Baltic Classifieds Group PLC

LSE:BCG

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Operator]

Hello and welcome to today's Baltic Classifieds Group 2023 Half Year Results Announcement. My name is Elliot and I'll be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions]

I'd now like to hand over to Justinas Simkus, CEO. The floor is yours, please go ahead.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

Good morning, all, and welcome to BCG first half of the year results presentation. We bring you a very good set of results. And to begin with a strategic overview. I am very excited to announce that after record results last year, we continued to deliver very strong double-digit growth in all 4 business units this year. We successfully executed our annual pricing event for our private customers in spring increasing the yields from C2C ads while improvements to our products and packages supported our annual pricing event for our business customers, which was implemented during the autumn. Therefore, this will mainly contribute to the revenue growth in the second half of the year. Also it's important to remember that despite continuously executing our pricing events annually, we are still in the early stage of monetization journey.

In summer we completed the acquisition of a service vertical in Latvia and Estonia, GetaPro. We also own a service vertical in Lithuania, Paslaugos, which doubled during this half of the year. So this acquisition marked a strategic expansion in fastest growing segment into new territory. Our revenue grew 19% reaching almost EUR 30 million while EBITDA exceeded EUR 22 million and was 16% up. We maintained industry leading margin at 77% despite significantly higher inflational environment in the Baltics. Adjusted basic EPS grew 31% to EUR 0.038 and cash conversion excluding GetaPro asset deal was maintained at 99%. Following our capital policy, we voluntarily repaid EUR 7 million of debt ending the half year results with leverage at 1.4x. And we continue to return excess cash to shareholders by executing the share buyback program, which started a few months ago, and declare an interim dividend of EUR 0.008 per share to be paid in the middle of January.

BCG portfolio has a huge reach in Baltics. In average, our sites were visited 63 million times per month suggesting that each citizen in Baltics has visited our site 11 times per month. More normal selling periods resulted in 17% more active ads in automotive, 8% in real Estate while eCommerce growth led to 3% more listings in Generalist. It's important to remember and also to see that the number of business customers were strong across all business units. We had 1% more real estate brokers, 3% more automotive dealers, slightly less customers in jobs after a record year last year but over 50% more than 2 years ago. The significant lead over our closest competitor, which we consider to be the most important KPI, was maintained across all major portals and now it's from 5x to 28x depending on the period we look at.

Our biggest portal Autoplius and job portal CVBankas lead improvements over the last few years is of particular note given they are operating in more competitive markets and the related increase represent a significant gain in their market share. Pricing and packaging improvements helped increase yields for both business and private customers. Average revenue per automotive dealer grew 22%, 15% for the private; in real estate, 20% for both B2C and C2C customers; in jobs, 25% and over 100% in services whereas Generalist yield grew 15%. B2C and C2C revenue we consider to be our core revenue streams representing 88% of the total revenue so I'm delighted to see that it's growing the fastest in our portfolio.

Now I'll hand over to Lina to talk more about finance in more detail.

[Lina Maciene, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We ended the 6 months period with the highest-ever yearly revenue. The targeted 15% growth was exceeded and the revenue grew 19%. We have continued with our usual schedule of pricing events in April. Shortly before the currently reported period, we introduced C2C price changes for most of our portals and these changes are reflected in the reported revenue numbers. And in the very end of the period in September and October, we introduced B2C price and packaging changes. We did it in real estate, auto and jobs portals and these made limited contribution to the first half year revenue with full contribution to be seen in the second half of the year from autos and real estate and from jobs to be rolled out throughout the following 12 months. Each of our business lines grew in double digits and Simonas will explain the details behind each business line growth separately.

But overall in automotive and real estate business lines, we have more ads plus we have increased the yields from both B2C customers and C2C listings. And consequently, auto business line grew 19% and real estate 18%. After a very strong last year during which jobs and services almost doubled, jobs portal continued to grow 20% against the same period last year and if we compare with the same period 2 years ago, then the growth was around 170%. The services part was benefiting from the yield improvement and value-added services usage. And in total, jobs and services business line growth was 27% year-over-year. Generalist grew 13% and that was also driven by growth in the number of listings and revenue per listed ad. The portfolio we manage is very well diversified across both business lines and revenue streams and you can see in the upper corner that auto and real estate business lines contribute approximately 60% of the group revenue and the remaining 40% are almost equally generated by jobs and services and Generalist.

