Adevinta ASA

OSE:ADE

Earnings Call Analysis

Impressive Financial Growth and Transformation

Adevinta's third quarter showcased a striking 14% revenue growth in core markets and a significant EBITDA margin rise of 5 percentage points, reaching 37.6%. The company is on track to meet the top end of its 2023 EBITDA guidance, between EUR 620 to 650 million, fueled by enhanced offerings and increased traffic across major platforms like Leboncoin and Mobile.de. This quarter also saw a remarkable 51% increase in transactional revenues, although advertising revenues declined by 6%. With its transformation project advancing steadily, Adevinta is poised to launch its new operational model by January 2024, signaling a greater focus on innovation, user value, and efficiency.

Stellar Financial Performance and Upward Trajectory in Core Markets

The company has announced robust financial results, with a 14% growth in revenue across core markets signifying not just expansion but also resilience. This growth has translated into an increased EBITDA margin of 5 percentage points, peaking at a notable 37.6%. The strong cash flow generation stemming from these results has allowed for substantial debt reduction, a prudent move especially amid rising interest rates. Aligning with prior forecasts, the company is on track to hit the upper end of its 2023 guidance, promising double-digit revenue growth and a group EBITDA within the EUR 620 million to EUR 650 million spectrum.

Strengthening Core Operations and User-Focused Innovations

Amidst positive revenue trends, the company is focused on vertically integrating its operations, enhancing user and customer value. Strategic initiatives such as adopting a new Target Operating Model and consolidating generalist platforms are underway. These initiatives have been implemented without disrupting current operations and have already started to yield significant returns. These strategic strides, particularly in mobility and real estate services, are rooted in the main aim—to deliver value to the users and customers through innovative solutions such as enhanced search and filter attributes and split payment options, resulting in an upward activity trajectory on the company's platforms.

Robust Revenue Growth and Diverse Portfolio Performance

The company's group revenues have seen a 12% year-on-year growth, accumulating to EUR 454 million. Within the core markets, revenue has surged by 14%, substantiated by 17% growth in online classified revenues, predominantly driven by the mobility sector on platforms such as mobile.de. Real estate has also witnessed a double-digit upsurge, with transactional revenues experiencing a staggering 51% increase across core markets. Advertising, meanwhile, has seen a 6% decline, reflective of a broader, weaker advertising market. EBITDA has seen an impressive 29% climb to EUR 171 million, reinforcing an already solid 37.6% margin.

Segmented Successes: Real Estate and Mobility Achievements

In France, online classified revenues saw a 13% inclination, spurred by mobility's significant 20% increase in average revenue per dealer listing. Moreover, revenue in Mobile.de exhibited a stellar 26% increment, facilitated by the blossoming dealer listings and substantial growth in revenues from private sellers. Deeper into the European market, revenues expanded by 10%, with mobility and consumables contributing to a 13% rise in classified revenues. Notably, Kleinanzeigen and Spain's growth began to decelerate, but transactional revenues continued to gain momentum, doubling from the previous year. Despite the decline in international markets revenues by 21%, primarily due to currency effects and decreased vibrancy, initiatives like OLX Brazil managed to increase revenue and significantly enhance EBITDA.

Solid Cash Flow and Deleveraging Continues

The company has maintained strong cash flow with EUR 144 million generated in the quarter, nearly mirroring previous year's performance. Capital expenditures, although higher due to integration projects and harmonization efforts, accounted for just 6% of quarterly sales. This financial strength is enabling continued deleveraging, with the business reporting a 2.7x leverage ratio, edging closer to the mid-term target of 2x net debt to EBITDA, reflective of prudent financial management and strategic debt repayments.

Looking Forward: Prudent Outlook and Strategic Ambitions

With an excellent operational performance driving strong financial results, the company is expecting a slowdown in revenue growth towards the year's end. The guidance remains confident, aiming for double-digit revenue growth in core markets and an EBITDA at the higher end of the EUR 620 million to EUR 650 million range. Long-term ambitions are optimistic, targeting an annual revenue growth between 11% and 15% through 2026 with aspirations for an EBITDA margin between 40% and 45% in the same timeframe.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Welcome, everyone, to Adevinta's Third Quarter 2023 Results Investor Presentation. Mr. Antoine Jouteau, Chief Executive Officer of Adevinta, will host today's conference. Mr. Jouteau, the floor is yours, sir.

