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Scout24 Se
8/8/2023
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Scout24 second quarter and first half 2023 earnings call. My name is Filip Lindvall, and I am vice president 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 second quarter and first half 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.
Thank you, Philipp, and welcome, everyone. Let's go straight to page three of our presentation and summarize the Q2 and H1 results. I am pleased to announce that our growth trajectory continued in Q2 of 2023 with group revenues increasing by 12% in the first half of 2023. Our continued double-digit growth rates are a testament to the strength of our platform and resilience of Scout24 even in this ongoing challenging market environment. Revenue growth in the first half reflects strong demand for our core product suite, We continue to see a steady increase in agent memberships, a growing number of plus subscriptions, and strong growth in pay-per-add bookings. Demand for these products reflects the strong brand, consumer trust, and marketing power of ImmoScout24. OO EBTA grew by 21% in the first half, and we had an even stronger performance in Q2 2023 with 26% growth. These strong growth rates are not a coincidence. They are the outcome of executing our strategy to be able to grow in all environments with increased focus on operating leverage. On the point of organizational efficiency, let me emphasize that the cost reductions we have implemented are permanent in nature, allowing us to grow revenues at scale while improving profitability over the next years. Adjusted EPS reached 1.23 Euro for the first half year, growing strongly at 37%. On the topic of Sprengnetter, I am pleased to announce that we closed the transaction beginning of July. This highly strategic acquisition fits perfectly into our three-sided marketplace and will enable us to cover an even larger part of the real estate transaction value chain in an asset-light and digital way. Based on the strong revenue growth in the first half and increased operating leverage, we are pleased to update our full year guidance for fiscal year 2023 as follows. We now expect revenue growth of circa 15% and OOEBDA growth of 18 to 19% respectively. This range includes Sprangnetter from the second half of 2023. Before we move to the earnings slides, let me express again how pleased we are with our first half results. First, we are continuing to gain customers both in our professional and private segment in a difficult market. Second, we continue to grow group revenues at double digit rates with a favorable product mix. Third, we are entering a scaling period with increased operating leverage. Fourth, This will result in over-proportionate OOEBDA growth and a sustained increase in profitability over the next years. Fifth, we are the beneficiaries of operating in the German real estate market, which is witnessing a shrinking gray market and accelerating trend of digitization. And sixth, we think this increasingly positions Scout24 as unique real estate platform business in Europe. While other platforms are facing declines in listings and revenue pressure, we will continue to grow through the cycle with increasing profitability. To conclude, as we had shared with you previously, we continue to follow a clear playbook, enhancing our network and platform capabilities to facilitate real estate transactions for all stakeholders while striving operational scale and efficiency. Now, Let's turn our attention to page four of the presentation to look at our Q2 2023 metrics. On a group level, our revenue for the second quarter reached €122.0 million, representing 11.2% growth. As we expected, this is a slight slowdown versus Q1 2023, primarily driven by weaker seller leads and slightly slower growth in private. The ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came in at 78.2 million euros, reflecting a margin of 64.2% and a record historical OOEBDA growth of 26.1%, emphasizing our operating leverage. In the professional segment, subscription revenues increased by 10.5% to 70.2 million euros. Growth was driven by continued strong membership revenue offset by weaker seller leads and mortgage revenues. The growing significance of the ImmoScout24 platform and the agents need for enhanced visibility and marketing services in the current market environment continues to manifest itself through ongoing customer wins. The number of agents grew by 4.2%, bringing the total number to 21,835. I would again like to call out how pleased we are with this development in this challenging market. Professional ARPU increased by 6.0% to 1,071 euros, driven by strong membership growth, offset by declining seller leads revenue. Core ARPU continues to grow strongly. In the private segment, we continued our successful path of winning new customers, ending the quarter with more