And in addition to that, the split by revenue streams is 48% from B2C, 40% from C2C so 88% is generated by the core business and the remaining 12% comes from advertising plus ancillaries. This time we wanted to show quarterly revenue by business line over the past 2.5 years. We do not intend to show this every time, but wanted to emphasize the resilience of each business line. You can see that COVID-19 didn't affect overall BCG business significantly. We gave some discounts to our business customers, we postponed pricing events, but still grew 9% organically during the year 2021. And various COVID related restrictions continued until the very end of 2022. In addition to that, in the end of February what was the middle of fourth quarter of financial year 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and started a war there. We then saw Internet population focusing more on the news rather than shopping online or searching for a property or a car and the impact of this to our revenue was very short term, a matter of weeks.

It recovered within a quarter, therefore it's not seen in the quarterly revenue and our growth in 2022 was 22%. So despite the turbulences we went through, each of our business lines have maintained growth trajectory. Now moving to costs. We show the cost to EBITDA and this period there were no adjustments to it. Our group operates in a higher inflation environment for quite a few years and for some time inflation is double digit. Obviously a significant component to inflation is energy prices to which BCG is not too much directly exposed to. Our costs are under control. People costs account to the majority of our operating costs, which is more than 60%. And the higher wage inflation is no news to our region. We have that for many years in a row especially given 1/3 of the team is intact. So the majority of the increase in people cost is in line with previous years and is driven by the annual salary reviews. And also the expected listed company costs materialized.

We have a growing cost relating to the performance share plan because in July the group awarded the second portion of employee share options under the group PSP scheme and the costs relating to it should continue increasing gradually during the first 3-year period after the IPO and thereafter, the costs should be relatively constant. Marketing costs remain at approximately EUR 1 million a year and in absolute amount terms, we think we outspend our competitors. But if looking at a percentage from revenue being 1.5%, that's a benefit of the fact that we are a locally well-known portfolio of brands. Justinas mentioned we are 1 of the most visited portfolios across the regions and we were visited by each resident 11 times a month. Our websites are among the most visited sites in the respective countries plus we do cross-marketing. For example, approximately 10% of the traffic to our auto portfolio in Lithuania comes from our own Generalist.

And other costs as in people cost, we separately a show part of it relating to operating as a public company. In this period we had AGM related legal costs for the first time. But the most significant cost growth comes from audit fees. So overall, BCG costs grew 29% and the majority of this growth comes from costs relating to being a public listed company. Without these costs, our operating cost base grew 13%. I will now move to profitability, which was highest ever. As noted earlier, EBITDA this period had 0 addbacks. EBITDA grew 16% year-over-year and EBITDA margin was 77%. As a reminder, at IPO we were confident in sustainability of group margin prior to the impact of listed company costs. So now prior to public listed company costs, our EBITDA margin grew to above 80%. And we're highly cash generative. Cash flow from operations grew 15% to EUR 24 million. We do not capitalize any people costs.

And this year in addition to usual CapEx, we acquired GetaPro websites in Latvia and Estonia and because it was an asset deal, reported cash conversion was 92%. But if excluding GetaPro acquisition, then cash conversion becomes comparable to the prior period and proves to stay strong at 99%. Now the upper part of this table presents a list of adjustments to our profitability measures. No adjustments done to EBITDA. The only adjustments done are noncash and related to historic acquisitions. These are used to get to the adjusted operating profit and we also use these adjustments when assessing the dividend amount. So in line with EBITDA, our adjusted operating profit also grew strongly at 16% year-over-year. We continue reducing the net debt and leverage. We started the period with EUR 84 million of loan and leverage of 1.7x and since then in July, we acquired a service vertical GetaPro for EUR 1.6 million.

