Scout24's Half Year Results Hold Firm

August 13, 2020
Share this Post: 

The Munich-based portal company Scout24 which owns and operates property portals in Germany, Switzerland and Austria has reported half-year financials for 2020 which reflect solid performance and a resilient residential property market. Some highlights from yesterday’s announcement include:

  • Revenue up 1% to €173 million for the half-year despite a second-quarter drop of 3.5%

  • Ordinary operating EBITDA margin 61%. Up from 59.4% for the first half of 2019

  • Traffic to immoscout24.de up in the second quarter by 24% year-on-year

In March, Scout24 sold off its car portal AutoScout24 as well as tertiary services divisions FinanceScout24 and Finanzcheck to private equity firm Hellman and Friedman for some €2.84 billion and has since been focussing solely on real estate. Since the second quarter of 2020 the company’s operations have been divided into three segments: residential, commercial and media and other. Residential, which accounted for 71% of revenue in the half-year, has proved the most resilient to the economic crisis in the second quarter as surprisingly, revenues here were only down 1.6% year-on-year. Here Scout24’s report reveals a surprising scenario, given the economic lockdown in Q2, where it was actually able to increase revenue from agents:

“the revenue with professional customers included in this figure (i.e. real estate agents, property managers and finance customers) actually increased by 1.9%, while revenue with consumers declined by 8.7% in the second quarter”

Although comparisons across property markets are problematic, the fact that a dominant market leader such as Sout24 was able to not only increase revenue from agents during a pandemic but also increase the number of paying agents year-on-year for Q2 of 2020 (from 16,209 in Q2 2019 to 17,020 at the end of Q2 2020) is remarkable and something that bosses at Rightmove will no doubt have read with envy.

As for the business real estate segment, it largely held firm and reported half-year revenue growth of 1.4% largely thanks to customers who were tied into long-term contracts. As we’ve seen with other portal companies’ recent financial results, Scout24’s revenue from media was hardest hit by the pandemic with revenue dropping 12% over the first two quarters.

Elsewhere, the company was able to make something of an efficiency drive and lower headcount as well as complete the purchase of financial advice portal Immoverkauf24 in July. Scout24’s share price has been climbing steadily since its March nadir and currently sits at €78 per share, well above its pre-pandemic high of €64.

Scout24 Share Price

Source: Google Finance

August 13, 2020
Since March 2020 Edmund's job has been to read about, write about, collect data on, analyse and generally know about real estate marketplaces and the companies that run them. Before that he worked at the aggregator Mitula Group (which became Lifull Connect) for five years.

Subscribe to our mailing list to get the famous, free Friday newsletter!

News and analysis to help build better online marketplace businesses, in your inbox, every Friday

Related News

Proptech Funding Roundup 21March24
PropTech Funding Roundup: Spacely AI, Paraspot, First Street, Landerz

This week's proptech funding roundup hits close to home, featuring none other than the startup that won the Pitch Club...

Read More
Product Roundup 21.3.24 Updated
Product Roundup: Zillow, Immobiliare, Jitty, Listing Loop, AngoCasa, DomClick, Propertynews, Wasalt

Our product roundups seem to get bigger every week. This edition sees no fewer than ten companies announcing product and...

Read More
Dhruv Agarwala Rea India Logo
CEO Dhruv Agarwala on How REA India Reached Traffic Leadership, the Size of the Prize and Industry Disruption

As CEO of REA India, Dhruv Agarwala heads up one of the most ambitious projects in global real estate: becoming...

Read More
Beike Logo Chinese House
KE Holdings Sees 20% GTV Uptick in 2023 and Announces Special Dividend as It Outperforms Chinese Market

The Chinese brokerage and real estate marketplace operator KE Holdings (aka Beike) saw gross transaction value (GTV) increase 20% in...

Read More