5/2/2024

speaker
Philipp Lindwall
Vice President Group Strategy and Investor Relations

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Scout24 first quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Philipp Lindwall and I'm 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. Tobi will kick off the presentation and Dirk will dive deeper into our financial performance. As usual, we will conclude the call with a Q&A session. You can find today's presentation on our website under financial reports and presentations. This session will be recorded and a replay will be made available on our website 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 (CEO)

Thank you, Philipp, and welcome everyone. Let's go straight to page three of our presentation and let me summarize the key takeaways from our first quarter result. I'm pleased to announce that we started off 2024 with 12% revenue growth for the first quarter. Growth was driven by very strong performance in our agent membership and private subscriptions businesses offset by normalizing PPA growth and continued soft demand for leads. Let's review our key growth drivers for the quarter. Our membership business grew revenue strongly by 10%, driven by a mix of pricing and continued customer growth. We are particularly excited about growing our professional customer base in this challenging market. The average customer base in the quarter was 22,091. The number increased even further in March. We ended the month with over 22,200 subscribers. During our Capital Markets Day in February, we spoke about the strength of our membership business and the great demand we are seeing for our products. This quarter is another testament to that. Our private subscriber business continues to maintain impressive growth rates off a larger base. In February, we crossed the 400,000 subscriber mark, ending the quarter with an average subscriber base of 413,000. This represents a growth rate of 21%. The strong growth in our core business was offset by more muted growth dynamics in other revenue lines, which experienced a more challenging quarter as transaction levels are only slowly recovering. Moving from revenues to ordinary operating EBITDA, we are very pleased to continue delivering strong operating leverage. Ordinary operating EBITDA grew strongly by 17% for the quarter, resulting in meaningful margin expansion of 2.4 percentage points year on year. Adjusted EPS came in at 67 euro cents for the quarter, growing 18% year on year. We are also pleased to confirm our guidance for 2024 of 9 to 11% revenue growth, and an ordinary operating EBITDA margin of about 61%. Now, let's turn to page four of the presentation to look at our first quarter metrics. On a group level, our revenue for the quarter reached 136.1 million euros, representing 11.7% growth year on year. Ordinary operating EBITDA came in at 79.5 million euros, up 16.5% year on year. In the professional segment, subscription revenues increased by 11.7% to 79.1 million euros. This was mainly driven by continued strong membership growth and the consolidation of Sprengnetter. Our membership business has carried its momentum from 2023 into 2024, and we are very pleased with the dynamics we are seeing in the business. We continue to gain customers in this challenging market, growing by 1.8% and bringing the total number to 22,091. Professional ARPU increased by 4.0% to €1,131. In the private segment, subscription revenue was strong with 19.8% growth, maintaining the momentum from the fourth quarter last year. Subscriber growth was at 20.8%, accelerating compared to the fourth quarter 2023. We ended this quarter with 413,000 subscribers, which marks a significant milestone for our unique business as we cross the 400,000 subscriber base. On another positive note, we saw the buyer plus subscription product stabilizing and growing month on month for the first time since many quarters. Private ARPU declined slightly as more subscribers opt for the longer subscription period product, which increases lifetime value. Moving beyond the financials for the quarter, I would like to provide an update on how we are progressing with the execution of our strategy as presented at our capital market stage. We continue to drive interconnectivity of our unique three-sided marketplace while focusing on innovating new products for our stakeholders. Let me give you a couple of examples. For our professional customers, our new memberships for agents are well received. We are pleased with the uptake of the new memberships by our customer base, both in absolute numbers and the mix of the different packages. The new additions aim to drive interconnectivity within our ecosystem as it enables our professional customers to consume much larger parts of our product portfolio than before. Some of the products require usage of our newly launched digital currency, which creates further attachment to our ecosystem. Now let's talk about our homeowners. We continue to attract new homeowners to our platform, growing our base by another 0.1 million to 1.3 million users. Our homeowner base is not just growing, but also showing an increased level of engagement. As an example, the monthly active users grew by 77% year on year and visits per month in March 2024 were 2.5 times compared to 1.7 times for the same month in 2023. Obviously, the engagement is also somewhat correlated to the developments of the real estate market. Within the homeowner hub, we are seeing good uptake from recent innovation products such as the Modernizer calculator, which then turns into an ESG lead, as well as our new digital appraisal reports for professional landlords. Products such as PPA and seller leads being increasingly triggered from the homeowner hub environment is also a clear indication of high engagement. Before I hand it over to Dirk, I would like to conclude the first quarter as follows. We are off to a solid start in 2024. Our core business has carried its momentum from 2023 into 2024 and is performing well. We are tracking well in line with the growth targets we communicated at the capital markets day. The real estate market in Germany is showing signs of slow recovery. We know agents had a solid start into the year. This is confirmed by the increased activity we are seeing on our platform with respect to sale objects. We are fully on track executing our strategy laid out at the capital markets day. Our guidance for 2024 remains Unchanged. And with that, I hand it over to Dirk.