In October, we paid the first final dividend for financial year 2022 of EUR 0.014 per share in the amount of EUR 7 million. We reduced the loan liability by partially paying down EUR 7 million of the debt. Bought 1.5 million of company shares to Employee Benefit Trust for future employee awards. And also post AGM, which was held on the 28th of September, we have started buying back company shares. We've been only doing it for 1 month and we bought 0.4 million of shares for cancellation during the period reported on. But to this date, we have bought 1.3 million of shares for cancellation. And at the end of the 6-month period on the 31st of October, the gross debt balance was EUR 77 million with leverage at 1.4x. And going forward, we intend to use the excess cash that we generate in a year within the same year or shortly thereafter. We will continue considering M&A opportunities.

We intend to return 1/3 of adjusted net income, which is similar to net cash inflow from operating activities, each year via dividend. The Board has now declared an interim dividend of EUR 0.008 per share to be paid in January. And we also think that given the current market valuation of BCG, share buybacks create the potential for significant value creation for our shareholders. As we do not have any particular target level of debt, as long as our leverage stays below 2x, we intend to continue with buying back company shares and proceed with debt repayments from the balance of cash.

And now Simonas will guide you through the group's strategic progress.

[Simonas Orkinas, executive]

Hello, everyone. Now it's the time for the KPIs update. Lina and Justinas have touched on some of them, but it's good to repeat important things. So the structure of the slides remain the same as the last time. Just as a reminder, market context is provided on the top left, C2C performance on the top right, B2C performance on the bottom right and our lead against the competition is at the bottom left. So let's start from autos. In first half of FY 2023, automotive market in Baltics remained stable but still significantly lower than pre-COVID level and the car shortages and inflation keeps the fast growth of the average car price. In C2C, average revenue per active ad grew by 15%. There are 2 main reasons for that. One is pricing actions we implemented and the second one is the value-based pricing, which means the listing price is tied to the car value. And the private customers listed more cars than the previous period so we had 17% higher number of active listings.

In B2C segment, average revenue per dealer grew very strongly by 22% and the main reason was introduction of the new packages. Growth in dealer base is very modest as you can see because of the already very high penetration. And in bottom left, you can see our lead versus closest competitor and we're really happy that our lead in Lithuania keep growing and now it's more than 5x. In real estate, real estate market is active. I would say that normally active while in 2022 it was abnormally hot. In the last half year number of transaction was very similar to pre-COVID period, but the average price of the property keeps growing. The dynamics in both C2C and B2C segment is quite similar to autos. In C2C, we directly benefited from growing prices because of the value-based pricing plus we implemented pricing actions in the beginning of the year and this resulted into 20% average revenue per ad growth. And we observed higher number of new listings as well as extensions so the number of active ads grew by 8%.

And on the bottom right chart, you can see the strong growth of 20% of average revenue per broker. It was a result of successful implemented new pricing and packaging. And the broker penetration is very high, already saw the number of B2C clients remain stable even for the last couple of periods already. And in the real estate, our competitive position is very strong. The gap between us and nearest competitor in Estonia grew even further up to 16x now. And jobs, jobs market remained very active, significantly more active than pre-COVID. Average wage in the first half of this calendar year grew by 14% and unemployment rate keeps decreasing. It is still challenging for companies to find employees. Companies are willing to invest in hiring, but some of them are more conscious than a year-ago in growing their teams. So we grew average revenue per customer by 25%, but the customer base slightly decreased.

And our job board remained a strong leader, the lead over our closest competitor is more than 8x. And I would like to touch on our services subsegment in the top right chart, it performed very well in H1. Average revenue per ad doubled -- more than doubled actually. And the Generalist, the Generalist platform performed well. Revenue grew by 13%. And our biggest Generalist platform Skelbiu grew its average revenue per listing by 15% as a result of introduction of value-based pricing and bundled packages in some of the categories plus other pricing actions. And as you know, the COVID lockdown boosted our lead in FY 2021-2022 and in H1 in 2023, our lead versus closest competitor in Lithuania is more than 18x, which is 3x higher than pre-COVID. And now I would like to tell few words about the product developments in BCG. We make changes on our platforms every day. I will share some of them in the next 2 slides. And last 6 months, we were focused on developing B2C propositions and content quality.

