REA Group Ltd

ASX:REA

Earnings Call Analysis

REA Group Q1: Strong Revenue Growth with Positive Outlook

In the first quarter, REA Group reported a remarkable revenue increase of 21% to $413 million, with EBITDA rising 23% to $243 million. This growth was supported by robust demand in the property market, highlighted by a 7% rise in national new buyer listings. The company's premium products gained traction, driving residential yields up 15%. REA anticipates continued double-digit yield growth for FY '25 and expects margins to remain positive despite slight geo mix drag. The company remains disciplined in its capital management, including a strategy for growth in India, where revenues surged 42%. Overall, REA's performance sets a solid foundation for the future.

Strong First Quarter Performance

REA Group Limited's first quarter results for FY '25 displayed remarkable growth, with group revenue reaching $413 million, an increase of 21% year-on-year. The adjusted EBITDA for core operations was $243 million, marking a 23% rise. This robust performance is attributed to high employment rates, stable interest rates, and increasing buyer demand, all contributing to seller confidence.

Listing Gains Across Major Markets

The company observed a significant uptick in property listings, with national new buyer listings increasing by 7%. Major capitals like Sydney and Melbourne saw strong growth of 11% and 9% respectively, while Brisbane and Perth recorded 10% and 11% growth. This growth in listings is crucial as it provides more opportunities for agents to connect with potential buyers.

Investments and Strategic Moves

In a notable strategic move, REA Group approached UK property platform Rightmove for a possible acquisition, identifying a compelling opportunity to enhance shareholder value. However, following Rightmove's refusal to engage, REA exited the process, reiterating their disciplined approach to mergers and acquisitions. Investments in Athena Home Loans also highlight REA's commitment to expanding its service offerings, providing consumers with more choices.

Record Audience Engagement

The company's flagship platform, realestate.com.au, achieved a significant milestone by attracting an average of 11.9 million visitors per month, showing a 5.2 million audience lead over its nearest competitor. This audience engagement is critical as it drives seller inquiries and listing interactions, underpinning REA’s growth strategy.

Innovations in User Experience

To deepen customer engagement, REA launched the first phase of their next-generation listing experience. This initiative aims to create a dynamic and personalized browsing experience for users. Enhancements include larger image sizes and improved branding for listings, expected to significantly increase user interaction and satisfaction.

Future Projections and Guidance

Looking forward, REA projects double-digit buyer yield growth for FY '25, thanks to sustained demand and pricing power. The residential buy yield experienced a 15% increase in Q1. Moreover, listings for October were up 14% compared to the previous year, indicating strong market momentum. However, management acknowledged the possible impact of geographic mix negatively affecting yields, which they anticipate will remain a factor throughout the year.

Market Conditions and Competitive Landscape

The Australian property market remains healthy with supportive economic conditions. However, REA's leadership indicated that a normalization in listings is possible as heightened market activity creates increased choices for buyers, potentially reducing urgency. Competitive dynamics, especially with estate agents reallocating budgets, signal the importance of offering superior value to maintain yields.

Growth in Financial Services

The financial services segment is also witnessing growth with a year-on-year increase in submission volumes by 13%. This momentum is anticipated to bolster revenue in the coming quarters as REA improves its offerings and expands its market presence.

Cost Management and Financial Discipline

Operating expenses rose by 19% over the quarter, primarily due to strategic investments and inflation in salary costs. However, management remains optimistic, maintaining guidance for high single-digit cost growth, which reflects an expectation of improved operational efficiencies moving forward.

Final Thoughts and Investor Considerations

Overall, REA Group's strong financial results and strategic initiatives reposition the company favorably within the competitive landscape. The commitment to growing their audience and deepening engagement, coupled with robust revenue outlooks, presents an appealing investment case. Despite potential challenges in listing normalization and geographic yield mix, REA's integrated approach to growth and disciplined financial management showcases a resilient business model.

Earnings Call Transcript 2025-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REA Group Limited First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Alice Bennett. Please go ahead.

[Alice Bennett, executive]

Good morning, and welcome, everyone. My name is Alice Bennett, Head of Investor Relations, and I'd like to thank you for joining us to discuss REA Group's results for the first quarter ended 30th of September 2024. Before we commence, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia and recognize the continuing connection to landS, waters and community. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to elders past, present and emerging.