[Antoine Jouteau, executive]

Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us today. Due to yesterday evening's announcement of a voluntary tender offer to acquire all issued and outstanding ordinary Class A shares in Adevinta by Aurelia Bidco Norway A S, we have [ accelerated ] to release our Q3 results originally scheduled for November 23rd. Today, during this conference call, we will [ go through ] Adevinta's strong progress in our third quarter. Exceptionally, this presentation will not followed by a Q&A session.I'm delighted to be accompanied by Elisabeth Peyraube, our new CFO, who joined us just 2 months ago. Elisabeth brings with her many years of experience across a wide range of digital consumer and media platforms, together with a strong track record in leading finance transformations, so we are delighted to have her on our team. We will be talking you through yet another strong set of results this morning. We also take the opportunity to update you on the significant progress we have made this quarter on our transformation project.So let's start by the key highlight of the quarter. Once again, we delivered a strong financial performance with 14% revenue growth in our core markets. Our EBITDA margin grew by a pleasing [ 5% ] points year-on-year to 37.6%, benefiting from operating leverage and the favorable phasing of expenses despite the impact of our changing business mix. This produced another quarter of strong cash generation, allowing us to further deleverage the business and pay -- and to pay down debt, mitigating some of the impact of rising interest rates.I'm delighted to confirm that these strong results leave us well positioned to deliver our previously announced guidance to 2023 with double-digit revenue growth in core markets and group EBITDA at the top end of the EUR 620 million to EUR 650 million range. We continue to lay the foundation for stronger, more innovative and more efficient organization. We are making good progress in the verticalization of our operations. The statutory consultation with our working council on the proposed Target Operating Model has been successfully completed, and we are on track to go live with our new organization in January 2024.The convergence of our generalist platforms got underway with Leboncoin and Kleinanzeigen. And during the summer, we reached out our first major milestone with the transformation of the Leboncoin platform into a multi-brand platform. I'm pleased to say that we have delivered these major changes without any disruption to the day-to-day running of the business, maintaining strict financial discipline, while achieving some significant product and commercial successes in our key strategy pillars.Our top priority is to deliver value to our users and customers. In mobility, we continue to enhance our offering for users. At [ Mobile.de ], for example, we introduced new search and filter attributes, including electric vehicles and online buying and selling. In Real Estate, in Spain, it's now possible to search by commute time in Fotocasa. Users simply select their preferred mode of transport and the maximum time they want to spend commuting and they will get a tightly targeted set of results.In transactional services, we introduced Split Payment at Leboncoin, enabling users to pay with a card and [ available wallet ]. At Marktplaats, we launched a new shipping option with DHL Home delivery. These are just a few examples. There are many others.Overall, activity continues to trend upward on our main platform with traffic growing year-on-year, demonstrating the strength of our brands. Leboncoin showed an impressive performance with visits up by 11% compared to the same quarter last year. Mobile.de traffic also showed strong growth with visits up by 9% year-on-year following the current market trends. In Kleinanzeigen, visits were flat year-on-year, reflecting the temporary impact of the rebounding and domain change and the drop in traffic during the unusually fine weather in September. The benefit of the rebounding are now beginning to show through and Kleinanzeigen was back on positive year-on-year growth trajectory in October.Now let's dig into our 2 key verticals, starting with mobility. In Germany, listing increased by 19% year-on-year against a relatively low comparative period, mainly driven by reduced demand due to the economic environment, as well as a sustained recovery in the number of new listings through the quarter. In France, listing grew by 14% in the third quarter, mainly due to the low prior year comparatives.While in the previous quarters, lower demand levels and weaker car dealer supply had a positive impact on our platform listings and [ directly ] on our revenue in Mobile.de, we expect these volumes to stabilize to a more normal business trend in the coming months. However, we continue to see significant opportunities for growth from the current very low monetization level and are implementing a number of commercial initiatives, including price increases, as well as product improvement and new value-added services for customers.In Mobile.de, the price increases on 1st April 2023 led to increased monetization with average revenue per [ listing ] up 10% year-on-year. Mobile.de continues to innovate in leasing, financing, C2B and more. We introduced our new dealer packages, including a new fourth package and the redesign of the other three accounts. These new packages were soft launch in October. The early outlines of these new packages have been very well received by the majority of our car dealers. In the quarter, average revenue per dealer in France increased by 20% year-on-year.For Real Estate, the overall macro environment for Real Estate continues to be challenging with sustained high inflation, rising interest rates and low consumer confidence, all of which impact the property market with obvious consequences for the number of listings available on our platforms. This is true to different degrees in France and Germany, largely due to the different market position we hold.In France, professional listings increased by 11% year-on-year, driven by a slowdown in the number of transactions, explained by the rising interest rates and the tightening of credit access conditions on the demand side for all properties. We continue to improve our monetization. ARPA increased by 21% year-on-year benefited from the successful launch of enhanced subscription packages in September last year with high added value for professional clients.In Germany, professional listings continued to show impressive growth, up 79% year-on-year. There were 2 factors behind this. The first is the particular market dynamics in Germany, where demand for houses for sale is decreasing significantly and shifting partly towards houses for rent due to the current economic environment. As a result, professional listings stay longer on our platform.The second driver is our gain in market share and increased agent penetration. The number of professional clients increased 13% year-on-year to 10,000. We still have a lot of room to go in Real Estate, and we are making sure that we continue to bring further value to agents, which will ultimately lead to increased monetization.In transactional services, we continue to see very strong traction in product adoption with strong double-digit growth in all markets. During the quarter, we ran successful back-to-school promotions in all our core markets, which had a positive impact both on the number of transactions and on adoption. In Italy and Spain, the number of transaction in September reached an all-time high.We also continue to improve and launch new products in all our core markets. I mentioned earlier, the launch of the Split Payment at Leboncoin and the DHL Home at Marktplaats, but we also launched Apple Pay for our iOS users at Leboncoin at the end of the quarter with very strong results so far. We also improved the user journey in transactional services in Kleinanzeigen with the launch of the Transactional Overview Page and Buy Now Solution for individual shipping.So as you can see, the overall picture has been extremely encouraging for the Group, and we are delighted with the progress we have made, not only in our financial results, but also in the many initiatives we have launched and to improve our future market positions and secure robust long-term growth and profitability for our business.I will now hand over to Elisabeth to talk in more detail about our financial performance.

