Hemnet Urged to Improve Share Price by Hedge Fund

The Swedish real estate portal Hemnet has been urged to improve its share price performance after a 40% decline in just over six months.

An analysis article published by the Swedish language outlet Dagens Industri reported that Hemnet has been marked 'vulnerable' by one of its big-ticket shareholders.

Australia-based hedge fund GCQ, one of the top ten largest shareholders in the dominant Swedish market leader (with a 5.2% stake), has penned a letter to Hemnet Chairman Anders Nilsson, suggesting that Hemnet could and perhaps should increase advertising fees on its portal, lest share prices continue to fall after a disappointing year.

Douglas Tynan, an investment manager at GCQ, said that Hemnet is at a "very high risk" of being targeted in its current vulnerable state.

Pictured below is Hemnet's year-to-date share price according to Yahoo Finance.

GCQ highlighted REA Group's more aggressive pricing strategy in Australia—which also uses a vendor-paid advertising (VPA) model where home sellers pay the marketing costs for their property—as an example of how to price Hemnet's products more in line with its dominant market position.

For context, REA charges on average 0.4% of a house's selling price, double that of Hemnet's 0.2%.

This argument, however, overlooks the fact that the REA Group is currently under investigation by the ACCC for its allegedly overly aggressive pricing methods, while Australians are more used to VPA than Swedes.

GCQ, which first invested in Hemnet in 2022, also suggested improved share buyback schemes, a better communications strategy for investors, and called for CEO Jonas Gustafsson to give more public interviews in its letter.

Hemnet is one of a clutch of highly dominant real estate portals worldwide, servicing circa 90% of house sales in Sweden. The marketplace has achieved remarkable success in monetising its listings, quadrupling its ARPL from $213 to over $854 in just five years, while its latest financial filings showed net sales of $51.6 million in Q2 2025.

Yet despite GCQ's pressure to increase prices, Hemnet is already under fire from within the Swedish market to relax its pricing amid soft market conditions.