This morning, you'll firstly hear from our CEO, Owen Wilson, who will provide a brief business update. Then Janelle Hopkins, REA's CFO, will talk to financial highlights for the quarter. And following this, we'll be happy to take your questions. Just as a reminder, our quarterly numbers are top line results only. So we're restricted by the amount of detail we can provide. And with that, I will pass to Owen to get us started.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Thanks, Alice. I'd like to welcome everyone this morning and also acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are meeting and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. REA Group has delivered an excellent first quarter results, underpinned by double-digit yield growth and continued listings growth in our residential and commercial businesses. Looking at our results from core operations for the quarter. Revenue was $413 million, an increase of 21% and EBITDA, excluding associates, was $243 million, an increase of 23%.

High employment and immigration levels, together with stable interest rates continue to support buyer demand and, in turn, seller confidence. Listings were up year-on-year, driven by strength in the major capital city markets with Brisbane and Perth now matching the growth in Sydney and Melbourne. In these favorable conditions, our customers increasingly chose our premium products to differentiate their listings and connect with our audience, which reached record levels. REA's purpose is to change the way the world experiences property. Our consistent strategy centers on engaging Australia's largest consumer audience, providing our customers with superior value and leveraging our unique data and insights.

During the quarter, we approached the U.K. business, Rightmove with a possible offer because we saw a compelling strategic opportunity. We had no doubt that we could have added value to that business given the complementarity of our strategies and that a combination of our businesses made great sense for both sets of shareholders. Rightmove's refusal to engage meant that we had to withdraw from the process. While we are disappointed with the outcome, our approach to capital management when we look at M&A or any other investment will always be disciplined. We have a clear strategy to expand in both our core business and adjacent markets, and we are focused on pursuing these exciting opportunities.

Our investment in Athena Home Loans is a good example of this, and REA India remains an exceptional opportunity for growth. Turning to operational highlights for the quarter. In this healthy market, Australians visited realestate.com.au in record numbers. Our platform is Australia's #1 address in property with a record 11.9 million people visiting our site on average each month. That's almost 5.2 million more people than our nearest competitor. This is now the widest audience gap recorded under the Ipsos iris measurement. Over half our audience turned to realestate.com.au exclusively making our platform the key destination for connecting with these consumers.

Our unique, increasingly personalized experiences ensure our audience continually returns to our site with 100 million more monthly visits than our nearest competitor. The quality of our audience is what sets REA apart. Our membership base continues to grow, increasing 18% year-on-year. And last month, we achieved the exciting milestone of more than 1 million logged-in members in 1 day. With a focus on deep personalization, in September, we launched the first round of realestate.com.au's next-generation listing experience. Creating immersive experiences through [ imagery ] was core to these first enhancements with larger image sizes, a new image tour experience and stronger branding presence for our customers.

This 2-year program of work will shift the listing experience from fixed to dynamic and highly personalized for each user. The end state of the [ NextGen ] listings initiative will drive even deeper consumer engagement and will deliver even more value for our customers. As part of the NextGEn listings, inquiries now sit behind the realestate.com.au logging. This means to make an inquiry on our listing, a consumer must be a logged-in member. We know signed-in members are highly engaged with our personalized experiences. Compared to nonmembers, they view 4x the number of properties and share 6x more listings. We also know our customers are short on time, and this change ensures we deliver only the highest quality inquiries.

Our property owner strategy nurtures deep connection with owners and helps drive quality seller leads to our customers. We've now surpassed 4 million properties being tracked by the owner on realestate.com.au. And with the support of product optimization, seller lead volumes increased an incredible 80% year-on-year for the quarter.

Turning to our customers. Increased Premiere+ penetration continued to make a strong contribution to the group's revenue with Premiere+ penetration up in every state. Audience Maximizer achieved record penetration. And while it's early days for Lux, we're pleased with the take-up and customers are recognizing the value. Premiere+ listings with Lux achieved more than double the number of property views. Our pro subscription enhances the value delivered across agency services and agency marketplace. Pro enables our agents to win more listings with deep insights and help set their agency apart with premium seller leads and enhanced agency profiles.

The uptake of Pro is very pleasing with 28% growth compared to Q4 last year. The value in Pro's premium seller lead offering is clear, with Pro customers receiving an average 64% increase in seller leads after upgrading their subscription. Our Financial Services business achieved pleasing revenue growth and has increasing momentum. Along with growth in settlements this quarter, we achieved 13% year-on-year increase in submission volumes, which should underpin growth in Q2.