[Elisabeth Peyraube, executive]

Thank you, Antoine, and good morning, all. I'm very pleased to be with Antoine today to review with you Adevinta's quarterly financial performance. I have to say, it's very pleasing on my first outing as CFO to be presenting such a strong set of results backed by a strengthening balance sheet.Group revenues grew by 12% to EUR 454 million. This is on a similar scope basis, meaning that we have restated the revenues for the markets that we exited between last year and this quarter, which included Mexico and Hungary. Revenues in our core markets grew by 14% despite the soft macroeconomic environment. Online classified revenues improved by 17%, supported by continued strong double-digit revenue growth in Mobility, mostly driven by mobile.de.Real Estate posted double-digit growth, driven by France and Kleinanzeigen. Jobs performance was flat year-on-year. Transactional revenues grew by 51% year-on-year with strong growth in all core markets. Advertising revenues, as you might expect, were down 6% year-on-year, reflecting an overall weaker advertising market.Reported EBITDA at EUR 171 million was up by an impressive 29% year-on-year, representing a 37.6% margin. This performance was driven by: first, a strong top line evolution I just referred to; second, lower marketing spend down by more than 20% year-on-year, driven by different phasing, spend discipline and prioritization across all markets; and third, a favorable spread of expenses in the period, with some catch-up expected in Q4, 2023. Also, let me remind you that last year's performance was impacted by the EUR 6 million catch-up provision related to the French digital service tax.These positive drivers were partly offset by an anticipated controlled increase in personnel and other costs, including transactional expenses. The increase in personnel costs fell into 2 areas. Firstly, the continued buildup of our global capabilities with the implementation of new operating models for support functions and our product and tech teams. Secondly, continued investment in product development in sales and customer support operations to support our future growth. This increase was partly offset by slightly higher capitalization related to the convergence project and the harmonization of our investment policy.Let me take you through the details of our various markets, beginning with France. Reported revenues in France grew by 12% in the third quarter of 2023. Online classified revenues grew 13% year-on-year, driven by Real Estate and Mobility. Real estate saw double-digit revenue growth. It continued to benefit from the successful launch of enhanced subscription packages in September 2022. This contributed positively to the ARPA development.Mobility revenue growth was driven by the 20% ARPD increase, mainly due to the annual price increase. Jobs and holiday rental revenues were down year-on-year.Advertising revenue were down 9% compared to last year. We saw the ongoing impact of reduced activity from media agency and programmatic following negative market trends for classic display.Transactional revenues on the other hand were up 34% year-on-year on the back of transaction volume growth.Net reported EBITDA was EUR 59 million, up 13% year-on-year. Positive revenue development and lower marketing expenses, as well as a EUR 6 million catch-up provision booked last year in relation to the French DST contributed to this year-on-year improvement. This was partly offset by an increase in direct transaction costs year-on-year and an increase in personnel cost due to investment in product and technology development.The reported EBITDA margin was broadly stable year-on-year, also reflecting the evolution of the business mix with an increasing share of transaction services and a decreasing share of highly profitable advertising revenues.Turning to Mobile.de. Revenue in Mobile.de improved by 26% in the third quarter of 2023, again, an impressive performance. Online classified revenues and value-added services increased by 29% year-on-year, once again driven by the continued recovery in dealer listings, the successful implementation and execution of the dealer price increase of 15% on average in April and a strong upsell performance. Average revenue per dealer listing increased by 10% year-on-year.Revenues from private sellers also posted a strong performance in the quarter, supported by higher C2C average price per listing and higher C2B average revenue per user. Advertising revenues decreased by 4% compared to the previous year, still impacted by the ongoing reduced level of advertising spend by OEMs, result of the current market environment.EBITDA improved by 41%, mainly driven by the positive top line development, operating leverage and a 15% year-on-year reduction in marketing. This was partly offset by an increase in personnel costs, as a result of