Prosus Sees Classifieds Segment Profit Hindered by OLX Autos in HY1

The Amsterdam-based international internet giant and classifieds operator Prosus has released its results for the six months ended 30th of September. Relevant highlights of the company's operations include:

• Total consolidated revenue grew 23% to $3.78 billion while Adjusted EBITDA loss widened from $105 million to $251 million.
• Like-for-like revenue from the Classifieds division grew 36% year-on-year to stand at $1.4 billion while trading loss widened to $159m.
• The company's joint venture (with Adevinta), OLX Brazil saw revenues grow 15% year-on-year.

Prosus is an offshoot of South African publisher Naspers and owns the global online classifieds operator OLX Group. It runs the general classifieds OLX platforms, the real estate verticals Otodom (Poland) and Property24 (Africa) and is a stakeholder in EMPG and OLX Brazil.

The company is also a significant player in the autos industry and invested to expand its direct-to-consumer business in the segment over the course of the period, selling 114,000 cars (a 60% increase on the comparison period).

The investment in transactional capabilities has not so far been extended to the real estate vertical and has had a material impact on the classifieds segment's profitability. The $206 million Trading Loss made by OLX Autos dragged OLX Classifieds' bottom line to a $154 loss for the period in spite of profits for OLX Europe and OLX Brazil.

The company expects its operating environment to remain challenging for the foreseeable future and will be cutting costs accordingly. Despite the macro-economic environment, Romain Voog, CEO of Prosus Classifieds believes that the group is well placed to benefit:

“The economic and social benefits that OLX delivers through facilitating commercial trade across five continents is more pronounced than ever as our consumers and professional sellers deal with uncertain economic times and scarce global resources.

Our marketplace ecosystems, enabled by tech, powered by trust, and loved by customers, serve hundreds of millions of people every month. Across each of our businesses, we leverage our higher growth rate and focus on cost efficiency to accelerate our profitability improvements.”

The last few years have brought upheaval to the classifieds portfolio of Prosus. The company has sold off more value in classifieds assets than any other player since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.

In 2022 alone Prosus has so far sold off South American property vertical Properati, its Indonesian property vertical Lamudi and the leading Russian horizontal platform Avito.