.38% as of 31st of March has nonetheless still outperformed the ECB deficit facility rate of minus 0.5%. With a higher negative financial result and a lower tax expense, the reported net income decreased by 17.7% in Q1 2022. Adjusted for non-operating effects, the EPS amounted to 44 Eurocent in Q1, which is 30% higher than the year before and perfectly leads over to the message on the next page. On page 12, we would like to highlight how earnings growth in combination with our share buyback program translates into a higher attractive shareholder return profile. So what you have is the best of both worlds. On the one hand, you have accelerating growth that is superior to our peer group. On the other hand, you have a highly attractive shareholder remuneration program consisting of ongoing share buybacks plus dividends at 50% of net income. We just launched another €350 million share buyback program in March on the back of the roughly €1.7 billion already returned to shareholders over the past two years until February. I would like to emphasize that our attractive earnings per share and dividend per share trajectory is set to continue in 2022. We are guiding for a 6-8% EBITDA growth, so naturally we expect adjusted net income to increase as well compared to 2021. At the same time, due to the share buybacks in 2021 and 2022, including the ongoing €350 million share buyback, the average number of shares will in any case be clearly lower than in 2021. Both these positive effects are adding up, translating into strong growth of both earnings per share and dividend per share in 2022. It goes without saying that we can only achieve these results whilst focusing strongly on our improved ESG measures. Turning to page 13, I'm very happy to share that we have made great progress in this area, reflected in a substantially improved Sustainalytics rating. We are very proud that we are now ranked first in our peer group, Internet Software and Services. How we are tackling the measurable success going forward you can see on the left side of this slide in recent years we have implemented key levers to continuously reduce our energy consumption to the minimum possible for example we switched to green electricity moved our data centers to the cloud implemented a new travel policy increased the proportion of electric cars in our fleet and constantly improved our databases in 2020 we were able to reduce our emissions by 43%. So we are well on track to achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2025. For us, sustainability does not only include the environmental aspect. For over 20 years, we have been an agile, dynamic and multicultural company at which our employees make a difference. We aim to increase the proportion of women and non-binary people in management positions from 37 to 42% until 25 and become even more diverse. Therefore, we have evolved our recruitment process to win even more talents for Scout24. In 21, we add conduct guidelines for business partners, suppliers, and service providers to our code of conduct. These cover the environment, society, quality, and governance. We want to increase the share of business partners, service providers, and suppliers who accept the code of conduct or comply with its requirement by 80% for physical products and 40% for professional services by 22. This slide shows sustainability is part of our DNA, and we strive to reach the next level of sustainability. Let me conclude our presentation on page 14 by reiterating our outlook for 22. Based on our first quarter performance, we are confident that group revenue growth for the full year will be at the upper end of the forecasted range of 11-12%. Also, we are expecting ordinary operating EBITDA growth for the year 2022 to come out at the upper end of the forecasted range of 6-8%.
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