8/9/2022

speaker
Ursula Caret
Head of Investor Relations and Treasury

Welcome everyone to Scout24's Q2 and half-year 2022 earnings 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 Q2 and H1 financial performance in detail. 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. There you can also find our half year 2022 report. If you are using the web link we provided beforehand, you can follow today's presentation live. This session will be recorded and a replay will be made available as quickly as possible after the event. Before I hand it over to Toby, allow me a few words on a personal note. As most of you already know, this will be my last earnings call at Scout24. I very much enjoyed working with all of you over the last three years and thank you for your trust and support. I am handing over the IR and Treasury Departments to a very skilled and experienced colleague, Philipp Lindvall, who will also keep his role of Head of Strategic Development and M&A. If he has not done so already, he will get in touch with you next week after his return from vacation. I am still available for you until the end of this week. And of course, also the IR team, Louis Johannwil and Alena Flemer will be there for you if you have any questions. Louis and Alena, thank you so much for your hard work and engagement in these volatile times. You are the best. And now let's move from the disclaimer page right to Toby's initial statement.

speaker
Tobias Hartmann
CEO

Thank you, Ursula, for your great support. We will definitely miss you. So welcome, everyone. Let's move directly to page three of our presentation. We held our CMD where we presented our next level strategy only nine months ago. At that time, none of us would have thought that our market environment would change so rapidly. As we have already shared in our recent ImmoScout24 research update Wohnbarometer in July, with rising interest rates and overall geopolitical and macro uncertainty, the dynamics of the German real estate market are changing. Of course, trends differ between city real estate and more rural areas, between new developments and existing objects, or between buy and rent. The more important implication for Scout24 is we are becoming even more relevant via the unmatched marketing power of our leading platform and the value add of our diversified product suite. As a result, our business model is highly resilient in a challenging macro environment and should continue to perform well. Our strong Q2 performance is a testament to this resilience and to the growth momentum of our next level strategy. As we have already pre-announced last week, we are raising our guidance for the full year 2022. We are very confident in our top line growth momentum and operating leverage driving ordinary operating EBITDA and cash flow. Dirk will explain our raised guidance in more detail. Let's just take a minute to explain what we mean by changing market arena, resilient business model and diversified product suite. On the left-hand side of page 4, we have summarized the key changes we are seeing in the German real estate market. While the market historically has proven resilient, we are seeing the following trends right now. Buyers are faced with increasing interest rates and higher mortgage scrutiny. While interest rates for a 10-year mortgage were at about 1.0 to 1.5% in the beginning of the year, they are now at about 3.2 to 3.6%. This is starting to translate into reduced demand for property purchases. For sellers, this translates into longer standing times and less interested parties in their properties for sale. According to our data intelligence, The demand for properties to sell decreased by 36% in Q2 2022, while the supply increased by 46% in Q2 2022. For agents, longer standing times of properties for sale and less demand translate into a need for increased marketing. Furthermore, quality leads are becoming ever more important. While we see decreasing demand for property purchases, we see increasing demand for rental properties and an increasing supply demand imbalance, i.e. a scarcity of supply. Our leading Value-Add product suite addresses these challenges. Let me give you some examples. Via TenantPlus, we provide the best visibility for rental seekers with regards to available supply. and we make it easier and more efficient for landlords to find the right tenant. Vermeeted.de facilitates the exchange between landlords and