5/4/2023

speaker
Philipp Lindvall
Director Group Strategy and Investor Relations at Scout24

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Scout24 first quarter 2023 earnings call. My name is Philipp Lindvall, and I am director group strategy and investor relations at Scout24. With me on the call today are Tobias Hartmann, our CEO, and Dirk Schmelzer, our CFO. Toby will kick off the presentation and Dirk will dive deeper into our first quarter 2023 performance. 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're 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. Please take note of the disclaimer on page two. Tobi, now over to you.

speaker
Tobias Hartmann
Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Philipp, and welcome everyone. Page three summarizes our Q1 performance. We are off to a good start in 2023. Revenue growth for the quarter came in at 13% and OOEPDA growth at 16%. Our agent membership business continued to show strength with revenues growing at 16.5% driven by pricing momentum and new customer wins. We grew our number of customers by 4.1% in the quarter. and are very happy to partner up with these new agents to offer them the best products and marketing tools to help them operate efficiently in this market environment. On the topic of innovation, we have successfully partnered with a third party provider of professional real estate valuations to include its products in our agent membership packages. This will provide our customers with additional highly insightful pricing data. With these new products, we want to further increase price transparency in the market and continue to establish ImmoScout24 as the trusted party and brand, bringing seller and buyer together. Especially in times of deviating price expectations, this feature is of particular importance. Our seller and mortgage leads business continue to face muted demand as agents and mortgage brokers are hesitant to buy leads in the current environment. But we do see sequential improvements in the number of transactions in some parts of our business, which we view as a positive sign, but we're not ready yet to call out a sustained recovery. In our unique private subscription business, we are continuing to win new customers at fast pace. At the end of first quarter, we reached 342,000 subscribers, representing growth of over 20%. Growth was again fueled by strong demand for Tenant+. OO EBITDA grew by 16% in Q1, driven by product mix and strong operating leverage. On the topic of efficiency and operating leverage, I would like to mention that we have started to implement organizational changes to merge our product and tech organization. This will make us more agile and enable a more integrated workflow, thereby accelerating product innovation and implementation. Adjusted EPS grew strongly by 27%, reaching €0.56. On the back of a good first quarter, we are pleased to reconfirm our full-year guidance for 2023 of 12% revenue growth and 13% ordinary operating EBITDA growth. Now, let me move to page 4 to walk you through our key Q1 2023 metrics. On group level, revenue totaled €121.9 million, a 13.0% year-on-year increase. Ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came out at €68.2 million, representing a margin of 56.0% and a growth over Q1 2022 of 16.3%. In our professional segment, subscription revenue increased by 10.7% to €70.8 million. This is the result of strong core membership and PPA growth offset by weakness in our seller leads and mortgage business. The number of professional customers grew more than 4% year on year. We are particularly pleased about the continuing trend of welcoming new customers in this challenging market environment. ARPU increased by 6.3% to 1,088 euros. In our private segment, including the landlord platform for Miete.de, subscription revenue increased by 23.6% to 17.0 million euros. This was fueled by continued new customer wins for the Tenant Plus product. Total number of private customers in Q1 2023 increased by more than 20% to over 340,000. Another record high, which we are very pleased with. Private ARPU increased by 2.5% to 16.6 euros. Our private customers clearly appreciate the value add nature of our products in our market with scarcity of available rental objects in Germany. Turning to page five, let us review where we stand on targets and momentum for the five value drivers on the basis of our Q1 performance. Professional membership revenue increased by 16.5% year on year as our membership products are in high demand, significantly outperforming our mid-term target. Seller leads revenue declined in Q1 2023 by 16.7% year on year. Although we grew revenues versus Q4 2022 by 14%, we faced a very high comparable with Q1 2022, which impacted the growth rate negatively this quarter. We are curtailing certain marketing and lead corporation based activities in this business, which might impact revenues negatively going forward. This is fully in line with what we stated previously. We will rather focus on efficiency than revenue growth. As a reminder, the seller leads business is in its early innings, representing roughly 8% of our total revenues in the first quarter. Our mortgage business revenue declined by 19.6% in Q1 2023, affected by the significant decline in real estate and mortgage transactions in the German real estate market. Mortgage brokers are hesitant to invest in leads at this time of heightened uncertainty and decreased underwriting appetite from banks. On a positive note, though, looking at our mortgage advisory business, every month since December 2022 has shown sequential improvement in number of transactions. Our unique private subscription business continues to grow strongly as the product and value proposition resonates well with consumers and landlords. Subscription revenues grew 23.6% in Q1 2023, mainly driven by continued strong growth in tenant plus offset by soft demand for buyer plus. The number of total subscribers grew by 20.6% to 342,000 in Q1. Our landlord solution around Vermieter.de is continuing to gain relevance. We continue to grow the number of registered units beyond the 1 million mark, reaching 1.169 million units on the platform, representing 81.9% growth year on year. To conclude, I would like to summarize the key takeaways. We are pleased with our Q1 2023 performance. It is a good start into the year. We see continued high demand for our core IS24 product suite and are focused on supporting our business partners in this environment. As expected, demand for leads continues to be muted. From a transactional point of view, we are seeing sequential improvement month by month across the portfolio, both on mortgage and brokerage side. While this is a positive sign, it is yet too early to call it a sustained recovery. Initiated organizational changes will make the company more efficient, enabling faster product innovation and implementation going forward. And with that, I would like to hand it over to Dirk.

