Rent.com.au Posts Solid Q1 2023 Results As RentPay User Subscription Product Starts to Grow

Rent.com.au has released its Q1 2023 financial results, with solid growth in its RentPay user convenience product.

Highlights include:

• Quarterly revenues of A$825k (down 2% YoY).
• 9th consecutive EBITDA-positive quarter for the core portal business.
• A$1.3m cash reserves.
• The number of RentPay users passes 3,500.
• A$1.3m in rent per week paid via RentPay.

Greg Bader, CEO at Rent.com.au, said:

"The focus of this quarter was setting up the transformation of our business.

"We previously announced a strategic partnership with Origin Energy Limited, and during the past quarter we have focused a lot of our time into putting that agreement into effect.

"From mid-August we started referring moving customers to Origin via our Rent Connect product. And in late September, we completed the functionality to enable rent pay customers to start using our build smoothing feature to pay that origin gas and electricity bills.

"Following our UX changes to rent pay in the previous quarter, the increased customer value proposition provided by Bill Smoothing has provided the catalyst for us to recommence the marketing of rent pay to our customer base. Funds from the Rights Issue we announced today will primarily be used to expand our rent pay sales and marketing efforts."

Rent.com.au gave prominence to the RentPay product, which incurred EBITDA losses of A$1.8 million for the full financial year. However, it is starting to pay off with significant year-on-year growth in active users with the figure reaching 3,537 (up from 908 at end of Q1 2022).

The company said there has been "good interest" in the product and that Rent.com.au expects to bring additional agencies on board in the coming quarters. "RentPay revenue growth is derived from increasing customer numbers as well as increasing the average revenue per user that we receive per month," said Bader.

Meanwhile, Rent.com.au admitted that it is seeing "very low levels of rental properties available across most states".