Prosus Grows Core Classifieds Revenue 27% in FY24 as Margin Increases to 24%

The Amsterdam-headquartered internet giant Prosus has posted its results for its 2024 financial year. Highlights from the company's performance for the period include:

• Average Revenue Per Agent (ARPA) was up 12% year-on-year across all real estate classifieds assets.
• Like-for-like 'Core Classifieds' revenue was up 27% year-on-year from $519M in 2023 to $707M in 2024.
• Trading profit from 'Core Classifieds' increased from $56M in 2023 to $172M in 2024 at a 24% margin.

Spun off from the South African publishing giant Naspers in 2019, Prosus operates a plethora of online classifieds assets around the world as well as in food delivery, FinTech and education. Prosus also owns a stake in the Chinese internet giant Tencent.

Prosus Classifieds Assets

The company's strong classifieds performance in FY24 was mainly driven by OLX Europe, where the motors category grew 45% across horizontal and vertical platforms. OLX Ukraine’s marketplace activities recovered to pre-conflict levels while South African assets Property24 and Autotrader also performed well.

There was good news in real estate as well where despite the impact of high interest rates, the category saw a 25% increase in revenue, reaching $96m for the period. The company's shareholder presentation highlighted Prosus's intention to drive its real estate classifieds assets into adjacencies such as tenant verification, virtual tours and mortgage brokerage

Revenue (+3%) and profit (+6%) were also up at the online classified joint ventures that Prosus is involved in standing at $244M and $15M respectively. However, OLX Brasil (which Prosus owns as a joint venture with Adevinta) is facing a "weak macroeconomic environment" with the company mentioning "cost optimisation" and "headcount restructuring".

Prosus claims that its use of artificial intelligence drove a 15% increase in marketing campaign effectiveness at OLX over the reporting period as it revealed that it is A/B testing an AI-powered virtual assistant chatbot in its real estate verticals.

The investor presentation was also notable for introducing the new CEO, Fabricio Bloisi who replaces Bob Van Dijk. Company Chair, Koos Bekker, announced the appointment:

"As we progressed in the interview process, the discussion of who is best suited to lead the group led to a larger discussion of our identity. While we are a company that both operates and invests, the boards believe that at this point in our history, the group will benefit most from the leadership of someone who brings a founder’s passion and deep operating rigour. This will benefit our core businesses and should benefit our investment processes.

The boards unanimously approved the appointment of Fabricio Bloisi as the chief executive with effect from 10 July 2024. Fabricio is the founder of Movile and currently the CEO of iFood. He is an innovator with deep roots in building and scaling world-class technology companies in growth markets."

The past 18 months have seen a great deal of upheaval in the online classifieds portfolio of the Naspers-related firm.

In October 2022 Prosus sold Russian classifieds giant Avito for a reported $2.5 billion after coming under heavy pressure to do so. Avito generated 48 billion Rubles ($559 million) in revenue in FY21 at a 34% trading profit margin.

Prosus has also decided to sell off or wind down all of its OLX Autos businesses around the world having been "materially affected by macroeconomic and market challenges... similar to listed peers". The auto business made a trading loss of $418 million in FY23.