speaker
Dirk Schmelzer
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Tobi, and welcome everyone. On slide 6, you can see the year-on-year revenue growth in our three segments and the respective ordinary operating EBITDA margins. The 9.3% revenue growth in the professional segment is fueled by strong core membership, PPA revenues, and offset by declines in the seller and mortgage businesses. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin improved two percentage points to 62%, driven by favorable product mix shifts, operating leverage, and reduced marketing spend in our seller leads business. The private segment was again characterized by strong demand for plus products due to rental market conditions. The subscription revenue increased by 23.7% driven by continued customer growth. As Tobi mentioned, we crossed the 340,000 mark by the end of the first quarter. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the private segment decreased slightly by 0.6 percentage points year on year due to increased marketing investments for individual product groups like Tenant Plus and Credit Checks to capitalize on the tailwinds in the rental market. Media and other segment revenues increased by 7.9% compared to Q1 2022, primarily due to the strong ImmoScout Austria business and growth in our third-party advertising business. Media and other ordinary operating EBITDA margin developed positively, increasing by circa 10 percentage points driven by combination of ImmoScout24 Austria revenues coming in at high incremental margins, as well as reduced investments in our CRM businesses. Let's turn to page seven to dive a bit deeper into the professional segment. Professional segment revenue grew by 9.3% in quarter one 2023 to 78 million euros. Growth was driven by new customer wins, strong demand for memberships, APU growth, as well as increased pay per ad revenues. Despite the current challenging real estate market environment, we were again able to increase the number of agent customers by 4.1%. Subscription revenue increased by 10.7% to 70.8 million euros. Thereof, 61.4 million euros were attributable to our core business with agent memberships, which grew by 16.5% year-on-year. On seller and mortgage leads, revenues declined by 16.7% and 19.6% respectively in Q1 2023 compared to first quarter 2022, driven by lower demand from customers due to adverse market conditions. Professional APU increased by 6.3% from 1,023 to 1,088 euros. Our pricing strategy impacted APU positively. offsetting new customers generally coming in at lower APU and the negative impact from seller leads. Pay per ad revenues continued to grow strongly at 23%, benefiting from the increased inventory compared to first quarter 2022 and longer standing times. At 62%, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin of the professional segment increased two percentage points year on year due to a favorable product mix, operating leverage, and reduced marketing spend in our seller leads business. On page eight, let's take a closer look at the private segment. In the first quarter of 2023, the private segment continued to benefit from strong demand for our tenant plus products due to rental market conditions. As expected, demand for Bayer Plus continues to be soft. The average number of customers for the period grew by 20.6% to 342,037. Private APO increased by 2.5%. As a result, subscription revenues increased by 23.6% to 70 million euros. In line with trends observed in our professional segment, paper ad revenues grew at 32.3% in the private segment, benefiting from the increased inventory compared to Q1 last year and longer standing times. Ordinary operating EBITDA in the private segment grew by 22.2%, slightly below revenue growth as we invested in new marketing campaigns. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin of 46.8% decreased by 0.6 percentage points year on year. Turning to page 9, let us go through the main ordinary operating items. OwnWear Capitalized decreased by 14.2% quarter on quarter to 6.2 million euros, mainly due to the planned expiry of development and integration projects at Vermieter.de, FlowFact and ImmoScout24. The ratio of OwnWear Capitalized to revenues decreased by 1.6 percentage points from 6.7% in Q1 2022 to 5.1% in Q1 this year. This development is in line with what we have communicated previously. Total operating effects increased by 6% in the first quarter, significantly less than revenue growth of 13%. This is due to a combination of items which translate into operating leverage. Specifically, personal cost increased by 9.1% in Q1 2023. This increase is mainly explained by sales commissions increasing with