So starting from autos on the left hand side. In Autoplius, we replaced 2 existing dealers packages with 4 new ones providing customers with better tailored services to suit their business. And in Auto24, we introduced new B2C package and limited re-listing. This is a very important step to improve the content quality and buyer experience. On the right hand side in Aruodas, we updated existing B2C packages, introduced a new one the premium package and initiated authentication requirements for all the agents on the platform. So this improves agents' credibility and prevents shared use of the single account. In KV, real estate portal in Estonia, we introduced new packages for real estate developers and limited re-listing for brokers similarly to Auto24 and the main goal is to improve content quality and user experience again. And I mentioned introduction of new packages many times already and I want to add that we see very strong take-up in premium packages in both in autos and real estate.

Let's move to jobs, CVBankas introduced a very interesting tool, salary estimator tool. So job seekers, market researchers or anyone else can explore the salary levels in the different positions so it's very important. It's always very important and interesting topic for the people. And as was already mentioned that the Generalist Skelbiu implemented value-based pricing in automotive and real estate categories and which proved to be very effective on our verticals. So we keep improving content quality and fraud preventions, for that we upgraded the moderation tool.

And on that note, I would like to hand over back to Justinas to finalize the presentation.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

All right. Thank you, Simonas. Our growth runway is significant. We are early in our monetization journey. Our portal take rates compared to international peers are 2x to 3x lower. So improving our pricing and packaging will help to grow our revenue and profit in the coming years. This we consider to be our core of our growth story. In addition to this, we are developing ancillary products, particularly financial intermediation and data related products and we have a shortlist of M&A targets we are constantly circling around. Also the Baltic economies are in healthy shape and still have many low-hanging fruits for growth. Public debt durations are one of the lowest in the EU. GDP growth for the next full year is forecasted to be positive despite possible [indiscernible] recession in the first few quarters of the next year. BCG continued to grow in soft landing economic environment since it results in more normal selling plans of automotive and real estate and encourages customers to invest more into marketing.

The outlook for our company is positive. For the aggregate of automotive, real estate and Generalist business units; the Board is comfortable maintaining guidance of 15% revenue growth for the second half of the year. This builds on the outperformance during the first half of the year for these business units. For jobs and services after the 27% growth during H1, the Board anticipates a slower second half as we are starting to see some companies take a more cautious approach to their hiring plans. However, we expect for the full year growth of around 15%. The Board expects the company to maintain adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year despite rising costs in a high inflation environment and further listed company costs. During the second half of the year, the Board will continue allocating excess cash towards reducing gross debt and to the share buyback program as well as declare an interim dividend to be paid in January.

All right. Thank you for listening, for your attention. And now we are very happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from William Packer from BNP Paribas.

[William Packer, analyst]

I've got 4 questions. I'm happy to go back in the queue if that'd be better for you, but I'll fire away the 4. So firstly, you've guided to 15% revenue growth for the second half for autos and real estate and this strikes me as a little bit conservative. You put through a 20% price increase and from our scraping, the inventory levels on your key websites have grown 20%. Assuming we don't see a major turn in inventory towards the upside risk, is that the risk or have I missed something? Secondly, could you update us on any regulatory developments in any of your key markets? We've had this Estonian property investigation for example and it's quite hard for us to keep precise tabs on what's going on so an update there would be useful. Thirdly, a key risk for the auto classified sector heading into 2023 is the normalization of gross profits for the dealers. Could you update us as to how gross profits have developed in your key markets and how you expect car dealers to navigate those challenges? And then finally, could you help us think through the split of free cash flows between debt reduction and buyback as we head forward? For our modeling, that could have quite a significant impact on the EPS growth so any help there would be very useful.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

So I will start with the first question with regards to our guidance and to bring a small correction what we have said. So we are guiding 15% for the second half in aggregate for automotive, real estate and Generalist. So it's likely that automotive and real estate will be slightly above that and Generalist will slightly below 15%, but for the aggregate we are guiding 15%. Secondly, the automotive and real estate business lines are doing very well. They did very well during the first half of the year; automotive grew 19%, real estate grew 18%. Also for the second half of the year, the B2C price changes will kick in and that will have effect on our revenues. However, we also need to remember that we do our pricing events annually. So also last year, we did the B2C pricing event in autumn. So the comparables for the second half of year becomes higher. So we anticipate the revenue growth here, but also the comparables will be higher. The second question was...