Penetration of our white label offering was strong for the quarter, largely driven by Mortgage Choice Freedom. We were pleased to announce our investment in Athena Home Loans in September, accelerating our strategy and reinforcing our commitment to providing consumers with greater choice. REA India's strong momentum continued in the quarter with 42% growth in revenue driven by strength in the Housing Edge platform and the core Housing.com business.

PropTiger revenues have ironically been impacted by the strength in the new homes market with developers allocating less stock to external brokers and excess demand, putting downward pressure on commission rates. Housing.com continues its leading audience position with 1.2x more web visits than the nearest competitor. REA India's app first strategy has driven our traffic growth of 37% year-on-year and an increase in the share of our downloads to 44% during the quarter.

A few comments on current market conditions. The Australian property market remains healthy, supported by strong employment, high immigration levels, the benefit of stable interest rates and recent tax cuts. Listings are off to an exceptional start for the second quarter with the highest level of October national listings since 2015, and Melbourne had its third strongest month ever. For the first 4 months of FY '25, Melbourne listings were 30% above the 7-year average, while Sydney was 25% above.

At some point, we would expect this to normalize. However, listings are notoriously difficult to predict, and it's fair to say that current strength of the market exceeded our expectations at the start of the year. The increase in stock in the market means more choice for buyers, leading to less urgency to buy. However, properties are continuing to sell, with interest rates expected to remain stable and potentially be on their way down later in 2025, and we can expect the level of demand to remain robust. This will support the listings environment. I'll now pass to Janelle to provide more detail on our financials. .

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

Thanks, Owen, and good morning, everyone. The strong momentum from FY '24 has continued into the first quarter, and REA has delivered an excellent result driven largely by growth in our Australian residential and commercial businesses. Group revenue for the first quarter increased 21% to $413 million. Operating expenses from core operations increased 19% to $170 million, and the group delivered operating EBITDA excluding the results from our associates of $243 million, up 23%. Our residential business has had another standout quarter, with revenue growth of 23%, driven by double-digit yield growth and stronger listings for both buy and rent with no impact of deferral.

National new buyer listings increased by 7% with growth in metro markets at 9%, outpacing regional markets, which were up 2%. While Melbourne and Sydney continued strong growth, up 9% and 11%, respectively, most other metro markets kept pace, with Brisbane up 10% and Perth top 11% and Adelaide, slightly slower but still growing at 6%. Whilst listings as a positive contributor, the biggest driver of our residential performance was our strong buy yield which was up 15% for the quarter. This was driven by a 10% average Premiere+ price rise, year-on-year growth in overall [ depth ] and Premiere+ penetration; growth in add-ons, Audience Maximizer and Lux in particular, and a small positive impact from the consolidation of Realtair. Excluding the impact of Realtair, buyer yield increased 14%. It's worth noting that while Melbourne and Sydney listings have remained strong, much of the recent growth in those markets has been in lower-yielding suburbs.

This, combined with stronger growth in other metro markets resulted in a small negative geo mix drag to yield in Q1 of around 1%. Our rent business delivered the strongest year-on-year growth since FY '19 benefited from double-digit yield growth driven by an 8% price rise and increased debt and 8% growth in listings. Turning to Commercial and Developer. Revenues increased in Q1, with strong growth in commercial and more modest growth in developer revenues.

Commercial revenue trends were again similar to our residential business, with performance driven by an average 12% price rise, continued growth in depth penetration and higher listings. The developer market remains challenged. And after seeing year-on-year growth in Q4, project commencements declined by 11% in the first quarter. However, developer revenues modestly increased assisted by longer project duration and a price rise from 1 July. Media, Data & Other grew during the quarter, driven largely by CampaignAgent, which continued to benefit from strong customer growth, higher volumes and greater spend per customer and by increased developer display revenues.

This growth was partly offset by lower PropTrack revenue and a decline in programmatic display revenues in a soft advertising market. Financial services momentum improved during the quarter with double-digit revenue growth. Revenue was driven by a return to growth for settlements, which were up 5%, a continuation of recent trends with increased usage of our white label products driven by Mortgage Choice Freedom, and increased productivity across our broker network, including our salaried brokers.

REA India delivered strong revenue growth in the quarter, up 42% year-on-year. This was largely driven by strong growth in adjacency services on the Housing Edge platform with increased number of users and transactions. It's worth noting that while Q1 adjacency revenues have been stronger than expected, we still anticipate a slowdown across the full year given the much tougher comp in the second half. We saw continued momentum at Housing.com, which benefited from strong events, continued yield growth and improved monetization in our Tier 2 cities.