speaker
Dirk Schmelzer
Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Thank you, Tobi, and welcome everyone. On slide five, you see the first quarter 2024 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, continuing the track record from 2023. The professional segment grew revenues by 12.8% in the first quarter, driven by strong performance in core memberships and inclusion of Sprengnetter. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin expanded by 1.2 percentage points to 63.2%, despite absorbing Sprengnetter's lower margin business. This improvement is due to our favorable product mix and continuous efficiency improvements in our seller leads and mortgage businesses. In the private segment, we continued to witness strong demand for plus subscription products, offset by slower growth from PPA as revenues normalized on a high level. Overall, this resulted in a 9.3% increase in revenues. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the private segment increased by 3.9 percentage points to 50.8% as we continued to scale the business. The media and other segment experienced an 11.4% increase in revenues. Growth was driven by all three verticals, our Austrian business, CRM portfolio and third-party advertising. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin for the media and other segment displayed a significant improvement of 6 percentage points, reaching 45.4% due to profitable growth and efficiency in our CRM portfolio. On a group level, we delivered a margin of 58.4% for the first three months while absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter. Let's turn to page 6 for a closer look at the professional segment. In the first quarter of 2024, revenue in the professional segment grew by 12.8% year on year, including Sprengnetter. Growth was driven by continued healthy growth from our subscription business, which grew by 11.7%, fueled by strong membership growth and consolidation of Sprengnetter. Membership growth of 9.8% was once again strong and well in line with the recent targets we communicated at our Capital Markets Day. We also managed to continue expanding our agent customer base with year-on-year growth of 1.8%. Our sales force continues to execute well in this challenging market. Demand for seller leads and mortgage remains soft and revenues were down organically in the first quarter. Reported growth for seller leads was 24.3% due to consolidation of Sprengnetter. Mortgage revenues increased by 66.9% also due to Sprengnetter consolidation. On an organic basis, revenue development was also negative due to continued soft demand for leads. Professional APU increased 4%, rising from 1,088 to 1,131 euros. Strong core APU for membership was offset by negative impact from seller leads. Professional pay-per-add revenues declined by 20.1% in the first quarter. This development is driven by our ongoing strategy to migrate customers into membership contracts. The ordinary operating EBITDA margin improved to 63.2% in the third quarter, up 1.2 percentage points year on year, despite absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter. As you can tell from the numbers, we are continuing to gradually scale profitability nicely in our professional segment, despite a challenging market environment. On page seven, let's take a closer look at the private segment. The segment grew by 9.3% in the first quarter, reaching 38.1 million euros of revenue. This marks a deceleration compared to last year as continued strong subscription growth is offset by PPA revenues normalizing on a high level and a softer growth of other revenue lines. This is in line with our strategy to balance growth and profitability. Subscription revenues grew by 19.8% in the first quarter, maintaining its strong growth momentum from the fourth quarter last year. Growth continues to be driven by new customer acquisitions. the average number of customers for the first quarter exceeded 413,000, representing a 20.8% year-on-year increase. PPA revenues grew by 5.5% year-on-year, on the back of a very strong performance in 2023 and listing volume growth normalizing at high levels in the first quarter of 2024. The gradual normalization of PPA growth rates during 2024 is something we flagged during earnings calls end of last year. The private APU decreased slightly by 0.9% in the first quarter as more customers are opting for the longer duration subscription products. Other revenues declined by 13% in the first quarter, driven by lower demand for relocation leads and credit checks. Our ordinary operating EBITDA