On Tuesday this week the REA Group announced it’s half year results. The headline numbers are very much in line with where we thought they would be:
- Revenue was $134.6m – up 18% on the same period last financial year
- EBITDA was $59.6m – up 24% on the same time last year
- The EBITDA margin was 44%
- An EPS increase of 27% to 31.6c
- An interim dividend of 12.5c
In addition to these good half year on half year growth numbers, the business also announced that the Italian business had delivered good first half revenues and became marginally profitable.
Here are the highlights as released by the REA Group.
In Australia, where REA Group operates the leading residential and commercial real estate sites, realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au, key first-half metrics included:
- realestate.com.au attracted a Unique Audience of 2.4 million in December 2011 (Nielsen), approximately 1.8 times Domain
- REA Media (including developer) revenues grew to $32.7 million in the first half, a 33% increase on the prior corresponding period
- Paying subscribing agents decreased slightly to 9,324 agents (June 2011: 9,536 agents)
- ARPA increased to $1,327 in December 2011, up 10% on the prior corresponding period
- Revenue from premium listing and branding products now represents 48% of residential revenue
In Italy, REA Group’s residential property site, casa.it, delivered strong revenue growth and a positive EBITDA.
- Revenue increased by 44% to $10.5 million from the prior half-year.
- EBITDA increased to positive $0.3 million at 31 December 2011 from a loss of $2.2 million at 31 December 2010.
- Traffic to casa.it increased to 3.5 million Unique Browsers in December 2011 (2.3 million in December 2010), well ahead of the Italian number two ranked competitor.
- ARPA increased to €122 in December 2011, up 49% on the prior corresponding period.
However, the smaller countries didn’t fair so well. Half year on half year revenue growth in Hong Kong being only 2% while the country continued to operate at a loss. For the Greater Luxembourg Region, revenues grew in line with the overall company result (19%) but ARPA decreased 7% reflecting the tough European economy.
Overall the business delivered to market expectations and as such the stock closed slightly down.
Over the next few days we will get behind the numbers on a country by country basis. Now that should make for some interesting reading.
Advertising Partner
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