Adevinta Grows Revenue and Progresses Verticalization Plan in 2023 as Private Equity Takeover Looms

The international online classifieds operator Adevinta has released a report on its activities for the fourth quarter of 2023. Highlights from the company's report, as it prepares to be taken private by a consortium of private investment firms, included:

• Full-year revenue was €1,826M representing growth of 12%.
• EBITDA was €651M, up 19% year-on-year at a 35.7% margin (2022 33.4%).
• Cash flow generation of €491M and year-end leverage ratio of 2.5x.

Commenting on the results, Adevinta CEO Antoine Joteau said:

"2023 has been a great year of progress for Adevinta. We transformed our organisation, laying the foundations to accelerate our business growth. Over the past year, we have redesigned our operating model, verticalised our organisation in line with our Growing At Scale strategy, and successfully completed our portfolio optimisation programme. We have achieved strong financial and operational performance, and reached our financial targets for the year, despite the tough macroeconomic environment."

Adevinta's portfolio includes real estate verticals in Spain (Fotocasa and Habitaclia), Brazil (VivaReal, and Zap joint venture), France (A Vendre A Louer) and Ireland (Daft.ie joint venture) as well as many leading horizontal classifieds platforms (Leboncoin in France and Kleinanzeigen in Germany) and car and job verticals mainly in Europe.

Transactional revenues grow but profit is hurt by another impairment loss

Adevinta continues to focus its investment efforts on the profitable real estate and mobility verticals in its five core European markets (France, Germany, Benelux, Spain and Italy). The company saw 12% growth in revenue in Q4 in its core markets with mobility revenues growing 21% year-on-year while real estate revenues grew 7% in the period and revenue from transactional services grew 46%.

Real estate revenues were helped by a 9% year-on-year traffic boost at both the French generalist platform Leboncoin and a 3% boost at its German counterpart Kleinanzeigen. Leboncoin also benefitted from planned price increases which brought average revenue per agent up to €725, a 26% improvement year-on-year.

Elsewhere the company saw 10% growth in Ireland (a joint venture in Distilled Media) and 18% growth in Austria (a joint venture in Willhaben) as well as strong growth in Benelux (22%). Revenue growth in Spain and Brazil was hampered by economic headwinds.

In Canada, Adevinta recognized a €147M impairment loss related to its generalist classifieds platform Kijiji which was chalked up to...

"a reduction of the projected cash flows as a result of increased competition in the Canadian classifieds market and negative impacts from the roll-out of a new mobile application in 2023

Revenues from third-party advertisers were down 4% for the year in line with what other online classifieds operators have been experiencing.

Plan to verticalize and 'grow at scale' progressing well

Since completing the $9.2 billion deal to acquire eBay's classifieds division in 2020, Adevinta has been on a mission to integrate and extract synergies. The company claims that its ambitious plans to converge assets onto the same tech platforms are progressing well "and according to plan".

Adevinta also reported that it had hit its €130M synergy target for 2023 and announced that its new 'verticalized' corporate structure had been implemented on the 1st of January. The idea of the new structure is to align Adevinta's organizational structure around its four 'growth pillars' of Mobility, Re-commerce and Real Estate & Emerging Verticals.

In terms of product updates the company's Q4 report mentioned the incorporation of agent reviews into real estate listings in France via a partnership with Immodvisor and machine-learning image tagging at its Spanish real estate portal, Fotocasa.

Adevinta's report looks set to be one of the company's last public market missives. Earlier this month it announced that a $13 billion bid from a consortium of private equity firms led by Permira and Blackstone had reached the necessary threshold of shareholder approval. The deal is expected to be completed in Q2 pending regulatory approval.