than 342,000 subscribers. We implemented a change with a longer minimum subscription term. This change was implemented in the quarter and caused a slowdown in new customer ads in April and May. Growth picked up again in June, and we are pleased how the business is performing in July and early August. Our outlook remains positive going into 2H2023. Private subscription revenues increased strongly by 16.8% in the quarter, amounting to 17.2 million euros. Turning to page 5, let me elaborate on our H1 results. We saw strong growth across the board with group revenue for the first half reaching 243.8 million euros, growing 12.1% in line with our full year guidance of 12%. The ordinary operating EBITDA of the group came in at 146.5 million euros, reflecting a margin of 60.1% and significant OO EBITDA growth of 21.4%. Within the professional segment, revenues grew strongly by 10.6%, totaling 141.0 million euros, driven by the strong performance of our core membership products throughout both quarters of the year. In the private segment, revenues grew 20.1% compared to the previous year, reaching 34.3 million euros. This growth was a result of a strong performance in the first quarter followed by a slightly softer second quarter as we implemented the changed subscription tiering. We expect this change to drive positive impact of LTV and ARPU going forward. Turning to page six now, which shows an overview of how our value drivers performed in H1 2023. As I already commented on the key revenue drivers on the previous two slides, I will keep my commentary brief. Our professional membership revenue continues to grow at industry-leading rates fueled by pricing and new customer wins. Our seller leads business continues to be impacted by soft demand. In addition, we pulled out of unprofitable marketing and cooperation activities over the quarter, which pressured revenues. Based on current trading, we do believe revenues have bottomed out and may see slight month-on-month growth as we move through second half. For our mortgage business, the trends are similar as for our seller leads business. Our unique private subscription business continues to exhibit robust growth. Before handing it over to Dirk for the financial part, I would like to highlight a couple of points regarding our growth track record how we are benefiting from structural dynamics in the German real estate market, and lastly, how we are taking our platform to the next level. Firstly, as you can see on the charts, we have consistently over the past 14 quarters added both professional and private customers. On the agent side, we added more than 2,700 agents representing circa 4% CAGR. On the private side, we added more than 255,000 private subscribers representing circa 47% CAGR. This significant growth is due to a combination of factors. The increased relevance of IS24 as a trusted place to transact. The increased need for online marketing as the gray market subsides. Our ability to innovate products to drive efficiency and digitization in the German real estate market. IS24 provides the best buyer leads and highest quality rental seekers. And IS24 provides strong return on invest for the agents. The good thing is we don't see any of these trends reversing. In fact, rather accelerating. Secondly, we have a product portfolio in place ready to scale. As we have mentioned previously, we are coming out of an investment period where we improved our core product portfolio and expanding into adjacent areas such as homeowner hub, landlord and consumer subscriptions, commission share transactions, and most recently, the Springnetter acquisition. We now have a diversified and comprehensive product portfolio catering to all stakeholders in our three-sided marketplace. We will now focus on scaling our current portfolio. When the market improves, our transactional assets and leads businesses provide growth upside. This growth will come at improved unit economics as we are using the current market phase to improve those businesses. Thirdly, we will double down on taking the ImmoScout24 platform to the next level and differentiate ourselves from competition. As part of this development, you will hear us increasingly talk about our homeowner hub and how we are gaining traction here. The homeowner hub provides a great opportunity for us to serve the homeowner with exclusive and personalized offerings while growing the inventory of objects on IS24. You will also hear us talk more about the premium value of an IS24 listing and data showing that the IS24 platform generates the highest quality buyer and rental leads. In summary, we are very pleased with the health of our business and the German market provides a great backdrop for Scout24 to benefit from structural growth drivers for many years to come. We look at H2 2023 with confidence and we are excited about the opportunities in 2024 and beyond. I will now hand it over to Dirk.