And PropTiger revenues declined, reflecting the strength of the property market with demand for property exceeding supply, therefore, less need for the developers to use brokers. Turning to operating costs. Group core operating expenses increased 17% and Australian costs by 14%, excluding the impact of Realtair acquisition. In Australia, this was due to higher employee costs which reflects salary inflation and the investment in strategic projects that we accelerated in the second half of FY '24 flowing through and marketing costs being elevated in Q1 with our new marketing campaign Keep Moving launched in July during the Paris Olympics.

India saw operating costs increased by 26%, driven largely by an increase in revenue-related costs or COGS attached to the strong growth in [ RentPay ] and increased marketing costs. Excluding the impact of COGS, India's operating costs increased by 11%. Including Realtair, Australian operating costs increased by 17% and group costs were up 19%. As is often the case, we will see quarterly phasing vary across FY '25, particularly for marketing campaigns and employee costs, resulting in higher year-on-year growth rates in the first half of the year compared to the second half.

I also wanted to flag the Q1 core operating costs exclude $18 million of one-off legal and other advisory costs incurred as part of the withdrawn bid to acquire Rightmove. The group's combined share of associates contributed a $7 million loss to core EBITDA, which compares to a $6 million loss in the prior period. Move's equity accounted losses reflect a 1% decline in revenue with continued challenging market conditions, resulting in lower transaction volumes and leads.

This was partly offset by revenue growth in adjacent products such as seller, rents and new homes. Moving to current trading conditions. October national residential new buy listings were up 14% year-on-year or 7% on a like-for-like basis, excluding extra working days this year. Melbourne and Sydney listings momentum has continued, increasing 12% and 14%, respectively, with the growth rates for Brisbane and Perth markets above these levels.

Year-on-year growth rates for the second half of the financial year will reflect very strong prior period listing volumes, particularly for Melbourne and Sydney. Residential buy yield growth is anticipated to grow double digit in FY '25 benefiting from price rises, increased depth penetration and product mix and growth in add-ons. The magnitude of growth may be impacted if the small negative drag from geo mix in Q1 widens across the remainder of the year. We continue to target positive operating [ jaws ] in FY '25 with high single-digit group core operating cost growth anticipated. Growth in Australia will largely reflect increased employee costs due to strategic investment and salary inflation and higher revenue-related and technology costs.

India will be driven by higher COGS and marketing spend. EBITDA losses in India are anticipated to be marginally lower in FY '25 compared to FY '24. The group expects FY '25 losses from combined contributions from associates to be modestly lower than the prior year, reflecting stabilizing market conditions in the U.S. We are incredibly pleased with the performance we've delivered in Q1 and continue to be excited by the opportunities in Australia and India in FY '25 and beyond.

As always, we will invest prudently to drive long-term organic growth. And as demonstrated by our exit of PropertyGuru and walking away from the potential Rightmove transaction, we will continue to exercise financial discipline with any potential M&A activities.

I will pause there. Operator, can we now open for questions?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] our first question is coming from Eric Choi with Barrenjoy.

[Eric Choi, analyst]

I'll rapid fire all of my questions. So just on the first one on yield. Obviously, you're guiding to double-digit now, and it looks like add-ons and depths are both outperforming. If I contrast that to Domain who called out cost of living driving depth downgrades, I'm just wondering, is this evidence of some agents cutting Domain from budgets to fund your price increases in your products? And if you've got any data on growth in your unique listings to support that?

Second question, just on jaws, just given how strong your first half -- sorry, your first quarter and your October has been, even if we factor slower, flattish listings in the second half and maybe negative geo like the full year revenue growth could still be close to, if not a touch under mid-teens, and you're still guiding to high single-digit cost growth. So I'm just wondering in that scenario, do jaws widen to 5% and more than your historic 1% to 3% jaws. And then just lastly, just taking a step back, if you looked at the recent CoStar result, they sort of made some comments and they said that they don't think you guys can deliver double-digit yield growth over the next 15 years, but they were sort of viewing you as a cost to the agent.

And I'm just wondering if today is a proof point that maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. I'm just looking at your Lux penetration, and that sort of tells you vendors are happy to fund your costs or they view it as a percentage of the house price. And then obviously, your performance versus other parts of the marketing budget tells you that vendors are happy to sort of fund you guys from other parts of the marketing cost as well. So I mean, maybe the question is, is there any reason why REA can't grow from 20 basis points of the house price today to maybe closer to 100 basis points in 15 years.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Thanks, Eric. There's probably about 15 questions in there, but we'll have a crack.