tenants and dealing with ancillary costs in an environment where energy costs are expected to double or even triple. Our agent premium products and membership additions ensure the right positioning and visibility of objects, hence add to the marketing power of the agent. while our seller lead products make the mandate acquisition more efficient. And last but not least, with increased pre-qualification and more complex advisory needs, our mortgage lead and advisory products become more relevant. In Q2, we have acquired a small advisory team with four FTEs and further 16 mortgage advisors, which is now part of Scout24, to underpin this enhanced strategy in the mortgage business. So, in summary, the market dynamics are changing. We are in a great position with our diversified product suite to capture increased demand from selected customer groups and thus drive attractive revenue growth. This should more than offset any potential softness in other areas going forward, which may arise due to changing markets. Page 5 shows you our strong performance in Q2. On group level, Q2 revenue totaled €109.7 million, a 14.4% year-on-year increase. Ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came out at 62.0 million euro representing a margin of 56.6% and a growth over Q2 2021 of 12.5%. Excluding completed M&A, the organic ordinary operating EBITDA came in at 62.5 million Euro at a margin of 57.4% and a growth of 13.3% over Q2 2021. In our professional segment, subscription revenue increased by 8.6% to 63.5 million Euro in Q2. This is a result of strong core membership growth, a dynamic seller leads business and solid professional customer growth of circa 2% to almost 21,000 in tandem with a 6.3% increase in ARPU. In our private segment, including Vermieter.de, subscription revenue increased by 58.8% to 14.8 million Euro. This was fueled in particular by significant new customer wins, especially for the tenant plus product, growing our number of private customers by 56.9% to 297,000. As of today, we have broken the 300,000 mark. Let me just take one minute to put this in perspective. This was a business invented by Scout24 in 2017, So within five years, we have created a greater than 70 million Euro business with great margins, all based on a truly unique product experience. This speaks to our ability to constantly identify new customer needs, innovate and adapt our product suite. Private ARPU increased by 1.2% to €16.6. The blended estimated customer lifetime value increased sequentially from Q1 by 2.3% to €112. In summary, we delivered a strong performance in Q2 across all metrics on group level and within our professional and private segments. Turning to page 6. Let us now take a look at where we stand on our targets for the five value drivers on the basis of the H1 financials. Our performance is a strong testament to the growth momentum of our next level strategy. We are firing on all five growth cylinders. Professional membership revenue has increased by 6.7% in H1 year on year. Note, this exceeds our mid-term 2026 target range of 4-6% CAGR. This is mainly the result of successful rate card upgrades and higher demand for visibility products in an environment which is starting to develop from a seller's to a buyer's market. We grew seller leads revenue by 31.6% compared to H1 2021. This is fully on track with our mid-term guidance of 30 to 40% annual growth on average until 2026. Compared to Q1, we scaled down the acquisition of leads in Q2 and funneled more leads into the Realtor Lead Engine product. Our mortgage business-related revenue increased by 21%, which compares to a 2026 guidance of 18 to 20% growth per year. This is again fully in line and I already explained what the drivers of this business currently are. On the private side, the private subscription revenue, including for me to DE grew by 66.9% with a healthy margin and significantly above midterm guidance of 26 to 28% average growth per annum. As I mentioned before, visibility of seekers and therefore our plus product suite becomes even more important in the current market environment. Also, the software solution for landlords from Vermieter.de is gaining relevance. We grew the number of registered units on the platform by 80%. We are on track to reach our goal of 4.5 million registered units by the end of 2026. Dirk will now provide more detail on our financial performance and group level and for each of the segments.

