REA Group Q1 2024: Revenues Up 12% Year-on-Year Despite Financial Services Performance Drop

Australia-based portal operator REA Group has released its Q1 results for the 2024 financial year. Highlights include:

• Revenue hits A$217M for the quarter, a 12% YoY increase.
• EBITDA reaches A$126M, at a margin of 58%.
• Core Australian revenue grows 11% YoY.
• Financial services revenue dipped 7% for the quarter, driven by lower applications and settlements.
• REA India continues strong development, with revenues up 25% for the quarter.

Group CEO Owen Wilson commented:

"The property market started the new financial year strongly, led by Melbourne and Sydney. Healthy demand from buyers, coupled with stable interest rates for several months, gave sellers confidence to bring their properties to market.

"Our strong Australian performance demonstrates the value of our premium products in a strengthening market. We were delighted that REA India also continued its rapid growth in both revenue and audience.

"The strength of our audience leadership, combined with the increasing depth of consumer engagement on realestate.com.au, continues to deliver superior value to our customers. Our focus on personalising consumer experiences is key to this
and during the quarter we saw a record number of visits to our Property Owner Dashboard. Momentum behind average buyer enquiries, and the valuable leads they deliver to our customers, also continued to grow strongly.

"After a strong start to FY24, we remain focused on delivering new features across our product suite. We will continue to enhance the depth and quality of engagement on our platforms with more personalised consumer experiences. Together these initiatives will drive significant value for our customers and audience, underpinning future growth."

The group's flagship portal, realestate.com.au, continues to dominate the Australian real estate market, with a company report claiming that 53% of consumers exclusively use the portal to conduct property searches. Realestate.com.au recorded 127.6M average monthly visits, and generated 2.2M average monthly buyer enquiries, up 11% YoY.

One of REA Group's major focuses in recent years has been its expansion into the Middle East region—and REA India has continued to impress with significant revenue growth of 25%, with the Group highlighting Housing.com's property advertising business. REA India's audience also grew by 16% YoY, and has also benefitted from more customers signing up for higher-yield premium products:

However, financial services revenues for the quarter suffered, with the Group pointing to a challenging market as the primary cause.  Settlements dropped 7% YoY despite the Group increasing its number of brokerage partners by 5% in the same period.

REA Group will implement a 13% price rise nationally within the next 12 months and plans to introduce a suite of new products including a seller-lead subscription service.