[William Packer, analyst]

The regulatory developments?

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

Yes. Unfortunately, those are very slow processes so there is no update on that note currently. Just maybe to repeat ourselves. We are cooperating with competition authority. We prepared -- not we, but the RBB computational economists prepared the report regarding Estonia real estate and auto market about our take rates, about the dealers' commission pool, comparables to the international peers and we see here that actually our take rates are much lower compared to international peers. Our pricing and packaging or yield growth also correlates with our delivering increasing value to the dealers and brokers. So we are feeling optimistic with regards to these investigations. Unfortunately, they are taking as long as they are taking and cannot update more here. The third with regards to dealers and brokers gross profits. I don't know, Simonas, maybe you would like to take this one or shall I?

[Simonas Orkinas, executive]

I think there is no different. But if you refer that, basically the dealers profits -- the gross profits depends mostly on the value of the vehicles. So we see the rapid growth of the price of the vehicles in the market and we don't really expect that this price will drop. First of all, the price of the new vehicles is growing so that the used vehicles -- our markets are dominated by used vehicles. So the used vehicle's prices are following the new ones. That's the first thing. And the household incomes in the Baltics still they grow actually. You can see the wage inflation for the last 7 years is around 10%. So people have savings, people have the money let's say and the households -- the amount of the incomes of the households makes the difference, makes the decision of buying things. And if the households incomes is growing, then this means that it's really hard to expect the price drop on any products basically. So we think that the same is, let's say, from what we get the information from the local economists that inflation rate will be lower than we have now, which is record high. But still we'll have inflation and we don't expect any drop in the car prices and same basically for the properties.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

And the third question with regards to capital allocation. Lina maybe you would...

[Lina Maciene, executive]

Yes, I could. As long as our leverage is below 2x, we continue with and plan to continue with the same approach what we did up until now so we'll do both, return the debt and do share buybacks. Actually at this point in time, we would like to buy shares. Given the valuation, we would like to buy as much as we can. And based on the EPS calculation, there is bigger acceleration on the shareholders' return with share buybacks, so that's definitely what we want to do. But we hear investors and the willingness for the companies to have strong balance sheets. So we will continue both, paying down the debt and share buybacks.

[William Packer, analyst]

Maybe just to follow up on Justinas' comments around the conservatism of guidance. You mentioned the comps get harder. Just to make sure I understand properly. Are you thinking of changing the timing of the H2 price rise or will you look to raise prices at the same time? Clearly the fact that you had a significant price increase in the previous year makes comps harder, but just to check around the timing of pricing.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

So currently we haven't scheduled the price rises for the next year. But looking from, let's say, today's perspective, we don't see why it shouldn't happen in the same schedule this year. But we haven't done the decision yet. And basically because in the beginning of this half of the year, we did the C2C and the end of this half year B2C. So we just went through both of the pricing events. So it's just still time yet for the planning for the next ones.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Jessica Pok from Peel Hunt.

[Jessica Pok, analyst]

I was wondering if you can give any color as to kind of demand of jobs kind of in the Baltic region for blue collar versus white collar and any trends there would be helpful. And the second question is just on the pricing event that you've just had for B2C. Is there any color you can give in terms of the level in which you've put through these pricing events? Is it kind of in your historical 15% or is it closer to maybe 25%? Just any color on that would be helpful.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

So maybe I will take the second part of the question and, Simonas, maybe you can take the next one. So with regards to the price increases, it was in line with our historical levels, it was from 10% to 20%. If we want to give an average, we should kind of average 15%. And it's not only the price increases because especially for B2C, it's both pricing and packaging because we are introducing new packages tailored for different size of the dealers. We also give more prominence products for the dealers if they are choosing more premium packages. So it's not only a straight price increase, but it's also when the customers choose our better products, they also get more leads and we are kind of giving more business to them. With regards to labor market, I can maybe just start answering. But actually our job vertical is not considered more at the blue label. It is a very broad vertical. It includes both blue and then white label and the labor market continues to be strong.