Look, on your first question around yield and sort of what Domain had been calling out, with all respect, I really can't see what the cost of living has got to do with how much you spend on marketing, the most valuable asset that you own. And it's not bread or milk that you're purchasing. This is a really important spend on selling your most valuable assets. So we don't see any evidence of cost of living at all. I think what you are seeing in the numbers is that agents can absolutely see the respective value of both products and when push comes to [indiscernible] call, the fact that they've even called out a win back program to try and get listings back, they are giving listings away for free. But despite that, we do track unique listings on both sides.

And while we don't publish that number, that number hasn't moved really at all this year. It's a very consistent number. So I think what you're just seeing is agents looking at the respective value that you get. And where it's not there, they are coming up the schedules. That's why they're giving it away sometimes.

Look, I'll take the [indiscernible], and I'll let Janelle talk to jaws. I think Andy was -- one, he doesn't know much about the Australian market, thinking that agents pay for the advertising versus vendors. So he clearly needs to educate himself on Our market. Secondly, I think was just a classic bunch of deflection comments away from his -- some of [indiscernible] he's feeling both in the U.K., where it doesn't look like it's making a lot of traction. And I don't see any meaningful return on what is arguably, I'm hearing, $500 million to $1 billion of marketing spend in the U.S. So he's deflecting. I'm not going to give 15-year projections on our business. I'm very confident -- we look out 5 years at a time, we pay our value that we're building and delivering to customers over that period of time. So we have great confidence. That's why we constantly talk about double-digit yield growth through the cycle and we stand by that, and I won't go out as far as 15 years, but bring it in shorter and hand over to Janelle to talk about jaws.

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

Shorter term. So look, Eric, you would have seen that we have made no change to our cost guidance for the full year, and we're very comfortable with the current investment profile that we have. As we sit here today, really the only thing that could change our guidance is really revenue-related costs, which is a good cost. AMAX continuing to do better or more Housing Edge in India. So -- and as we've seen, in some years, our jaws are wider and some of them, they're more at that historical average, but it's still relatively early in the year at the moment.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question is going to come from the line of Lucy Huang with UBS.

[Lucy Huang, analyst]

I've got 3 questions and I might ask them all together. So firstly, just on the geo mix impact, starting to see a little bit of drag in the first quarter. So I just wonder, if you can give us an update in terms of October, whether that drag has started to increase given lower yields in the suburbs are continuing to face stronger growth? And then just secondly, following on from Eric's question on marketing budgets. I think in the past, [indiscernible] guys mentioned that 1% of asset value is invested in [ VPA ]. So given your kind of visibility through CampaignAgent, have VPA budgets kind of grown over the last kind of 3 to 6 months as the proportion of asset value.

And then just thirdly, just Premiere+ take-up continues to increase. So just wondering if you can give us some color as to who's upgrading? Is it Packages from Highlight and [indiscernible] going up to Prem+ or Prem to Prem+

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

Thanks, Lucy. I'll take 1 and 3. So geo mix, we've seen pretty consistent trends in October. So that minus 1% rate we saw in Q1 is continuing to flow through into October. But look, on balance, we're pretty comfortable with that geo mix at minus 1. When you think about -- it is pleasing to see the rest of the country and the rest of the metro market starting to catch up. So that's a positive. On Prem+, look, we're really pleased with the sign-ups we got as part of the recontracting in Q4 last year. And again, it's a combination of people going from Premier to Prem+ as well as from the lower tiers as well. So it's a mix across all levels up to Prem+, so very pleased around that?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Yes. On marketing budget, Lucy, we're not seeing any sign of them shrinking. That's for sure. In a market where there is a lot of stock on the market at 1 point in time. And it is getting increasingly harder to move stock, then the logic holds that you really do need to market your property to attract the buyers in the market. So we're not seeing any movement. CampaignAgent does give us sort of a bit of insight only to the size, not what's on the marketing budget, we don't look at that. And it's not -- and it doesn't cover the whole market, but it is the largest player in the market.

What we do know is 2 things that, on average, marketing schedules are larger when CampaignAgent funding is in place. So people are willing to spend more when they can pay later. And secondly, over time, the marketing budget is being funded by CampaignAgent are increasing marginally. So they are trending upwards. But as I said, it's not the whole market, they don't have total market coverage with that product, but it is the market leader. .