the annualization of investment in product enhancements and in sales and customer support operations. Accordingly, the EBITDA margin improved by a pleasing 6.5 percentage points year-on-year.Revenues in the European Market segment increased by 10% on a comparable basis, led by double-digit performances in Benelux and Italy, while growth in Kleinanzeigen and Spain started to slow down as expected.Online classified revenues were up by 13%, supported by double-digit growth in Mobility and Consumables. Advertising revenues were down 5% year-on-year. Transactional revenues continued to show strong momentum and doubled compared to the same period last year.EBITDA improved by 15% compared to the third quarter of 2022. This performance was mainly driven by the positive top line development and lower marketing spend in the period. This was partly offset by transactional costs driven by higher volumes and by promotional campaigns to drive adoption of the service. EBITDA margin improved by 2 percentage points year-on-year despite the revenue mix effect.Let me now give you a little more insight into the revenue evolution in our 4 largest EU markets of the segment. Kleinanzeigen revenues grew 6% in the period to EUR 62 million. This was driven by online classified with strong momentum in Real Estate, with further market share gains in mobility due to higher volumes of leads generated by mobile.de, and in consumer goods with strong performances from small and medium businesses. Advertising, on the other hand, was down 9% year-on-year, mainly due to the weaker global market environment and higher comparatives. Transactional revenues continue to show strong momentum, supported by multiple shipping promotion campaign.Turning to Spain. Revenues grew by 5% in the period to EUR 56 million. The major contributors to this performance were: first, the solid performance of online classified up 6% year-on-year, driven by solid performances in Mobility, Consumer Goods and Jobs despite lapping tougher comparatives; second, the further ramp-up of transactional revenues.Real Estate revenues on the other hand were predictably affected by the macroeconomic environment. Advertising revenues were down 4% year-on-year, driven by lower vibrancy, also largely as a result of the current environment.Benelux revenues continued to post double-digit growth and reached EUR 43 million in the period. Revenue growth in online classified was supported by a recovery in Mobility listings and a price increase, coupled with a strong performance in Consumer Goods. Transactional services revenue more than tripled year-on-year and were boosted by recent launches of additional shipping options. Advertising revenues were down 3% year-on-year.In Italy, revenue grew by 20%, mainly driven by the strong performance in Mobility and Consumer Goods and continued strong momentum in transactional services, where revenues almost doubled. Advertising revenues improved year-on-year driven by higher programmatic performance and new revenue streams.Let's move on now to International Markets, which are effectively confined to Canada. International Markets posted a 21% year-on-year revenue decline, driven by currency impact and continued contraction in vibrancy, which affected both online classified and advertising performance.Reported EBITDA was down 23% year-on-year. It reflected the top line trend and a slight increase in personnel costs in Canada, offset by a reduction in marketing and other costs, as well as by our exit from non-core operations. The reported EBITDA margin improved by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year. Although, we no longer include OLX Brazil in our segment reporting, we continue to provide you with some visibility on these assets.OLX Brazil increased revenue by 1% year-on-year in local currency to EUR 44 million. This weaker performance should be understood in the context of the macroeconomic environment, which is weighing on our activities, particularly in the Real Estate business. EBITDA improved 60% year-on-year, reaching EUR 13 million. This improvement was driven by a decrease in marketing expenses, lower personnel expenses, mainly due to a headcount reduction and other efficiencies, [ at least ] without compromising operations and other cost optimizations. The EBITDA margin for the quarter was 29%, up 11 percentage points year-on-year.Other and headquarters EBITDA improved by EUR 6 million compared to last year to a negative EUR 47 million. We continue to build up our global capabilities with the implementation of new operating models for our support functions and our product and tech teams to drive operational efficiencies and accelerate value creation. This was more than offset by favorable quarterly saving of IT expenses and the largest share of cost allocations to the market to reflect global team support. As a percentage of