growth in membership revenues. At the same time, a number of efficiency measures were initiated in the first quarter to reorganize our structure for tech and product. This will lead to a reduction in headcount in the future. Our marketing cost decreased by 6.4% quarter on quarter, mainly related to reduced investments in the lead business, offset by increasing investments in other areas. We continue to maintain marketing spent at a healthy level in particular in our private segment to gain further market share in the current environment, while marketing spent in our professional segment has been reduced. IT costs remained at a comparable level with a slight decrease of 0.3% year-on-year. Selling costs increased by 42.8% in Q1 2023 due to increased costs for lead cooperations and higher marketing costs for individual credit checks. As a result of the strong revenue momentum, operating leverage and a favorable product mix, ordinary operating EBITDA increased by 16.3% in Q1 2023. Accordingly, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin was 56% in the first quarter, representing an increase of 1.6 percentage points year-on-year. Let's turn to slide 10, which tracks our operating leverage. In Q1, ordinary operating EBITDA growth outpaced revenue meaningfully by 3.3 percentage points, supported by product mix and improved operational efficiency. As Tobi talked about in his part, we are in the process of updating our organizational structure to create a faster and more dynamic delivery. The fact that we are coming out of a phase of significant investments over the past three years has consequences on the way we operate. monetizing on the investments, shaping a faster and more agile organization focused on execution, ultimately operating smarter. As part of this process, there will be a reduction in headcount throughout the year. This will provide additional support going forward for sustained operating leverage in 2023 and beyond. Let's turn to page 11, where you see the items below ordinary operating EBITDA. In the first quarter, non-operating effects increased primarily due to one-off costs related to the reorganization of our tech and product functions. Higher non-operating effects impacted reported EBITDA growth, which came in at 8.6%. Depreciation and amortization increased by 6%, mainly due to higher amortization of internally developed software. The financial result improved compared with Q1 2022. This is mainly due to the liquidation of the special fund at the end of the first half of 2022, which created one-off costs. As a result, net income grew by 84.5% to 37.1 million euros. The lower income tax rate in Q1 2023 is due to non-operating effects, mainly reorganization measures. These led to usage of unrecognized tax loss carry forwards and correspondingly to deferred tax income. Basic EPS rose by 102.4% to 50 Cent and adjusted EPS grew by 27.3% to 56 Eurocent supported by lower number of shares outstanding. Turning to page 12 in full year 2023 guidance. Based on first quarter financial performance, we reconfirm our full year 23 guidance of 12% revenue growth and 13% ordinary operating EBITDA growth. Based on current trading and what we are seeing in the market right now, I want to provide you with our key perspectives on the remainder of the year. First, our membership business is performing well and we are not seeing any signs of accelerated churn. Having said that, we do not expect the strong first quarter growth rate to persist for the full year, as we are lapping more difficult comps and customer growth is likely to slow down over the next quarters. Second, the seller leads and mortgage business is facing continued muted demand. We don't expect these businesses to recover meaningfully over the next quarters. We are, however, starting to lap easier comps in the second half of 2023. Private subscription revenue growth continues to be fueled by strong tenant plus growth, offset by weaker demand for buyer plus. Given current market dynamics, we don't see demand for buyer plus recovering near term. Our PPA business is starting to lap more challenging comps already in the second quarter 2023. To conclude, we feel good about the current financial trajectory and the revenue momentum we are seeing in the business. but we would not expect first quarter 23 revenue growth to be a guiding post for the full year. On ordinary operating EBITDA level, we continue to feel very comfortable with our guidance. We will provide with the next update in our second quarter first half year 23 call on August the 8th. 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.

Disclaimer

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