Thank you, Tobi, and welcome everyone. On slide eight, you see the half year one 2023 year on year revenue growth and ordinary operating EBITDA margins for our three business segments. We are pleased that all segments continue to grow at healthy rates with increasing profitability. we are delivering against our strategy. The professional segment grew revenues by 8.8%, driven by strong performance in core memberships and paper ad revenues, offsetting declines in the seller and mortgage business. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin improved significantly by 5.7 percentage points to 66.2%. This improvement is due to our favorable product mix and improved efficiency in our seller leads and mortgage business. In the private segment, we continued to witness strong demand for plus products, driven by the rental market conditions. This resulted in a 21.9% increase in subscription revenue. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the private segment increased by 1 percentage point to 50.8%. Margin improved as we continued to scale the subscription and PPA business. The media and other segment experienced a 6% increase in revenues, This growth was primarily driven by continued growth in our Austrian business and third-party advertising operations. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the media and other segment displayed a significant improvement of 10.8 percentage points, reaching 43.2%. Margin improved as we have completed investments in our CRM portfolio over the past years. Let's turn to page 9 for a closer look at the professional segment. In quarter two 2023, the revenue in the professional segment grew 8.3%, reaching 77.4 million euros, maintaining momentum from quarter one 2023. Growth continues to be fueled by strong performance in our core membership products, growing 15.7% in the second quarter. Despite the challenging real estate market environment, we managed to continue expanding our agent customer base with growth of 4.2% year on year. Revenues from seller and mortgage leads declined by 20.1% and 21.5% respectively in Q2 23 compared to the same period in 2022. As pointed out by Toby, we are cautiously optimistic that we have hit a bottom in Q2 23 and can return to slight month-on-month growth going into the second half. The professional APU increased at a slightly lower rate of 6% than the overall subscription revenue. from 1,011 to 1,071 euros. Core ARPU remains strong, but overall ARPU is offset by the declining seller leads business. The growth rate of Pay Per Ad revenues slowed down in Q2 with a 5.8% year-on-year increase. This was primarily due to our successful customer migration strategy into our core membership products. PPA revenues remain at a high level But going into the second half of the year, PPA is unlikely to continue to grow. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin improved to 66.2% for the first half, up 5.7 percentage points year on year. This development is due to product mix and improved profitability in our seller leads business. On page 10, let's take a closer look at the private segment. Overall, the segment grew by 21.9% in the first half, reaching 70.4 million euros. Growth was driven by continued strong demand for our Tenant Plus products, as well as continued strong growth in our PPA business. Average number of private customers grew 17.9% for the first half, reaching an average of 342k at the end of the period. As mentioned already, customer ads were a bit slower in Q2, but we are pleased with developments going into Q3. For the first half of 2023, subscription revenues increased by 20.1%, totaling 34.3 million euros. The private APU increased slightly by 1.8% for the first half. We expect APU going forward to be positively impacted by our recent change in subscription tiering. PPA revenues increased by 29.5% for the first half, supported by the build-up of listings in Q2 2022, as well as some price adjustments. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin expanded to 50.8% in the first half, up 0.9 percentage points, driven by scale in our subscription and PPA business. This increase again also underscores our attractive operating leverage. Let's turn to page 11 to review the main ordinary operating items. Our own work capitalized decreased by 17.9% year on year in Q2 to 5.9 million euros, primarily due to the completion of various developments and integration projects. As percentage of revenue, we are now below 5%. Operating costs declined by 1.7% for the first half and by 9.5% in the second quarter. This was driven by improved efficiency across all cost lines. Personal cost decreased by 4.8% in Q2. This represents the successful implementation of our organizational update as well as one of impacts due to the release of oversized bonus accruals. Marketing cost experienced a significant decrease of 26.8% year on year in Q2. This reduction primarily stems from reduced investments in the leads business offset by increasing investments in other strategic areas. In particular, we are maintaining a healthy level of marketing spend in our private segment to gain further market share in the current market environment while reducing marketing spend in our professional segment. IT costs decreased by 4.7% year on year, remaining at a comparatively low level in the second quarter. Selling cost increased by 11.3% in Q2 23, well below growth rates of the private segment. For the first half, they increased by 27.5%, which was due to the one-off cooperation agreement we discussed in the first quarter earnings call. Other operating expenses declined by 16.1% in Q2 as we are continuing to drive downspend on external vendors and resources. Due to the strong revenue