So the only I guess why we are more cautious on the second half of the year, it's we have quite tough comparables for the second half of the year because in the last year in the second half of the year, we emerged from the pandemia and from the COVID restrictions. But on the other hand, currently the labor market is also very strong. If we compare it to the regular averages before the pandemia also, now we still have 50% more ads and the revenue is more than double that size. So basically for the next year, we rely on the forecast that the labor market will continue to be strong. The local economists are forecasting that unemployment rates will be more or less stable. There will be salary pressure because of the higher inflation to the employers. So basically our assumption is that -- our view is more cautious, but our assumption is that the labor market will be still strong.

[Simonas Orkinas, executive]

Maybe a small remark on top of that that we don't have -- we have not to forget actually that we have the proper blue collar, let's say, job category on our Generalist side. So we are covering really broad market and CVBankas is a mix, the Generalist is the blue collar.

[Operator]

We will now answer questions received from the webcast. First question, what are the B2C price rises you put through recently? And in C2C in absolute terms, your prices still seem low relative to the cost of the items involved. Where could these get to mid-term? 2, longer term what are your aspirations for your services vertical? Could it be similar in size to other verticals?

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

Right. So I will start answering. With regards to B2C price changes, as I mentioned, it was from 10% to 20% and average 15%. And as I mentioned earlier, it's not only trade price increases. But in some cases that we are having new packages, more tailored packages which include more prominence products. So the customer is not only get a price increase, but they are also getting better product. Second part of the question with regards to C2C. I agree with you that actually the listing fees are very low compared to the value of the vehicle or the value of the real estate. And how much bigger it can be? Well, it's difficult to answer. But in our view, it's significantly bigger and this is what we are aiming for. We are taking annual pricing events in C2C. This year, as you could see, growth was the fastest, it grew 26%. And basically we see that actually once we add like EUR 5 extra to the listing fee, the customer willingness to pay are very strong and there is low price sensitivity as you can see among the C2C customers.

[Simonas Orkinas, executive]

And the second question was about our aspiration towards the service verticals. So maybe I will start here so how we look at this let's say. The service vertical is extremely wide and broad. When you think about the services, there are so many of them, so much and they are not on Internet. Quite a lot of them, they are not even on the Internet. It could be like cleaning, construction, transportation, carpentry, I mean anything, teaching, some photographers and so on. And so we see this segment as very wide and very, let's say, capable to acquire -- invest into the market because they are businesses, either smaller or mid-sized businesses, and they can pay for the customers they are getting. So we really believe that this could be similar to other -- in size I mean similar to other verticals. And the good thing that market itself in the Baltics especially, as you know, the level let's say of the living standards they are increasing and the incomes are increasing. So people tend to buy more and more services instead of doing something themselves, just small things. So we believe that this might be very significant and similar to other verticals.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

Also maybe to add, but actually it's all around the world the service verticals are expanding and basically many classifieds companies see the service vertical as a new emerging vertical. And basically if we look how many suppliers are here and how many services are in our lives, basically kind of every day we need some kind of services. So we think that it can be definitely as big as some other verticals. Although it will take time and in our projections, it will take 3, 4, 5 years. But the way it's expanding, it's doubling during almost every year so it looks very promising.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Marco from [ AlphaStar ]. Is the below average growth in advertising from a weakening online advertising market or is there something else to consider?

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

It's a good question, I think that maybe to begin with, advertising revenues we don't consider to be our core revenue and we are not focusing on it. What does it mean? So basically we are not creating new positions or we are all the time waiting does it wait, is it more kind of better to have a position or to have a better user experience? So we don't consider just the advertising contributes only 6% of our revenue. It's growing, but like single digits and we see a much bigger potential in the classifieds revenue which is C2C and B2C.