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is going to come from the line of [indiscernible] with E&P.

[Unknown Analyst]

My first question is just around next-gen listings. And I mean, I think that initiative is really interesting. But so my question is, are you seeing any negative impact on inquiry levels from next-gen listings and that requirement to log in to submit an inquiry? And how do you balance this up with the benefit you get from having users log in? And I've got another couple, but I might let you answer that one first.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Yes. Look, when we bought -- when we put inquiry behind login, [indiscernible], we absolutely expected inquiries to drop. And it's only been a very marginal drop, but that has been more than offset by an increase in the quality. The type of inquiries that have dropped out were the really low value ones, the people where they're putting in fake e-mail addresses, fake phone numbers and wasting agents' time, quite frankly.

So the feedback from agents from doing this has been actually quite positive. So it's a marginal drop in inquiry, but more than offset by the quality to the agents. And also, it's good for us in terms of personalization, knowing who's making the inquiry.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Great. And then I've got a question on Rightmove, which I mean, it was obviously a transaction which was -- has been unsuccessful to date. I guess, firstly, do you view that as a unique opportunity? Are you continuing to explore other potential offshore opportunities? I mean you're clearly willing to go pretty big based on your appetite for Rightmove. And I mean -- and how would you assess the likelihood that you go back and have another go at Rightmove in once a 6-month period has expired?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Rightmove is a very unique opportunity. If you look at the complementarity of the strategy as they put out in the Capital Markets Day last year versus our business, there was a clear overlap, albeit they are a lot further behind in a lot of the things that we've been working on for a long time. So it's a unique asset. So don't assume that, that means that we have to have an offshore asset for the sake of it. We assess every opportunity on its merit. And as we said before, we say no to way more than we say yes to, and we're very, very disciplined. As Janelle said, the PropertyGuru exit is, I think, fundamental evidence of that. We've made our position clear on Rightmove. They refused to engage, and we've made that position very clear in our announcement. So no plans.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. I mean it is interesting to see that the share price has dipped below $6 now, which is well under your offer price, but I'm not sure whether you can comment on that.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

No.

[Unknown Analyst]

It sounds like that's no. Okay. All right. Final one. The 19.9% interest [indiscernible] can you give us -- can you explain what that gives you over and above the existing partnership? And do you have any appetite to increase that interest further beyond that 19.9% holding?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

We're very pleased with our holding. It's kind of exactly at the level we would like it to be because it gives us a position on the Board, a couple of board seats actually. So what it gives us over and above our existing commercial arrangements is that we've got an agreement with Athena and we've got resources within Athena that will -- we will work to on product development. And we've alluded in the past to kind of developing products will help unlock more transactions in our market. Commercially, I'm not going to talk about what they might look like, but we're very excited that we'll be working with Athena on this with having exclusive resources within the company to do that.

[Operator]

Our next question is going to come from the line of Kane Hannan with Goldman.

[Kane Hannan, analyst]

I've got 3 as well. Just the sell leads, I think they accelerated from what, 37% last year to 80% this quarter. Just talk about what's driven that, sort of where they're coming from? I suppose remind us what you see as the end game for your sort of sell leads proposition? And then just quickly, just the India EBITDA losses sound like that might be slightly higher than what you were talking to in August despite that first quarter adjacency performance. Just any more color around what's happening in India?

And then again, on the associate losses on similar comments, is that adjusting for the Athena investment and sort of property sale and then a better Move outcome? Or just sort of what's happening with the associate outlook?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

I'll take seller leads and we'll probably tick tack on what's happening in India and associates. I mean associates is obviously largely the Move business. And as you heard on the News Corp call and ours, that market has still not recovered. The rate cut last night is incredibly welcome. As rates go down, that market will rebound. And we're not assuming that in our outlook yet, but it's only going to get better from here.

I think, in the U.S., on seller leads, it is a remarkable performance. And it's on the back of years and years of work around having owners engage with their property. As I said, tracked properties are now through $4 million. It's something like 60% to 62% of seller leads come from the owner experience. And having owners interact with their property on a regular basis and be prompted to think about what they might do, when it's time to contact an agent, they're increasingly using us. So that 80% increase in leads, partially, it's the huge uptick in claim properties over the same time last year.