margin expanded to 50.8% in the first quarter, up by 3.9 percentage points, driven by scale in our subscription business. Let's turn to page 8 to review the main ordinary operating items. Our own work capitalized decreased by 14.8% in the first quarter to 5.3 million euros as we continued to complete various development and integration projects. As a percentage of revenue, we were at 3.9% in the first quarter. These developments are in line with the communication we gave at the Capital Markets Day about continuing to focus on efficiency and coming out of the investment phase. Operating costs increased by 3.4% in the first quarter, driven by continued operating efficiency, offset by the consolidation of Sprengnetter. On a like-for-like basis, we saw a year-on-year decline. Personal costs increased by 8% mainly due to the inclusion of Sprengnetter. Pro forma excluding Sprengnetter, personal costs were even down year on year. Marketing costs increased by 3.5% in the first quarter as we continue to invest in brand and offline marketing campaigns to drive brand awareness. IT costs decreased by 9.3% year on year as we continue to find efficiencies and focus on driving down vendor spend. Selling costs decreased by 1.8% in the first quarter, continued growth in the private segment and the consolidation of Sprengnetter was offset by lower costs for our Leeds business as we continued to exit cooperation agreements. Other operating expenses increased by 3.7% in the first quarter due to slight increase in the use of external resources and vendor inflation. Due to the continued strong revenue momentum, a favorable product mix, and operating efficiency I just outlined, ordinary operating EBITDA increased strongly by 16.5% in the first quarter. Ordinary operating EBITDA margin reached 58.4% for the quarter, representing solid margin expansion of 2.4 percentage points. Let's turn to page 9, where you see the items below ordinary operating EBITDA. In the first quarter, non-operating effects amounted to 12 million euros, increasing 20.1% year on year. This development was due to increased costs for share-based compensation, offset by lower charges for reorganization. DNA charges in the first quarter were 9.6 million euros, increasing by 19.9% due to the acquisition and consolidation of Sprengnetter. Basic EPS rose underproportionately by 6.4% to €0.54 for the first quarter, as the improved financial result was meaningfully offset by higher taxes. This was due to positive one-off tax effects in the first quarter of 2023. Adjusted EPS continues to grow strongly, up 18.3% in the first quarter to 67 Eurocent. The number of shares outstanding decreased by 100,000 shares to 73.5 million. Turning to the guidance on page 10. Based on the financial performance of the first quarter and unchanged outlook for the rest of the year, we are pleased to confirm our financial guidance for 2024. As a reminder, our guidance for 2024 assumes 9-11% revenue growth and ordinary operating EBITDA margin of about 61%. To give you some more context on what we are planning for the remainder of the year. We do expect revenue growth to be stronger in the second quarter compared to the first quarter. Regarding profitability, I would like to remind you that the second quarter of 2023 was exceptionally strong. with 26% ordinary operating EBITDA growth and 64% margin, as efficiency measures kicked in and marketing costs were very low that quarter. This tough comparable, in combination with absorbing the dilution from Sprengnetter consolidation, will make ordinary operating EBITDA growth more muted in the second quarter of 2024, however not changing the full-year profitability outlook. We continue to prioritize profitability over revenue growth when running our leads business throughout the year. In terms of dynamics for our key revenue lines, we are assuming the following for the remainder of the year. Continued high demand for memberships and private subscriptions. PPA professional remaining a headwind throughout the year. PPA private revenue levels remaining at high level, but we are not assuming meaningful growth compared to 2023 revenue baseline. Demand for leads remains soft and is most likely normalizing over the course of the year, slightly lagging the recovery of the transaction market. I would like to conclude that we feel absolutely confident about our guidance, both revenue and profitability, based on the strong momentum in our core business. And 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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