speaker
Dirk Schmelzer
CFO

Thank you, Tobi, and welcome everyone. Also from my side, a big thank you to Ursula. Let's turn to slide seven, which shows the quarter two year-on-year revenue growth in our three segments and the respective EBITDA margins. The 9.6% revenue growth in the professional segment is based, as Toby has already mentioned, on a strong core membership business, a dynamic seller leads business, and an enhanced mortgage leads business. As the professional PPA business is gaining momentum in the current market environment, these revenues add to the segment revenue growth. Consequently, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the professional segment came in relatively strong at 61% despite this year's additional growth investments. The private segment showed a revenue growth of 28.4% in Q2. strongly backed by private subscription revenue, which grew by 58.8%, including for Miete.de. In private, we also experienced a revival of our PPA business, creating additional tailwinds. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the private segment has significantly increased to 52.2% in Q2 2022. This has mainly to do with a lower penetration of credit checks as part of a longer subscription term, whilst also accelerating the PPA business with longer standing times for listings. The media and other segment revenue increased by 13.2% in Q2 2022. This includes the ImmoScout Austria business, which grew strongly by 12.3%, as well as our CRM business FlowFact and PropStack, which grew by 11.8%. The third-party media business showed declining revenues. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the media and other segment fell by 3.4 percentage points to 35.2%. Let's turn to page 8 to dive a bit deeper into the professional segment. As already mentioned, with a strong core business and seller leads growth, subscription revenue increased by 8.6%. As we again managed to increase our number of customers, the Q2 professional APU increased at a slightly lower rate by 6.3% year-on-year, from €951 to €1011. In these times, our highly diversified revenue composition comes at a big advantage. With a stronger core business and in the context of the current market developments, we deliberately scaled down on lead acquisitions. Hence, the slowed seller-lease growth at 13.8%. This is in addition to the revival of the pay-per-add demand, adding momentum to the professional segment's EBITDA growth. Hence, despite additional growth investments, the ordinary operating EBITDA came in at 43.6 million Euro, a 3.6% increase compared to Q2 last year. This results in a margin of 61%. On page nine, let's take a closer look to the private segment. I already elaborated on the year-on-year increase of the private subscription revenue by 58.8% and a significant new customer addition in the second quarter of 2022. In July, we reached the 300,000 customer mark. Speaking of important milestones, the PPA business exceeded the 10 million euro revenue mark in Q2. increasing by 19.8% year-on-year. We reduced the business with third-party credit checks, leading to a decrease of 11.6% of the other revenue line. This, amongst others, had a positive effect on the ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the private segment. In absolute terms, the ordinary operating EBITDA grew strongly by 52.4% to €15.4 million in Q2 2022. This is mainly due to a more efficient plus product business, the revival of the high margin PPA business, and lower expenses for credit checks. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin came in at 52.2%, which is more than 8.2 percentage points higher than in Q2 2021. Turning to page 10, let us go through the main ordinary operating items. Own work capitalized increased by 7.4% to 7.2 million Euro in Q2 2022. This translates into a capitalization ratio of 6.6%, which is 0.4 percentage points lower than last year and brings us closer to our Q4 target of around 6%. Personal cost increased by 9.7%, mainly due to the integration of Formited DE employees and regular increases in wages. Marketing costs increased more slowly in Q2 than in Q1. Reason being that we spent less than planned on the acquisition of leads due to rising lead prices and the changing market conditions. This had an impact on the amount of growth investments we had planned for the value drivers this year. In Q1, these totalled €6.5 million versus €3.7 million in Q2. This has mainly to do with the flexibility we now have given our diversified business model in the current market environment. One important takeaway for you is that in the light of the changing German real estate markets, we will be very focused on return on invested marketing spend, which may result in mix and channel shifts. The year-on-year growth in IT cost of 28.4% to 5.4 million Euro results from the integration of Formited.de and increased AWS costs, which have been impacted by the Euro-US dollar exchange rate. Selling costs increased underproportionately due to the PLUS product revenues, mainly due to a lower amount of credit checks sold with PLUS subscriptions. Putting it all together, we get to a 12.5% higher ordinary operating EBITDA of €62 million in Q2 2022. The resulting margin is 56.6%. Let's turn to page 11, where you see the items below the ordinary operating EBITDA. First point to mention here, non-operating costs decreased by 58% to €2.6 million in Q2 2022. The decrease is mainly due to the lower share-based compensation and M&A-related expenses. The reported EBITDA increased at a higher rate than the ordinary operating EBITDA, coming out at €59.5 million in Q2 2022. 21.4% higher than the year before. Depreciation and amortization increased underproportionately due to the termination of the purchase price allocation amortization of the ImmoScout customer base. The financial result, however, increased with a negative net amount from minus 2 to minus 4.1 million Euro, which was driven by the unfavorable performance of our special fund investments due to the adverse global capital market environment. In June, in view of the upcoming share buybacks and the repayment of a 100 million term loan, we closed the special fund mandate and transferred the remaining liquidity into our current accounts. Since the closing of the sale of AutoScout24, the overall performance of the managed liquidity was at minus 0.6%, hence better than if we would have parked the fund in a cash account with negative interest charges. With these developments, the reported net income increased by 21.3% to €26.8 million in Q2. Due to the ongoing share buyback, the basic EPS increased by 36%, testament to our highly accretive capital allocation strategy. Due to the decreasing non-operating cost in Q2, the adjusted EPS increased by 24.3%. Before I turn to the next slide, let me summarize the main messages for today. As we are executing on our next level strategy with a very comprehensive product suite, we are generating attractive, sustainable growth momentum. Second, our core membership offering becomes more relevant in the current market environment. Third, we have an unmatched B2C offering. Lastly, based on half year one 2022 revenue growth with a favorable product and marketing mix, we are benefiting from increasing operating leverage. In the light of these developments, and as already pre-announced last week, we have raised our guidance for 2022. We are expecting Scout24 group revenues to increase by 13 to 15% year-on-year versus prior guidance of 11 to 12%. For Group Ordinary Operating EBDA, we expect 2022 growth of 10 to 12%, a significant increase versus the prior guidance of 6 to 8% year-on-year. Increasing our guidance for 2022, despite an overall challenging market environment, is a testament to the resilience of our business in combination with our next level strategy, translating into accelerating growth. With that, let's open the line for questions. We would appreciate if you could limit your questions to two per speaker. Operator, over to you.

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