Alma Media's Finnish Real Estate Portals Endure Tough Q3

The Finnish online classifieds operator Alma Media has announced its provisional results for Q3 of the 2023 financial year. Relevant highlights from the company's performance for the three months ended 30th of September include:

• Overall company revenue was €73.4 million, down 1.5% year-on-year.
• Adjusted operating profit was €20.5 million, up 6.2%.
• Revenue from Alma Media's housing marketplaces was down 6.5% to €4.5 million.

Alma Media owns and operates Finland's leading real estate portal Etuovi as well as the country's largest rentals marketplace Vuokraovi. The company also operates several leading online classifieds assets across its home market (autos marketplaces Nettiauto, Autotalli.com and Alma Talent and Jobly.fi in recruitment) as well as Eastern Europe (including Prace.cz in the Czech Republic and Profesia.sk in Slovakia).

A company press release quoted the Central Federation of Finnish Real Estate Agencies in saying that 2023 is expected to be the weakest year for a long time for the housing market with only 3,822 transactions having been reported so far.

Those market conditions affected the company's earnings from its real estate portals with revenue from Alma Media's Finnish property portals falling 6.5% compared to Q3 of 2022.

Searches on the portal were down 11.5% however email alert signups were up 8.2% a figure the company says shows pent-up market demand while the volume of sale listings were up 5.7% with rental listings up 18.6%.