momentum, favorable product mix and operating efficiencies I just outlined, ordinary operating EBITDA increased strongly by 26.1% in the second quarter and 21.4% for the first half year. As a result, the ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the second quarter reached 64.2% and 60.1% for the first half. We are pleased to be in this favorable situation, which allows us to continue to grow revenue in double digits while increasing profitability. Let's turn to slide 12 to the topic of operating leverage. Building on what I just mentioned regarding our favorable developments of key cost items, I'm very pleased that we managed to further accelerate operating leverage this quarter. with 26% ordinary operating EBITDA growth, a significant increase versus 16% run rate in Q1 23. We started to communicate our focus on operational leverage during the second half of last year. What we are seeing now is a consistent execution of this strategy. The organizational efficiency measures we have implemented will allow us to continue growing at scale within limited increase on the majority of our cost items. to highlight the significant progress we have made on the key cost and capex items. Personal costs stood at 18.2% of revenues in Q2 2023 compared to 21.2% in Q2 2022. While the baseline clearly has been positively impacted by the organizational efficiency measures, there were also some positive one-off impacts in Q2 2023 related to oversized bonus and vocational accruals. We will also have salary increases become effective from Q3 2023 onwards. This means that the Q2 2023 run rate is not a guidepost for the full year. Marketing cost amounted to 7.6% in Q2 2023 compared to 11.6% in Q2 2022. This decline is due to phasing out of marketing spend related to the seller-lead business, which generated insufficient return on investment. We will be reinvesting some of these savings in the second half of 23 into other marketing activities. Same as for personal expenses. This means the second quarter 23 run rate is not a guide for the full year. Capitalized asset ratio was at 4.9% in Q2 23 compared to 6.6% in Q2 22. The decline is in line with the guidance I have provided previously. we do expect the ratio to be stable from here or even trend downward. Overall, we are very pleased with where we are in terms of our cost structure and ability to control our costs from here. You can expect us to continue to be very focused on growing the business and increase profitability going forward. Let's turn to page 13, where you see the items below ordinary operating EBITDA. In the second quarter, non-operating effects were driven by higher share-based comp and reorganizational cost. In Q2 2022, the share-based component was largely non-existing, which causes the big jump in Q2 2023. DNA charges in the second quarter were 8.2 million euros, roughly in line with Q1 2023. The item fell in a quarterly and half-year comparison due to an unscheduled depreciation of self-developed software, and the special depreciation of the FlowFact brand in the previous year. Basic EPS rose by 86.1% to €1.09 in the first half, and adjusted EPS grew 37.4% to €1.23. Adjusted EPS for the second quarter accelerated further, reaching 66 cents, representing a growth of 45.4%. Now turning to page 14, Guidance. Based on strong first half-year performance as well as consolidation of Sprengnetter from July onwards, we are pleased to update our guidance for full year 23 as follows. Upgrading consolidated revenue growth from 12% organic to circa 15%. Out of the 15%, we expect Sprengnetter to contribute around 3 percentage points. upgrading consolidated ordinary operating EBITDA growth from 13% organic to a range of 18% to 19%. Thereof, we expect Sprengneta to contribute slightly above one percentage point. I would like to provide you with some further color on the updated guidance and our assumptions for the remainder of the year. As you can see from the significantly upgraded ordinary operating EBITDA growth range, we are confident to achieve meaningful ordinary operating EBITDA margin expansion in 2023, even absorbing dilution from the consolidation of Sprengnetter. Excluding Sprengnetter, the increase in profitability would be even higher. For the second half of 2023, we do expect revenue growth to become more challenging. To that end, I would like to reiterate what we outlined in previous earnings calls. Third quarter 22 represents a tough comparable with 17% revenue growth. We expect organic growth to fall below 12%. In the fourth quarter, growth could accelerate again. Membership comps becoming increasingly difficult as we move through third and fourth quarter. Both private and professional PPA growth will normalize as we are lapping the benefits of listing buildup happening in the first half of 2022. In addition, professional PPA will be impacted by client migration into core memberships. We will prioritize revenue growth in our core business and run the seller leads and mortgage business for profitability. All in all, this means the 15% revenue guide represents an ambitious target and would definitely represent the high end of where we are likely to end up. On ordinary operating EBITDA level, we continue to feel confident to deliver outsized operating leverage, providing us high level of confidence with the upgraded range. In conclusion, based on the momentum we are seeing in the business and the improved organizational efficiency, we feel good about our prospects going into the second half of 2023 and 2024. We will provide the next update during our third quarter earnings call on November 2nd. 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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