revenues, central P&T and headquarter costs were down year-on-year at 10%.Moving on now to other P&L items below the EBITDA line. Depreciation and amortization reduced by EUR 6 million in the quarter, mainly driven by the impact last year of the reassessment of the useful lives of certain trademarks. Our share of loss of joint ventures and associates in the quarter decreased by EUR 2 million compared to the same period in '22 due to the improved results of OLX Brazil.Other expenses amounted to EUR 30 million and the main drivers being the eCG integration, the verticalization project and the rebranding of Kleinanzeigen. This was partly offset by a gain on the sale of Hungary.Last year, other expenses included the digital service tax of France related to 2019, 2021, integration expenses related to the eCG acquisition and restructuring provision related to reorganization in France.Net financial costs increased by EUR 11 million year-on-year, mainly due to the exchange loss on the loan in Brazilian real, granted by Adevinta to OLX Brazil, as the Brazilian real depreciated against euro.We saw strong cash generation of EUR 144 million in the quarter, broadly in line with last year. The main material movement from EBITDA to cash this quarter was CapEx of EUR 29 million. It represents around 6% of our sales in the quarter, and it is essentially the capitalization of development costs of EUR 22 million.The CapEx number is higher than what we have had in the past due to integration projects, for example, cloud and ERP migration, the convergence project and harmonization of CapEx policy across the Group. This strong cash generation allowed us to continue to deleverage the business in the period. At the end of the quarter, we had a leverage ratio of 2.7x on a clear trajectory to our medium-term target of 2x net debt to EBITDA.We repaid an impressive EUR 94 million of debt, of which [ EUR 74 million ] was on our term loan B [ USD ] and [ EUR 20 million ] was on our term loan B euro, in line with our strategy to prioritize floating debt repayments. We will continue to focus on deleveraging and reassess our debt structure to mitigate any impact from rising interest rates.In terms of our debt maturity profile, we have time in hand, as no debt repayments are due until November 2025. We are taking active measures to mitigate our FX and interest rate exposures. As I just explained, we continue to reduce our floating interest rate exposure by prioritizing floating interest debt, as we deleverage. Our floating total debt ratio is now around 30%. Thanks to this deleveraging strategy, our interest expenses were broadly stable despite the rapid increase in reference rates.Overall, our deleveraging and hedging have resulted in interest savings of EUR 30 million so far in 2023. In terms of exchange rate exposure, we hedge every material transaction, and we try to minimize the FX risk by keeping FX cash at an operational minimum and by hedging our M&A proceeds, where possible.In summary, I'm really pleased to have reported on an excellent operational performance translating into strong financial results for the Group in the third quarter.I will now hand back to Antoine for the outlook and conclusion.

[Antoine Jouteau, executive]

Thanks, Elisabeth. In conclusion, we have had a very strong quarter. We have delivered a good financial performance, while making significant progress in the execution of our business and strategic roadmap.As we move into the final quarter of 2023, we expect revenue growth to ease compared to previous quarters, lapping a strong performance in Q4, 2022. And as we expect dealer listing growth to be more limited in the quarter for Mobile.de after several quarters of double-digit growth. The business profitability for that quarter will reflect the seasonality of the business and associated revenue mix with a typically higher level of transactional revenue and related costs and employee benefits in the last quarter of the year. The phasing of expenses and investments, especially in marketing after a low level in Q3; and third, the targeted one-off projects in Q4 to support future business initiatives.We remain confident of achieving our previously announced guidance for 2023 with double-digit revenue growth in core markets and Group EBITDA at the top end of the previously announced EUR 620 million to EUR 650 million range. Beyond 2023, we continue to see many further opportunities. Our financial ambition for the business remains strong with our annual revenue growth ranging between 11% and 15% until 2026 and our EBITDA margin [ ranging ] at between 40% and 45% for 2026.We have now reached the end of this presentation. And as mentioned at the beginning of the call, this presentation will not be followed by a Q&A session. Thank you for your time and have a very good day. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.