And I think also there's a market element in there. We've got kind of record -- new record listings sort of happening at the moment in many geographies. And for every listing, there's a lot of people making seller inquiries. So we're really pleased with it because it underpins the value of the Pro subscription. As I said in my speaking remarks, if you're on a Pro subscription, you're getting about a 64% increase in seller leads coming to you. we'll, over time, track those leads. We'll prove they convert and we'll prove that sort of the commission rates that our customers are earning off that. So it really does underpin the value in that Pro product. Now it's early days. Pro is launched last year, but we're increasingly excited about the opportunity to demonstrate that real value through those seller leads.

In India, look, yes, we've just wanted -- we always said sort of down. It's going to be marginally down. The Indian market is becoming increasingly competitive. The competitors are not handing that market to us on a [indiscernible]. 99acres in particular, has ramped up marketing spend in the past few months, buying audience, buying app downloads. I mean we're still confident our app is best and is leading in the market. But it is getting increasingly competitive. Two of our competitors dropped their prices, for example. So we're not panicking. We're not spending quite crazy, but we are responding tactically in some markets, and that's -- you're seeing that in that sort of very minor change to the guidance for India.

[Operator]

Our next question is going to come from the line of Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup.

[Siraj Ahmed, analyst]

Just I'll ask questions. But the first one, just in terms -- I don't think we discussed listings outlook for the rest of the year. Clearly, better start. So is it still flat listings? Or just keen to understand how you think the second half will shape up?

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

Sorry, Siraj, I didn't quite catch that. Can you just repeat the question?

[Siraj Ahmed, analyst]

Yes, sorry, just the listings outlook expectation for the full year. I don't think we -- I think your expectation is flat. So what are you expecting now?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Okay. It's fair to say after the 4 months that we've had so far, that's it is a great start to the year. And while we will be lapping very strong comparables in Melbourne and Sydney in the second half, the other geographies, we aren't lapping as tough comparable. So it's fair to say the outlook for listings is probably higher than what we thought coming into the year and the guidance we gave around about August. So flat, it has to be fairly negative in the back half of the year to be flat now. It's probably going to be marginally up.

[Siraj Ahmed, analyst]

Got it. And just a follow-on from that, just in terms of geo mix, right, Janelle, is 1% drag the way you're thinking about for the full year? Just keen to clarify that.

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

No, we gave -- we said it's 1% for the quarter, and it's also sitting at minus 1% for October as well. So we just don't know what will end up being for the full year. It will really just depend on what happens from the point of view of the -- where the listings mix is between Melbourne and Sydney versus the rest of the country. I think we've given the bookends in the past where it sort of been somewhere between minus 5% and positive 3%. But at the moment, it's tracking minus 1%.

[Siraj Ahmed, analyst]

Got it. And so in terms of -- so this thinking of by yield, right? You were -- you didn't give double-digit guidance for the full year in August. So it doesn't seem like geo mix has changed the expectation. So what's been the delta? Is it lux take-up? Or what's been actually stronger than expected in terms of the yield outlook?

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

We were just -- we thought geo mix may have been a drag. We just weren't 100% sure what the impact would be when we were sitting here back in August and our expectation around what overall yield would be. I think the fact that we've already started the year and we were sitting at 15% gives us confidence around being able to call double digit for the -- our expectation around double digit for the full year.

[Siraj Ahmed, analyst]

Owen, just a quick thing on Athena. Can you just confirm that you're still not looking to do sort of balance sheet use capital to write loans because that's been a question that's coming up.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

No. No, no. One of the reasons why we're very comfortable with that 19.9% stake is there is no consolidation. We will get the benefit of equity accounting. Athena is a great business with great products. It's got one of the fastest digital mortgage approvals in the country. But no, we don't plan to use our balance sheet, and that's why we've kept that stake where it is.

[Operator]

Our next question is going to come from the line of Tom Beadle with Jarden

[Thomas Beadle, analyst]

I've just got a couple of questions. Just firstly, on the cost phasing. There's probably a bit more there than I thought in the first quarter. So just given the soft cost comp in the second quarter, it might imply that cost growth might only be in the low single digits in the second half. So I guess, firstly, just I'm wondering if that's a fair assumption. And if that is the case, is that because you have factored a decline in listing volumes into the second half into this guidance?

And so if volumes perform better, say, if they're even flat, you've maybe got a bit of discretion to invest a bit more and that cost number might be a bit higher. And I guess just around -- if you could comment just around India, just with the cost growth there being a bit more than expected, like how much of that skew of those higher costs that we've seen is just because of higher cost of sales in India? And just the second question is just around Lux. I realize it's still fairly early days, but I'd just be interested to hear any comments around the take-up of Lux and just the extent to which it might have assisted your residential yield.