[Simonas Orkinas, executive]

So maybe just the technical nuances. Let's say the context of technical environment or legal environment does not support online advertising because of the privacy protection GDPR and other laws let's say. They kind of very -- they limit basically their possibilities of using online advertising, all the cookies consent and third party. So we have to comply with those and these are shrinking basically from the market online advertising.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

And from this perspective, we feel that we are very fortunate to that. This part of revenues is very minor in our portfolio.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Harry Wilson from [ Virgins ]. One, how should we interpret the minor declines in Auto24/Aruodas market share multiple since full year '22? 2, please could you expand on the breakdown between pricing impact and volume expected in the 15% guidance? 3, as of today, could you remind us of the number of shares bought back and how that relates to targeted buyback?

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

All right. Maybe Lina, you would like to start from the third question.

[Lina Maciene, executive]

Yes, I can. So up until today, we bought 1.3 million of company shares for cancellation. We don't have a particular communicated target of number of shares to be bought, but currently the goal is actually -- given the valuation of BCG and given the fact that we are below 2x in leverage, the goal is actually to buy as much as we can. We are limited by rules such as safe harbor and we comply with those. But simply saying, we're just currently buying as much as we can.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

Right. I can answer about the trends in automotive vertical in Estonia. I think that for the audience, it's very important to remember that portals like Auto24, they are super-dominant portals. So basically Auto24, the lead is close to 30x and they are one of the most popular sites within the respective [indiscernible]. And for example once you are 25x or 30x bigger compared to your closest competitor and let's say your competitor gains 1 user so basically to maintain the same lead, you need to get 30 more users. But in fact we are so dominant and so penetrated, there are no additional 30 users on the market. So it's not a 0 sum game the competition and actually with small movements once you are at least more than 10x bigger and in Auto24 case, we are more than 20x bigger, it doesn't matter these kind of movements. It doesn't reflect the changes in the market share.

The most important movements within our portfolio and looking at our leads are in Autoplius in Lithuania where we increased from 4.4x to 5.6x. Even though kind of looking by number, it's not a big improvement. But actually in terms of the market share, it's a huge improvement. So just maybe to explain to the audience, actually the movements once you are above 20x, these are more like arithmetics and also it can depend on since we are using open source data to calculate, it also can reflect some small changes into the kind of data collection methodology by the open source data or basically. So this is not where you should kind of be focusing. They are much more important. The lead is the one we achieved through over the last few years in Autoplius within bankers and within also real estate portals in Estonia. Those are much more significant gains.

And the second part of your question, how much the growth has been reflected in the volumes and how much through the yield improvements. So this is a very general question. So to answer it very precisely, we need to go through each business line individually and then to look at -- so it's not very kind of easy to give a generalized question. But to make it maybe a short answer, the volumes are growing in single digits and the last few years especially in the real estate and automotive we had headwinds because the economy was booming and the selling periods were so short and there were lack of clarity on the market and such. So basically we have this headwind in terms of inventory. Now we have a tailwind when the selling times are more normalizing so we see the growth in terms of the volumes. But in the future, we shouldn't be expecting a single-digit growth because of our platform is already being so dominant. And the yields, we are aiming to grow our yields through the pricing and packaging events double digits. We are aiming with the 15% annually pricing events so double digit.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have another written question from Subash Menon at [ Avalon ]. Is the interest rate on Facility B fully hedged?

[Lina Maciene, executive]

We pay margin plus 1 month Euribor. But as I mentioned earlier, looking at the EPS impact from interest costs and from share buybacks, currently it makes more economic rational to emphasize the share buybacks, but we're continuing with both.

[Operator]

This concludes our Q&A. I'll now hand over to Justinas Simkus, CEO, for any final remarks.

[Justinas Simkus, executive]

All right. Thank you. And thank you all for listening and for very good questions. And looking forward to see you during our full year results announcement.

[Operator]

Today's call is now concluded. I'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.