[Janelle Hopkins, executive]

Yes. Look, so Tom, on costs, we do talk about phasing quite a bit because it does play into making the cost numbers on a quarter-on-quarter basis, sometimes a bit lumpy. If you think about, for example, marketing, in Q4 last year, we had 3 marketing campaigns going, and then we've done marketing in Q1 of this year. So there were more costs skewed to the second half last year. And then you'll recall in FY '24, we were unclear around the revenue trajectory. So we ramped our investment into the second half of the year.

So you're right, the comps are softer in the second half than they are in the first half. But at the moment, as we've shared that our cost guidance remains unchanged for the full year. And then we did provide on my speaking notes, whilst we had that strong cost growth in India, if you exclude the impact of COGS, the India cost growth was only 11%. So COGS is absolutely skewing that India overall cost number for the quarter.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

On Lux, as you said, it is early days. We're very, very pleased with it on a couple of bases. One is it's being sold at almost every price point. And we always said this is not a top-end product only. I think we've got something like more than 50% of Lux listings are below $3 million value properties. And they're being sold on sort of $1 million value properties and all over the place.

So the value holds. It's still early days to get the exact performance outcome. So we'll track price outcomes and selling results down the track. But as I said, we're getting double the views of a Lux listing. So the value is there. Agents are giving us good feedback on it, and it is being sold at kind of every price point, which is exactly what we wanted.

[Operator]

Our Next question comes from the line of Sriharsh Singh with BofA Securities.

[Sriharsh Singh, analyst]

Just a couple of questions and clarification. One, can you talk about the conversion rates of your seller leads? And how does that compare to your target conversion rates? And in that context, if you can lift your conversion rates for seller leads, do you think you're under monetizing the Pro subscription? So that was one. And quickly, could you also clarify on the Lux? So if I'm thinking about properties selling for $3 million and above or $5 million and above, is there a threshold where majority of the properties selling above a price point is going on Lux rather than Premiere+?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

No. Look, I'll take Lux first. There's no there's no price point where above $5 million, $10 million that every property is buying lux. It is being -- it's very evenly distributed across all of those price points. And so it will take a while to settle where it comes out. As more and more agents are using it and trialing it and seeing the benefit, we will see that penetration grow. I have no doubt about that. But as I said, it's got an equal value to a $1 million property as a $5 million property. So there's no sort of skew or situation yet where everything above $10 is buying, for example. So -- but we'll keep updating you as this grows and we learn more and more about the product and how it performs.

The seller lead conversion runs around about 30% to 35% because don't forget, sellers will contact more than one agent. So they can't all convert. And then in terms of conversion, there's a couple of things at play. and I'm talking about converting to a listing. One is obviously how many agents consumer wants to contact. And then secondly, it's up to the agent to their performance to convert. So what we will be tracking over time is relative conversion of agents who are getting these leads and kind of point out to the ones that are maybe not converting as many as they could be. You are right in terms of the potential Pro monetization. The value we are delivering here is substantial. I have no doubt about that.

Now we're doing this deliberately. We deliberately priced Pro at an entry-level price to make it very easy to convert. And customers are clearly seeing the value. Obviously, that creates opportunities for future monetization.

[Sriharsh Singh, analyst]

And Owen, just a follow-up on that. So your conversion rate is around, call it, 30%. Is there a target -- is there a conversion rate which once you hit it, you can start flexing pricing and subscription much stronger?

[Owen Wilson, executive]

No, this conversion rate is very high. If you compare conversion of these leads to listings versus other sorts of leads that agents pay for, it's very, very good. As I said, it's very hard for us to control the conversion rate because if a consumer contacts 5 agents, they're only going to pick one, that's a 20% conversion. If they contact , it will be 100% conversion. So we really can't control that. And it's -- ultimately, over time, it will be that that conversion rate will -- well, I think we will stay around this sort of 30% rate for that reason, which is a very strong conversion rate, and we can point to listings, which then point to commissions and the value we're driving.

[Operator]

Thank you. And I would now like to hand the conference back over to Owen Wilson for any closing remarks.

[Owen Wilson, executive]

Look, thank you all for joining us today. We're absolutely delighted with our Q1. And obviously, with that October market, Q2 is off to a flying start as well. Look forward to seeing you all in a few months for the half year results. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.